Changing Winds Part 27

"Hilloa, Gilbert!"

"Hop out quickly, will you!"

He hopped out as quickly as he could and said "Hilloa!" to Ninian, who said "Hilloa!" and slapped his back and called him an old rotter.

"Widger'll take your luggage," Gilbert said, taking control of their movements as he always did. "Hang on to this, Widger," he added, taking a handbag from Henry and throwing it into Widger's arms. "Show him the rest of your stuff, Quinny, and let's hook off. We're going to walk to Boveyhayne. You'll need a stretch after sitting all that time, and Ninian's getting disgustingly obese, so we make him run up and down the road over the cliff three times so's to thin him down!..."

"Funny a.s.s!" said Ninian.

"Mrs. Graham wanted Mary to come with us, but we wouldn't let her. We're tired of females, Ninian and I, and Mary's very femaley at present.

She's started to read poetry!..."

"Out loud!" Ninian growled. "I'm sick of people who read out loud to me.

When Mary's not spouting stuff about 'love' and 'dove' and 'heaven above' and that sort of rot, Gilbert's reading his d.a.m.n play to me!"

"I'll read it to you, Quinny!" Gilbert said, linking his arm in Henry's.

They had left the station, and were now walking along the unfinished road above the shingle. There was a heat haze hanging over the smooth blue sea, so that sky and water merged into each other imperceptibly. In front of them, they could see the white cliffs of Boveyhayne shining in the descending sun. There were great stalks of charlock, standing out of the gra.s.s on the face of the cliffs, giving them a golden head.

"If Marley's on Whitcombe beach, we'll row over to Boveyhayne," said Ninian. "You'd like to get on to the sea, wouldn't you, Quinny?"

Henry nodded his head.

"No," said Gilbert, "we won't. We'll sit here for a while, and I'll read my play to Quinny. I carry it about with me, Quinny, so that I can read it to Ninian whenever his spirits are low!"

"I never saw such a chap!" Ninian mumbled.

"This great, hairy, beefy fellow," Gilbert went on, seizing hold of Ninian's arm with his disengaged hand, "does not love literature!..."

Ninian broke free from Gilbert's grip. "Marley is on the beach," he said, and ran ahead to engage the boat.

"Well, Quinny!" said Gilbert, when Ninian had gone.

"Well, Gilbert!" Henry replied.

"How's Ireland? Still making an a.s.s of itself?"

Henry made no answer to Gilbert's question because he knew that an answer was not expected. Had any one else spoken in that fashion to him, any other Englishman, he would probably have angered instantly, but Gilbert was different from all other people in Henry's eyes, and was privileged to say whatever he pleased.

"Gilbert," he said, "I want to have a long jaw with you about something!..."

The English way of speaking came naturally to him, and he said "a long jaw about something" as easily as if he had never been outside an English public school.

"What?" Gilbert said.

"Oh, everything. Ireland and things!"

"All right, my son!"

"You see!..."

"Wait though," said Gilbert, "until we catch up with Ninian. He ought to hear it, too. He has a wise old noddle, Ninian, although he's such a fat 'un.... My G.o.d, Quinny, isn't he getting big? If he piles up any more muscle, h.e.l.l have to go to Trinity Hall and join the beefy brutes and get drunk and all that kind of manly thing!" They came up with Ninian as he spoke. "Won't you, Ninian?"

"Won't I what?" Ninian replied.

"Have to go to Trinity Hall if you go on being a beefy Briton. Hilloa, Marley!"

"Good-evenin', sir!" said old Marley.

They got into the boat, and Ninian rowed them round the white cliff to Boveyhayne beach, where they left the boat and walked up the village street to the lane that led to Boveyhayne Manor.

"Henry wants to talk about the world, Ninian!" said Gilbert as they left the beach. "We'd better have a good old gabble after dinner to-night, hadn't we?"

"It doesn't matter what I say," said Ninian, "you'll gabble anyhow.

Anything to keep him from reading his blooming play to me!" he added, turning to Henry.

5

He had a sense of disappointment when he met Mary. In his reaction from Sheila Morgan, he had imagined Mary coming to greet him with something of the alert youthfulness with which she had met him when he first visited Boveyhayne, but when she came into the hall, a book in her hand, he felt that there was some stiffness in her manner, a self-consciousness which had not been there before.

"How do you do?" she said, offering her hand to him like any well-bred girl.

She did not call him "Quinny" or show in her manner or speech that he was particularly welcome to her.

"I suppose," he thought to himself, "she's cross because I didn't answer her letter!"

He resolved that he would bring her back to her old friendliness....

"I expect you're tired," she said. "We'll have tea in a minute or two.

Mother's lying down. She's not very well!"

She would have said as much to a casual acquaintance, Henry thought.

"Not well!" he heard Ninian saying. "What's the matter with her?"

"She's tired. I think she's got a headache. There was a letter from Uncle Peter!" Mary answered, and her tone indicated that the letter from Uncle Peter accounted for everything.

"Oh!" said Ninian, scowling and turning away.

They went into the drawing-room to tea, and Henry had a sense of intruding on family affairs, mingled with his disappointment because Mary was not as he had expected her to be. It might be, of course, that the letter from Uncle Peter had affected Mary almost as much as it seemed to have affected Mrs. Graham, and that presently she would be as natural as she had been that other time ... but then he remembered that Gilbert had said that she was "being very femaley at present." She poured out tea for them as if she were a new governess, and she reproved Ninian once for saying "d.a.m.n!" when he dropped his bread and b.u.t.ter....

"Mary's turned pi!" said Ninian.

She frowned at him and told him not to be silly.

"She calls the Communion Service the Eucharist, and crosses herself and flops and bows!..."

"You're very absurd, Ninian!" she said.