Bealby; A Holiday. Герберт Уэллс

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СКАЧАТЬ Rampound Pilby was out of the room. The talk had arisen out of a duologue that had preceded the departure of the ladies, a duologue of Timbre’s, about apparitions and the reality of the future life. Sir Peter Laxton, released from the eyes of his wife, was at liberty to say he did not believe in all this stuff; it was just thought transference and fancy and all that sort of thing. His declaration did not arrest the flow of feeble instances and experiences into which such talk invariably degenerates. His Lordship remained carelessly attentive, his eyebrows unfurled but drooping, his cigar upward at an acute angle; he contributed no anecdotes, content now and then to express himself compactly by some brief sentence of pure Hegelian—much as a Mahometan might spit.

      “Why! come to that, they say Shonts is haunted,” said Sir Peter. “I suppose we could have a ghost here in no time if I chose to take it on. Rare place for a ghost, too.”

      The very fair young man of the train had got a name now and was Captain Douglas. When he was not blushing too brightly he was rather good looking. He was a distant cousin of Lady Laxton’s. He impressed the Lord Chancellor as unabashed. He engaged people in conversation with a cheerful familiarity that excluded only the Lord Chancellor, and even at the Lord Chancellor he looked ever and again. He pricked up his ears at the mention of ghosts, and afterwards when the Lord Chancellor came to think things over, it seemed to him that he had caught a curious glance of the Captain’s bright little brown eye.

      “What sort of ghost, Sir Peter? Chains? Eh? No?”

      “Nothing of that sort, it seems. I don’t know much about it, I wasn’t sufficiently interested. No, sort of spook that bangs about and does you a mischief. What’s its name? Plundergeist?”

      “Poltergeist,” the Lord Chancellor supplied carelessly in the pause.

      “Runs its hand over your hair in the dark. Taps your shoulder. All nonsense. But we don’t tell the servants. Sort of thing I don’t believe in. Easily explained—what with panelling and secret passages and priests’ holes and all that.”

      “Priests’ holes!” Douglas was excited.

      “Where they hid. Perfect rabbit warren. There’s one going out from the drawing-room alcove. Quite a good room in its way. But you know,”—a note of wrath crept into Sir Peter’s voice—“they didn’t treat me fairly about these priests’ holes. I ought to have had a sketch and a plan of these priests’ holes. When a chap is given possession of a place, he ought to be given possession. Well! I don’t know where half of them are myself. That’s not possession. Else we might refurnish them and do them up a bit. I guess they’re pretty musty.”

      Captain Douglas spoke with his eye on the Lord Chancellor. “Sure there isn’t a murdered priest in the place, Sir Peter?” he asked.

      “Nothing of the sort,” said Sir Peter. “I don’t believe in these priests’ holes. Half of ’em never had priests in ’em. It’s all pretty tidy rot I expect—come to the bottom of it. …”

      The conversation did not get away from ghosts and secret passages until the men went to the drawing-room. If it seemed likely to do so Captain Douglas pulled it back. He seemed to delight in these silly particulars; the sillier they were the more he was delighted.

      The Lord Chancellor was a little preoccupied by one of those irrational suspicions that will sometimes afflict the most intelligent of men. Why did Douglas want to know all the particulars about the Shonts ghosts? Why every now and then did he glance with that odd expression at one’s face—a glance half appealing and half amused. Amused! It was a strange fancy, but the Lord Chancellor could almost have sworn that the young man was laughing at him. At dinner he had had that feeling one has at times of being talked about; he had glanced along the table to discover the Captain and a rather plain woman, that idiot Timbre’s wife she probably was, with their heads together looking up at him quite definitely and both manifestly pleased by something Douglas was telling her. …

      What was it Douglas had said in the train? Something like a threat. But the exact words had slipped the Lord Chancellor’s memory. …

      The Lord Chancellor’s preoccupation was just sufficient to make him a little unwary. He drifted into grappling distance of Mrs. Rampound Pilby. Her voice caught him like a lasso and drew him in.

      “Well, and how is Lord Moggeridge now?” she asked.

      What on earth is one to say to such an impertinence?

      She was always like that. She spoke to a man of the calibre of Lord Bacon as though she was speaking to a schoolboy home for the holidays. She had an invincible air of knowing all through everybody. It gave rather confidence to her work than charm to her manner.

      “Do you still go on with your philosophy?” she said.

      “No,” shouted the Lord Chancellor, losing all self-control for the moment and waving his eyebrows about madly, “no, I go off with it.”

      “For your vacations? Ah, Lord Moggeridge, how I envy you great lawyers your long vacations. I—never get a vacation. Always we poor authors are pursued by our creations, sometimes it’s typescript, sometimes it’s proofs. Not that I really complain of proofs. I confess to a weakness for proofs. Sometimes, alas! it’s criticism. Such undiscerning criticism! …”

      The Lord Chancellor began to think very swiftly of some tremendous lie that would enable him to escape at once without incivility from Lady Laxton’s drawing-room. Then he perceived that Mrs. Rampound Pilby was asking him; “Is that the Captain Douglas, or his brother, who’s in love with the actress woman?”

      The Lord Chancellor made no answer. What he thought was “Great Silly Idiot! How should I know?”

      “I think it must be the one—the one who had to leave Portsmouth in disgrace because of the ragging scandal. He did nothing there, they say, but organize practical jokes. Some of them were quite subtle practical jokes. He’s a cousin of our hostess; that perhaps accounts for his presence. …”

      The Lord Chancellor’s comment betrayed the drift of his thoughts. “He’d better not try that sort of thing on here,” he said. “I abominate—clowning.”

      Drawing-room did not last very long. Even Lady Laxton could not miss the manifest gloom of her principal guest, and after the good-nights and barley water and lemonade on the great landing Sir Peter led Lord Moggeridge by the arm—he hated being led by the arm—into the small but still spacious apartment that was called the study. The Lord Chancellor was now very thirsty; he was not used to abstinence of any sort; but Sir Peter’s way of suggesting a drink roused such a fury of resentment in him that he refused tersely and conclusively. There was nobody else in the study but Captain Douglas, who seemed to hesitate upon the verge of some familiar address, and Lord Woodenhouse, who was thirsty, too, and held a vast tumbler of whisky and soda, with a tinkle of ice in it, on his knee in a way annoying to a parched man. The Lord Chancellor helped himself to a cigar and assumed the middle of the fireplace with an air of contentment, but he could feel the self-control running out of the heels of his boots.

      Sir Peter, after a quite unsuccessful invasion of his own hearthrug—the Lord Chancellor stood like a rock—secured the big arm-chair, stuck his feet out towards his distinguished guest and resumed a talk that he had been holding with Lord Woodenhouse about firearms. Mergleson had as usual been too attentive to his master’s glass, and the fine edge was off Sir Peter’s deference. “I always have carried firearms,” he said, “and I always shall. Used properly they are a great protection. Even in the country how are you to know who you’re going to run up against—anywhen?”

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