Читать книгу Windlestraws - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 8

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Jean was never told what to do; her duties, at convenient, but not at stated times, simply rose up before her like additional features in the landscape. There were voters to be visited and meetings to be held, important political guests came and went; but nothing was really allowed to interfere with the shooting.

The household filled and emptied for week-ends without an apparent ripple. More doors opened and shut, more well-bred pleasant voices broke the silence of the house, and when the week-end was over, the murmurs died down and a pile of dead birds was sent to the Cottage Hospital.

Mr. Cripps, the political agent, who came to the house daily and was almost always asked to put up with Jean, because Sir Reginald had started off with the guns, complained bitterly.

'It's not fair on me, Miss Arbuthnot!' he insisted, wrinkling the expanse of his smooth pink brow. 'I'm keen as mustard to get him in but he doesn't take it seriously! It isn't that he won't unbend--that's my usual trouble with a powerful landlord! They can't get over the feeling, you know, that people are bound to kotow to them, whether they put themselves out or not! But Sir Reginald is pleasant enough! He unbends all right if he's there! But no matter how humble people are--and nobody is particularly humble nowadays--they do expect a candidate to show up!'

Mr. Cripps glared at Jean as if she was directly responsible for Sir Reginald's habitual absences. He had a large round face, china-blue eyes, and a good deal of bare upper lip; and Jean wondered if he had any idea of how much he looked like a celluloid doll in a bath.

'I wish I could help you,' she murmured meekly, 'but I only see him myself for a minute or two after breakfast, and perhaps after tea to sign things, if I'm lucky enough to catch him before he sits down to bridge.'

'That's just it!' groaned Mr. Cripps tragically. 'Birds--beasts--bridge! What can you do with a man that fills himself up on cards and animals? I can't fit him into the day's work! I work eight hours a day for him and he only gives me two!

'He sends Major Ramsay instead--and 'pon my word that makes things worse. Major Ramsay takes any amount of trouble and comes down to hard tacks. If he were standing for himself I might put my hands in my pockets and whistle! He'd get in on his merits. But people see well enough that it's only for Sir Reginald he puts himself out. If I speak to Sir Reginald he only laughs things off--and says he has every confidence in me! Does he think I can hoax Ashcomb to take me for their local magnate? If you could get hold of him for me yourself, Miss Arbuthnot, Lady Falconer and Major Ramsay say you are the one to do it! Either he puts his shoulder to the wheel or he'll lose the seat--that's the way to put it to him! He couldn't have an easier constituency! All it asks of him is that he'll take the trouble to say that he wants it!'

Jean looked dubious. 'I don't know why I should be the person to ask him,' she said hesitatingly. 'I haven't been here long and I'm only supposed to do what he tells me.'

Mr. Cripps looked at Jean with a kind, vaguely embarrassed expression. He even blinked a little, as if the soap from the invisible toy bath had got into his china-blue eyes.

'Will you try?' he said persuasively. 'You've done a lot for him already, you know--so have I for that matter--and I expect that's why they think it's up to you to do rather more?'

Jean considered this theory carefully. It seemed to her hardly a commercial proposition, but not an untrue estimate of the Windlestraws' method. If they didn't confine you to your duties, she had already discovered that neither did they confine the duties. They grew with your ability to get them done.

Mr. Cripps gave her hand the warm grasp of an ally and departed, but he left the problem behind him. How was she to get Reggie to work? This responsibility seemed so definitely pushed into Jean's hands that she ventured to seek for Beatrice to ask her to share it. She found her surrounded by piles of chrysanthemums, scarlet leaves, and Michaelmas daisies. Beatrice paused from her labours to glance at Jean with friendly raillery.

'The only way to make Reggie go about properly,' she dropped, 'is to go about with him!'

Then she returned to the task of her autumn garden and appeared to think that she had disposed of the problem. Jean pursued Reggie to the stables. She found him with his hands in his pockets, a pipe between his lips, and a general air of being more at home in the stable yard than the grooms.

The wind blew about the leaves of the Virginia creeper on the grey walls, Robbins hissed softly over Beatrice's satin-smooth bay mare, pails of water stood on tiles already glistening with cleanliness. The harness in the harness room shone like a jeweler's window.

Reggie shot an appreciative glance at Jean. She was a little flushed with her anxiety to get him to attend to his job, and the sunshine touched her light brown hair with gold.

'I want to ride Moonlighter to hounds to-morrow,' he announced; 'would you like to have a look at him in his loose-box? You must keep well back--he's such an unaccountable brute--but we'll take him some sugar, that'll soften his heart.'

Jean followed Reggie obediently into the garnished temple of his gods. It was a haunt of peace; the vague smell of fresh straw, leather, and animals, made a climate of its own. Each loose-box bore the name of its treasured inmate, and Reggie paid his leisurely calls upon his favourites as if he were visiting famous actresses in their dressing-rooms. A few words of description to Jean came first, so that she might grasp their reputations and their histories. Then he slipped open the door and entered with the freedom of the habitué introducing a novice. Jean had a glimpse of large, startled eyes gazing down at her, and then the slender beneficent beings stood over to show her their points; they were all beautifully made up and prepared, waiting in the wings for their cues, but having no great objection to passing the time of day with suitable admirers, until the call-bell rang.

