A Case in Camera - Oliver Onions

Скачать книгу

have told him that their buying-in meant a good thousand pounds in Esdaile's pocket. Then he would have looked at them in quite a different manner.

      In the middle of the inspection Joan Merrow's white frock and buttercupped hat appeared in the doorway, and we were bidden to come in to breakfast. Monty Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham had just arrived, which made our party complete.

      The little recess in which we breakfasted was filled with the sunlight reflected from the garden outside. Everything in it—the napkins and fruit and chafing-dishes on the table, the spring flowers in the bowls, the few chosen objects on the buff-washed walls, the showery festoon of the chandelier overhead—had the soft irradiation of a face seen under a parasol. Little shimmers of light, like love-making butterflies, danced here and there whenever glasses or carafes were moved, and the stretches of shining floor almost looked as if trout might have lurked beneath them.

      And where the tall French windows stood wide open the light seemed to be focused as if by a burning-glass on the two little Esdaile boys who played beneath the mulberry that rose above the studio roof.

      I don't suppose the whole of Chelsea could have shown a merrier breakfast-party than we made that May morning. For, in addition to our host's new Associateship and those fourteen wandering pictures safely back home again, we had a further occasion for light-heartedness that I haven't mentioned yet. This was the wedding, to take place that day week, of Mrs. Cunningham and Monty Rooke. Philip was generously lending them his house and studio for the summer. Monty we had all known for years, but Mrs. Cunningham I for one set eyes on for the first time that morning. Later I got a much more definite impression of her. For the present I noticed only her slender and beautiful black-chiffon-covered arms, the large restless dark eyes that seemed to disengage themselves from under the edge of her black satin turban hat, and her manicured fingers that reminded you of honeysuckle. The Esdailes had received her "on the ground floor," so to speak, and it obviously pleased Monty that Philip had called her Audrey straight away.

      So we talked of the approaching wedding, and the Associateship, and the painting-cottage in Yorkshire, and so back to the pictures again. On this subject Commander Hubbard unhesitatingly took the lead.

      "Well, it's certainly Art for mine my second time on earth," he good-humoredly railed, the aiguillettes swinging gently on his breast. "Fancy going out of town this weather! Taking away all that gear behind the bulkhead there,"—he jerked his head to where Philip's painting paraphernalia lay ready packed in the hall—"a few yards of raw canvas bent on battens—and bringing it back again worth twenty pounds an inch!"

      Hubbard had a Whitehall job that summer, and loathed it. Esdaile laughed.

      "Can't see why they didn't make me a full Academician while they were about it," he said.

      "And he's grumbling!" Hubbard retorted. "Perfectly revolting fellow. That's too much lunching with Admirals. Listen, Mrs. Esdaile, and I'll tell you the kind of thing we mere senior officers had to put up with. A hoist breaks out from the flagship, and every glass in the Squadron is glued to it. You'd think at least we were to proceed to sea immediately. Nothing of the sort! It's the Admiral presenting his compliments to this wretched wavy-ringed fellow your husband, and would he give him the pleasure—would Lieutenant Esdaile, R.N.V.R., condescend—stoop—to take luncheon with him! The Admiral, if you please! And that's what it is to be an Official Painter!"

      Esdaile laughed again. He was trying to remove in one unbroken piece the paring of an apple for Joan Merrow.

      "Give him a smile now and then and he'll eat out of your hand, Mollie," he said. "Now, Joan, the last little bit—this is where a steady hand comes in—there!" He held up in triumph the wiggle of apple paring. "Throw it over your left shoulder and see what initial it makes on the floor. Here's my guess on this bit of paper under my napkin—'C for Ch' … Ah, clumsy infant!" The strip had fallen in two pieces. "There goes your luck. Allee done gone finish. I'll have the apple myself; you'd better go and write the rest of those labels."

      The Esdailes had to all intents and purposes adopted Joan Merrow now that she was alone in the world. On the day when Philip, half scared by the risks he was taking, had informed his private pupils that their tuition took up too much of his painting-time, he had not included Joan. She had continued to prime his canvases and to make use of his models at long range from odd corners of the studio; and then, during his absence on Service, she had come to live in the house, had taught and mended for the children, and had been companion and friend to Mollie. By an affectionate fiction, her former fees were supposed to cover the cost of her board, and a proper arrangement was to be come to one of these days. She was twenty, had only lately ceased to have the stripling figure that is all youth and no sex, and was already acquiring that mystery of physical shape and of mind and emotion that causes men's heads to turn behind and their lips to murmur, "Ah—in another year or so——"

      There was still the faint echo of chattering schoolrooms in the repartee that came from her pretty lips. Pertly and with little tosses of her head she enumerated the duties she had discharged that morning.

      "The labels are all distinctly written, with the name at the top, then a space, and 'Santon, Yorks' quite at the bottom so you can tear it off and use the label again for somewhere else. Both the taxis are ordered for one-thirty, and Mr. Rooke won't have to send on letters because they're all being re-addressed at the Post Office. The doors and windows are all fastened, and I've shown Mrs. Cunningham where everything is for after the wedding. And I didn't want the apple, and you've no business to write things about me on your horrid bits of paper!"

      And we all laughed as she suddenly twitched Philip's napkin away and tucked the horrid bit of paper safely away into her bosom.

       Table of Contents

      I have told the foregoing in some detail because I want you to see the careless and happy party into which that morning's bolt dropped a quarter of an hour later. I want you to see the contrast between our homely light-heartedness and the complex tangle of all that followed. I will now tell you what the bolt was.

      Breakfast was over, and we men had gone into the studio again. Mrs. Cunningham was helping Mollie to clear away, and Joan Merrow had joined the children in the garden, and with them was looking up at an aeroplane, the soft organ-like note of which had suddenly ceased. We were having Hubbard's views on Art again.

      "But that submarine sketch of yours is the pick of all you've done to my mind, Esdaile," he was saying. "Old Horne at the periscope, eh? You caught him to a hair; a snapshot couldn't have been better! And we bagged that beggar ten minutes later, Norwegian flag and all," he added with professional satisfaction.

      Philip Esdaile gave a quick exclamation.

      "By Jove, that just reminds me! The orange curaçao, of course! The very thing after all that fruit—corrects the acidity, as the doctors say. We'll have some."

      The Commander gave him a sharp look. On the face of it there was no very evident reason why the torpedoing of a German ship flying the Norwegian flag should remind Esdaile of orange curaçao, but no doubt there was a story behind that we others knew nothing of. If ships have to be put down there is no sense in sending bottles of delectable liqueur to the bottom of the sea also.

      "What!" cried Commander Hubbard, R.N. "You don't mean to say that you had the infernal neck to take your whack——"

      A mere wretched wavy-ringed fellow to loot bottle for bottle with his betters like that!

      But Esdaile, with a wink, demanded the key of the cellar from Monty Rooke, told him to get the liqueur glasses out, and was off.

      It was at that moment that the crash came that seemed to bring the whole of Chelsea running out of doors.

      The shrill cry of "The aeroplane! The aeroplane!" was hardly out of the children's mouths before it was upon us—I don't mean the aeroplane, but the other thing. Judging from the harsh but muffled roar, the first installment of

Скачать книгу