Читать книгу The Man Without Nerves - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

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The Sarson establishment was kept up with far more dignity than any other in the Oasis. A butler carved at the sideboard and handed the wine, and a second man passed the dishes. Tyssen felt desperately uncomfortable and, notwithstanding the charm of his hostess, occasionally showed it. He had fetched a change of clothes and enjoyed a wonderful bath, but unfortunately Anthony had appeared in full evening dress.

“Do forgive me, old fellow,” he begged. “Nine nights out of ten I should have worn exactly the kit you are in, but I am taking Sybil Cresset over to a dance at Godalming to-night and it didn’t seem worth while changing twice.”

Tyssen was a little relieved at the explanation.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said uneasily. “I don’t live exactly the sort of life you people do down here, you see. I came here for one purpose and one purpose only, and I am afraid I never think of clothes.”

“Don’t be silly,” Pauline begged him. “Flannels are all one requires down here—unless you are a gay young spark like Tony and have to go out to these dances!”

“Once in a blue moon,” Anthony grumbled. “I didn’t really want to go to this one only Lady Amfraville caught Sybil and me together at the cricket match. She thought naturally enough that she was my sister and she insisted upon it that we both come over to her dance to-night.”

“You didn’t happen to mention, I suppose,” Pauline said, “that you had a sister at home?”

The young man laughed self-consciously.

“I’m afraid I didn’t,” he admitted. “You don’t appreciate my dancing. Sybil loves it. Besides, Lady Amfraville would have had to have asked you both then and she probably would not want more than one girl. You can sit and talk golf for half an hour with Tyssen and when he’s bored with it, he can push off home.”

“In that case,” Tyssen found courage to say, “I shall be here when you come back.”

“You don’t know my sister,” Anthony declared. “She has boundless enthusiasms but an inexhaustible capacity for sleep. She will probably take you out to see the stars. You will sit down on a seat and in half an hour’s time she will begin to yawn, then you will light a final cigarette and disappear.”

Pauline laughed softly.

“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Tyssen. When any one begins to talk about games, I am the most alert person in the world.”

“But I am really not an authority on golf,” he objected.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Anthony said impatiently. “Remember, I have seen most of our best players and I am hoping to squeeze into the Walker Cup team some day.”

“You have misjudged my game,” Tyssen assured his host. “I have played a little quiet golf for the sake of exercise in out-of-the-way places. I don’t want to play any better than I do. I don’t want to play any game seriously. As I told you, I came here for one purpose and one purpose only, and I want to carry it out.”

The three of them alone at the table presented a strange study in contrasts. Tyssen, the guest, was obviously the most serious. The knuckles of his hands showed white, where they were clutching the arms of his chair. His earnestness seemed to have given him a more commanding and vigorous personality. Anthony, on the other hand, was just the younger presentment of what his father might have been—a genial, but an indifferent, host. He was interested in his guest, whom he secretly suspected to be a professional from one of the north country clubs, playing above his form. Pauline’s interest in the awkward youth by her side was unmistakable. Something about him fascinated her. She was perfectly certain that there were two selves here—one struggling against the other. His manners at times were atrocious. Sometimes he slipped back into an ease of speech and deportment which pointed to something very different. Like all young women of her age, she was attracted by the unusual—the mysterious. Metaphorically speaking, from that moment she adopted their dinner guest.

“You must remember, Mr. Tyssen,” she warned him, “that these small places, into one of which you have found your way, are perfectly charming and restful but they have their vices. I think the vice of Sandywayes is curiosity. If you have put all ideas of golf and games out of your mind and come here, as you say, for one purpose and one purpose only, tell us what it is.”

There was a brief pause. They had reached the stage of dessert and the servants had left the room. The windows were still wide open. Outside were the Common, the silent tennis courts, the deserted cricket pitch, the single faint light shining across the way from Mr. Huitt’s cottage residence.

“I came here to be quiet,” Tyssen confided. “I want to work. I am trying to write a book. I want to study human nature—events.”

“Events?” she repeated. “Here at Sandywayes—with a city of seven millions so near?”

“A city of seven million inhabitants is no academy for me,” Tyssen assured them. “Every event here is either a minor or a major tragedy. Look at Jesson’s suicide.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t get too excited because of one happening,” she advised him. “This is the first suicide I have ever known in my life in these parts.”

