Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 34

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There was none of that particular vanity which makes a certain type of man anxious to show off in front of a pretty woman about Rusty Rockingham. He backed the car, as was his habit, very slowly, glad to reach the fork without running his rear wheels off the gravel.

“Do you drive?” he asked, letting in first gear again.

She smiled, “You forget I’m an American. We learn to drive almost as soon as we learn to walk”.

He said, never realising how rare it was for him not to experience any selfconsciousness at his first meeting with a woman, “It’s so difficult to realise you are an American”.

She laughed at that, never realising how rare these last years had made the gift of laughter, “You can’t have met many. Did you expect me to say, ‘Vurry pleased to know you, Major’?”

“Something like that, I’m afraid.”

“And you’re honest enough to admit it?”

“Honest—but unwise perhaps.”

“On the contrary. I think honesty’s about the only quality really worth having. But then, I happen to have been born a southerner.”

She was laughing no longer, and her eyes had clouded again, as they drew up before the big gray stone house, which was of no particular period, and slightly forbidding, despite the fresh white painting round all its windows.

The front door matched the window frames. A middle-aged butler opened it to them before they had climbed the five long steps.

“Please have Major Rockingham’s bag taken to his room, and tell Graves to put his car away for him”, ordered Camilla.

She led the way through the outer hall into the inner, large and used as a living-room, though it looked more like a natural history museum—bristling everywhere with trophies—a rhino head, a lion’s head from Africa; a snow leopard’s head, cheetal horns, blackbuck and nilghai horns from India; the antlers of a Canadian elk.

From a tigerskin by the groined fireplace, in which a huge coalfire was burning, a silver-brindled Dane rose and made to lick her hand.

“Bad dog”, she chided. “You’ve been lying on that sofa again.”

She looked at the sofa. The dog made for the door. She called him back, saying:

“He’ll keep you company. I must go and change. His name’s Tiny. Appropriate, don’t you think? Lucus a non lucendo”.

And with that, she went.

Alone—with Tiny dropping a heavy head to sniff at the turn-ups of his trousers—Rockingham asked himself, once again, “How on earth did she come to marry the Hawk?” For her use of a Latin quotation had set the seal on his surprise.

“Charming young woman”, he thought next. “Cultured young woman. And what a player.”

Momentarily, he speculated about her age. (Thirty she might be, but not a day older.) Then—unaware of the effort necessary to change the current of his thoughts—he began to inspect the various trophies, each with its ivorine label giving the date and place of the kill.

He had done a little big-game shooting himself—while the battery was in India. The best of sports—because it held more than a spice of danger. Pity one hadn’t had more opportunities. A lucky devil, Hawk Wethered. In most ways. In every way ...

But on that again—though still unaware of the effort it cost—Rockingham brought his mind back to his immediate surroundings. This room was a positive exhibition.

For all its museum-like ugliness, nevertheless, the place did not lack creature comforts. A big chair, with a table of periodicals beside it, tempted him. He sat down; picked up a month-old American magazine; looked at a picture or two; glanced at a paragraph or two. The dog couched itself at his feet. The coals sizzled pleasantly. He began to read with more care.

The first article, headed, “New York—and All That”, puzzled him. He could hardly follow one of the personal allusions. But, turning on, he came to, “How about London?”; and the very subheading creased his forehead.

King George, when that article had been written, was still alive. Shere indecency, therefore, to ask, “Who’s going to be the next Queen of England?”

Soon the slight crease was a scowling frown.