Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 20

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All the time he was sluicing and shaving in the white-tiled, gleaming-tapped bath-room, all the time he was dressing in the severe, mahogany-furnished, single-bedded apartment which adjoined it, Gerald Cranston’s thoughts busied themselves with the difficult problem of his wife and stepson’s inheritance from her first husband. “Difficult business,” he mused as he went slowly down the staircase into the hall; “the thing ought to have been got rid of years ago.”

Hermione, her dark hair tired smooth about her young forehead, her shoulders pale above the orchid-crimson velvet of a short-skirted dinner-frock, joined him with a quiet, “Not late, am I, Gerald?” and, momentarily, answering her, he wondered how any woman so obviously well balanced could have imagined herself in love with Tony Cosgrave. Then, his mind returning to its problem, he went on: “By the way, I’ve had a letter from Sir James Guthrie. He seems to think the position of Cosgrave is rather serious. Do you mind if we talk it over after dinner? You see, nothing can be done without your sanction.”

“Of course I don’t mind.” Hermione’s violet eyes displayed only a shadowy interest. “But I warn you, I’m hopelessly stupid about money matters. As a matter of fact, they rather frighten me——”

“Frighten you?” To him her words were a greater puzzle than the problem of her estate. “Why on earth should money matters frighten you?”

“Well”—she hesitated—“money is rather terrifying, especially when one hasn’t got any. And even if one has——”

“Nonsense!” said Cranston resolutely. “Money’s like most other things—horses, for instance. Either you master it, or it masters you.”

“Dinner’s sairved, m’lady,” interrupted Rennie.

As, over their adequate meal, Gerald continued his disquisitions about money, it came home with some force to Hermione’s criticizing mind that, so far, their honeymoon weeks had brought them little or no intimacy of conversation. Gerald, she thought, watching his powerful, serious face across the purple candles of their dinner-table, was still the unknown quantity, a factor impossible to estimate. The men of her own world, Gordon Ibbotsleigh, for instance, she could more or less understand. To them, as to her, money meant “something to spend”—a token one exchanged for one’s every-day pleasure. Whereas, to this man—or so ran her momentary impressions—money meant “something to make.”

The more he talked of money, the more did she realize how much he differed from any one with whom she had ever come in contact. In his eyes, apparently, money-making was a sport. He regarded it as the men of her own world regarded polo or steeplechasing.

“It’s a ruthless game,” he told her, “but the only one really worth playing. Barring the law—and the man who goes outside that is a fool—one makes one’s own rules. That’s another advantage.”

He smiled, and she, misinterpreting the smile, interpolated, “Then it can’t be a very straight game.”

The smile froze on his clean-shaven lips. “One’s got to go straight,” he said curtly. “That’s the first rule, if one wants to make a really big fortune. Dishonesty’s a poor substitute for brains. And at best it’s only a temporary substitute.”

“Aren’t there any exceptions to that rule?”

“Quite a few.” He smiled again. “But I’m not one of them.”

“You’re ruthless, though. You admitted that.”

“It’s a ruthless game. Like Nature. She’s ruthless enough.”

“But men aren’t wild beasts?”

“No, they’re civilized beasts. That’s worse.”

His philosophy baffled her even more than his financial knowledge. He believed, he told her, in the survival of the fittest: “Weakest to the wall. You can’t get over that.”

“And the under dog?” she asked.

“Has to be treated like any other dog, kindly but with a firm hand.”

Hermione found the philosophy a mite repulsive; yet, listening to it, she was conscious for the first time in their short married life of a quickening interest in her new husband’s career. She caught herself wondering, vaguely agitated, how far his obvious determination might carry him, carry them both. But though her wondering was faintly personal, her interest in Gerald was purely detached.

They finished their coffee; and, asking her permission before he lit his small cigar, he followed her across the hall into the drawing-room. There, without more ado, he pulled Sir James Guthrie’s report from the pocket of his smoking-jacket, and seating himself opposite to her chair, started in to discuss it with her.

