Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 39
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ОглавлениеSaid Lance to his grandfather:
“Tell me all about yourself, grandfather.”
The Venerable’s eyes laughed gently under the bushy white eyebrows.
“Once upon a time there was a little old fellow who kept a book-shop.”
“So you did keep a book-shop.”
“For thirty years or so. What was the family tradition?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it at present. The reality is so much better than the make believe.”
“Well—I kept a book-shop in London, and then—another book-shop in a Dorsetshire town. Then we had the war as an interlude, and my books remained on the shelves. I ceased to be a bookseller and conducted a tram. I have been in this billet for about seven years.”
Lance stirred his tea. His face had a clouded look.
“Didn’t they know?”
“We had passed out of each others’ lives.”
“But was there no—no effort?”
“Your father did make an effort.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“But—he did not like my job. Quite natural. It did not inspire credit. Very kindly—he offered to pension me, to turn me into an old fellow pottering about a parade. But I did not see it—as he saw it.
“And you told him——?”
“I’m afraid I told him to go to hell.”
Lance flushed up.
“Splendid! That’s just like—these people, they always want you to do what suits them.”
His grandfather gave him a shrewd look.
“You too?”
“Yes. It has all been arranged. I’m to be a business man. I’m to be the expert specialist. Everything is taken for granted. I’m to be a little second edition of my father. Of course—I know—that he has never grudged me anything. Parents don’t, but when it comes to the crisis——”
“Yes.”
“They grudge you the one big thing.”
“And that?”
“The right to be yourself.”
Old Pybus appeared to be counting the currants in one of the slices of cake.
“Yes, we are all guilty of that, more or less. We like to retain control. I let my boys go, but I kept the right of telling them what I thought——”
“Did it do any good, grandpater?”
“Not a shred. It made them dislike me—a little more. They meant to go their way, and I went mine. And you——?”
Lance looked out of the window.
“My way’s different, too. At least—I think so. I want to be myself.”
