Читать книгу The Meadows of the Moon - James Hilton - Страница 10

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He did not tell her till they were half-way home on that bright June morning. She had been staying with friends in London for several weeks, and on her return he met her at the station in the two-seater car. There was a drive now, leading right up to the house, but he preferred to leave the car at the lodge and walk over the meadows.

For the meadows were lovely in June. They heaped up like billows, and there was one place where nothing could be seen except the green waves of this inland sea, crested with buttercups and swelling against the horizon in wide-sweeping arcs. This was the spot where they had so often played together as children, where they had hidden amongst the long grasses, and where, when Miss Grimshaw had at last found them, she had always exclaimed: “Well, I declare!”

And here Fran looked at Michael. She saw him first of all as a stranger, and then, gradually, as a strange man hiding a boy. Somehow, although she had seen him intermittently during his college years, she had never realized till now that he had been growing older. The years had been like elastic, pulled more and more tightly, yet all the time linking them to boyhood and girlhood; but now, all at once, the elastic had snapped and they were man and woman.

She knew, long before he told her, that he had failed in his examinations. But she let him announce and explain. “It was awfully bad luck,” he said, without seeming especially perturbed. “You know, Fran, I’m not the examination sort ... never could be. Things like that aren’t in my line. Pity, though, because it’s just happened at the wrong moment.”

She made no comment, knowing that he would explain further.

He went on, dreamily: “Fran, there’s going to be a first-class row at home.”

“Because you’ve failed?”

“Partly that.... And also about other things.”

“What other things?”

He said, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders: “Money.”

“Money?” She was surprised. “But, Micky, that’s the last thing there ought to be a row about. We’ve got all the money we want. I’m sure Nan’s been very generous to me—always—and to you as well. And John——”

“Ah, John——” he echoed. Then came explanation in a fierce torrent. Apparently he had overspent during the past term at Oxford. Not that he had been at all extravagant—his biggest bills had been for books. John, however, had refused to allow him more than four hundred a year. Four hundred a year wasn’t really enough to keep mind and soul together (he loved his little epigram). Nan had let him spend what he liked up to then, and it hadn’t been much more than five hundred. But John had lately taken command of finances, had gone mad about economies, had already sacked half the servants and sold the stables. “We’ve both of us been away, Fran, and we haven’t noticed what’s been happening. John’s lord of creation now. He’s been playing for it for years, all the time you’ve been at Kensington and I’ve been at Oxford. No wonder he chose the works instead of the ’Varsity.... Poor old Nan—it’s no use going to her now—all she can say is: ‘John thinks this.’ ‘John would rather that.’ ‘I must ask John.’ Oh, it’s all sickening, damnable. ... I believe I hate him so much—so much that I almost—respect him.”

The house lay ahead of them, nestling in the dark green fold of a hill; it seemed never so beautiful as at morning, when the sunlight kindled its old red brick to the colour of flame. As they approached, Fran remarked upon the scaffolding against the first-floor windows.

“That’s what he’s been doing with the money he’s saved,” said Michael, bitterly. “Pulling down the old wooden verandah—going to have an iron one instead—like a fire-escape.... That’s just like him, isn’t it?”

She had been perhaps dimly aware of the gradual transference of control from Nan to John. She had thought it natural enough, since John was growing older; it had certainly aroused no antagonism in her, hardly concern even. It had not seemed to affect her personally at all, for she spent most of her time in Kensington. It was Michael’s burning and impetuous protest that brought to her the first touch of apprehension.

She spent most of the day working in her own upstairs study, while Michael dashed off in the car to Patchley on some business or other. She might have accompanied him, but she did not trouble. As always, on meeting him after a longish absence, she wondered whether she really liked him a great deal or not.

Towards six in the evening she heard the sound of a car coming up the new drive; she went out on to the landing to look, but the workmen were at the main window, and the only other was the mullion window at the end, with its stained glass through which the evening sun was pouring rivers of molten red and blue. She looked through the red and saw a red John stepping from a red car with a red dust-coat on his arm. Then she stood on tiptoe and saw a blue John saying something to a blue chauffeur and walking across a blue courtyard.

John, untransfigured by stained glass, was less exciting. She met him later at the dinner-table, and as usual he was quietly polite. There was nothing noisy or blatant about him. He was not the Napoleonic type; his face, shrewd and perhaps forceful, was almost humdrum in certain lights. She studied his appearance with a new and closer interest; it was hard indeed to cast him for the rôle of tyrant.

