Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 32

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September mist.

Lance, standing at his bedroom window and brushing vigorously at his insurgent hair, saw the beeches draped in vapour, and the grass grey with dew. Also, he saw the Daimler below on the gravel, with Wyman standing beside it smoking an early and surreptitious cigarette. Sir Probyn was driving up to town to attend a board-meeting.

Lance and his father had had a passage of arms over this very board-meeting on the previous evening. Sir Probyn, pouring out a second glass of port, had called his son back from the half-opened door. Something had occurred to remind the elder Pybus that Lance would be in his last year at Cambridge, and that the serious business of life was approaching. Probyn was an opportunist. It may be that right eye of his had persuaded him to approach life obliquely. Also, he was just a little afraid of his son.

“Lance!”

“Yes, pater.”

“Just shut the door a moment, will you?”

Lance had closed the door. He had come and stood by the table with that air of alert gravity which was so disturbing to his father. The lad was so full of silences. Sir Probyn, very conscious of his son’s eyes and of the fact that Lance was being detained there like a dog called back when it is bent upon some adventure of its own, had smiled and tried to make an easy movement in his chair.

“I have a board-meeting to-morrow. Care to drive me up?”

“The Buick?”

“No—the Daimler. Good opportunity. I’d like you to come with me and get an idea.”

Lance had waited in silence.

“See how these things are done. Can’t begin too early. You’ll be in your last year.”

Sir Probyn had glanced at his son, and then had removed the band from his cigar. After all, to an intelligent lad like Lance a hint should be sufficient. Probyn was very fond of his son, though with a rather puzzled and slightly diffident fondness. He had given the lad plenty of rope; he had not interfered with his scribbling. Sir Probyn always thought of it as scribbling. But he had plans for his son, quite gentlemanly plans. The young Jason should travel; he should be a man of languages, he should carry the Fleece into foreign lands. Experts! A young merchant prince and director! But first a year in the mills, and another year in the sales-manager’s office.

Lance had stood looking down at his father. Only of late had he begun to visualise himself as a business man; life had been so easy. Moreover, there had been a vagueness about the future. Probyn had not been very definite in his suggestions; again, he had preferred the oblique method.

“I don’t think I should be any good in business, pater.”

His father had said, “Oh——! What do you know about it?” and had looked at his son, not directly, but as though his glances diverged and met again behind his son’s back. He had been surprised—as parents always appear to be surprised—by Lance’s abruptness, an abruptness that had sounded agressive.

“Don’t know much about it, do you, Lance?”

“Not a great deal.”

“Thought that you understood, my dear boy. It has always been in my mind——”

Lance had pulled some grapes from a dish, and had begun eating them. He supposed that he had understood in a way that his father had intended him to go into the business—but never had he given an inward consent to anything. He had been too young to consent to anything. He did not know. He had urges, prejudices, predilections. He had been full of his rowing, and his inspirations, and his explorations into the adventure of life. He had taken things rather as he had picked up those grapes.

“You see, pater, it’s not easy.”

He had frowned, while eating skin and pips, and thinking of that other Pybus. No, it was not easy, especially for a lad whose man’s cry was to be, “Give me something difficult. Not the easy thing. The easy thing’s so fatal.”

“I have been thinking a good deal lately.”

His father had raised bland eyebrows. Surely it was not necessary for Lance to think! The proof of the pudding was in the eating, and if Lance’s eyes were not open to the advantages of business—well—he had only to look about him.

“Your mother and I have taken it for granted——”

He had been caught by a sudden swift glance. Such a strange look!

“I don’t think you ought to, pater.”

“My dear boy! Don’t you appreciate the fact that your mother and I——”

“You have been very generous.”

His father had smiled over the apparent concession.

“Of course—naturally. We wanted you to have every advantage. It’s our wish——”

Again he had been the target of that steady, searching stare.

“Do you want me to do—what you want me to do, or what I——”

“We want—what’s best, Lance.”

“Yes, that’s just it, pater. What’s best! But isn’t that just about the hardest——”

“Well, use common-sense. I’m not going to say—that I’m a good deal older——”

And there Probyn Pybus had left it. He had never been a man to push an issue to immediate extremes. His nature was bland and circuitous. Conciliation. Allow a few suggestive persuasions to soak in. Besides, he supposed that most young men began life with bees in their bonnets; and if you were a shrewd person you allowed the bees to buzz themselves out. He had said, “All right, I’ll take Wyman to-morrow,” and felt that he had been tactful and kind and rather subtle.

So Lance stood brushing his hair. His father had ordered the car for nine, and Lance was late for breakfast, and the Daimler—standing on the gravel—suggested that it could carry a compromise. Sir Probyn, with the morning paper propped against the coffee pot, was wondering whether his son would come downstairs and say “Morning, pater, I’d like to drive you up to town.” While upstairs Lance was passing through one of those experiences that may appear trivial at the moment. Being sensitive, he found the doing of certain things difficult, but also he had youth’s ruthlessness and its scorn of compromise. He had changed very much in a year. He had become more acutely self-conscious, and also more aware of people and their proclivities. He had seen people through the eyes of other young men, and he had begun to see his own people with a very disturbing clearness. His father was a far more vivid and comprehensible figure to Lance than Lance was to his father. Youth sees things freshly, with a cruel impartiality, wide awake to all the tricks of soul and body; and by his son Probyn was seen as a caricature of himself. Lance had not asked to see him like that. It happened so. It was one of those inevitable discriminations which make life both humourous and tragic.

“I can’t go.”

He went downstairs in flannels, and met his father’s oblique eyes looking up at him over the top of the paper. He helped himself to porridge while his father finished his second cup of coffee. They had wished each other good morning.

Probyn Pybus got up as his son sat down. He gulped his coffee. He folded up the paper with a crumpling testiness.

“Lot of mist this morning. Meet my board at eleven.”

Lance, with a spoon in the sugar-bowl, supposed that the mist would lift very quickly. The day promised to be hot.

Sir Probyn—with a characteristic swerve of the right eye, allowed it to be seen that he was nettled.

“You’ll spend the morning scribbling—what?”

Lance looked out of the window.

“Very likely.”

His father went out of the room saying something about life being a serious business, and that every man—however young—should learn to face responsibilities, the kind of thing that thousands of fathers have said to thousands of sons.