Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 37

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Tea came, and the incident of the offending magazine—trivial in itself—soon passed from Rockingham’s memory. Still completely unselfconscious, he found himself asking the easy questions. How did the Hawk’s wife like England? (“Very much, thank you.”) Had she been here before? (“Only on visits.”) She must have had a lot of work getting this house in order. (“Why, yes. There’s been a great deal to do, but then I like being busy.”)

While he considered her last answer, she refilled his cup.

“I ought to have asked you if you wanted another before I did that”, she said. “But my husband always takes two when he doesn’t take three. And one so easily acquires habits.”

“But you haven’t been married as long as that, Lady Wethered.”

“Why, no. Not two years yet. Have you known my husband long?”

“Since I was twenty.”

“He’s a remarkable person, isn’t he?”

“Rather.”

Talk languished for a while. He was aware that the beige housefrock, the silk shoes and stockings had altered her appearance. She looked a little older, less the tennis girl, more the woman of the world.

“I’ve no patience with people who don’t eat”, she said as she helped herself to a second slice of cake from the big silver dish. “I’m sure slimming’s bad for the health. Not that I’m a crank about my health.”

“You don’t need to be”, suggested Rockingham with another smile.

“That’s true.”

She cut more cake, and handed a slice down to the dog. He observed her wedding ring, the only piece of jewelry she wore. She observed—liking him for it—that he was no chatterbox.

“More, Tiny?”

The huge animal thumped an emphatic tail. Camilla gave him another piece of cake, and took a cigarette from the tin on the tray. Rockingham struck a match for her.

“Tell me”, she asked with the first puff. “Do you like being a soldier?”

“Yes.” He did not hesitate.

“You don’t find that, as a profession, it has many disadvantages for the intelligent?”

“No more than any other. Of course, it isn’t particularly exciting. At least in peacetime.”

“It certainly isn’t lucrative.”

“I don’t mind that. Money doesn’t interest me. I’ve enough for my needs.”

“You’re lucky,” said Camilla; and soon they were drifting—neither quite realising how easily speech came—into army talk.

“I’m so ignorant about the British army”, she said after a while. “When Guy told me he’d been appointed a C.R.A., I didn’t even know what he meant. You do love lettering things, don’t you? Talking of that, I found a paper when I came in. It was marked T.E.W.T. What is a Tewt when it’s at home—animal, vegetable or mineral?”

He explained, “A tactical exercise without troops. Presumably, therefore, vegetable”.

Camilla laughed—for the second time within the hour.

“Nice man”, she thought; and wrenched thought to a standstill. Then, surprisingly, she asked: “If you were married and had a son, would you want him to follow your own profession?”

“I think so”, said Rockingham after a pause.

“Why?” The direct question might have been a man’s.

“Tradition, I imagine. We’re what is known as a service family.”

“Are you a large family?”

He told her a little about Geoffrey, about William, about his parents.

“Your mother”, she said, when he had finished, “sounds slightly forbidding. But I believe I should like her. You see, I come of soldier stock myself.”

She stopped there; and he had a swift impression of reticence. Surprisingly again, it was as though she admitted, “But I’d rather not talk about my own family”.

Still silent, she rested one hand on the dog’s head.

After a moment, she took another cigarette. Again he struck a match for her. In the spurt of the flame, her eyes, her finely chiselled features, her blond hair, which—he could not help realising—owed as little to artifice as her hands or her lips, no longer seemed quite those of a stranger. As far as her physical appearance was concerned, he might have known this young woman for a long time.

Mentally, too, they seemed akin.

“Don’t you smoke?” she asked, while he still wrestled with these peculiar illusions.

“Not cigarettes.”

“A pipe?”

“Yes. May I?”

“Of course.”

As Camilla spoke, the dog sprang from the hearthrug; leaped for one of the windows; rested his forepaws on the sill.

“That must be Guy”, she said. “He’s home early.”

Almost at once they heard horse hoofs on gravel; and the Hawk bawling:

“Lightfoot! Damn and blast it, where’s Lightfoot? Come and take this bloodstained quadruped, will you?”

Camilla’s face changed. He saw annoyance there. She pressed the bell by the fireplace, rose, went to the window.

From there, she said: “It looks as though he must have had a spill. He has. He’s limping quite badly. Excuse me, please”.

She ran out, Tiny at her heels. Rockingham waited.

Presently he heard Hawk Wethered’s voice again, “Nothing to fuss about, my dear. I’ll be all right once I get these boots off”.

The voice sounded irritable. Nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed before his host entered the museum-like hall.