Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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Mr. Conrad Pybus collected pictures, and being the possessor of two “Constables,” and three “Cotmans,” he had some right to stretch out a large hand and to indicate the picture that was hung against the blue horizon.

“That’s Castle Craven—over there. Rather like a thing by Constable. What?”

In spite of the largeness of his hand and the largeness of the car in which he sat, he spoke with an assurance that failed of its effect. He was shy of the woman beside him. She was leaning forward in the coupé, her dark thinness and her pallor joining to disconcert Mr. Conrad Pybus’s vague yet ample correctness. She was smiling, and when she smiled the angles of her long and expressive mouth curved deep into either cheek. It was a curious smile, showing a gleam of teeth, but not as the conventional beauty displays them, all to the front as though advertising a musical comedy or a dentifrice. As a small nephew put it: “Aunt Ursy laughs in her cheeks.” She did, with a kind of slanting, upward, ironic swiftness, as though the two corners of her mouth were retracted by a couple of hooks.

Mr. Pybus’s hand, sheathed in wash-leather, seemed to fascinate her. Extended, palm turned towards the landscape, it suggested the hand of a policeman on point duty, pontifically presenting a whole street to some hesitating motorist. But with the gloved hand the illusion ended. The blue-and-white striped shirt-cuff nicely protruding from the blue sleeve, marked the particular Pybus. No man could have been better tailored. His hats came from Pont’s in St. James’s Street.

She examined him with one swift and inclusive stare while he remained for a moment in that attitude of civic dignity, presenting her to Castle Craven, that hill town, grey under a kind of blue murk, the lapis of a horizon that was tumbled with clouds. She saw the red gold gleam of a wheat field, ripe on a green hillside. The world seemed a welter of hill-tops, green and grey and silver, or bewigged with smooth beech woods. The distances appeared immense.

But beside her and very much in the foreground was Conrad Pybus, solid and obvious, all black and white, a heavy man who could not sit comfortably in her presence. He had been trying so hard to impress her. He wanted her to marry him. And she, with the merciless eyes of a woman who had no illusions, saw him as a glorified and rather flashy stockbroker’s clerk, a morning-paper man, worth perhaps fifteen thousand pounds a year. He had a place—Chlois Court, in Berkshire.

She allowed herself to agree with him.

“All those clouds massed up there. Rather fine. How much have we done?”

“Oh,—about seventy. You wouldn’t know it in this ’bus, would you? An hour and a half. Not so bad.”

His large, white face, with its unblinking blue eyes and very black moustache, reminded her somehow of the face of a chef. But why a chef? How oddly one associated things! Only—that particular sort of face seemed to call for a chef’s white cap. She smiled.

“You are going to give me lunch there?”

His right hand reached for the gear lever.

“Of course. Saracen’s Head. I wired them before we started.”

The car went softly down into the valley where the Brent ran under the grey span of an old bridge between the steep greenness of overhanging trees. “Aunt Ursy” was peering into a little mirror. She had one of those ivory skins that are proof against sunburn or worry, and neither her skin nor her hair needed attention. Conrad Pybus was showing her how he could handle a car on the narrow steeps of the ascent into Castle Craven. He was very conscious of her sitting there, squinting at her sleek face in that provoking little mirror. Yes, she was “it,” as much “it” as the car he was driving, but she would take more handling, O—yes—much more handling. He might be a new man, but Chlois Court had a ripe and proper atmosphere.

While she, consummate worldling, but coolly honest, as many worldlings are, watched a high stone garden-wall glide by, its greyness tufted with Siberian wallflower and draped with aubrietia. Colour! Of course! The man had no colour. Moreover, he possessed one of those heavy white skins which resemble greasy vellum. Hence the “chef complex.” Yes—that settled it, for, whatever she might be, she was like most women, richly fastidious, a saint in her æsthetics, if something of a vagrant in her morals.

Meanwhile Conrad Pybus’s blue car, with its black coupé and silver snout, climbed the steep and tortuous Bridge Street into Castle Craven. He drove with a confident care. He was doing the thing well, and it was no use doing things badly in the presence of Ursula Calmady.

“Might be the Brooklands test-hill. Oh—you idiot!”

Balked by a Ford van that pulled out in front of him without a by-your-leave or a signal, he had to hold the car on the steep hill. The lady glanced at his face. He had the air of saying to himself things that in her presence could not be said.

She smiled to herself.

“No—my dear, no. You are not a bad sort, but in six months you would be saying those things aloud.”

The car moved on, and she allowed herself to feel self-revealed in the dignity of Castle Craven. Its very steepness was dramatic and Shakespearean. Between little grey crowded houses, the cobbled street swept up and through the black throat of an old gate. There was a sudden enlargement of the sky. The tall houses drew back under the smiling white clouds. A church tower with six pinnacles, each topped by a gilded vane, made a glittering against the blueness. In the centre of the great space a market cross rallied the town. There were houses of stone and houses of Georgian brick, and a row of pollarded limes shading the fronts of a line of shops. On the left a golden head swinging on an iron bracket overhung the broad pavement. A little farther on the White Hart Inn wore upon the top of its white-pillared portico a turban of flowers. Two red ’buses, and half-a-dozen cars were drawn up by the Cross.

The obvious Pybus drew in towards the Saracen’s Head.

“Well, here we are.”

He was made to measure.