“There will be a murder very soon, if I don’t go,” Anthony observed, rising from his place. “Tyssen, you will excuse me, old fellow, won’t you? Pauline will look after you and I hope she will get you to talk about your golf! Of course, what we are all leading up to is this. In a fortnight’s time we play the ‘Society’—Oxford and Cambridge, you know. We have never beaten them yet and if we could get hold of a real good surprise packet, like I fancy you might turn out to be, we would give them the time of their lives! Sorry. Look after him, Pauline.”

A vision of white was flitting-up through the front garden. Anthony hurried off.

“Just a moment, dear,” they heard him call out. “I’ll have the old bus at the gate in no time.” ...

Pauline rose to her feet.

“Will you finish your port here, Mr. Tyssen, and come and look for me in the garden?” she proposed. “I sha’n’t be very far away.”

“I would rather come with you,” he answered abruptly.

“Coffee outside?”

“Marvellous.”

They sat on two low chairs.

“I rather like this place,” Pauline confided. “From here you can guess at what every one of your neighbours may be doing. You can see their lights and wonder.”

“Begin at the Wilderness,” he begged her.

She curled up a little deeper amongst the cushions of her chair.

“Ah, you make it difficult to start with,” she said. “There is one tiny light there amongst the trees. From the second bungalow, as you see, nothing. That tiny light is just the index to the one mystery of Sandywayes.”

“The lonely lady,” he murmured.

“Or ‘the beautiful lady.’ Every one seems to have a different name for her.”

“I know two,” he said.

“I only know one—Madame de Sayal. But I have seen her, which is probably more than you have. There’s really no mystery about her at all. We like to make one, but it doesn’t exist. She’s an artist and a very clever one. Once I passed and she showed me one of her pictures. Most mornings she comes down here to the post office and does her own shopping. Always she looks in here and waves her hand. She has an old servant living in that bungalow which looks so deserted, but the servant speaks only her own strange language: I think it’s Roumanian.”

“She has another name,” Tyssen confided.

“How do you know?”

“I am a curious person. I am here to drag out material—for my story. I notice everything. I poke my head into every one’s affairs, as Mr. Huitt told me. I lodge at the post office and there are letters which come here with coronets, and even crowns, on the backs of the envelopes. Letters addressed to Signora la Marchesa Sayella.”

“That’s the same name,” Pauline observed. “The de implies a title. Let’s pass on to the next house.”

“Will you tell me this, then,” he begged. “Why do you suppose a woman so beautiful as Madame de Sayal or Signora la Marchesa Sayella comes to a simple little Sussex backwater to paint pictures?”

“You ask me that,” she remarked smiling, “as though it were difficult to answer. You are not an artist, perhaps.”

“I am not,” he confessed frankly.

“Well, believe me,” she assured him, “that beauty presents itself in different types in all the odd corners of the world. This Oasis is one of the odd corners. When the sunlight comes filtering through these pine trees and touches the cornfields and melts away in those blue hills seaward, there is something about this place which I have never seen anywhere else. It is really a place to attract a great artist. There is no mystery in the coming of Madame de Sayal.”

“I differ from you,” he said, a little hardly. “What you say may be true. People may feel like that. They may see wonderful things where the ordinary pagan like myself sees nothing. Anyhow, let’s finish with the Wilderness. Move on to the next place.”

“Well, the only house on the other side of the Common,” she told him, “is the cottage residence of Mr. Huitt. Mr. Huitt would be a damning member of any especially romantic locality. He was meant for the routine of life. He is one of the perfectly shaped cogs that fit in the great wheel. Figures have taken him by the throat and strangled him. He lives for figures, he has lived by figures, he will die with figures in his brain! ... You are—you are not cold, Mr. Tyssen?” she added, turning towards him.

He held his breath for a moment. It seemed as though he had been shaken by some queer emotion.

“Cold?” he repeated. “Not I. I am so interested. Go on.”

“I am not sure,” she continued, “that there is much more to dilate upon. The station lights—they mean so little. The village lamps have gone. Ah, up there in that cutting through the woods are the lights of Sandywayes Court. If one could see the other side of those windows! I wonder?”

“Do you know Lord Milhaven?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“We catch fugitive glimpses of him,” she replied. “We read paragraphs in the paper. If he meets us in the vicinity and realises that we are neighbours, he bows to us in stately fashion. Our great man, Mr. Tyssen. A lover of art, a great traveller, a great hunter, a famous aviator. He has his own private aëroplane and aërodrome up near the Golf Club. For some short time a statesman. To me he always looks like a man who has worn out life too soon. I looked up his age the other day. He is only forty-nine but he seems tired already.”

