Читать книгу A Man Under Authority - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 9

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Dinner at Hatchstead Place, even when there was only one guest, was a somewhat ceremonious affair, conducted by a butler and a footman with a pomp worthy of the traditions of the old house. General Farjeon sat at the head of his table where his ancestors had sat some centuries before, and drank wine that was poured from priceless old decanters that had belonged to the family when they were new.

He was growing very old himself, but he yielded nothing to age. He still went out for his early ride when his gout permitted, and in winter followed the hounds and even occasionally tramped forth with his gun. He had never been married and professed a cynical distrust of women, which Molly Morton found highly entertaining. He was wont to tell her that so long as she remained a child his house was open to her, but from the moment she became a woman he would have none of her. His nephew Stafford Kenyon was his heir and his only relation, the son of his only sister long since dead, with whom he had always been at daggers drawn. He was not over fond of Stafford, who was a major in the Guards and had a very fair opinion of himself, but he endured him as a duty and saw as little of him as possible.

He was never polite to anyone, and it was Bill Quentin’s perfectly good-humoured acceptance of this fact which had first attracted him to the Vicar of Rickaby. His general opinion of the Church was highly uncomplimentary, though he occupied his old square pew in Hatchstead Church every Sunday morning to the perpetual embarrassment of Mr. Morton who knew himself to be under a censorious eye from the moment of his emerging from the vestry to that of his return thither.

But his attitude towards Bill was different. Bill was a man—a sportsman; he didn’t stuff religion down your throat at every turn, didn’t even think it necessary to look religious, but played the game, sir, and played it well. Why, to look at him, to talk to him, you’d almost think he was in the Service. And—damn it!—why the devil wasn’t he? That’s what General Farjeon wanted to know.

It was a subject upon which he hectored Bill almost every time they met, but without any satisfaction. Bill was not in the Army because he had never been trained for it, and had never had any money. A pity? Yes, perhaps, from some points of view, but he did not apparently greatly regret it. There were other walks of life where you were not turned adrift on a cold world with a niggardly pension in the flower of your age. He personally would prefer to go on working till he dropped. At which point the General always became explosive. Work? What did Bill know of work? Had he ever been orderly officer or field officer for the day? Had he ever turned out at four in the morning for “Stables” or marched for miles in a broiling sun till he was ready to drop? No, Bill had done none of these things. Therefore he did not know the meaning of the word work and was quite incapable of arguing on the subject. Of course Bill did not argue; he only smiled. There was really nothing to argue about; their ideas were different, that was all.

He never found General Farjeon difficult or exacting. He did not mind his criticisms. They were friends. Sitting in the vast dining-room at Hatchstead Place with the last crimson rays of the sun piercing the long windows at the western end, he was completely at his ease. There was something rather restful about the old place despite the irritability of its master.

“Penny for your thoughts!” sharply announced the General.

Bill looked across the shaded candles with a smile. “Sorry, sir! Afraid I wasn’t thinking just then.”

“Then think!” commanded his host. “Who is this woman that young Molly was being so pointed about this afternoon? You’ve met her? Do you like her?”

“I’ve met her, yes.” Bill’s tone was deliberately impersonal. “I don’t know her yet.”

“Go on! Go on!” said the General impatiently. “What’s your impression of her? Decent or otherwise?”

“Oh, quite decent,” said Bill.

“Just an ordinary person?” demanded the General, almost in a tone of exasperation.

“Not for Rickaby,” said Bill.

“Not for Rickaby! Not for Rickaby! Go on, man! Go on! What the devil do you mean by that?”

Bill smiled. “Well, you know Rickaby,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I know Rickaby all right. Dull as ditchwater the whole pack of you. And this—this new importation—she’s different, eh? A bit French and interesting!”

“I have only spoken to her once,” said Bill.

“Ah, but you mean to again on the first opportunity! I know you, you dog! Don’t tell me!” General Farjeon snorted aggressively. “But you be careful! Mind you don’t burn your fingers! She may be a second Madame Verlaine for all you know.”

“I don’t think that very likely, sir.” Bill’s tone was still impersonal, even slightly bored. He took a walnut, and cracked it with precision. “I don’t think a woman of that type would come to a place like Rickaby.”

The General growled his disagreement. “It’s just the sort of place she would choose, you simpleton. These fair husband-slayers generally find it advisable to take a rest-cure between events. I’ve great faith in Molly’s judgment, and this woman sounds like an adventuress.”

“Molly!” A hint of contempt sounded in Bill’s voice. “Molly was simply out for blood this afternoon. You couldn’t take anything she said seriously.”

“Damn it! Why not? The child is shrewd enough. Got her knife into you all right, hadn’t she?” The General chuckled. “Give me Molly for brains every time! And for pluck too! By George, if I’d met her fifty years ago my life’s history would have been a bit different, and so would hers.”

Bill was peeling his walnut with stolid concentration. He did not glance up from his task. “She’ll get you yet, sir, if you’re not careful,” he remarked.

General Farjeon sat back with a shout of laughter. “The minx! Why, it’s only the other day that she came and perched on my knee and pulled out my watch under pretence of hearing the tick and then hammered the glass on the arm of the chair and smashed it. She was barely six then. Fanny wanted to spank her for it, but I wouldn’t let her. It was so plucky of her and so damned original.”

“Little beast!” said Bill.

