Читать книгу Housemaster - Major General John Hay Beith - Страница 6
II
ОглавлениеWithin the Impasse stands a house—old-fashioned, rather provincial-looking, with a flaky stucco face and the usual outside shutters and little iron balconies.
In the big bare studio at the back, Aubrey Faringdon, in a paint-smeared blouse and a blue velvet tam-o’-shanter, worn less for ornament than to keep the top-light out of his eyes, stood at his easel engaged upon a preliminary charcoal study from a model. He was a strikingly handsome man of middle age, with the impulses and sense of humour of a generous and rather impish schoolboy.
To him entered his sister-in-law, Miss Barbara Fane, who has already been mentioned in this narrative, dressed for the street and equipped with a large string-bag. She was a well-bred, self-possessed, uncompromising English spinster, of the type which George du Maurier loved to depict; and several years in her present surroundings had invested her with an air, towards the Latin races in general and Paris in particular, of resigned disapproval.
Aubrey greeted her cheerfully, and asked if she was going shrimping.
“Or is it butterflies?” he added, as an alternative.
“I am going marketing, Aubrey, and you know it.”
“Why not let Madame Mollard do the marketing?”
“Don’t be silly. Cooks get commissions. I want to talk to you. Will you kindly ask that young woman over there either to put something on, or go away? She makes me shiver.”
Aubrey addressed a brief direction, of a colloquial nature, to his model; who, after a pithy and fortunately unintelligible rejoinder, removed herself to the dressing-room in the corner of the studio.
“Now,” he said. “Which of them is it this time?”
“Chris.”
“I thought so; it’s her turn. Sit down and spill it, as our Chris herself would say.”
Barbara seated herself upon the edge of the model throne.
“Aubrey,” she enquired presently, “have you ever heard of the Girls’ Friendly Society?”
“Vaguely. Why?”
“I sometimes think your daughters must have founded it. There’s no vice in them, of course—that’s their mother coming out——”
“Why not their father?”
“Don’t make childish interruptions, please. Why must they be so friendly—no, intimate!—with every one they meet, from the word go?”
“That’s an easy one. They’re enormously interested in life, and being absolutely devoid of all fear of their fellow-creatures, they go straight to the point with them.”
Barbara nodded grimly.
“Yes,” she said; “I’ve heard them do it. Only yesterday, when old Muravieff came here with that little—but never mind her. Why are they only interested in queer people? Goodness knows, I do my best to introduce them to what decent society there is in Paris——”
“How gorgeous if only Paris could hear you say that, Barbara!”
“—And nearly every Sunday I take them to lunch at Madeleine Carey’s house in Passy, where they meet some—well, they’re only Americans, of course, but they’re respectable, and they and the children do speak the same language——”
“Barbara, I hotly dispute the imputation that my children talk through their noses.”
“—And what happens?”
“They over-eat themselves, in the first place. So do I, whenever I go there. American hospitality——”
“They usually get into a corner,” pursued Barbara, to whom, when she had something to say, irrelevant interruption merely acted as a stimulant, “and giggle, and make silly private jokes in some sort of argot which nobody understands but themselves. But set them down in this studio, at one of those cocktail parties of yours, and they’re blissfully happy. Why?”
“It’s not the cocktails, anyhow: they only shake them up. Damned well, too. And you must admit that their presence has a most restraining effect on the company. Why, the place is like a convent, when——”
“That is an overstatement, Aubrey.”
“Well, you know what I mean. Nobody gets tight—at least, not unpleasantly tight—and nobody talks tough or acts rough while they are there. Let me tell you something, Barbara: those children have got a rather rare gift. They instinctively, and without trying to, bring out the decent side of everybody they meet.”
“Have all your friends got a decent side?”
“Everybody has, somewhere—otherwise the world would have thrown its hand in centuries ago. I say, that’s rather well put. I must remember it and use it again.”
Barbara, as usual, was busy with the matter in hand.
“That’s just the point, Aubrey. These people only hold themselves in because the girls are so young; and——”
“How old are they now?”
