Money for Nothing Read Free Page B

Lincoln Hotel, Curzon Street, London. She thinks of taking the three o'clock train tomorrow. She is in excellent health.'
    It did not occur to John to question the accuracy of the other's information, nor to be surprised at its minuteness of detail. Mr Bywater, he was aware, had a daughter in the post office.
    'Tomorrow!' he gasped.
    'Yes, sir. Tomorrow.'
    'Give me my change,' said John.
    He yearned to be off. He wanted air and space in which he could ponder over this wonderful news.
    'No doubt,' said Mr Bywater, 'she . . .'
    'Give me my change,' said John.
    Chas Bywater, happening to catch his eye, did so.
III
    To reach Rudge Hall from the door of Chas Bywater's shop, you go up the High Street, turn sharp to the left down River Lane, cross the stone bridge that spans the slow-flowing Skirme as it potters past on its way to join the Severn, carry on along the road till you come to the gates of Colonel Wyvern's nice little house, and then climb a stile and take to the fields. And presently you are in the park and can see through the trees the tall chimneys and red walls of the ancient home of the Carmodys.
    The scene, when they are not touching off dynamite there under the noses of retired military officers, is one of quiet peace. For John it had always held a peculiar magic. In the fourteen years which had passed since the Wyverns had first come to settle in Rudge Pat had contrived, so far as he was concerned, to impress her personality ineffaceably on the landscape. Almost every inch of it was in some way associated with her. Stumps on which she had sat and swung her brown-stockinged legs; trees beneath which she had taken shelter with him from summer storms; gates on which she had climbed, fields across which she had raced, and thorny bushes into which she had urged him to penetrate in search of birds' eggs – they met his eye on every side. The very air seemed to be alive with her laughter. And not even the recollection that that laughter had generally been directed at himself was able to diminish for John the glamour of this mile of Fairyland.
    Half way across the park, Emily rejoined him with a defensive, Where-on-earth-did-you-disappear-to manner, and they moved on in company till they rounded the corner of the house and came to the stable-yard. John, who for some years now had looked after the business of the estate for his uncle, had a couple of rooms over the stables, and thither he made his way, leaving Emily to fuss round Bolt, the chauffeur, who was washing the Dex-Mayo.
    Arrived in his sitting-room, he sank into a deck-chair, and filled his pipe with Mr Bywater's Special Mixture. Then, putting his feet up on the table, he stared hard and earnestly at the photograph of Pat which stood on the mantelpiece.
    It was a pretty face he was looking at – one whose charm not even a fashionable modern photographer, of the type that prefers to depict his sitters in a grey fog with most of their features hidden from view, could altogether obscure. In the eyes, a little slanting, there was a Puck-like look, and the curving lips hinted demurely at amusing secrets. The nose had that appealing, yet provocative, air which slight tiptiltedness gives. It seemed to challenge, and at the same time to withdraw.
    This was the latest of the Pat photographs, and she had given it to him three months ago, just before she left to go and stay with friends at Le Touquet. And now she was coming home. . . .
    John Carroll was one of those solid persons who do not waver in their loyalties. He had always been in love with Pat, and he always would be, though he would have had to admit that she gave him very little encouragement. There had been a period when, he being fifteen and she ten, Pat had lavished on him all the worship of a small girl for a big boy who can wiggle his ears and is not afraid of cows. But since then her attitude had changed. Her manner towards him nowadays alternated between that of a nurse towards a child who is not quite