Dead Man's Quarry (2 page)

“Well—twelve?” suggested Nora diffidently.

The girl looked faintly surprised, and having performed a simple division sum in her head, replied pensively:

“That'll be two each, I expect.”

“One each would do,” said Nora, not wishing to appear greedy, “if eggs are scarce.”

“Oh, there's plenty eggs,” replied mine host's daughter reassuringly. “I expect you could have twelve. And you'd like them soft-boiled, I expect?”

“Please. And plenty of bread and butter.”

She sauntered back along the passage, sniffing the peculiar cool, pleasant odour of cider, stone floors and saw-dust that permeates small country inns, and entered the low-pitched square parlour with its windows full of geraniums and pot-ferns, and its hideous chairs of yellow wood and black horsehair ranged in prim rows against its panelled walls. Isabel, who was lying on the slippery hair sofa reading a volume of
The Girl's Friend
for 1885, looked up as she entered.

“Do listen to this, Nora. They had a short way with girlish aspirations in the days of Victoria the Good.

‘Answers to Correspondents.
Anxious
: Certainly not; we make it a rule never to give young girls recipes for making themselves slimmer; be thankful, my dear Anxious, that you are not too
thin
.
Heliotrope
: Surely you are perfectly aware, without advice from us, of the impropriety of corresponding with a young man to whom you are not engaged.' Poor darlings!”

“At least,” said Dr. Browning mildly, looking up from a book on the flora of South Wales, “your Victorian adviser wastes no words. She comes straight to the point in an admirable manner, and writes English. Very different from the illiterate compositions I sometimes notice in the domestic papers nowadays. I may add that, as a doctor, I heartily endorse her advice to Anxious.” Isabel smiled over her dog's-eared volume at Nora's father.

“What about the advice to poor romantic Heliotrope?” Dr. Browning looked around him.

“Middle-age is in a minority in this gathering,” he remarked. “As a middle-aged man and a coward, I beg to be excused.”

Charles Price, sitting with an air of discipleship on a stool by Isabel's sofa, laughed, rather loudly and stridently. His laugh was in keeping with the rest of him. Just a little larger than life in every way, this new-found cousin of Felix's. Colonials in England often had an air, thought Nora, of being too large for their surroundings. She regarded the new baronet as no ornament to his title and estate, and privately thought it a pity he had ever returned from the prairie he was so fond of talking about.

Felix, standing by the window and putting a film-roll in his camera, laughed too, a little constrainedly. He was probably regretting now, thought Nora, the friendly impulse that had made him invite his cousin to join the party at Worcester. The carefree holiday spirit of the journey had been a little damped since the advent of Sir Charles. Perhaps it was as well that this was the last day of the holiday. It was natural that Isabel, who never lost her head or heart, should prefer a mutual flirtation with Charles to the devotion of Felix, who was a romantic and single-minded youth, incapable of flirting; but it was unfortunate for poor Felix and the rest of the party, although, to do Felix justice, his breeding rose superior to his misfortune.

Lion, Nora's young brother, looked up from the large and elaborate map of his own designing that was the dearest treasure of his heart. With youth's god-like indifference to emotional storms and stresses, its wise concentration on the essential things of life, he asked severely:

“Got the eggs?”

“I expect so,” said Nora absently. “Yes, I've ordered them.”

“Did you tell them to boil mine exactly three minutes and a quarter?”

“No, my son, I didn't waste my breath. I said soft-boiled and hoped for the best.”

“There's no harm,” murmured Lion reproachfully, “in telling people how to boil eggs properly, even if they don't generally listen. If these eggs really turn out soft-boiled I shall mark this inn on my map in green ink, with a label, ‘Here We Had Soft-boiled Eggs for Tea.' Nearly all the other inns are marked in black, meaning Hard. Have you got my green ink, Felix? I may as well have it ready.”

“Optimist,” said Felix with a smile, feeling in his haversack and producing three or four little bottles of coloured ink. “How's the map getting on? Have you got as far as where we stopped last night?”

“Yes,” said Lion gravely. “These little purple spots are the fleas.”

“What's that long, eel-like thing a little lower down?”

“That's Charles meeting us at Worcester,” replied Lion, looking complacently at his handiwork. “It's rather like him, I think.”

