Читать книгу Old Pybus - Warwick Deeping - Страница 41

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Standing in the Saracen yard with his back to a big blue “saloon” which had come in for the night, John Pybus pointed with the stem of his pipe at Lance’s little “Talbot.”

“There won’t be any of that, Lance.”

“No, I suppose not, grandpater.”

“Not to begin with. Books don’t—as a rule—produce motor-cars. But—of course—you have thought——”

He looked with a courageous kindness into his grandson’s serious face. He was being braver than Lance knew. It is so much pleasanter to utter comfortable words; and this new and human relationship had suddenly become precious to him.

“Criticism is one of the most difficult drugs to swallow. You’ll be thinking me a platitudinous old devil——”

Lance’s smile came back.

“He—whom the Lord chastens—grandpater——”

“You’ve got it. Don’t we all want to wave flags and shout horray. But I won’t—my lad—to you.”

“No, I don’t think you could.”

“But I can shout horray at the right moment. We are flesh and blood—remember. And then——Well, there’s something to look at.”

A long, white two-seater, a de luxe machine, had glided in through the archway. A very tall man, brown as to face and clothes, climbed out of it, and turned to smile in a particular way at a very decorative young woman in a velvet and fur coat.

“Puss staying on the cushion?”

She was a pretty thing with oblique dark eyes, and a slow, sophisticated smile.

“Need I get out?”

“Need you do anything? Just going across to the gunsmith’s that’s all. Snuggle up.”

The Venerable, after looking admiringly at the little lady in the black and white chariot, glanced up at his grandson.

“Interested—in that sort of thing?”

Lance looked a little fierce. He was more interested in—that sort of thing—than his grandfather suspected.

“O—yes—sometimes. It hasn’t lasted long—yet.”

“Expensive hobby in these days. Say you sell fifteen hundred copies of a novel. A hundred pounds, more or less; probably less. How far would that go? There is a sort of celibacy——”

And suddenly he took his grandson by the arm.

“Let us go and look at the river. You haven’t to pay to look at the river.”