“Rosemary is just twenty, and Chris is eighteen. Things may start getting really difficult soon. Heaven knows they’re difficult enough already. Think of Rosemary and that saxophone player!”
“Yes, that was unfortunate. One finds it hard to forgive her for a saxophone player. But what has Chris been doing?”
“You know that horrible little two-seater you gave her?”
“The Baby Peugeot? Yes. What has she done with it—run over a gendarme?”
“It has recently been the cause of her getting picked up—by a racing-motorist.”
“In what sense do you employ your verb, Barbara dear?”
“In the good old-fashioned sense. Yesterday she and Rosemary went for a run towards Chantilly, and the machine stuck. Chris, of course, is as clever as a monkey with cars: she got out all her tools, and opened the lid of the car——”
“Bonnet.”
“But finding nothing wrong there, got underneath. Rosemary, who is no more interested than I am in what makes machinery go round, went for a stroll down the road. When the racing-motorist drove up in his car Chris was alone. All that could be seen of her was her legs, but that was quite enough.”
“I should say so: my daughters have admirable legs. And he waited to see what the rest of her was like. Any gentleman would have done the same. Well?”
“Of course, when she finally crawled out and found him there, they fraternised at once. She told him all about herself and the car, and what was wrong with it; and he was so impressed with her knowledge of the thing that he offered her a job as his mechanic on the spot.”
“Which she accepted?”
“My dear Aubrey, don’t ask silly questions. Of course she accepted!”
“What was the racing-motorist’s name, if any?”
“Paul Richet. Have you heard of him? I mean, is he well-known as a racer?”
“Extremely well-known, as a speed-merchant in every sense of the word. Proceed.”
“Well, by the time Rosemary came back Chris had promised to be ready to start for Monte Carlo with him next morning. Paul was going there to compete in a Grand Concourse of Elegance, or whatever the French call these ridiculous affairs.”
“H’m!” said Aubrey. “Obviously Chris had failed to explore the situation in all its possibilities.”
“She wasn’t the only one.”
“You mean—Paul Richet——?”
“Exactly. They brought him straight to see me—I must say they’re very good about that—and he got the shock of his life. He got a bigger one still when I told him what I was going to do about it.”
“Namely?”
“Come to Monte Carlo too.”
Aubrey chuckled.
“And what was Master Paul’s reaction?”
“Well, you know what these French people are like when they’re frustrated over that sort of thing; they simply go off at ninety to the dozen. I gave up trying to follow what this creature was saying. But I fancy it was some sort of tirade about the English.”
“Perfidious Albion, and so forth. Can you blame him?”
“Chris and Rosemary understood him all right, though, and both lost their tempers. Chris, anyhow. Master Richet got as good as he gave, and finally went off with his exhaust open and tears running down his cheeks. And that was that. I suppose,” concluded Barbara gloomily, “it will be Button’s turn next.”
“But not for a little, surely. How old is Button?”
“Nearly fourteen. All the same, I’m more frightened of her than the other two put together. She’s a secretive child, and nobody could accuse Rosemary or Chris of being that. Inclined to be furtive, too.”
“Sinister is a better word,” said Button’s father. “I’m rather frightened of her myself. Where is she, by the way?”
“That’s another thing. She has taken of late to disappearing mysteriously, for about an hour in the middle of the day. Of course by rights she ought never to go out alone in this place; but I can’t be everywhere, and of course you’re in the studio as long as daylight lasts——”
“The patient breadwinner.”
“I’m not so sure about the bread. And Rosemary and Chris haven’t any more sense than she has. Much less, in fact. Luckily all the people round here know them, and keep an eye on them——”
“Haven’t you asked her where she goes?”
“Yes, and her answer is that she goes to see a girl friend!”
“Just that.”
“Just that, and a dazzling smile, and not a word more. Well, I’m a long-suffering woman, but there are limits. Button slipped out about a quarter of an hour ago, and went up towards the Boulevard. When I’ve done my shopping I’m going up that way too: perhaps I shall meet mademoiselle on her return journey.”
Barbara rose to her feet, and grasped the string-bag.
“You can call that creature in again now, Aubrey,” she said. “Good morning!”
