Bohemian Girl, The by Cameron Kenneth Read Free Book Online Page A

staring at Denton with his hurt eyes, the painting in both hands, and he said as if it had just occurred to him, ‘Won’t you sit down?’
    Denton picked an overstuffed chair with a worn red cover. He put his hat on the floor next to him. Heseltine, after replacing the painting, sat on the edge of a straight chair. He said, ‘Should I not have sent the envelope to you?’
    ‘No, of course you should.’
    ‘It was addressed to you.’
    ‘Of course. But you didn’t open it.’
    ‘No!’ It was like a groan of pain. ‘No, I swear I didn’t!’
    ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you had. I just wondered if you knew what was in it.’
    ‘No!’
    Denton was afraid the young man was going to weep. He became gentle. ‘Could I ask you a question?’
    ‘Yes. Of course. Should you like tea? Coffee?’ Heseltine looked around vaguely. ‘My man is out.’
    ‘The date on your note to me was some weeks ago. How long had you had the painting then?’
    ‘Oh - oh, let me see - I got to London in August. The twelfth.’ He gave a sudden, unexplained laugh. ‘The Glorious Twelfth. Do you shoot? I used to. Now I can’t—The noise upsets me.’
    It came to Denton slowly: the twelfth of August was the opening of grouse season, a very big event in the lives of sporting people. He waited for the young man to go on; when he didn’t, he murmured, ‘So you got to London on August twelfth.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And bought the painting? I mean, how long after did you buy the painting?’
    ‘Oh—The date would be on the receipt. If I still have it. They could tell you at the shop. In the arcade. It was - oh, a while ago.’
    ‘It’s now the twenty-sixth of September. You sent me your note and the envelope on August twenty-ninth.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘So, it must have been pretty soon after you bought it.’
    ‘Yes, it was while I was hanging it. My man was hanging it, I mean. He, mmm, brought it to my attention. I put it in an envelope and wrote that silly note the same day. “Little Wesselons”!’ He laughed a bit hysterically. ‘Ass.’
    Denton waited several seconds for him to get calm. ‘The letter inside the envelope was dated more than two months ago.’
    ‘What did it say?’
    ‘It must have sat sat in the back of the painting - or somewhere - for several weeks before you found it.’
    ‘I was in the war.’
    That meant South Africa - fighting the Boers, a war that had gone on far too long and had reached a vicious stage where the British army was building concentration camps. It probably explained Aubrey Heseltine. Denton had seen young men like this after the Civil War, young men who were never the same, young men whose lives had been taken over by war. ‘Are you on leave?’ he said.
    ‘No, I’ve been—I’m invalided home. You reach a point—Then it’s no good going on. You’re no good. They don’t trust you any more.’
    ‘I was in the American Civil War.’
    ‘Then you understand.’
    ‘A little, maybe.’
    ‘You’ve seen it, then. You’ve seen them.’ His face twitched. ‘Boys. Men with families. My sergeant said we’d get them out. He told them that. Then he was dead.’ The right side of his mouth pulled down in a tic. ‘They shelled us. Our own guns. The line was cut. I sent a runner back—A boy, one of mine, he was eighteen, then he was just a tunic, you know, and one leg. A nice boy. Lancashire. I pulled them back. Against orders. I admitted it at the investigation. Why should they die like that from their own guns? That isn’t right, is it, Mr - Denton? Is it?’
    Denton shook his head.
    ‘I’m on medical leave.’ The side of Heseltine’s face pulled down again. ‘But they’re going to court-martial me. For pulling back.’
    The soldier in Denton wanted to judge him harshly; on the other hand, his older self said, nothing was proven yet. ‘Is it bad?’
    Heseltine gave him the half-smile again. ‘They’ll cashier me.’ ‘You have dreams about the war?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You remember