Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 39

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Soon after breakfast the next morning, which was Sunday, Joanna Halliwell appeared, riding a bicycle. Chris Hudson, Lottie and Anthony were standing near the water-splash, discussing the programme for the day. Harry Pordage and Dick had gone off in the car, proposing to be away till evening. Harry, as well he might, felt that the visit was not being a success. Lottie Wayland was the only one of the visitors in whom Septimus seemed to take any interest. Sensing his annoyance, she had set out to charm him, as she could, with her bows and curtseys and monsieurs. He had invited her to his study after supper and given her a lecture on calligraphy. Ranged on the long refectory table at which he wrote were bundles of quills. He showed her how they should be cut and used. He told her that he was writing a book, and said that it would be in three moods: stately and elegiac, for which he would use the quills of swans; soaring and romantic, for which he would use the quills of golden eagles; and harsh and discordant, for which he would use the quills of crows. He explained that during a holiday in the Highlands he had met a gamekeeper who, for a small consideration, supplied the eagles’ quills, and the swans’ quills came from a fisherman in Cornwall. “Crows’ quills I can find a-plenty,” he said. “I sometimes wish that fish were feathered. Their quills would be incomparable for passages of rippling liquid music.”

He showed her with pride his parchment manuscript paper and the sepia ink that he made for himself. He displayed the writing produced with various quills, and she said it was the most beautiful writing she had ever seen, which was true; though—but she did not say this—she could see no difference between his elegiac and romantic hands. “You would have been very happy, sir,” she said, “in a monastery, writing their beautiful books,” and Septimus said rather wistfully that he thought he would; “but perhaps the cold would have been too much for me. I am not a very good man, my dear, not good enough to be able to endure discomfort. Still, it would have been pleasant to look out of a slit window and see that a gentle knight was pricking on the plaine rather than a motor-car a-sticking by my water-splash.”

“I hope we have not disturbed you too much, sir.”

“I shall survive. I shall survive. Now off to bed with you. Mrs. Toplis has built a nest somewhere, and she will expect you to snatch a little sleep. Do not disappoint her. Snatch.”

This encounter put him into a better mood for the morning, but Harry thought it wise that he and Dick should be out of the way.

Joanna had come to invite Lottie Wayland to visit her house. “I had a job with Mother,” she said. “But then I always have a job with Mother. You’d better bring your birth certificate and family tree.”

“I don’t want to go where I’m not wanted,” Lottie said; and Joanna laughed. “Oh, come on. Don’t be stuffy. I want you. If Mother’s awkward, we’ll just have to put up with it. After all, she won’t last much longer. She’s fifty if she’s a day.”

Cerberus, interested in the bicycle, bit through a tyre and inner tube and looked up with a smile, asking for approval, as the machine settled down on to the wheel-rim. Anthony thought that he alone had noticed this. He patted Cerberus. “Good dog,” he said. He did not approve of a girl who thus casually took Lottie away and left him with Chris Hudson. The girls started to walk, Joanna pushing the bicycle. She was at once aware of the flat tyre. “Look what’s happened now,” she said. “Oh, damn!”

Chris said: “It was the dog did that. Anthony’s dog. He bit through the tyre. I saw him.”

The girls came to a standstill and looked back. Anthony said with menace: “D’you want a bath? You didn’t have one this morning.”

“I should think not.” He addressed the girls. “Do you know what Anthony does? He goes to the stream and jumps in with no clothes on. Disgusting conduct! He wanted me to go with him, but I wouldn’t.”

Joanna began to laugh. “You’d look a pretty sight if you did,” she said.

Chris was no Adonis and no infant Hercules. This direct contemptuous comment on his physique stung him to blind anger. His fists clenched, and he said: “Oh, you—you——” He made to advance upon the laughing Joanna, but Anthony put a hand on his chest and shoved. Chris landed on his back in the middle of the water-splash.

Anthony did not wait to see the outcome. He crossed the splash on the stepping-stones, whistled the dog to his side, and walked away in the direction of Smurthwaite. Let ’em all go hang, he thought. Let Chris Hudson wallow, and let the girls go off, if they wanted to. He could do without any of them.

He did not get back till lunch-time, and he lunched alone with Septimus, who was in beaming good humour. He said: “Peace is upon this house. Gaudeamus igitur.”

“Where is Chris Hudson?” Anthony asked.

“He is embarked upon what he would call the chemin de fer—the iron road to Bradford, via Keighley.”

“Was he very wet?”

“When first I saw him, he was very wet indeed. He looked remarkably like a newt that had clothed itself before emerging from the natal stream. ‘Whence, O Christopher, this metamorphosis?’ I asked; but chattering teeth were incapable of rational reply. He stood among the daffodils, gibbering with angry incomprehensibility.”

“I threw him into the stream.”

Septimus spread red-currant jelly upon a forkful of tender lamb. “Out of the incoherence,” he said, “the name of Anthony Bromwich emerged, coupled with oaths and threats of lifelong feud. I was able to reach my own conclusions.”

“He asked for it,” said Anthony tersely.

“He said that he must leave this house, that he would not stay to be insulted. What could I do but bow? No thoughtful host could stand in the way of a guest’s wishes so clearly expressed. Back to Bradford, he cried, back to Bradford without a moment’s delay. I assured him that a moment’s delay was imperative if he wished to escape rheums and agues, fevers tertiary and quarternary. In short, O Christopher, I said, you’ll have to change your bags.”

“I’d have let him go as he was.”

“All nature cried out against it. He was a disgusting sight.”

Christopher, having brought no change of clothes, was ordered to go to the barn-room and dress in something of Anthony’s, and while Septimus walked among the daffodils filled with pleasurable meditations, a victoria drawn by a brown horse stopped at the gate, and a coachman wearing a cockaded hat approached and handed him a letter. With Mrs. Halliwell’s compliments he was informed that Miss Wayland would be staying to lunch, and hoping that this short notice does not involve any domestic inconvenience, I am, yours faithfully.

“Inconvenience—oh no! My heart sang. To know that the widow Halliwell was mine—and faithful to boot—and to know that here was the deus ex machina for the conveyance of my dry parcel of boy to Smurthwaite station! A few sesterces pressed into that honest palm did the trick and permitted Valpy, whom I should have hated to disturb; to enjoy his sabbatic peace. And so you see, my dear Anthony, when others, by brutal violence, create a painful situation, Pordage’s diplomatic service may be relied on to handle it with tact and discretion.”

“He asked for it,” said Anthony again; and Septimus said: “We all of us, my dear boy, ask for it in one way or another. Human history is little but the tale of frenzied men asking for it, sometimes getting it in the neck, and, with a frequency for which God be thanked, sometimes being allowed to escape the consequences of their own folly.”

Mrs. Toplis came in with an apple-pie. “Quite like old times,” she said. “Just the three of us. I must snatch a moment to warm that boy’s trousers.”

“O that some power had put it into a human heart to warm them with frequency and precision in the past,” said Septimus.