“Living image of him,” said Isabel who had left her sofa to look over the boy's shoulder at this painstaking record of their holiday. “What are all these little figures?”

“Dates and times of arrival at the various villages and points of interest,” explained Lion with studied nonchalance.

“I see, Mr. Bradshaw. When you've finished it we'll all subscribe to have it framed.”

Charles, hoisting his long limbs up from the stool by the now deserted sofa, inquired:

“Did you remember to put in the banana you dropped and ran over this morning?”

The others laughed, but Lion answered with dignity:“This is a small-scale map. There isn't room in it for unimportant matters like bananas.”

“Hard luck on the banana,” commented Isabel, “to be snubbed like that after being squashed as flat as a pancake.”

“It didn't suffer,” said Lion gently, removing his map from the table as the waitress came in with the tea. “It was a painless, instantaneous death.”

With some ceremony the waitress placed an enormous cosy of Berlin woolwork over the teapot and withdrew. Nora, who was the kind of girl upon whom such duties naturally devolved, began to pour out the tea. The others drew up their chairs. Sir Charles hastened to seize Isabel's chair out of her hand and placed it at the table with a flourish, seating himself next to her rather hastily, as if he feared that Felix would forestall him. Idiot! thought Nora irritably, watching from under her eyelashes. She liked Charles less every time she looked at him. His elaborately gallant manner to herself and Isabel, the open court he paid to her pretty friend, offended Nora's fastidious taste. She did not consider such displays appropriate to the occasion of a country holiday, and missed the atmosphere of casual and kindly good-fellowship which had been suddenly dissipated at Worcester. Charles's good-fellowship was something to make one put cotton-wool in one's ears, so extremely noticeable it was.

“Old man,” he was saying now to his cousin, “we must arrange plenty of bicycling expeditions before you go back to town. How long are you going to be with us?”

“Only a fortnight,” said Felix regretfully.

“A fortnight!” echoed Charles. “I was hoping you were going to stay a month at least, and show me all the ins and outs of being an English squire.”

“Wish I could,” returned Felix amiably, opening his egg and looking with mild surprise at its firm and solid contents. “But I can't leave the studio so long. All the elite of London are waiting in a queue to be photographed. My dad'll show you all the ins and outs, he's used to them. And Blodwen'll back you up much better than I should.”

Nora, still studying the bold, handsome, rather large-scale features of the new squire, thought she saw a slight, almost imperceptible change of expression on them as Felix mentioned his father; so slight a change and so swiftly over that it was impossible to guess what emotion had produced it, impossible to put a name to the change itself. One could not call it a sneer, but it approached a sneer.

“I'm looking forward no end to seeing Blodwen,” he replied. “I haven't seen my sister for fifteen years. We were great pals as kids. I wonder what I'll think of her?”

“It would be more becoming,” remarked Lion, carefully and hopefully chipping at his egg, “to wonder what she'll think of you.”

“Lion,” said Nora reprovingly, “don't be cheeky.” But privately she agreed with him.

“Well, you'll soon see,” said Felix. “She came back from France yesterday, I believe. She'll be waiting for your inspection when we get to Rhyllan, and will present you to her miscellaneous pack of hounds.”

“I've seen some of them already,” said Charles with his loud laugh. “In fact, the other day I shot one of them.”

“Oh,” said Felix, and did not seem to find this news amusing. He added rather distantly:“How was that?”

“Out in the corn-fields shooting rabbits. Little beggar went off its head with excitement and got between my gun and the rabbit.” Charles glanced round the table, and perceiving a certain lack of sympathy in his audience, subdued his voice and manner. “Pure accident. Might have happened to anybody.”

He looked at Isabel. She was looking meditatively at her plate.

“I tell you, old chap,” he added feelingly, “I was terribly cut up about it. Afraid Blodwen'll never forgive me.”

“It is certainly,” said Dr. Browning mildly, “a rather unfortunate way of re-introducing yourself to your sister. Miss Price is devoted to her animals. But she'll certainly forgive you for an accident. She is a very reasonable girl.”

“Hope you're right,” said Charles genially. “But I don't know. Old maids are always perfectly cracked about their pets.”

