Читать книгу Heirs Apparent - Philip Gibbs - Страница 7
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ОглавлениеThey walked at a good swinging pace while the shadows grew longer and the rich gold of the sunlight paled a little, until the low hills lost their sharpness of outline and were like purple clouds lying above the tawny earth of ploughed fields and the emerald green of pasture land. Presently the woods darkened below and their feathery tops caught the fire of the setting sun, and the sky above them was of turquoise blue with rose-flushed clouds. In the west was a great grey wing with flame-tipped plumage. Dark shadows crept into old barns. There was a jabber of gossip before bed-time in the rookery of a rectory garden. Farm carts crawled down the rutty lanes with tired horses, and country lads called good evening to Julian and Audrey. Birds twittered in the darkening hedges, and flowers in cottage gardens lost their colour but gave out a new richness of scent as the evening dew moistened them. Later a crescent moon rose like a silver scimitar in a sky still blue but no longer rose-flushed, and a star twinkled in the east. The earth was good to smell, and somewhere in the fields behind a farmstead a wood fire was burning, and its bluish smoke was wafted to the nostrils of the girl, who called to Julian to sniff the sharp, thin smell of it.
“Burning wood! It’s the odour of romance, the aroma of life’s first adventures. Why does it always remind me of that heroic vagabond, Richard Cœur de Lion?”
“Association of ideas,” said Julian. “I expect he roasted a deer by a wood fire, or you think he did.”
Darkness came, but luminous. The road was white beneath their feet and a little mist crept about them, an exhalation from the warm earth.
Suddenly, beyond Nettlebed, Audrey took hold of Julian’s hand and said, “Stop! ... Listen!”
It was at a gate leading to a farmstead with big old barns. By the side of the gate was a tall hedge of hawthorn in which a bird was singing.
It was a nightingale warbling to its mate with a few deep, rich, chuckling notes before pouring out its love in passionate song. Audrey’s footsteps and her words alarmed it and it stayed quite quiet for a minute while the boy and girl stood there listening. Then it made a few little gurglings of liquid sound and suddenly gave out a high trill and began a Caprice, very blithe and quick in change of note and tone, as though striving for the perfect expression of its ecstasy of love.
“Pretty good,” said Julian. “Some bird!”
Under such carefully unsentimental words he masked his own wonder at this little voice of beauty which gave him a thrill as though something stirred hidden things in his own nature. He could feel Audrey’s hand quiver as she held his wrist. She lifted her face up to the bush and spoke to the now silent bird.
“Hark! ah, the Nightingale!
The tawny-throated!
Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark—what pain! ...”
“You’re as bad as Stokes Prichard,” said Julian. “Better be walking on. It’s still a fair step to Henley.”
“Bother Henley!” cried Audrey. “Why not sleep out in the fields and forget the haunts of men and all unpleasantness?”
Julian considered the idea for a moment. Certainly it would be rather amusing, but there was a limit even to the simple life and the open road. It would certainly get extremely cold, and anyhow he was hungry. A good inn, with steak and onions, would be more attractive than the sheltered side of a haystack. So he protested to Audrey. Besides—he did not enlarge on that “besides,” even in his own mind, but subconsciously there was a touch of caution in his character, some old instinct of self-defence and obedience to the law of convention which as a rule he derided like most of his friends. Audrey was an amusing kid and perfectly straight and all that, and there was nothing whatever between them, but all the same one couldn’t take too many liberties with the usual scheme of things. In any case, Clatworthy wouldn’t like it.
“Me for Henley,” he said. “And the biggest meal they can give us at the White Hart.”
“Materialist,” said Audrey. “Unadventurous and unromantic soul! How nice to see the dawn break and wash one’s face in the running brook, and comb one’s hair in the morning sun.”
“I know that English dawn,” said Julian. “Freezes the very marrow in one’s bones.”
“Doubtless you’re right,” said Audrey graciously. “You’re a wise young man with an old head on young shoulders. But I shall miss a good adventure. I’m in a primitive mood to-night. I’m a child of nature. I want to lie on the earth and embrace the sky. I want to run through dark woods and go to sleep among the fairies. I want to play hide-and-seek with moonbeams.... But on the other hand, I admit the lure of steak and onions. How many miles to Henley, did you say?”
