Читать книгу Christina - L. G. Moberly - Страница 4

"Don't be a silly ass, Layton. Do I look the sort of man to play such a fool's trick?"

"My dear fellow, there's no silly ass about it. You, a lonely bachelor, and not badly off—desirous of settling down into quiet, domestic life, would like to find a young lady of refined and cultured tastes who would meet you with—a view to matrimony. I'll take my oath you are as ready as this gentleman is, to swear you will make an excellent husband, kind, domesticated, and——"

Further speech was checked by a well-directed cushion, which descended plump upon the speaker's bronzed and grinning countenance, momentarily obliterating grin and countenance alike, whilst a shout of laughter went up from the other occupants of the smoking-room.

"Jack, my boy, Mernside wasn't far wrong when he defined you as a silly ass," drawled a man who leant against the mantelpiece, smoking a cigarette, and looking with amused eyes at the squirming figure under the large cushion; "what unutterable drivel are you reading? Is the Sunday Recorder responsible for that silly rot?"

"The Sunday Recorder is responsible for what you are pleased to call silly rot," answered the young man, who had now flung aside the cushion, and sat upright, looking at his two elders with laughing eyes, whilst he clutched a newspaper in one hand, and tried to smooth his rumpled hair with the other. "The Sunday Recorder has a matrimonial column—and—knowing poor old Rupert to be a lonely bachelor, not badly off, and desirous of settling down into quiet domestic life, etc., etc.—see the printed page"—he waved the journal over his head—"I merely wished to recommend my respected cousin to insert an advertisement on these lines, in next Sunday's paper."

"Because some wretched bounders choose to advertise for wives in the Sunday papers, I don't see where I come in," said a quiet and singularly musical voice—that of the third man in the room—he who a moment before had flung the large cushion at young Layton. He was sitting in an armchair drawn close to the glowing fire, his hands clasped under his head, his face full of languid amusement, turned towards the grinning youth upon the sofa. Without being precisely a handsome man, Rupert Mernside's was a striking personality, and his face not one to be overlooked, even in a crowd. There was strength in his well-cut mouth and jaw; and the rather deeply-set grey eyes held humour, and a certain masterfulness, which dominated less powerful characters than his own.

In those eyes there was a charm which neutralised his somewhat severe and rugged features, but in Rupert Mernside's voice lay his greatest attraction; and a lady of his acquaintance had once been heard to say that with such a voice as his, he could induce anyone to follow him round the world.

Why he had remained so long a bachelor had long been matter for speculation, not only to the feminine portion of the community, but also to his men friends; but thirty-five still found Rupert Mernside unmarried, and the manoeuvres of match-making mothers, and of daughters trained to play up to their mothers' tactics, had hitherto failed to lead him in the desired direction.

"My dear Rupert," his young cousin said solemnly, after a pause, "you are a bachelor—the fact is painfully self-evident; you have enough money to—settle down and become domesticated. There are hundreds—no—thousands of young women in the world, who would 'meet you with a view to matrimony.' It seems a crying shame that you should waste your sweetness on the desert air—when you might be blooming in a fair lady's garden."

"You utter young rotter," Mernside ejaculated, laughing as he rose, and stretched himself, "if you are so keen on matrimonial advertisements, why not put one in on your own account?"

"Awful sport," Layton ejaculated; "think of the piles of letters you would get from every kind of marriageable woman—old and young. And you might arrange to meet any number of them at different places, and have no end of a ripping time. You only have to ask them to meet you with a view to matrimony; the matrimony needn't come off, unless both parties are satisfied."

"Silly ass!" Mernside exclaimed again, with a laugh that mitigated the words, "one of these days you'll find yourself in some unpleasantly tangled web, my boy, if you play the goat over matrimonial advertisements. Better leave well alone and come up to Handwell Manor with me. Cicely wants a message taken to the Dysons."

"Cicely's messages are like the poor—always with us," the younger man answered flippantly; "no, thank you, Rupert; on this genial and pleasant November afternoon, when you can't see half a mile ahead of you for the mist, and the country lanes are two feet deep in mud, I prefer the smoking-room fire. Besides, I have letters to write."

"I'll go with you, Mernside"; the man who had been lounging against the mantelpiece straightened himself, and flung away the end of his cigarette; "Cicely won't be down till tea-time; she is spending the afternoon in the nursery, looking after the small girl. Confounded nuisance for her that the nurse had to go off in a hurry like this, for my respected sister was not intended by nature for the care of children."

"Fortunate she has only one," Mernside answered; "what would she have done with a large family party?"

"Managed by hook or by crook to get a party of nurses and nurserymaids to mind them," laughed the other man; "she's the dearest little soul alive, but Cicely never ought to have been a mother, though I shouldn't say that, excepting to you two who are members of the family, and know of what stuff Cicely and I are made."

Mernside and Layton joined in the laughter, and the younger man said lazily:

"Cicely's just Cicely; you can't imagine her less perfect than she is, and you, Wilfrid, being merely her brother, are not entitled to give an opinion about her. Rupert and I, as cousins, see her in a truer perspective. Bless her sweet heart! She makes a perfect chatelaine for this delectable castle, and the small heiress couldn't have a sweeter guardian."

