Читать книгу The Court of St. Simon - E. Phillips Oppenhein - Страница 11

Table of Contents

VALENTIN turned with relief from the dusty road on to the soft green meadow-land. The end of his pilgrimage was very close at hand. He walked for a hundred yards or so across the meadow, starred with yellow buttercups and cowslips, through the long grasses, past the sleek Alderneys that gazed at him with brown, unwinking eyes. Presently he reached a low ring fence, over which he climbed. Before him was the gray stone front of an old English country house, with its sweep of gravel, its flower-beds brilliant with color, its deep, rich lawns, with here and there a cedar tree. On his right was a bed of blossoming rhododendrons—a brilliant patch of color; on his left, a cedar tree, from under whose shade came a murmur of pleasant voices, the soft tinkling of spoons. Valentin gave a little sigh, knocked the dust from his shoes, and bending back the branches presented himself in the open space from which the sounds came.

"Fortunate as usual, my dear Helen!" he murmured, advancing towards the woman who was seated behind the tea-tray. "You see, I took my chance of finding you all at home."

Lady Carlingford was tall and fair, with some of her brother's good looks but without his distinction. With a cream jug in one hand and a cup in the other, she looked at him in blank surprise.

"Valentin!" she exclaimed at last. "It is really you, then! Why do you play us such tricks?"

He smiled and, taking her hands in his, kissed them.

"Dear Helen," he said, "you must not be angry with me. The day before yesterday I had no idea of coming. Last night it seemed to me that there was nothing I desired so eagerly on earth as to sit under your cedar trees and smell your roses and hear your hay-cutting machines make music. Certainly I am more English than French."

"You are a most amazing person, although you are my brother," she declared. "Let me present you to Lady Margaret Simes, Mrs. Henneker, Miss Doris Fielding, Mr. Clarence Gray—my brother, the Vicomte de Souspennier."

Valentin acknowledged his sister's introductions and threw himself into a chair by her side. "Helen," he exclaimed, "this is Paradise! England seems to me more beautiful every time I visit it."

She poured him out a cup of tea. "I don't suppose you will drink it," she remarked. "You want absinthe or some such horrible drink, I suppose."

He shook his head reproachfully. "My dear Helen," he protested, "how could you think me guilty of such an anachronism as to ask for absinthe in such an exquisitely English scene! It is in the miserable quarters of the world that one drinks absinthe. Here—well, tea is more suitable. And how is my esteemed brother-in-law?"

"Charles is well but busy," she replied. "To-day he is at an agricultural show about twenty miles off, where he is one of the stewards. He has to judge things, and I am sure I don't know what time he'll be home."

Valentin, who tolerated his brother-in-law, sighed gently. "And you others?" he asked. "Is this a little house-party? Do I hear voices on the tennis courts?"

"Very likely," his sister answered. "Some of the young people from the neighborhood are playing. Lady Simes is staying with me, and Mr. Gray. I am afraid you won't care about our bridge."

"Bridge!" Valentin repeated. "I shall not touch a card. To-night, after dinner, I shall wander in your rose garden. I suppose you can put me up?"

"What an irresponsible person you are!" she declared, with a laugh. "Your things are at the station, I suppose? I will send a car for them. You might at least have sent a telegram and spared yourself the long dusty walk."

"I liked it," he answered. "I enjoyed every step of it. The country here is wonderful."

"The country around Souspennier is beautiful enough," she remarked.

"Beautiful, but in a different way," he declared. "French country always seems to me to be imbued with a note of theatricality. One is conscious of the artist's touch. Even the elm trees are grouped to let the sunlight come through. It's fancy, of course, but after all, you see, I am an Englishman, and I suppose this sort of thing appeals to me more."

The others drifted away. Valentin was alone with his sister. She was still a very handsome woman and in her youth they had been considered alike. Somewhere or other, however, their lives had parted company. There was little likeness now between the satisfied, well-preserved woman of forty, and the hard, tired-looking man a few years younger.