Some of the hunters showed pleasure at Reggie's entrance, others were at first a little restive, as became the owners of the dramatic temperament, but the subtle flattery of Reggie's voice and hand soon reduced them to a benign acceptance of their visitors. They took Moonlighter last.

'Stand well behind me!' Reggie warned her as he slipped the latch of the loose-box. Jean gazed up with mingled admiration and anxiety at the towering chestnut. Moonlighter took some time to appreciate their kindly intentions. He stared down at them with haughty horror-struck eyes, and pawed at his straw as if it had turned to hot coals. He even squealed with annoyance and laid back his ears, till his magnificent head wore the expression of a spiteful gargoyle.

He was like a mighty dynamo stored with terrific powers, all of them inimical. The only doubt in Moonlighter's mind seemed to be how best to show the extent of his displeasure. Reggie waited with magnetic stillness for his nerves to settle; then he began to speak. Something in his quiet voice and leisurely movements soothed Moonlighter's active disgust into a temporary docility. He consented to stand over, and even drew his soft lips back and searched Jean's hand for sugar with his long yellow teeth. Jean was deeply afraid of him, but she hid her terror and even her relief when the sugar was finished. She felt that the only way to make Reggie listen to her was to go through this ordeal without disgrace.

'Mr. Cripps,' she said, flattening out her hand for the last lump of sugar, 'is very unhappy. He thinks you ought to go to Ashcomb every day and not miss a single meeting!'

'It's the time of year that's such a bore!' Reggie explained, with the grieved eyes of a suddenly chidden child. 'If it were only after Christmas you know, when the frosts are on! And then, I don't mind telling you that I awfully hate going about grinning at people as if I wanted things! I don't mind taking what I want--or going without it if I have to--but I've never been keen on asking people for things!'

'But if you want things I think you must ask for them!' said Jean gently. Moonlighter had finished the sugar and it occurred to him, with desperate suddenness, that this was the moment to turn them out of his loose-box. He snatched back his head, and Jean found herself lifted by Reggie, straight off her feet and dropped outside the door. She leaned breathless and shocked against the wall, wondering helplessly what was happening to Reggie. A moment later he joined her and apparently nothing had happened to him, or even disturbed the ironic indulgence with which he gazed down at her. She could hear the fury inside Moonlighters box and guessed the danger Reggie had snatched her from.

'Bad-tempered brute,' Reggie murmured apologetically. 'I oughtn't to have let you inside his box, but we had plenty of time to get out really. Hope I didn't startle you. Hear him kick himself into Kingdom Come! He can't do himself any harm, though, as his box has been specially prepared for his ill-humours! Well, what do you want me to do to soothe the savage breast of Cripps--that seems to be the main point now, doesn't it?'

It was not so easy for Jean to dispose of her feelings. She was frightened, she was grateful, she was not at all sure that Reggie hadn't been hurt, and she was called upon to make herself clear with her pulse beating a hundred and twenty to the minute.

In the end she spoke more severely than she had meant to speak, because she was afraid that if she tried to be nice her voice might tremble.

'If you want to get in you must work a little harder,' she said drily, 'that seems to be all there is to it!'

Reggie laughed as if her brevity pleased him. 'Come,' he said persuasively, 'if you'd had more sugar to give that brute inside, he wouldn't have let himself rip! I hope you grasp the analogy?'

Jean moved towards the open stable door, she wasn't going to start grasping Reggie's analogies. If she was to stay at Windlestraws, she foresaw that she must acknowledge nothing, except her duties.

'I hope,' she said more drily still, 'that you are in the habit of being more civil than Moonlighter, to people who try to be of use to you!'

She felt that Reggie's eyes were still laughing at her. 'I think I am pretty civil,' he murmured, 'but I do like sugar! Come, let's make a bargain! I'll go about more, if you'll go about with me! But I won't be put off with Cripps. He sits beside me while I'm driving and talks fifteen to the dozen! Can't keep a quiet tongue in his head and jumps like a trout when I put on pace. Besides, I prefer a girl in the front seat of my car; and I'm sure the electors do--if she's at all suitable to look at!' Jean gazed severely at the stable clock.

'You couldn't do better, then, than have Lady Falconer beside you!' she answered stiffly.

'Yes, she looks well on the front seat of a car,' Reggie agreed pleasantly. 'Any letters for me to sign this morning?'

Jean flushed angrily. He had made her feel that she was being impertinent, when she was only defending herself, and that he wasn't being impertinent, even when he was attacking her. Danger, anger, and a feeling more disconcerting than either--that she ought to be able to stand being teased--threatened her self-control. If only Reggie hadn't lifted her so neatly out of the loose box, she wouldn't have minded showing him how cross she felt!

'I am sorry to have bothered you,' she said at last with less dignity and more resentment than she had intended, 'there are no papers to sign!'

She heard him call after her 'Miss Arbuthnot!' 'Jean!' but without turning her head she made her way through the fluttering of pigeons, past the discreet, still hissing Robbins into the deep tranquillity of Windlestraws.