Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 26
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ОглавлениеRachel went in and danced. She danced very well in the manner of the modern tall young thing, back well hollowed, shoulders and head thrown back, her eyes looking squarely into the face of the man. Perhaps she appeared a little over-excited and vivacious, more than ready to laugh at anything and everything the lad said.
“You are a priceless person!”
He rather thought so too, and he did not mind her agreeing with him, but he was a nice lad, and he had a sense of fun.
“I say, we get on jolly well together. O, damn——”
The record had run itself out, and to him the romantic adventure was just beginning.
“Put on another, Jerry. You old ass—that’s a tango. We don’t tango, do we, Rachel?”
“Why not?”
“O—if you’re daring me, come on. I’ll be your Valentino.”
Their tango ended in confusion and laughter, and in a sudden mutual warmth and clinging of hands.
“Sorry, all my fault. Let’s revert. A foxtrot, Jerry.”
Rhoda and her partner were walking briskly about between the tables, watching Rachel and young Hanson, and exchanging amused and meaning glances. Geoff was a little bit touched, but that was not exceptional. He was but one of the many and multifarious young men on wheels who came once to the Mill House, looked upon the daughters of Robinia, and came again. There was no nonsense about Rhoda and Rachel; they were not genteel or “refained”; they were just healthy young women with a frank outlook upon life, ready to give and to take when they pleased.
Geoffrey grew confidential.
“I’m getting my new M.-B. next week. Hot stuff. She’ll do eighty. What about coming for a spin?”
She glimmered her eyes at him.
“I might.”
“Marvellous!”
“And I might not.”
“O, don’t be hard on a chap. Say yes.”
“Right-o. But it can’t be a Saturday or Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Silly! I have to work.”
“Does anyone work these days? Well, what about next Tuesday? I could get here at six.”
“In the morning?”
“Is it likely! Well, that’s a fixture.”
He held her a little more firmly.
“Say—I wish it was a ’plane. We’d zoom over to Paris and back again. Lovely!”
“O, would we! Don’t be such a speed-merchant.”
But she liked young Hanson. Her young body warmed to him, and standing at her window that night she contrasted Geoffrey with Mr. Bonthorn. She could play with the younger man; they talked the same language, understood the same quips and their world’s pattern. He was not desperately serious, and who wishes to be desperately serious? If sex was just a romp and a joke——?
But Bonthorn? She was afraid of Nicholas Bonthorn. He had made her feel uncomfortable and crude and apologetic. He was so much a finished piece of workmanship that her young self-in-the-making was both attracted and repelled. She might even feel that he was laughing at her, gently and subtly, but what young woman asks for such laughter?—more especially so when she is something of an Atalanta and pleasing to the young men.
Mr. Superior Bonthorn!
She would not allow to herself that she was afraid of him, but she could admit that he made her feel awkward and gauche. He was so vividly serious, so very much a person who walked head in the air through the little world of your marvellous fooling. She could not imagine him on a motor-bike, and herself on the pillion streaking round corners at fifty miles an hour.
“Nick, old thing, what about it?”
Yes, he was a sort of grandee who spoke a different language. He was quite old. He would seriously want to discuss serious things, as—he no doubt discussed them with Mrs. Gurney. That serene, stuck up old autocrat!
No, she wanted someone to play with, to fool with, to rush about the country on wheels, someone who could dance and talk nonsense. She would be so much more transcendent with a fellow whom she could call a silly fool. A one-eyed and learned philosopher stuck in a flower-garden! Something in her shrank from the mysterious menace of him.
