Читать книгу The Celestial City - Baroness Emmuska Orczy - Страница 12

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Did that sigh mean all that? Litta didn’t know. The next moment she would have closed the door and gone back to her friend, when a voice said suddenly quite close to her:

“I do like these little fellows that have lost their tails. Come and look at this one, Litta.”

Sir Philip Chartley, stooping above the rockery, was intent on the examination of a small lizard whose elegant figure was unaccountably curtailed through the absence of its tail. A clump of palms had hidden him from view. Litta, unaware of his presence, smothered a startled little cry.

“I had no idea you were here,” she said. “Why didn’t you come in? Gabrielle Bobrinsky is here.”

“There now, he has scooted off, the rascal,” Sir Philip remarked, before he straightened out his tall figure and somewhat shamefacedly replied to his wife: “I couldn’t face Princess Bobrinsky like this, could I?”

Ruefully he held out his hands—strong, capable hands they seemed to be, but for the moment covered with earth, and distinctly reeking of manure.

“I’ve had to put those strawberry plants in myself. That fool Falicon would have ruined the lot.”

He had on an old tweed coat and nondescript waistcoat and a pair of flannel trousers that probably were clean when he first changed into them, but were now a mere patchwork of green slime, brown mould, and various other kinds of dirt. His face was very hot and very moist, and his straw hat, which had not only seen better days but apparently many a better year, was tilted at the back of his head.

“Pardon me, my dear,” he said with an awkward little laugh, “for not taking off my hat. I’d better go and wash now, hadn’t I?”

He seemed in a great hurry to go, and had already turned to go down towards the loggia, where a sidedoor would give him access into the house without having to enter the boudoir, when his wife called once more to him:

“Phil!” she said, and there was just a suspicion of pathos in her appeal. “Gabrielle is in a grave difficulty and——”

“Is she, by Jove?” Sir Philip broke in, with that same shamefaced little laugh. “I am thunderingly sorry. Poor beggar! These Russians are always in difficulties, ain’t they? I’ll just get my cheque-book——” And obviously glad of the excuse, he once more turned to go. But Litta’s indignant cry once more held him back.

“It is not a question of money, Phil,” she said, letting her voice drop to a whisper, “and for gracious’ sake don’t let her hear you. Can’t you for once,” she went on, with that little note of appeal in her voice, “tear yourself away from your plants and your beetles and come and talk sensibly with Gabrielle in the blue room?”

Sir Philip didn’t seem to relish the idea, however. “If you wish it, my dear,” he said with a sigh.

“I do wish it,” she retorted impatiently, “and I also wish you wouldn’t call me ‘my dear.’”

He gazed at her in utter bewilderment, took off his hat and thoughtfully scratched his head. Altogether he looked so bewildered and so dense that Litta couldn’t help laughing in spite of her vexation.

“Go and get washed,” she said impatiently, “and for goodness’ sake don’t bring that eternal cheque-book of yours down. You seem to think that every trouble can be smoothed over with money.”

“I generally find it can,” he rejoined good-humouredly.

“One would think you were a nouveau riche,” she retorted.

This looked like the commencement of one of those periods of bickering which had become rather frequent of late in the Chartley household—one-sided bickering, that is, because Sir Philip, lazy and good-tempered, always vacated the field as soon as he realised that his wife’s nerves were on edge. Unfortunately for him, he did not as a rule realise this quite soon enough, with the result that bickerings often ended in acrimonious words on the one part and a kind of indifferent resignation on the other. On this occasion, however, the man was quicker than usual to understand that Litta was in one of her worst moods. Gabrielle probably had had a bad effect on her nerves, and women’s nerves,—well! Sir Philip was in holy terror of them. So he ran away, and Litta, with tears of exasperation in her eyes, went back to her friend.