“I wonder who his other dinner guests are tonight?” Tyssen ventured. “I heard him invite Mr. Huitt.”

“Sure to be financiers, I should think,” Pauline replied. “Lately he has taken a fancy to that sort of thing. He thinks that the world can be saved and conditions reëstablished by the pooling of huge fortunes.”

Tyssen was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded, frowning in puzzled fashion.

“I wonder, if he is such a great man, why he troubles to ask a man like Huitt to dine with him.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Why shouldn’t he?” she asked. “And what does it matter? I believe Mr. Huitt is supposed to be marvellously informed upon all financial affairs.... Now we swing back right across the railway line. We come to the police station. The dear old sergeant who is always complaining because he has to take Tom, the village policeman, as a tenant! No light there. Sergeant and policeman fast asleep.”

“As a matter of fact,” Tyssen corrected her, “the policeman is on duty in Sandywayes.”

“And how do you know that?” she asked.

“Curiosity prompted me to find out,” he admitted.

“We move on to Mrs. Foulds’ shop,” she continued. “Not a glimmer. I suppose you think you ought to be burning the night oil up there, writing your novel!”

“I am very content here,” he assured her.

“Next comes the house and estate,” she went on, “of Mr. Roland Martin. No sign of Mr. Roland Martin. No sign of Mrs. Roland Martin, who the gossips say has deserted her husband, because he drinks too much, and is living in Paris! Not a light in the place. An easy household: two maidservants and a charwoman in to help once a week: alternate Sundays holiday and alternate weekdays for the parlourmaid and cook. No parties unless Mr. Martin gets a friend in to share a bottle of whisky.”

“And next?”

“The house and estate of Mr. Andrew Cresset. Really, that is a very pleasant abode and the garden is beautiful. Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Cresset are exactly what you would suppose them to be like after a casual glance, and Sybil is a dear girl. All the same, I wish she were not so fond of Anthony.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because,” she replied, “I don’t think that Anthony is very likely to settle down for a long time yet. Father was too ambitious for Anthony. Eton and Oxford are not the perfect beginnings for a young man who is supposed to take his father’s place in a wine merchant’s business.”

“Isn’t there anybody else here you could tell me about?” he asked.

She laughed.

“Really, I begin to think, Mr. Tyssen, that your own description of yourself was a just one! You are a very curious person.”

“The first man who ever solved a picture puzzle was a curious person,” Tyssen answered. “He had patience. Have you ever realised what it must be like to be passionately anxious to solve a certain problem and to have that problem handed to you in thousands of pieces, and the rod of fate held over your head whilst you were bidden to put them together and solve them?”

Pauline swung herself up in her chair and turned towards him.

“Whatever are you talking about, Mr. Tyssen?” she demanded.

The dramatic note had vanished. He was again a little stumbling, faintly uncouth.

“I’m hanged if I know,” he admitted. “That’s how I always think of my work, if I think of it at all. A novel is like that. You have all the materials there chopped up in pieces—men and women, events, passions, details, everything that counts, and there is some one that bids you put them together and mocks at you. You make mistakes too. Such rotten mistakes.”

She was round upon him like a flash.

“Such as pretending you don’t play golf?”

“That’s nothing,” he told her. “I’ll go. I must be keeping you up.”

“You won’t do anything of the sort,” she assured him. “Groves is bringing us out cool drinks directly. I like the way you are talking to me, Mr. Tyssen. I am getting very curious about you. Go on talking about yourself now. Tell me where you were brought up, what school you went to, what profession you followed before you decided to become literary.”

He shook his head.

“I am not such a fool as to tell any one my story,” he said bluntly. “Besides, there isn’t one to tell.”

“Where did you learn your golf?” she persisted.

He laughed jarringly.

“Golf,” he repeated. “You have seen me play half a dozen approach shots on a still night!”

“Quite enough, thanks. Are you going to answer my question?”

“Some day—yes,” he declared, with a sudden change of tone and manner. “Some day I will tell you everything and ask you everything because—well, because it’s you.”

She felt her hand suddenly gripped—gripped with long, passionate fingers and then discarded.

“Good night,” he said shortly.

“But—but what about that drink?” she asked, a little breathless.

He was already almost out of sight—a dim shape, uncouth, too large in the hips, too small in the shoulders, with a characterless, slouching walk. A cloud drifted over the moon. He vanished into the darkness.