Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 17

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Moderately calm again, Rockingham took the pipe from between his teeth; and knocked out the dottle on the bar of the grate.

Each side of the fireplace rose high narrow bookshelves.

As he straightened himself, the title of one particular book caught his eye.

“Knew it was kicking about somewhere or other”, he thought. “Wonder if I can find that quotation.”

The well-thumbed volume, bound in red and gold, seemed to drop open of its own volition at the half-remembered passage:

“A virgin in the fight she stands,

Or winged wings in speed outvies.

Nay, she might fly o’er fields of grain,

Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat

Or skim the surface of the main,

Nor let the billows touch her feet”.

Virgil’s Camilla!

Hawk Wethered’s Camilla—one imagined—would be rather different. Some busy, hardboiled blond. With an American twang to set one’s teeth on edge and a spray of orchids as long as your arm trailing from her shoulder.

The Hawk always had liked a rough ride. What did one remember him rasping, years ago now?

“Women or horses, the fun’s breaking ’em in. Bit and bridoon for me. The harder they pull at the start, the better they go at the finish.”

Something of a bounder, the Hawk. “I give you the health of our new King”, indeed. Had the man no respect for tradition? Could any woman “discipline” him?

“Shan’t believe it till I’ve seen it”, thought Rusty Rockingham just before he fell asleep.

But that night—and this also was new to experience—a confusion of dreams haunted him; and waking he remembered the words of another poet:

“White hands cling to the tightened rein,

Slipping the spur from the booted heel,

Tenderest voices cry, Turn again,

Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel ...”

Fanny, questioned when she brought his tea, said:

“Your mother doesn’t believe in any of those patent medicines. I’ll get you her Epsom Salts”.