It was eight miles still, and Audrey, though a golf-playing girl and half back at hockey, was the worse for wear when she and Julian walked at last into the White Hart Hotel. She limped a little and announced that she had “strained her fetlock.”
The young woman in the office was doubtful whether she had two rooms. “Any luggage?” she asked, with what Julian considered to be unnecessary suspicion of his transparent honesty.
“A tooth brush between us,” he said in his somewhat arrogant way. “We don’t mind paying in advance, if that would please you.”
The young woman softened, because of his look of mastery, or perhaps because of his grey eyes and the curve of his upper lip. Other young women had served him gladly because of his youthful arrogance.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Brother and sister, I suppose?”
“No,” said Julian. “Uncle and niece.”
He signed the book, and passed it to Audrey who scrawled her name across the page in her big, bold hand.
“Now for a wash,” said Audrey, “and a tremendous meal!”
They could not get steak and onions, which was a real blow. It was too late for hot food and they sat down to cold ham and pickles.
“What about a teeny weeny cocktail?” asked Audrey. “It would put the right touch to the end of a perfect day.”
“It’s a bad habit for young ladies,” said Julian, but he yielded.
Over the meal they talked of Oxford friends like two old people who had left that life far behind. They were already beginning to feel the charm of its tradition.
“Of course, I’m glad to have been up at Balliol,” said Julian. “It’s a good thing to have behind one.”
“What’s your programme now?” asked Audrey. “How are you going to jab at life?”
“Oh, I shan’t be in too much of a hurry,” said Julian, “My Governor can afford to give me a bit of rope. Literature is my ambition.”
“It would be!” said Audrey. “The Isis has been responsible for many lost fortunes and desperate failures.”
“Something after the style of John Masefield,” continued Julian. “Real stuff. Perhaps I’ll have a shot at a play. Blank verse, of course.”
“Who’s your father to pay for such a hobby?” asked Audrey. “Horribly rich, of course, by the way you fling your money around. And that car of yours!”
Julian looked embarrassed.
“Not over rich. He used to be poor.”
“A war profiteer? What luck!”
Julian tried to avoid her cross-questioning. His face had flushed uneasily.
“Didn’t Clatworthy tell you?”
“Not a word. Is it a dark secret? Not the public hangman or anything like that?”
“More disgraceful,” said Julian. “He’s the editor of The Week, ‘All the Truth.’ The largest circulation of any Sunday paper. Frightful, isn’t it?”
Audrey found it amusing, but not frightful.
“How perfectly thrilling! What a lot you must know about Society Scandals and the tit-bits of the Divorce Court. Are you going to became a journalist and defend the dear old British Empire from all slander and assault?”
“Not that degradation,” said Julian.
“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind being a lady reporter if the life is anything like a novel I read—‘The Street of Adventure.’ ”
“It isn’t,” said Julian. “And the proprietor of The Week is one of the worst scoundrels in England. It’s a disgrace to be associated with him.”
“Victor Buckland?”
Audrey quoted a familiar line.
“—‘Another powerful article by Victor Buckland (inset) will appear in the next issue of The Week, entitled “Why God Loves the Englishman.” ’—Well, you must admit he’s patriotic, Julian. Where would the British Empire be without dear old Buckland?”
“Infernal old hypocrite!” growled Julian. “A Junker with his tongue in his cheek. The most poisonous influence in English life. Have another pickle?”
Audrey preferred a black coffee.
It was while he was ordering it and Audrey was smoking a cigarette over a copy of The Sketch before a wood fire in the lounge that Julian was startled by a friendly voice.
“Hullo, young Perryam!”
Julian swung round on his heel and saw an elderly man in a golf suit. He had a broad, good-humoured face, very bronzed, with a little grey moustache on the upper lip. It was Major Iffield, a friend and neighbour of his father’s at Gorse Hill.
Julian greeted him without enthusiasm.
“Good evening, sir. You here?”
“Very much here.”
