Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 19

Table of Contents

“Your tea’s in the drawing-room, sir,” reminded Rennie, “and I’ve put your letters with it. The post came a while back.”

“Thanks, Rennie. Where’s her ladyship!”

“Her ladyship sent a message to say she was having tea in her bedroom, sir.”

Her ladyship’s husband rid himself of his hat; and, passing slowly through the hall, dismissed Ibbotsleigh from his thoughts. The long day’s fox-hunting had scarcely tired his muscles. Pouring his tea from the modern silver tea-pot, he looked back on his sport in his usual deliberate way. They had killed in the morning. They ought to have killed in the afternoon. His first horse, the new brown, had gone well; his second, the new bay, badly.

Then, in the same way as his mind had dismissed Ibbotsleigh, it dismissed fox-hunting. He poured himself a second sugarless cup of tea; finished the cakes, the bread and butter; and turned to his correspondence. The big linen-lined envelope on top of the pile contained Tillotson’s daily budget. According to custom, he dealt with that first, slitting the envelope with a table-knife, pulling out the various typewritten documents, sorting them and studying them one by one.

Studying, his brain concentrated, so that his eyes were no longer conscious of their immediate surroundings—of the rigidly furnished room, or the hunting-prints on the white walls, or the colored cretonnes of the upholstery.

He scribbled a note or so on the first portion of Tillotson’s report; and turned to the second, which was headed: “Re your private affairs.” This, for the most part, consisted of brokers’ statements. Since leaving town, he had telephoned to close various outside speculations, on which the profits, as tabulated by the accurate Tillotson, amounted to the satisfactory sum of £9782.17.9. At the very end of these tabulations, however, appeared a memorandum about Coronation Cotton. The memorandum, “Confidential from McManus,” ended:

You acted wisely in getting out when you did. I don’t like to put too much in writing, but as far as I can gather C. C.’s are hopelessly insolvent. There are ugly rumors on the Exchange, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the Board of Trade didn’t take up the matter. If so, it may mean prosecution for E. B. S.

“Serve Sedgcumbe right if it does end in a prosecution,” thought Cranston, nonchalantly. Then he refolded the papers, reinserted them in their envelope, and ran through the rest of his mail. Two envelopes, whose respective flaps bore the superscriptions, “J. H. Harrison, F. R. I. B. A.,” and “Guthrie, Guthrie, Jellybrand & Guthrie, Chartered Accountants,” he left purposely to the last.

As he toyed with those two envelopes, Gerald Cranston allowed himself a moment’s respite from concentration. The room, so unlike the rooms of his youth; the silver service on the silver tea-tray; the sound of a horse pawing the stable-tiles; but above all the thought that men like Harrison and Guthrie, men at the very top of their professions, should be practically in his employ, stimulated the imagination and the power-lust in him. He thought, not blatantly but as one certain of his own abilities, “This is only the beginning of things—the first rung of the ladder.”

Concentrating again, he opened the architect’s envelope and glanced quickly through the covering letter. The estimates inclosed were large, larger than Harrison had anticipated—the lowest of them, Waring & Gillow’s, a trifle over twelve thousand pounds.

“Of course, we can save on some items,” wrote the architect. “There is really no need for the second lift, or the fourth bathroom. The steam-heating need not, in my opinion, be carried above the second floor. I have provided for double windows throughout, but I am not sure this is really necessary. Needless to say, your instructions that the contract must carry penalty clauses in case of non-completion do not cheapen the general cost of the suggested alterations.”

“No good spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar,” thought Cranston, turning from the letter to the estimates and scrutinizing them item by item. Whereupon, having decided to wire Harrison, “Accept lowest estimate and proceed,” he opened the last envelope; switched his mind to Cosgrave, and was still deep in the intricate figuring of Sir James Guthrie’s exhaustive report when Rennie came to clear away the tea-things and remind him that the stable-clock had just struck seven.