Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 36

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It was in the April of the following year that Anthony was walking towards Smurthwaite in the hope of meeting the motor-car bringing Harry Pordage and Dick Hudson, with Chris and Lottie, on their visit. It was a backward day. On Septimus’s lawn the daffodils were out, but they had a look of not liking what they had found on emerging from the underworld. A cold wind, eddying, bowed them all now in this direction, now in that, so that they were like a Greek chorus, lamenting in turn to the left and the right. The birds were singing, more to keep up their peckers than from joy, and the clouds were inflated bags of grey, trundling with ungainly menace not very high overhead. A robin stood on a gate with an air of finding comfort in his red flannel waistcoat.

Anthony had almost reached Smurthwaite when he saw Joanna Halliwell coming towards him. She was not, as he had always seen her till now, over-dressed. She waved a gloved hand and said: “Hallo! Where’s the dog? I’ve not seen you without him before.”

“And I’ve not seen you without your mother. I haven’t brought Cerberus because I’m expecting to meet some people in a motor-car, and he’s not used to motor-cars.”

Joanna said she was home for the Easter holiday. “A mistress brings us as far as London, and there all the girls who live in the country are met by their mothers.” She added, with obvious pride in the fine word: “I am emancipated now, if you know what that means.”

“Oh yes,” said Anthony, not to be sat on, “it’s from the Latin verb emancipare, to set free.”

“We don’t learn Latin—only French. We talk nothing else and all our lessons are in French.”

“Who emancipated you?”

“I did. After all, I’m sixteen now. Do you know, till I went away I had never in my life gone a yard without Mother or my governess? And in Switzerland we don’t, either. We walk about in crocodiles. So when I got back, I said to Mother: ‘Mother, I must have my freedom.’ She said: ‘What you’re going to do is learn to look after the mill when I’m too old to do it myself. In future you can come along with me each morning instead of sitting in a shop eating buns like a baby. It’s not too soon to start, and it’ll be something to do in the holidays.’ ”

“That’s a funny idea of a holiday.”

“I should think so. And what do I want with a mill? When Mother’s dead, I shall sell it. I expect,” she added complacently, “I shall marry on the proceeds.”

“It would be far better,” Anthony said wisely, “to give the mill to your husband, and let him do the work.”

“Perhaps you’re right. We shall see. Mother may live some years yet. Anyway, in the meantime, I’m allowed to be by myself now and then. I drove in with Mother this morning, and now I’m walking home.”

She got down from the gate and set off along the way Anthony had come. He fell in alongside her. “Perhaps the motor-car will overtake us,” he said.

“I want Mother to sell the carriage and buy a motor-car. Everybody’s buying a car now. Jogging along behind that old horse is terribly old-fashioned, but I’m afraid I sha’n’t shake Mother on that point. Old people are so obstinate. They make one feel madly helpless, and some of them live to be quite sixty.”

“Mr. Pordage doesn’t hold with motor-cars. He’s very upset because this one is coming.”

“Well, he’ll have to be upset, that’s all. There’ll be plenty of them coming, whether he likes them or not. I expect, before we know where we are, we’ll see these hedges down and a good road made into Smurthwaite. We’ll be able to buzz in there from our place inside half an hour. Oh, much less than that, because motor-cars will be getting better, too. Better and faster. Don’t you love the idea of going fast?”

Anthony wasn’t sure that he wanted this young woman to subvert all that Septimus had taught him, but he soon found himself overruled, for the hooting of an old rubber-bulbed horn caused them to stop, to turn, and to see the car coming towards them in a cloud of dust. Anthony waved, and the car came to a standstill. The canvas hood was down. Harry Pordage, looking worried at the wheel, and Dick Hudson, who sat alongside him, were disguised with goggles. Lottie Wayland, wearing what looked like a piece of old net curtain on her hair, shared the back seat with Chris Hudson. She shouted excitedly: “Bon jour, Antoine. Ça va bien?”

“See here, Lottie lass,” Dick Hudson said with massive patience, “this is Yorksheer. That thing comin’ down t’road”—Anthony looked and saw Cerberus making a grinning approach—“is a dog, not what you call a chiang. You and Chris can parley fransay as much as you like when I’m not about, but a holiday’s a holiday, so let’s have a bit of God’s good English. What say, Anthony? And how are you, lad?”

But Anthony had no time to answer. “Mais, Monsieur Hudson,” Lottie cried, “c’est pour apprendre le français que Christophe se trouve chez nous. Il faut le parler toujours et partout.”

“Have it your own way, whatever you’re talking about,” Dick said with resignation. “Who’s this lass, Anthony?”

Anthony made the introductions, and Joanna asked if she might have a lift as far as Mr. Pordage’s house. They packed in somehow, Anthony jammed between Lottie and Chris Hudson, Joanna perilous on Lottie’s knees, and, on Anthony’s knees, Cerberus, who made an uninvited leap and looked round with great interest on this unaccustomed accession to his usual company. Harry Pordage, looking like a surgeon about to perform his first operation and hoping that God will be kind, fiddled with knobs and levers. Soon an intense shuddering shook the car and Cerberus began to bark with riotous joy. The car suddenly leapt forward like a steeplechaser who has decided to try the jump after all, checked, and threw everybody into a heap. It trembled violently, roused itself, and went sedately forward. “Good lad, Harry,” Dick said. “Tha’s gettin’ on fine.”

Joanna said: “Moi aussi, j’aime parler en français,” and that set them off: Chris, Joanna and Lottie. They chattered like magpies. Anthony could not believe his ears. French, as imparted by Septimus, expert grammarian but unskilled in conversation, had nothing to do with what he was hearing now. He didn’t understand one word in six, and he was dismayed to find that Chris Hudson was as easy and voluble as the others. He was so downcast that he did not even try to join in. And so they came to the end of the journey: those three clacking away at the tops of their voices, Cerberus barking madly, Harry Pordage bent over the wheel as intently as Laacoon wrestling with serpents: to find Septimus standing at the water-splash holding out a red silk handkerchief nailed to a stick, and looking as though he wished it were a firebrand that would burn up everything that this shivering and already old-fashioned Humber represented.