Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 34

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That extraordinary old man!

How had his grandfather contrived to become what he was, both a sage and a bearer of burdens? How wrong it seemed, and yet how right he made it. For Lance had seen a swollen person in the Saracen yard, a sort of over-ripe human mulberry, splutter at his grandfather. “Here, where’s that soot-case. Damn it, man, I told you room No. 3.” And Lance’s blood had felt on fire, until, in watching the Venerable, he had realised that the heat in him was natural but unnecessary. His grandfather, looking with one straight blue glance into that squashed, mulberry face, had answered with resolute courtesy.

“One suit-case, sir, one kit-bag, one attaché case. The suit-case is under that rug, sir. There is no need to damn anybody.”

The swollen person had oozed more purple, and Lance, standing by the Talbot, and rattling the money in his trouser pockets, had seen the dignity of his grandfather cut like a knife into that human pulp.

How was it that the Venerable understood the inwardness of the thing you were saying almost before you had completed the saying of it? And the delight in being understood without explainings, while catching the gleam in those resolute blue eyes, and in hearing the right echo come back to you! What was the subtle nexus between them? How was it that in the presence of his grandfather he felt himself both man and child, and able to reveal his innermost thoughts with a confidence that was perfect? His grandfather was so young, yet not young like the young things. He could chuckle. He had a sudden sense of humour. You felt so near to him in that little brown room, or when idling under the castle ash trees, or sitting in the oriel of the Bayard Tower and looking down at the Brent below.

His grandfather had a peculiar dignity. You forgot the smallness of him in contemplating that massive head. The more you talked to him the larger he seemed to grow, until the mere physical outlines ceased to matter, or became a familiar cloak hanging about a soul of understanding.

Did the Venerable suspect?

For Lance had not told him. There had been a sensitive courtesy in the younger man’s approach to the elder one. Lance had felt that he wanted his grandfather to know Lance the man before he knew him as Lance—the grandson. For there was such a surprising sympathy between them, and yet—somehow—it seemed to have an inevitableness. Perhaps it had.