“As I see it,” he said, much as though she had been one of his business associates, “to put Cosgrave on a paying basis is going to be rather a problem. We can’t, certainly, let it. It won’t, apparently, help us if we break the entail. We’re not allowed to sell what’s left of the furniture; and if we took it out so as to avoid paying some of the rates, the cost of warehousing would be at least as much as any saving we could effect. Do you follow me?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid.” Hermione wrinkled a puzzled forehead. “Frankly, the whole thing’s more or less Greek to me. I did warn you, didn’t I, that I was hopeless about money matters?”

“You did. But you mustn’t be.” Her ignorance fretted him a little, though he realized it unassumed. “I’m sorry if I’m harassing you; but, after all, the place is yours, at least till Arthur’s twenty-one; and it really is necessary that you should understand something about it. Now, look here”—he laid aside his cigar; and, rising, spread Guthrie’s papers on the little marquetry table by her chair—“these are the incomings, the money you get, and those are the outgoings, the money you spend. What we’ve got to do, somehow or other, is either to decrease the outgoings, or to increase the incomings. You see that, don’t you?”

Hermione nodded acquiescence. Ignorant, she was nevertheless no fool; and as Gerald continued his explanation, as his brain grew more and more absorbed in the intricacy of Guthrie’s figuring, he ceased to fret about her lack of knowledge. That would come. Meanwhile, her enlightenment gave him pleasure.

His pleasure in her, however, as her interest in him, was detached, impersonal—her intelligence and not her physical attractions its cause. When for one moment their hands met on the typewritten documents, he was conscious of no thrill, of no sex fascination. Neither her perfume, nor the sheen of her bowed head, nor the curve of her handsome shoulders moved him to renew that momentary contact.

All the same, when, with the semblance of a yawn she admitted herself too weary to follow further figuring, and, gathering up the papers, he reseated himself, it intrigued him to speculate about her. Hitherto his thoughts about her had been almost completely superficial. But to-night they went a little deeper. To-night, for the first time, he recognized—a trifle startled at the recognition—that her personality held some charm.

What that charm might be, however, he could not analyze. It was like a will-o’-the-wisp. Examined through the telescope of that deliberation which he applied to his business problems, it disappeared. Nevertheless, the application of the mental telescope revealed one vital fact—the difference between this woman he had married and those other women who, with the sole exception of his mother, had so far been the limit of his emotional experiences.

Hermione began to read; and as he continued to watch her, the imaginative faculty gained momentary command of Gerald Cranston. He sought vainly to picture her love for her first husband. That this woman should have been “in love”—as he still understood the word—with Anthony Cosgrave, or, indeed, with any other man, seemed sheerest impossibility. Imagination could not visualize her—her, the aristocrat, whose poise, whose whole emotional balance equaled if it did not surpass his own—abandoning all poise, all balance for that emotional instability, that disease of weak minds, which was love....

He picked up Guthrie’s reports again and resumed his study of them: till Hermione, not realizing the tenseness of his concentration, disturbed him with a rustle of folding newspaper and a deliberate, “Gerald, I’ve been thinking——”

“What!”

“Oh, nothing important.” The unaccustomed curtness of his monosyllabic answer irritated her. “I was only thinking that it was hardly fair you should have to bother yourself about my trifles.”

“Cosgrave’s not a trifle. And, of course, your affairs are mine. By the way, how would it be if we had a look at the place to-morrow? That idiot Guthrie hasn’t sent a plan. He only gives the total acreage.”

Gerald’s voice was still curt, businesslike; and Hermione’s, “Naturally I’ll come if you think I shall be of the slightest assistance,” held a touch of sarcasm.

The sarcasm, however, missed its mark; for her husband, with a quiet, “Good. I’ll order the Rolls to be round at ten,” bent his eyes once more to his studies; and after a little while, curiously fearful of again interrupting him, she went up-stairs to bed.