"What does it mean, this sudden visit to England?" she asked him curiously.

"A whim, dear sister," he replied, plucking a piece of sweetbriar from over his head and holding it to his nostrils. "Paris does that sort of thing to you. She takes all you have to give. Then she throws you away as I do this bruised leaf."

"The pity of it is she ever calls you back again," Lady Carlingford remarked, a little severely. "There is no proper country life for you in France. You should buy a small place here and marry."

He shook his head. "I should like to marry," he admitted, "but I have too much sense of humor."

"I don't in the least see why a sense of humor should be a reason for not marrying," objected Lady Carlingford. "I am sure Charles says very droll things sometimes, and we have always got on together remarkably well."

Valentin smiled as though at some thought. It was queer to come back into a world like this! "In any case," he said, "fate has treated me a little hardly in that one respect. I have had very many charming friends among your sex, friends of all sorts, but I have been left outside the orbit of this wonderful thing you call over here love. I am English enough to want it. A marriage after the French methods seems to me to have in it the very elements of savagery. Dear me," he went on, "how English I am becoming! I am talking of marriage and love as though they were inseparable."

She sighed. Like all the world who knew him, she loved this restless, dissatisfied brother of hers. "You mean to say really, Valentin, that you've never been in love at all?"

"On my honor, no!" he answered. "Doubtless the fact accounts for the wrinkles on my face. They say that it is love alone which keeps a man young."

She sighed. "And you are thirty-seven," she remarked.

"Thirty-eight next birthday," he corrected. "You know how bad it is for a child to dispense with scarlet fever and come out with it at twenty-one. Fancy what a terrible thing if, after all these years, the more mysterious ailment should come to me!"

"If it were only the right woman," Mrs. Carlingford said decidedly.

"It never would be," he replied, getting up. "Come and show me over the gardens, Helen. I want to smell your roses again, and your pinks. Have you still that great bed of lavender? Do you know, a month ago, in the small hours of the morning in a little restaurant, the atmosphere of which would have terrified you, I suddenly thought that I could smell the Carlingford lavender. I think that was the beginning of my homesickness."

She took up her lace parasol and they strolled across the velvety lawn. Valentin drew in a long breath of the flower-laden air.

"It is true," he murmured. "It must have been this which was calling me!"

It was a very small house-party and Valentin was a somewhat notable addition to it. At dinner-time he was always amusing, sometimes brilliant. Charles Carlingford, who secretly admired his brother-in-law more than any man of his acquaintance, chose to call him flippant, but he listened enviously to the stream of light banter of which Valentin was always a perfect master. When dinner was over, however, the bridge tables were drawn out, and Valentin, amid a chorus of regrets, wandered away into the darkness. He passed down the terrace and across the lawns, through the rose garden and down to the sunk fence which hung over the park. Here he hesitated for a moment, finally turning to the left and making his way to the old flower garden. The air seemed almost faint with perfumes from a hundred different sorts of cottage flowers. He threw himself down upon a wooden seat and leaned back gratefully. Far away from him now the beautiful lamp-lit city, with its false atmosphere, its artificial stimulus, its great golden-throated choir voicing their thousand and one calls to the senses and hearts of its victims; far away its surge of eager people, its brazen chorus of invitations to meretricious delights. Valentin felt for those few moments as though a yoke had fallen from his shoulders. Something had passed—the restlessness, the craving for new sensations, the part of him which called out always for distraction. Here was rest—? rest for the nerves, the desires, rest physical and mental, the rest that comes hand in hand with peace. He leaned back in his seat. If only it were possible to live like this!

Then came a wholly unexpected interruption. A curious breeze came rustling among the leaves of the trees. From somewhere in the distance came the ominous rumble of thunder. He looked up. Black clouds had suddenly darkened the night. The cattle in the park were making for the trees. He was on the point of turning toward the house when he stopped short. Coming swiftly towards him across the dimly lit panorama was the figure of a woman.