He talked quietly about his day’s work at the tannery, and Nan approved and echoed everything he said. Michael’s failure, though obviously known, was not of course mentioned at all. After the coffee Michael went off on some errand of his own, and the others lingered talking for a while, but without saying anything of the least importance. Then John suggested that he should take Fran to inspect the new garages, and she agreed, because she could not very well refuse.

They went through the conservatories, and all the time she was half-wishing it had been Michael and not John who had commandeered her. John, however, was quite interesting in his own way; he was talking of the numerous improvements he was having made—a window here, an extra room there, and so on. “Quite recently,” he remarked, “when I came to look into the affairs of the house, I found them seriously rotten—structurally as well as financially. The bedroom verandahs, for instance, were all but falling down—eaten away by ants. The ants won’t eat the metal ones I’m having put up.... And as for the financial side of things, I decided there was nothing for it but a good straightforward row, once and for all.” He added, with a slight smile: “So I had the row—it was while you were away, about a fortnight ago—and as a result five of the staff have left. I discovered, for example, that the village grocer had been giving the servants tips—practically bribes—for them to be wasteful with things like soap and polishes.... Of course that had to stop. We don’t buy in the village now.”

He went on, after a pause: “I’ve been wanting to have a talk about this with you for some time, but you’ve been away so much.... And there’s the tannery as well. When I first began working there I made it my business to find out all I could about every section of the work. The result is that now, when I’m coming more or less into control, I know just what wants doing ... and what I’m going to do. To be quite frank, there needs to be a reorganization from top to bottom—and a weeding-out of abuses. There’s been slackness of all kinds, and even corruption.... Machinery, too, wants over-hauling and modernizing. All that’s bound to cost money. But it’s got to be done, just as those verandahs had got to be renewed.”

“Well?” She wondered where all this was leading.

He said: “We’ve got to do the things that need to be done, and therefore we’ve got to economize in the things that needn’t be done. You see?”

She smiled faintly. She certainly saw, and to show him the completeness of her vision, she replied calmly: “Micky has just been telling me about one of your economies—a cut in his college allowance.”

He seemed by no means displeased that she had broached the matter so directly. “Michael is extravagant,” he said. “I made careful inquiries, and I came to the conclusion that four hundred is ample.... If he finds it impossible, he must come away and earn his own living.”

“But it’s chiefly books that account for his overspending, isn’t it? And books are hardly extravagance, are they?”

“Books?” He uttered the word with care. “Yes, it’s chiefly books, I’ll admit. Perhaps you’d like to see the books. They’re all in my room.”

“Your room?” she echoed, and he rejoined:

“Yes, my room. Let’s go and see them.”

He led the way rapidly back through the conservatories and into the house, then across the library into a room at the farther end which overlooked the prettiest corner of the gardens. She followed him rather bewilderedly. “You’ll be interested in his selections,” he remarked, as he closed the door behind him. “There they are,” he added, pointing to a glass-fronted case. “I put them in there because they’re obviously too good for my common old shelves.”

They were certainly the acquirements of a person of taste. A fine leather-bound edition of Walter Pater and the entire set of the Wessex Hardy were conspicuous features, but the single volumes were no less elegant. Adlington’s Apuleius, a sumptuously-bound Cervantes, Florio’s Montaigne, the plays of Cyril Tourneur—truly the choice of a collector whose tastes were both rich and catholic.

“This,” said John, picking up a slim quarto volume bound in delicate Italian leather, “is William Byrd’s Breviary of Health, printed in 1552. On the bill it is marked at five pounds.”

“But—but how did you get hold of all these?” Fran asked.

“I just wrote to Michael’s scout to send them here,” replied John, replacing William Byrd on the shelf. “When Michael couldn’t pay his bills out of his allowance I naturally asked to see them, and when I saw one for fifty pounds’ worth of books I thought it would be interesting to see what the books were. Incidentally, I had them valued by a London expert, and I find they’re worth twenty pounds at most. Your Oxford bookseller is evidently a shrewd judge of character. At present I’m negotiating with him to take back the lot for the purchase price less ten per cent.”

“Does Micky know all this?”

“Certainly not. He didn’t tell me when he bought them. Why should I tell him when I sell them?”

“But—they’re his books.”

“If he can pay for them himself—certainly. Not otherwise.”