Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 11

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But of John Pybus’s ultimate and final quarrel with his sons no one knew and no one cared.

Why should they care? John Pybus had never asked for pity. As a gladiator he had gone down fighting, and fate had dragged him out by the heels, and finding him still alive had decreed that he should live as one of the arena slaves and scatter sand over pools of blood.

On that August day he had met one of his own sons in the arena, and the man of the forties had fled from the man of the seventies. Old Pybus had watched Mr. Conrad get with some hurriedness into his car, and bundle it out into the market square. Mr. John resumed his halo. He was on duty by the brass gong when Conrad, having recovered the lady, shepherded her with heavy impressiveness out of the Saracen’s Head. They passed Mr. John Pybus standing by the gong. They went together down the strip of red carpet. Mr. Conrad was still apologising.

“Beastly place!”

His father was wondering whether a woman with that dainty and whimsical face could bring herself to bargain across the counter with a shopman. He felt a liking for the gentlewoman. She had smiled and looked at him and spoken. He was an old man. His impulse was to accost her and to say “That fellow’s a rotter. Turn him adrift.” But, then, Conrad Pybus was not exactly a rotter, but a person of property, and it was probable that a woman who could wear her clothes as the lady wore them, had her own philosophy.

George, the waiter, coming out for a few words with old John, who was treated rather as a sage and a great man by those who worked with him, spread a palm in which lay a shilling.

“Gave me that—he did, for a special lunch, and the wine iced, and him with a lady.”

Yes, Conrad had always been careful, and old Pybus’s thoughts went back to the occasion when he had quarrelled finally and like a Cromwell with the carefulness of Conrad and the punctiliousness of Probyn. It had happened during those Winterbourne days in the second year of the war. Mr. Pybus had been in difficulties at the time, for his selling of books—never very brisk—had languished with the war. But the quarrel between John Pybus and his sons had had nothing to do with business, though business had been at the back of it.

For John Pybus was old English. When there was war there was war, and if his country was involved in it, then it was his—John Pybus’s war, and his sons’ war. He was an old-fashioned patriot. Also, he was—or had been—a bit of a Puritan. Also—he was blue-eyed and resolute against the bully, were he emperor or Bolshevist. So, Mr. Pybus had been able to speak of the war as Armageddon without cribbing an obvious bleat from the popular press. St. George for England!

Absurd, great little old man, facing bankruptcy, yet able to lose himself in the great tragedy, and to get up at recruiting meetings and speak to the young men. “I am a man of peace—but I charge you—take up the sword.” For a year he was a kind of fiery cross at Winterbourne, and so successfully fiery that he was sought for to set alight other and damper districts.

Meanwhile his own sons procrastinated. Probyn could not be spared, but he was doing his best to be spared, though he was thirty-seven and a married man. Conrad spoke of joining the Royal Naval Reserve. The letters that old Pybus wrote to them were not models of tact. Your Cromwellian soul does not trouble about the squeak of a boot. He could not understand at first why sons of his had not been among the first hundred thousand, but when he did understand it, he took up the scourge. He bought a third-class return ticket to London, but he had to follow Probyn to Yorkshire, in order to have it out with the elder son. Probyn, a little sheepish and sententious, had very good excuses. It appeared that he had become indispensable; his father-in-law had put up some money, and Probyn had interests. Wool was a necessity—you know, and so was a man who could give the army what it wanted. Conrad, unearthed somewhere near Fenchurch Street, was less explanatory than his brother. He was busy, arrogantly and perspiringly busy. Ships—you old fool—ships and more ships! He did not call this meddling old fire-eater a fool, but he implied it. Besides, he was a careful fellow; he was out to make money.

John Pybus returned to Winterbourne with a very fierce blue eye. He had said things to his sons, things which would not be forgotten. He had called them shirkers, gunshies, opportunists. Such burs stick even to sleek jackets.

And then—when speaking at an open-air meeting in a certain rather backward town, old Pybus met the new English. He was heckled. A young man with a little ginger moustache and prominent teeth, who was something in a Somersetshire coal-mine, reared a head and asked questions.

“I’d like to ask the speaker—whether he has any sons.”

“Two,” said old Pybus promptly, like an old Roman confronting the Gauls.

“And are they in the army?”

“No—they’re not. And be damned to them.”