Читать книгу The Window - Alice Grant Rosman - Страница 13

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Mary Winter drove to Woden for Patricia next morning in a car which was no beauty but the darling of her heart. She talked to him as she drove (for he was no "she," she said, but a good fellow and had been one of the lads. She called him Archibald and suspected him of a gay and frivolous past before he had decided to settle down and become a staid rectory car).

Patricia was waiting and with her an old English sheep dog, who immediately leapt into the back seat and sat up like a grandee.

"Well, Blinkers, a bit of an occasion, eh?" said Mary, nodding to him in salutation.

Blinkers shook the long hair out of his eyes and panted with delight, knowing perfectly well the object of this journey. It had been an exciting morning for a dog, people rushing about the house since dawn; and in Blinkers' experience that meant only one thing. Michael was coming home. From now onward he would be a king among dogs.

"Well, we've met your fisherman, my dear," said Mary to Patricia as they set out for Hillthorpe. "And you are to come over to dinner to-night and meet him yourself."

"Oh, Mary, not on Michael's very first evening. I couldn't, really."

"Michael won't mind. I'll talk to him as man to man, and it is all in a good cause. He is a nice fellow, Mr. Christopher Royle, and the more entertaining he finds us, the longer he'll stay to fish."

"I have forgotten how to be entertaining and I should be a skeleton at the feast."

"No good, my dear, you are committed. I wrote and told him you were coming and if you let me down he'll think me a designing female, getting him to a dull rectory under false pretences." She stole a look at her friend. "The fact is, Patricia, Mrs. Willingdon unfortunately arrived in the scene when he was having tea with us and snapped him up. I tried to rescue the poor dear but he foundered hopelessly. He is to go over there this afternoon and, as I said to Austin, we must provide an antidote for that."

"If he is going to the Manor it is much better that I should not meet him," said Patricia levelly.

"Very well then, he'll leave Dorne to-morrow. He'll fly. I'm certain of it. Austin has so few friends and he has taken an immense liking to your fisherman. Don't be a selfish cat."

Patricia, laughing, gave in, though she knew the craftiness of this argument and her heart was not in the promised entertainment. In these days she hated meeting strangers, especially anyone in favor at the Manor.

Hillthorpe, a little market town, tucked in the Cotswolds, was the nearest railway point to Dorne. As the two women and the dog reached the station, the train from town came in, disgorging among a crowd of schoolboys, the excited, flying form of Michael Eden.

"Oh, I say, hullo. Isn't this a lark?" said Michael, in off-hand greeting, for at nearly nine one must keep a wary eye out against possible feminine embraces. The same great age, however, does not debar one from an exuberant greeting from one's dog, and Blinkers and the small boy were soon tangled together and working off their emotion in concert.

"Are we going home in Archibald?" asked Michael, emerging from the tangle at last.

"Yes, and what do you think, Michael, we've let the fishing," said Patricia.

"Have we really?" Michael was deeply concerned with the economic position of his house. "Shall we make a lot of money out of it ... pounds even?"

"If he likes it and stays."

"Then," said Michael triumphantly, "you can have a new dress."

"Oh, dear, don't you like this one?" asked Patricia in dismay.

"Um ... yes ... it's rather decent, but I meant a ... well, you know what I mean, a proper silk one."

"Don't plant extravagant ideas in the feminine breast, young man," admonished Mrs. Winter.

"Oh, well," said Michael, quite accustomed to such talk, "she hasn't an awful lot of clothes."

Mary Winter smiled, thumping him manfully on the back.

"The fact is you want to show her off, you rascal. Come along now. Jump up. Strawberries for lunch."

Michael jumped with alacrity and Blinkers followed him, stretching out on the seat and laying his head and paws over the boy's bare knees. Archibald woke from sleep, grunted a little and carried them off to Dorne.

Though tongues at Dorne might wag about Michael Eden, he was at this time a singularly lucky child, for whom the world held no dismay. Friendly by nature, he was happy at school, while holidays were a rich adventure ... excursions with Blinkers, long talks with Maginnis, gardener and handy man and his most intimate friend; tussles with Mrs. Cope, who ruled the house with duster and broom and a scolding voice that didn't deceive him for a moment; visits to a courtesy uncle and aunt at the Rectory, where gorgeous things were produced for a fellow to eat at tactful intervals; and last of all, Patricia. Michael had immense confidence in her, though the attitude between them was casual in the extreme. She was "my people" when he spoke of her to the boys at school and he would willingly have died for her, but he wouldn't have said so for the world.

That they were hard up he knew, but he was not yet of an age to feel the lack of material things. Patricia, however, worried about it, and now she said to Mary Winter:

"Oh, dear, why doesn't money grow on the trees at Woden?"

"You make more grow there than most people could," said Mary practically. "Is it worse than usual just now?"

"No, but I'm growing into a thorough miser, Mary. Fate must be paying me back for the way I used to fling my money about when I had it. I do accounts in my head all day and dream them at night, and I find myself actually counting the roses to see how many I can sell. It's dreadful. I picked a big jar for the house to-day just to put a stop to it."

"Absurd, aren't you?"

"It's not the present, but the future that troubles me. Michael ought to go to a public school to give him a chance in life."

"But bless your heart they don't, if we are to believe the newspapers," protested Mrs. Winter.

Patricia laughed.

"Oh, Mary, you are a darling. You always do me good," she said.

"There he is ... oh, look, there he is," cried Michael, catching a glimpse of the fisherman through the trees.

Blinkers sat up and looked over the side of the car in mild inquiry. Why were they passing the gates of his home? But after all it didn't matter and he settled down again. He was not, he seemed to say, a fussy dog, and home to him just now was anywhere in the vicinity of this god beside him.