Thorley Weir. Benson Edward Frederic

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ gave a great shout, and disappeared altogether in the pool.

      Charles made breakfast ready according to agreement, and the two sat for a while afterwards in the stupefaction of out-door content.

      "This week has gone on wings," said Reggie, "and it's an awful melancholy thing to think that this is my last day here. But it's been a beauty of a week, I'm no end grateful to you for bringing me."

      Reggie had the caressing moods of a very young thing. As he spoke he left his seat and established himself on the ground leaning back against his brother's knees and anchoring himself with a hand passed round his leg.

      "I should have had to stew in Sidney Street for my week of holiday," he went on, "if it hadn't been for you. It was ripping of you to let me come."

      "It's I who score," said Charles. "You've earned your keep all right. I should have had to hire a model otherwise, or have done without one."

      "Oh, well, then, we both score."

      Reggie threw away the end of his cigarette and abstracted Charles' case from his pocket.

      "I must go up to town this afternoon," he said, "for Thistleton's Gallery opens again to-morrow morning. And there I shall sit, all July, at the receipt of custom and sell catalogues and make the turn-stile click and acknowledge receipts … oh, a dog's life. Jove, what a lot of money some of those fellows have! There was an American who came in last week and went around the gallery with a great fat white man called Craddock who often comes and shows people round. I rather think he is Thistleton, and owns the place. I say, Charles – "

      Reggie broke off suddenly.

      "Why, I believe it was he who was in the punt last night," he said, "and was standing on the lawn with that girl you sang at – "

      "Didn't notice him particularly," said Charles.

      "No, you were noticing somebody else particularly. But I feel sure it was he. As I say, he was taking an American round last week, who bought a couple of little Dutch pictures. He stopped at my desk on the way out and borrowed my pen and wrote a cheque for £5000 right straight off, without coughing. I remember he said he was going to post-date it. But he didn't tip me."

      "I don't quite know what this is all about," remarked Charles.

      "Nor do I. I hoped it was just agreeable conversation. Don't you find it so? But I bet you what you like that the fat white man in the punt was Craddock."

      Reggie lay further back against his brother's legs.

      "I see a great tragedy ahead," he said, "with inquests and executions. Craddock is about to marry the girl of the punt, and Charles will cut his throat, and – "

      "Whose throat?" asked Charles.

      "His own or Craddock's; perhaps Craddock's first and his own afterwards. Then there will be a sensational trial, and I can't bother to make up any more. Are you going to paint all the morning, Charles?"

      "No, none of it. It's enough for to-day to have finished you. I shall stop down here a day or two more and do another sketch after you have gone. I'm at your disposal this morning."

      "Then let us do nothing for a long time, and then bathe for a long time, and then do both all over again. Lord, I wish I was an artist like you, instead of a doorkeeper, to stop about all day in delicious places, and do exactly what you like best in the world, which is to paint."

      "It would make it completer if anybody wanted best in the world to buy what I had painted," remarked Charles.

      "But you sold two water colours the other day for three pounds each," remarked the consolatory Reggie. "That's as much as I earn in a month."

      "It might happen oftener," said Charles. "By the way, I heard from Mother last night."

      "A nice woman," said Reggie.

      "Quite. She sent me another sovereign in case funds had run low. When you get back you will find she has been living on tea and toast because she didn't feel hungry."

      Reggie gave a huge sigh.

      "I wish a man might marry his mother," he observed. "I should certainly marry her and we would ask you and the punt-girl to stay with us."

      "Very kind," said Charles.

      These two young men who were enjoying so open-aired a week of June by the Thames-side were the only children of the widow whom they kindly agreed to regard as a "nice woman." They had been brought up in easy and well-to-do circumstances, and educated at public schools, until the suicide of their father a little more than a year ago had disclosed a state of affairs that was as appalling as it was totally unexpected. He was a jobber on the stock-exchange and partner in a firm of high repute, but he had been privately indulging in a course of the wildest gambling, and he could not face the exposure which he knew could no longer be avoided. The sale of the pleasant country home at Walton Heath, and the disposal of all that could be converted into cash had been barely sufficient to make an honourable settlement of his unimagined debts. Neither his wife nor either of the boys had ever dreamed of the possibility of such a situation: never had it appeared that he had had the slightest anxiety with regard to money. His self-control had been perfect until, as with the breaking of some dam, it had given way altogether in ruin and destruction. Till that very moment he had been the gayest and youngest of that eager little family party, all of whom brought an extraordinary lightness and zest to the conduct of their unclouded lives. Charles had already left school for a three years when the stroke fell, and was studying in a famous atelier in Paris, while Reggie, still at Marlborough, was devoting as much time as he could reasonably be expected to spare from athletic exercises to the acquiring of foreign tongues with a view to the diplomatic service. They had both been instantly sent for by their mother, who met his death with a fortitude that never wavered. It was not long that they had to wait for the explanation of the utterly unlooked-for catastrophe, for a very short examination of his private papers showed the extent of his defaulting and the imminence of the crash. Willingly, had it been possible, would she have kept from her sons the knowledge that he had killed himself, bearing alone the unshared secret, but an explanation of accident was impossible. Equally impossible was it to conceal the miserable cause of it.

      It was on the evening of Charles' return from Paris, as they sat in the still house that till to-day had always rung with jollity, while heathery sweetness and the resinous odour of pines came in at the open windows, that she told them everything, quite shortly, and when that was done and they were still half stunned with the sudden horror that had blackened life, she rallied her own courage by awakening theirs.

      "You know it all, my darlings," she said, "and now whenever you think of it, and for a long time it will always be in your thoughts, you must think of it all as some dreadful mistake that dear Dad made, something he never meant at all. He got his troubles muddled up in his head till he didn't know what he was doing. He felt he couldn't bear it, just as sometimes he used to call out when we were playing some silly game like Animal Grab 'I can't bear it: I can't bear it.' Oh, Charles, my darling, don't cry so awfully. We've got to go straight ahead again, with all our courage undismayed, and show that we can face anything that God chooses to send us."

      She waited a little, comforting now one and now the other.

      "It was all a mistake," she went on, "and we must never allow ourselves to think that it was the dear Dad we knew who did it. He wasn't himself: trouble had made him forget himself and all of us just for a moment. We will think about that moment as little as we can, and then only as a mistake, but we will think constantly and СКАЧАТЬ