"Hear, hear," Mernside murmured, touching Layton's shoulder with a kindly, almost caressing touch, as he and his cousin, Lord Wilfrid Staynes, went out of the room, leaving the young man in sole possession.

Left alone, Layton stretched himself again, yawned, lighted a cigarette, and, strolling to the window, looked at the not very inviting prospect outside. Bramwell Castle stood on the slope of a hill, and on even moderately fine days, the view commanded, not only by the window of the smoking-room, but by every window on that side of the house, was one of the wildest, and most beautiful in the county. But, on this Sunday afternoon in November, nothing more was visible than the broad gravel terrace immediately below the house, and a grass lawn that sloped abruptly from the terrace, and was dotted with trees. Everything beyond the lawn was swallowed up in a white mist that drifted over the tree-tops, and clung to the dank grass, blotting out completely all trace of the park, that swept downwards from the lawn, and of the great landscape which stretched from the woodlands to the far-away hills. Park, woods, and hills were visible to Jack Layton only in the eyes of his imagination; he could see none of them, and, with a shiver and a shrug of the shoulders, he turned back into the warm fire-lit room.

Thanks to his close relationship to Lady Cicely Redesdale, the mistress of the house, to whom he had always been more of younger brother than cousin, he had carte blanche to be at the Castle whenever he chose, and to treat the house as if it were in reality, what he assuredly made of it—his actual home. Both to him—and to Cicely's other cousin, Rupert Mernside—the late John Redesdale, her husband, had extended the fullest and most warm hospitality; and since his death, it had still remained a recognised thing that the two cousins should spend their weekends at Bramwell, whenever Lady Cicely and her little daughter were there. The kindly millionaire who had married the lovely but impecunious Cicely Staynes, one of the numerous daughters of the Earl of Netherhall, possessed a host of hospitable instincts, and the Castle had opened its gates wide to Cicely's relations and friends. Only one reservation had been made by honest John Redesdale. No man or woman of doubtful reputation, or damaged character, was allowed to be the guest of his wife; and the shadier members of Society never set foot within any house of which the millionaire was master. Jack Layton, strolling idly now across the smoking-room, whose panelled walls and carved furniture had been Redesdale's pride and joy, glanced up at the mantelpiece, over which hung a portrait of the dead man.

"Poor old John," the young man reflected, as he kicked a coal back into its place in the fire; "he was one of the best chaps that ever lived—even if he hadn't many good looks with which to bless himself." He looked up again at the plain but kindly features of the man in the portrait, and a smile crossed his pleasant young face, as his eyes met the pictured eyes above him.

"It wasn't a love match, of course," his thoughts ran on; "at least, I don't suppose Cicely loved the dear old fellow. Well; he was thirty years her senior, so who could wonder? But they were jolly happy, for all that; John worshipped the ground her pretty feet walked upon, and he was her master, without ever letting her feel his hand through the glove. Cicely wants a master—all women do want a master," Jack wagged his head sagely, when his thoughts reached this point. Having attained to the ripe age of twenty-five, he felt he had plumbed the nature of woman to its lowest depths, "and Cicely was lucky to find a master who could give her a place like this." He sauntered away from the fireplace, and next surveyed the well-stocked bookcases, but although they contained every variety of literature, nothing he saw appealed to his fastidious taste of the moment—and, yawning afresh, he once more picked up the Sunday Recorder, which he had flung upon the floor.

That someone who is perennially ready to turn idle hands to account, was watching over this idle youth on that November afternoon, may, on the whole, be taken for granted, for as Jack's blue eyes ran down the columns of the paper, a sudden mischievous light sprang into them, a low laugh broke from his lips.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "What sport, what ripping sport. Why on earth didn't I think of it before? And—as I start for a four months' trip with Dundas on Saturday—I shan't have to pay the piper, so to speak, yet awhile. In fact, by the time I come back, good old Rupert may have forgotten the little practical joke." Whilst he soliloquized, he was making his way towards the writing-table, where, having seated himself, he drew towards him a blank sheet of paper—and began to write a letter, glancing frequently at the Sunday Recorder beside him. An expansive grin lightened his features as he wrote, and at intervals he chuckled softly to himself, murmuring under his breath:

"Poor old Rupert. If only I could be there when he gets the answers. But one can't have everything," he went on philosophically, whilst addressing an envelope to the Editor of the Sunday Recorder; "it will be pure joy to think of the dear soul's dismay, horror, and disgust. ''Tis a mad world, my masters'—and, oh! to see our Rupert's face when the letters pour in. For they will pour in." During this rapid soliloquy, he was writing a second letter, which gave him less trouble, and needed less thought, than the first. Indeed, it ran very briefly:

"DEAR SIR,—I am desired to ask if you will be good enough to forward all letters in response to the enclosed advertisement to R.M., c/o your newspaper, to 200, Termyn Street, S.W.—Yours faithfully,

"J. LAYTON."

With a final chuckle, the young man put both letters into an envelope, and having stamped it, went whistling from the house, and through the park to the village, to post the missive himself at the little village post office.

"Quiet and cultivated gentleman of good family and means, is anxious to meet a young lady of good birth who needs a home, etc., etc., etc.," he murmured as he walked slowly back to the Castle through the dripping November mist. "Oh! what sport—what utterly ripping sport!"