“Oh, I like ’em wicked,” declared the General. “Gives a spice to things. And it’s always the wicked that get to the top quickest. If you were to marry Molly, you’d be a bishop in five years.”

“If I were to marry Molly,” said Bill with the force of restrained exasperation, “she’d get her spanking all right, just as often as she asked for it.”

The General laughed again. “Not she! The little devil would be too quick for you, Bill. No one has ever got the better of her yet, and it’s my belief that no one ever will.”

Bill said nothing. Somehow he found it impossible to take a temperate view of Molly Morton and her doings that evening. He was in fact rather tired of the whole Morton tribe just then.

Not so the General, however. He elected to pursue the subject in face of his guest’s obvious distaste. “What has she got her knife into you for, eh, Bill? What have you been up to?”

“I don’t know,” said Bill.

“Yes, you do know, you rascal! Don’t tell me! You’re too eligible, that’s your trouble. These elderly young ladies can’t see you without falling in love with you. You ought to get married, my boy. It’s the only way out for a man in your position. Lottie’s got tired of waiting, but there is still the ever vigilant Fanny waiting to pounce.”

Bill finished peeling his walnut and looked up. His face wore a grim smile. “When Fanny pounces,” he said deliberately, “I shall not be there.”

“Good for you!” chuckled the General. “But you’d better be careful all the same. She’s full of enterprise and getting a bit desperate, to judge from her attitude this afternoon.”

At this juncture Bill did a somewhat unusual thing. He lost his temper.

“Oh, I’m sick of all this!” he declared. “Why on earth can’t people leave you alone to go your own way—live your own life? Why should I be marked down, made a target of by every bored spinster within reach? I hate ’em all—except one, and what the dickens they see in me I don’t know. I’ve nothing to offer anyone. It’s a deadly existence. I’d hardly ask a woman I did like to share it with me—much less one I didn’t. I tell you, sir, I’m fed up. My own fault no doubt, but there it is! You won’t understand of course, but——”

“Why shouldn’t I understand?” cut in the General. “Think I’m lacking in intelligence—getting senile, eh? I do understand, and it’s all your own damn’ fault. You weren’t cut out for this sort of thing, and you were a fool—yes, a damn’ fool—ever to think you were.”

“For what sort of thing?” Bill suddenly turned fully and faced him, his vehemence gone. “What are you talking about, sir? Me or my profession or what?”

“Your profession of course!” flung back the General, now well launched. “You were meant for a man’s trade, not this miserable, milksop business of preaching and praying and generally making an ass of yourself. It’s beginning to tell on you, Bill, and I don’t wonder. Of course you’re fed up. You’re not doing a man’s job. You were meant for better things. Good heavens, you a parson! It’s downright ludicrous to think of. Chuck it, man, chuck it! Start again and do some honest work for a change! Do anything! Go into Parliament even! Anything rather than this wretched show! It’s sapping your manhood. Chuck it, and take up something decent before it’s too late.”

He paused to drink some port. Bill was sitting absolutely still, facing him. All the fire had gone out of his look. His eyes, blue and keen though they were, had a far-off, remote expression. They were in some fashion like the eyes of a hunter who has temporarily lost his quarry.

The old General set down his glass and cleared his throat for another tirade. But very suddenly, before he had time to begin, Bill pushed back his chair and rose.

“I suppose it would look like that to you,” he said. “Yes, sir, it’s my own fault, as you say, but not the fault of the job. It’s about the hardest job on God’s earth, as He knows, and if I am not man enough to make a success of it, well, once again it’s my own fault.”

He walked across to the great windows and stood with his face to the glow. There was about him at that moment something unusual, something which prompted General Farjeon out of sheer curiosity to await developments. But for many moments he said no more, standing there in silence staring into the sunset.

At last he turned and came back to the table. “I’m confoundedly rude,” he said. “Forgive me!”

The General looked at him with a half-smile on his rugged old face. “There’s only one thing I’ll never forgive you for, Bill,” he said, “and that is if you ever dare to stand on ceremony with me. What’s the matter with you to-night? Liver?”

“No, sir.” Bill shook his head. “I’m just fed up, that’s all,—mainly with myself. It’s a sort of dry rot that’s got hold of me. I’m ashamed—damnably ashamed. When anyone like you says that my job is not a man’s job, then I know myself for an utter failure—a workman with nothing to show when the Master Builder comes round to see how the work is getting on.”

“Good heavens!” said the General. He peered up at Bill with frowning eyes. “So that’s how you look at it, is it? You really think you are doing something!”

“Trying to,” said Bill.

“Poor devil!” said the General; and then consolingly, “well, it can’t matter a tinker’s curse to you what I say or think, but I’ll tell you this. If you’ve nothing to show you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Though you’re a parson, you’re one of the straightest fellows I’ve ever met; only don’t take yourself too seriously! Damn it all! There’s nothing on earth can excuse that.”

He got up with the words and slapped him on the shoulder. “Come along! We’ll go and sit outside. It’s warm enough—probably the nearest approach to summer we shall get. So we’d better make the most of it, eh? Cheer up, old chap! I know your malady—suffered from it myself once, but I never took the remedy.” He broke off to chuckle. “A bit too permanent for me in those days, but things look a bit different as one gets older. You marry, my boy! Marry and damn the consequences! Marry the exception you mentioned just now, and may the gods send you luck!”