Читать книгу The Laslett Affair - Edward Harold Begbie - Страница 6

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At luncheon, which Stephen had ordered to be served quickly, Phillida asked him, mischievously, “What did you choose for her?”

“Something frightfully expensive,” he laughed, and flourished a fork over his plate.

“What was it?”

Mrs. Laslett, who was eating heartily and glancing down the room at Leo Daga, said, “I thought you were grown up. Just now I said to myself, What a man he is! And here you are confessing that you’re still a silly little sentimental boy. Why, I should have thought that you had already seen in London a hundred girls who attracted you far more than simple Susan—who’s not half so simple, believe me or believe me not, as she pretends to be. How good this sauce is! What a pity it makes one fat.”

Stephen smiled with the frankest amusement, knowing what was in his mother’s mind, and liking to find himself a subject of discussion. “Well, that’s the bother,” he confessed. “For example, while I was in the shop this morning a girl came to the same counter so extravagantly beautiful that I wanted to propose to her then and there! Honestly, she was as lovely as an angel. Oh, quite positively. Yes, I assure you. That’s the devastating thing about London. One sees adorable girls at every step. It seems contrary to nature to think of loving only one. Almost they persuade me, the darling buds, to become a Mohammedan. In fact, I’ve been upbraiding myself all the morning for disloyalty to my rustic Susan.”

“Disloyalty!” cut in Mrs. Laslett, and laughed scornfully. “Don’t talk such nonsense! You’re not engaged to the girl. She’s only a friend. Disloyalty! Good heavens, I should be very sorry if I thought you were going to become Susan’s pet poodle—a man with your future! Rustic’s a very good name for her, although she’s as artful in her own sly way as a cage full of monkeys.”

Afraid of this subject, and never caring to speak on one theme for more than a few moments, Mrs. Laslett looked longingly down the room at Leo Daga, and all of a sudden brought conversation round to their engagement for that afternoon.

“I really think it’s too cold for our trip to Twickenham,” she announced, glancing out of a window at the bleak greyness of the park. “Let’s take tickets for a matinée, and keep ourselves warm. I’m sure you only go to these ugly amusements, Stephen, because you think you ought to. It’s just a part of your silly old esprit de corps.”

Stephen laughed at that. “You enjoyed the match last year,” he reminded her. “And this year it’s going to be an epic of a fight. Ha, something tremendous. Have another glass of wine, mother. Oxford’s howling for our blood. Is she not? Thinks she’s got a pack this time that will beat ours to blithereens. And she’s bucking her head off about Butcher—Big Jack Butcher—never was such a Back in the history of Rugger. In other words, high-cockalorum-jig-jig-jig! But let them wait. My dear mother, what are you talking about? To miss this match would be to miss the last train to Paradise.”

Mrs. Laslett laughed. “I shouldn’t mind doing that,” she said, “so long as I could catch the next train to Paris. No; I don’t pretend to be interested in football. I don’t even pretend to care whether Cambridge beats Oxford, or Oxford beats Cambridge, in any of their various games. I’m supremely indifferent to both of them.”

“Which is flat heresy in my presence,” declared Stephen, not without a certain annoyance in his face and in his voice.

“One thing will cheer you up, mother,” said Phillida. “You’ll see Mr. Jodrell.”

“Ah,” cried Stephen; “the finest sprinter in England, an international three-quarters, and my chosen friend for life. Here’s to Hugh Jodrell! God bless him.”

Mrs. Laslett considered and at last remembered that name. This Jodrell had once paid them a visit in the summer holidays when Stephen and he were at Eton. And she had met him three or four times since at Cambridge and once at Lords. Yes, she perfectly remembered him—a boy with very broad shoulders, fair hair, small eyes, and a nose that jutted out from his face like a bird’s beak. Yes, she remembered him, distinctly.

“You mean the boy who is a nephew of the Earl of Norwich?” she inquired languidly, flustered for a moment by the belief that Leo Daga had caught her eye and was answering her look of interest.

Stephen laughed. “Be careful, dear mother. Remember, a little Norwich is a dangerous thing! Think of him only as the greatest sprinter of his times.”

“Still,” said Phillida, “all Norwich is power.”

“Phillida!” exclaimed Stephen, “you should never make other people’s puns. It encourages a second-hand mind; and, besides, intellectual petty larceny is worse than shop-lifting.”

Mrs. Laslett suddenly remembered that she had noticed in young Jodrell a distinct interest in Phillida, and had even contemplated the happy idea of Phillida becoming engaged to this scion of an ancient and noble house. But she hadn’t seen him for a year, and she had almost forgotten his existence, and now, for some reason or another, the thought of Phillida marrying any one at all irritated her nerves; it seemed to force her to contemplate her own image in the glass of time as a grandmother.

She suppressed a shudder and said carelessly, “Well, I suppose I must go, if it’s only to see Mr. Jodrell smothered in mud,” and again she looked across the room to the table at which Mr. Daga was sitting with an enviable woman on either side of him.