Felix winced, and Dr. Browning regarded Charles thoughtfully, as if he were an interesting specimen of a new genius of fern. There was a momentary, rather uncomfortable silence. It was broken by Lion. He put down his spoon and regarded his egg with an unfavourable eye.

“Nora,” he remarked stoically, “ring for a hammer and chisel.”

Nora laughed.

“I've just rung for some hot water. You can give your order to the waitress when she comes.”

Charles, with an anxious sidelong glance at Isabel's pretty profile coldly averted from him, addressed her feelingly, trying to make up the ground which, as he was vaguely aware, his last remarks had lost him.

“I can't tell you how keen I am to see Blodwen again, and talk over old times when we were kids. I've got an old photo of her here I've been carrying about with me half over the world.” He felt in his pockets and produced a little brown photograph for Isabel's inspection. “I want you to meet her, too. How long are you staying in Penlow?”

Isabel glanced with a smile at Nora, who replied for her:

“You're staying with us till we go back to London, of course, Isabel. Isn't she, Father?”

“I hope so,” said Dr. Browning heartily. “You certainly can't do justice to our beautiful county in less than a month, Isabel.”

“I wish I could stay till school opens,” returned Isabel sweetly. “But I'm afraid I'll have to go after ten days. I promised my aunt to spend part of the holiday with her. You see, I'm all the family she's got, and she gets bored when I'm away.”

“In that case,” said Dr. Browning, looking approvingly at this exemplary niece, “we mustn't press you, I suppose, though we're sorry for our own sakes that your aunt has such a thoughtful niece.”

Beaming approval at Isabel and pleasure in his own verbal felicity, he retired once more behind the “Flora of South Wales” propped against the sugar basin.

“Is your aunt staying in London?” asked Nora.

“Yes,” replied Isabel. “She's enjoying the wild mountain scenery of our native Notting Hill. When I go back we shall probably go away together somewhere for a week. But don't let's talk about going back, yet. I've only just begun to realize what you give up, Nora, in the pursuit of Art with a capital A. If I had the choice between Radnorshire and the R.C.A. I should say give me Radnorshire.”

“No, you wouldn't, my dear. Not if you wanted to earn your living decorating the hoardings,” replied Nora, and privately wondered how long Isabel would really be able to endure the monotony of life in a small country town. Isabel's transparent little insincerities amused Nora, and were hardly even intended to deceive. They were a habit, like smoking or biting the nails.

Felix shot at Isabel a look of tender approval; he deeply loved his county, although his business kept him away from it for forty-eight weeks in the year. Glancing from his cousin Charles to the window, where the great hills stood far and golden on the horizon, he wondered what difference his cousin's advent would make to life at Rhyllan Hall, which had been so idyllic. Changes were inevitable, for the new baronet bore little resemblance to his late father, and a respect for tradition did not appear to be one of his outstanding qualities. A gentle, learned old man Sir Evan had been, a permanent invalid, and well content to leave the management of his estate in the capable hands of his brother Morris, Felix's father. Felix had received a letter from his father a few days before he started from London, a melancholy letter hinting at drastic changes.

“If poor Evan could have seen what fifteen years in Canada have made of his son, I don't think, he would have been so anxious to trace him before he died. I can only be thankful that the poor old chap was spared a sight of his heir. He was a bit of a young waster before he emigrated, as of course you know, but we all hoped that the colonial life would have made a man of him. So it has, I suppose many people would think. My dear Felix, your cousin is a coarse, ill-humoured lout, and fond as l am of Rhyllan, I don't intend to endure his company very much longer. This state of affairs cannot go on. In the six weeks since he came here he has already shot his sister's favourite dog, turned the head of one of the housemaids, and sacked old Letbe on the most puerile excuse. He has also gone to the trouble of being exceedingly rude to poor old Clino, practically telling him that the sooner he takes himself off from Rhyllan the better. Poor Clino! I don't know what he will do. He is too old to hope to get fresh employment. I won't trust myself to write any more. You will see for yourself. I understand that you have invited him to join you and the Brownings at Worcester, when you cycle up for the holidays. I shall be glad of a few days to myself in which to think over the future, but I am afraid you will regret your invitation.”