Читать книгу The Honour of his House - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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There was no antagonism in Philip Saltburn's clear eyes. He lay back in his chair, crossing his legs, and smilingly contemplating the cut of his neat brown shoe. Obviously a difficult man to anger, and still more difficult to turn from his point. Lady Edna regarded him with smouldering eyes. She would not lose her temper, of course, but really this young man must be made to understand.

"I beg your pardon," she said coldly.

"And I beg yours," Saltburn said. "But, you see, the thing is as good as done. Of course, I should like to have your approval, but if you withhold it, then I can only deplore your point of view. What a charming old hall this is. There is nothing that shows pictures off so well as warm, brown old oak. And may I trouble you for another cup of this delicious tea. We are great tea drinkers in Australia, but we never get any like this. I expect that beautiful Queen Anne silver makes the difference."

Lady Edna murmured something vague in reply. She had an uneasy feeling that there was something wrong in her attack, and she was uneasily conscious that she had come in contact with a force. Clearly this young man was not going to be routed by the feudal method. Perhaps he was a radical, but, in that case, he would have had no sympathy with old oak and Queen Anne silver and the works of the great English masters. Clearly it was useless to try and snub him, to open his eyes to the awful gulf that lay between a Cranwallis and a Saltburn. Perhaps it might be possible to let him down gently, to send him away with a clear impression that money was not everything, and that a Cranwallis was as far above him as the misty star is beyond the flight of the moth.

She would not, perhaps, have been so tranquil beneath the armour of her exclusiveness could she have looked into Saltburn's mind, for over the edge of his Sevres cup he was studying her with the calm critical approval of a polished man of the world.

For Saltburn was acquainted with foreign courts. As the only son of that great financial magnate, William Saltburn, he found all houses were open to him, he had basked in the smiles of royalty itself. And he was not dazzled, he was too serene and level-headed for that. He had his own ideals, he knew exactly the type of woman whom some day he hoped would rule over the dainty and refined home which he saw late at night behind the blue drift of his cigarette smoke.

And here it seemed to him that he had found the very thing that he was looking for. Phil Saltburn was no snob, it was no exhilaration, to him to find himself mixing with the great ones of the earth; his critical faculty was too keen and clear for that.

But he had never yet seen anyone who set his pulses beating and moved him to such a warm regard as Lady Edna was doing. He liked her pose, he liked the haughty stamp of her beauty, the curve of her lips, and the aquiline chiselling of her nose. She might have been one of Tennyson's heroines, and Saltburn had always had a weakness for the women of that great Victorian. As he sat there, balancing his tea cup, he was drifting to the conclusion that there was no occasion to go any farther, but there was no hurry, and, as far as he knew, there was no one in the way.

He came down to dinner in the same frame of mind, where he sat with Sherringborne and his daughter in the Rubens dining-room to a meal which was none the less elaborate because it was so exceedingly simple. Half a dozen servants in the Cranwallis livery moved noiselessly about the room; the shaded lamps under the quaint pictures picked out the exuberant flesh colourings of the great Flemish artists. Silver and glass were priceless in their way, and it seemed to Saltburn that he had never seen such peaches and grapes before. Not that he was in the least impressed. He stood in no awe even of the magnificent family butler, who, before now, had impressed a Cabinet Minister.

Lady Edna sat there, dressed almost severely in black, her arms and shoulders shining like ivory in the shaded lights. There was just one diamond flashing in her hair, an old ring or two on her slim fingers. From under her half-closed lashes she surveyed her guest. She was a little disappointed, perhaps, that she could find no flaw in his social exterior. Even the trying act of peeling and eating one of the Cranwallis peaches gave her no loophole for criticism.

"This is a wonderful old place of yours," Saltburn said. "I have been wandering about the grounds and admiring them, but what strikes me most forcibly are those amazing old yew hedges of yours."

"Yes, we pride ourselves on our hedges," Sherringborne said. "They were planted in the reign of Elizabeth, mostly by Sir Walter Raleigh, I believe. They have been useful for the purposes of defence more than once. Nothing could get through them. They are impregnable."

"It would certainly be a matter of time," Saltburn observed. "I think I could manage it if I wanted to. It would be a matter of breaking one branch after another just as John Halifax suggested when the question was put to him by Phineas Fletcher. Do you remember the incident, Lady Edna?"

Lady Edna looked up from her peach languidly.

"I recall it," she said. "But I never cared much for that class of literature. In spite of his many virtues, John Halifax was essentially a middle-class man. The story of his successful career might have appealed to Samuel Smiles, but it certainly does not to me."

"There you are wrong," Saltburn said. "It is astonishing what little interest people in your position take in the middle classes. You ought really to read more good English literature. It is clearly a duty that you owe us."

Lady Edna smiled faintly. Really, Philip Saltburn was an amusing young man. A little later on, perhaps, she would be able to show him that there was another point of view.

"I am sorry you think my education has been neglected," she said. "And you do, don't you?"

"I am perfectly certain of it," Saltburn said in a tone that had no possible suggestion of offence in it. "It is not good for anyone to lead an aloof life in these days. Of course, yours is an ideal existence here, but none of us ever knows what change time may bring. For instance, it would never have occurred to you a month ago that you would be entertaining the son of a man who started life scaring crows from an English wheatfield."

This was so true, such a thrust in the chink of her cold armour that Lady Edna rose and swept from the room as nearly on the verge of rudeness as ever she had been in her life. Saltburn watched her with a strange gleam in his eyes. Then Sherringborne rose somewhat wearily from the table.

"I will get you to excuse me for an hour or two," he said. "I have to see a friend on a little matter of business. You can finish your duel with Lady Edna meanwhile."