Major Iffield explained that he had been spending a week-end with the Hetheringtons at Boar’s Hill, and had broken down hopelessly in his car on the way back a mile outside Henley.
“The worst of a cheap car! Come and have a whiskey or something.”
“Afraid I can’t,” said Julian coldly. “I’m with a friend.”
“Oh, well, bring him along,” said Major Iffield.
“It’s a lady,” said Julian.
He glanced toward Audrey, who turned round and smiled.
For a moment Major Iffield looked slightly startled. But he was obviously a gentleman, though a little clumsy in his manner.
“Perhaps you’ll allow me to join you? It’s extremely boring alone.”
“By all means,” answered Julian. “Audrey, this is Major Iffield.... Miss Audrey Nye.”
The Major bowed and shook hands with Audrey in a hearty way.
“Daughter of Mr. Nye of Hartland?” he asked.
“Alas, yes!” said Audrey. “A clergyman’s daughter, and wedded to holy poverty.”
Major Iffield laughed rather noisily.
“I have a great admiration for your father, any way. Would either of you young people like any refreshment? A liqueur—lemonade ... ?”
“Nothing at all, thanks,” said Audrey graciously. “A little bed for me very soon.”
“Oh, it’s early yet,” said the Major.
He asked a few questions about Oxford. He had been at the House—a million years ago. But Oxford didn’t change. The spirit of youth survived. Nothing could change that. Not even the Great War!
A shadow crossed his heavy, good-humoured face, and he sighed a little.
“You were too young for that, Perryam?”
“Yes. By a year.”
“Lucky for you. Above all, lucky for your father.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Julian carelessly. “I missed something, I expect.”
Major Iffield seemed to find those words amusing.
“You certainly did! Very unpleasant things, if they happened to hit you. But I forgot! It’s bad form to talk about the War, I’m told. Do you play golf at all?”
He told a few golf stories which Julian found very dull, though they seemed to amuse Audrey. But she was the first to bring the evening to an end.
“Well ... I confess to somnolence. Good night, Major Iffield. Thanks for your anecdotes. They will make my father laugh.”
“Excellent,” said Major Iffield.
“Coming, Julian?” asked Audrey.
Julian yawned rather theatrically.
“Yes, I’m dog tired. Good night, sir.”
“Good night, Perryam. I hope to see your father soon. Delighted to have run against you.”
Julian and Audrey went up the brown oak staircase to their bedrooms. They did not see Major Iffield walk quietly into the hall and look in the register book, and then stare after them with a kind of trouble in his kindly eyes until they disappeared on the first floor.
Audrey was holding Julian’s hand. She was really tired.
“A bore meeting people sometimes,” she said.
“Especially that Major man. A hero of the late unmentionable, but rather wearisome. Those golf stories!”
“Thirty-one, thirty-two,” said Audrey, peering at the old oak doors. “Which do you want?”
Julian opened both doors, and turned on the lights. Each room was furnished in an exactly similar way, a little white bed, a Georgian chest of drawers, a wash-hand stand with marble top, a dressing-table and looking-glass, two brass candlesticks without candles on the mantelpiece, an old oak beam across the ceiling.
“Thirty-one for me,” said Audrey. “To avoid argument.”
She smiled at him as he undid the knapsack and rummaged for her blue silk pyjamas, silver-backed hair brush, tooth brush and things.
“It’s been a great day, Julian!”
“Topping. How’s the fetlock?”
“That’s nothing. There’ll be worse things to bear at the journey’s end. Family indignation. Sordid domesticity. ... Thanks for this adventure, my dear.”
She held out her hand to him, and when he took it put her face up for him to kiss.
“Think so?” asked Julian, doubtfully, and with a hint of embarrassment. “What about Clatworthy?”
She flushed quickly and laughed.
“What’s that to do with it? I don’t belong to him.”
“All right then!”
He kissed her on the cheek, without any ardour. Then she took up her things, and with a “Sleep well!” went to her own room with a little smile about her lips.
Julian undressed in a leisurely way, read a pocket edition of Rupert Brooke in bed, and then turned off his switch with a sleepy yawn as the heavy footsteps of Major Iffield strode along the passage.
