Читать книгу The Window - Alice Grant Rosman - Страница 5

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Hatherley after all had been easy to deceive, for in his blind contempt for the man who called himself Robertson, he had not suspected him of the possession of more than a couple of rupees to knock together. He went, with the gusto of his kind, through the dead man's effects, finding nothing of consequence.

"Been hanging about this country for years," he said, with the scorn of the official who goes Home every year or so at Government expense towards one for whom Governments would have neither use nor approval. "Not that he has been in my district for some time. I saw to that. But I've heard of him and his doings now and then and precious little to his credit. Never even had a remittance as far as anybody knows. No people evidently, or if he has he's been dead to them for a good many years. They are better dead, his sort."

Christopher, knowing from experience how far from just the judgments of the Just may be, smiled grimly, thinking that the discovery of the diamonds would have been a considerable shock to Hatherley; but even so, he would have suspected them of being stolen, no doubt as, for all their present owner knew to the contrary, they might be.

Nevertheless he had continued his journey to the Coast carrying his possibly guilty secret with a light heart. As riches the gift meant nothing to him personally, though any time for years past it might have meant so much, for that is the irony of life. Christopher Royle was going home to his own inheritance. His brother Herbert was dead without heirs, so that all his bitter enmity to the younger man had not been able to prevent his triumphing at last.

The feud between them, unspoken, subtle, had grown from boyhood to manhood out of temperamental differences too great for any common understanding. Always the crafty rectitude of the elder had been able by some diabolical means to put the younger in the wrong, with his parents, his friends, his world. After his father's death, with Herbert smugly installed at Windyhill, married and likely to have sons, he had gone abroad, knowing that even this, a sane proceeding since his income was small and the prospect of work in post-war England dubious, would be made to seem, by innuendo, somehow a disgrace.

Out of his own experience therefore Christopher felt himself linked in understanding with this outcast Jim Robertson, who had been called Terry long ago. Reading the girl's letter had quickened his interest too for it gave at least some hint of the other's story. And as the ship carried him home to England and his own better fortune, he began to wonder how, once there with leisure and means at his command, he might trace it further ... oh, carefully, of course ... and perhaps rehabilitate the memory of the other man.

It was less a romantic gesture than a desire to get even with a world which men in their blindness so often make hell for one another.

But now he was in England and the rich Devon fields had given place to the lanes of Somerset and presently he would catch a glimpse of Windyhill and the far acres of his home. That at least had been a romantic impulse ... to leave the ship at Plymouth instead of going round by sea, just for the sight of it all as the train raced by.

And there it was, by Jove ... the old gray house, square set in its half circle of protecting trees, and beautiful with an enduring beauty that caught his heart in the realization of his own immense good fortune. Windyhill was his, a thing he had never dreamt might come to pass, even in his boyhood, when the secret love of it grew day by day into a nature as sensitive to beauty as it was repressed.

The train had passed but it did not matter. Clear in his mind was every stone and corner of it ... the old square hall, deep-raftered, perfectly proportioned, the staircase, shallow and wide, its balustrades carved by some artist of a forgotten age, the mullioned windows looking on a drive that wound with grace through terraced gardens to the very heart of the village set below the hill. And here was a market place centuries old and there the Norman church, where carved in marble lay the first Royle of Windyhill.

To the right across the fields lay Windy Farm where Pollock and his lads, Fergus and John, had had always a warm welcome for the young Christopher. Fergus, poor chap, had died in France, but John would be nearing thirty, and old Pollock working and planning as usual, season in and season out. A bit of a genius at farming, Pollock, full of ideas which the Governor, Conservative to the teeth, had resisted every time. Well, old Pollock should have his head now. Between them they would make Windy the farm of his dreams.

Paddington at last and four o'clock. Too late perhaps to go back to Somerset this evening. Better see the lawyers and get it over ... then Windyhill in the morning. He called a taxi, ordered the hood down and drove through London with the unequalled zest of one who comes from the wilderness back to the world.

This world had changed, of course, but he did not see that all at once, absorbed in looking for familiar landmarks. Here was the Quadriga, incomparable, he had always thought it, that figure, waiting

"... to outstrip the wind

And leave the breezes of the morn behind."

And there, as he swept along the Mall, was old Nelson, a slim silhouette above the Admiralty Arch.

It had been Trafalgar Day when he left London and the hero had looked down through blinding rain upon a wealth of flowers. And Christopher remembered thinking what hypocrites we are, because the same nation which put Nelson on a pedestal and yearly hangs it with garlands in remembrance, yet neglected his last trust and left the woman he adored to starve.

"Damned lot of hypocrites," he had cried angrily then, but time had modified the view. "Poor fools," he thought, "understanding so precious little of each other."