“There’s a man you ought to know, and cultivate,” she said to Stephen. “Over there between the windows.”

“He’s Leo Daga,” said Phillida.

Stephen set down his glass with a jerk. “Oh, my aunt,” he exclaimed, with a laugh of great knowingness; “hot stuff, very hot stuff! Let’s have a look at him.” He turned on his chair, and stared down the room. “Well, he ain’t exactly Vere de Vere, is he?—looks more like the superintendent of a restaurant taking a busman’s holiday; all the same, he can write, and every author can’t look like Rupert Brooke, can he? Oh yes, the little beggar can write; and he knows a deal about women, some sort of women. I expect he’s collecting copy from those two vamps at his table. If you look closely you’ll see he’s gloating over them. Ger-loat is the mot juste, as he would put it. What a pity we don’t know him. I’d like to talk to him. Let’s drink his health. Here’s to the Adulterous Lady and her Laureate!”

Mrs. Laslett rebuked him for that, with a laughing, “Stephen! you naughty boy!” and Phillida, regarding him enviously as one who knew more about life than she did, smiled admiration.

Stephen exclaimed, “Here is a quatrain for your edification:

“Smoke not the Pipe, nor yet the Larranaga,

Abandon Ale, abjure old Homer’s Saga;

The Modern Spirit cometh, saying, ‘Take

Cocktail, and Cigarette, and Leo Daga!’

I’ll polish it after the match,” he said, “and send it to the little squit with my compliments. In the meantime, here’s to him and the Muse of Indecency.”

At this point, Stephen stopped abruptly, put down his glass, and under his breath exclaimed, “Family, pull yourselves together; here comes the Bread Winner!”

William Laslett, famous in two continents for his company promotions, approached the table slowly and wearily, like a man who is bothered as well as tired. He was short, square-shouldered, and fattish, with thin gold-red hair, a yellowish skin, and small deep-set pale eyes which were almost invisible under drooping lids.

“Well,” he asked; “having a good time?” His voice was low, and he spoke with the accent of his Derbyshire ancestors, who were peasants. The question was put rather scornfully, rather contemptuously.

“I’ve just thought of a riddle, Bread Winner,” said Stephen. “Why are you like Debenham and Freebody?”

Mr. Laslett shook his head.

“Because you deal in combinations,” said Stephen.

“I call that horrid,” said Phillida.

“Silence, child,” answered Stephen, “or I’ll turn the hose on you. Hose; do you see the jest? Ha, ha! Bread Winner, may I offer you a glass of château-bottled Moselle, nineteen hundred and eleven?”

“No, thank you.”

“A glass of port, sir?”

“I think not.”

“Then a chair?”

Mr. Laslett ignored this sportive invitation, as if Stephen had now gone far enough in his foolery, and asked, looking from his wife to his daughter, with an air of no interest, “You’re going to this football match, I suppose; all three of you?”

Stephen thrust in the answer. “Why don’t you come too?” he asked, in no mood to be suppressed, much less ignored. “Do you good, Bread Winner. Take you out of yourself. Help you to forget the oppressive number of your millions.”

“No doubt. But I’m going to Manchester.” He looked at his wife. “Anything you want from me?”

“Manchester!” exclaimed Stephen to the gods. “And he might be at Twickenham!”

Mrs. Laslett considered, fingering the spoon in the saucer of her coffee-cup. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, I’ll be off. I’ve got some friends lunching with me across the room. See you all later in the week.”

“You’ll be at home for Christmas, I hope?” asked Stephen. “Good King Wencelas expects you, you know. Besides, it’s the feast of Stephen, is it not?”

Mr. Laslett almost smiled at that. “Seems to me,” he said, “that you regard every day in the year as that.”

“I’ve got a handsome present for you,” announced Stephen very impressively.

“And so have I,” said Phillida; “something particularly posh.”

“You mustn’t spoil me, you know,” said the Bread Winner grimly, and walked away from them.

Stephen looked after him, nodded his head very gravely, and said, “There, but for the grace of God, goes Stephen Laslett.” He picked up the waiter’s pencil from a plate at his side, and initialled the bill. “Now, ladies: your sable coats, your muffs, and your fur gloves. The magic word is Twickenham.”

“Muffs!” laughed Phillida; “why, they went out of fashion before I was born.”

As they walked between the crowded tables, Mrs. Laslett looked at Leo Daga, and turning her head said to Phillida, “I shall never be happy till I know that man.”

“I should think that was easy enough,” said Phillida, drawing up to her mother’s side.

“But how?”

“Well, he knows Mrs. Vaudrey; I heard Jane talking about him at their house in the summer. She spoke about him as Leo, as if they knew him quite well.”

Mrs. Laslett’s face burnt with excitement. “I’ll ask Ann Vaudrey to dine,” she exclaimed. “Remind me to telephone directly we get back from this dreadful match.”

“Mind you,” said Stephen, coming between them, “goloshes are verboten. I give you three minutes. You’ll find me at the car. Vite!”