Old Pybus

Mr. Conrad Pybus collected pictures, and being the possessor of two
"Constables," and three "Cotmans," he had some right to stretch out
a large hand and to indicate the picture that was hung against the
blue horizon.

"That's Castle Craven--over there. Rather like a thing by
Constable. What?"

In spite of the largeness of his hand and the largeness of the car
in which he sat, he spoke with an assurance which failed of its
effect. He was shy of the woman beside him. She was leaning
forward in the coupé, her dark thinness and her pallor joining to
disconcert Mr. Conrad Pybus's vague yet ample correctness. She was
smiling, and when she smiled the angles of her long and expressive
mouth curved deep into either cheek. It was a curious smile,
showing a gleam of teeth, but not as the conventional beauty
displays them, all to the front as though advertising a musical
comedy or a dentifrice. As a small nephew put it: "Aunt Ursy
laughs in her cheeks." She did, with a kind of slanting, upward,
ironic swiftness, as though the two corners of her mouth were
retracted by a couple of hooks.

Mr. Pybus's hand, sheathed in wash-leather, seemed to fascinate
her. Extended, palm turned towards the landscape, it suggested the
hand of a policeman on point duty, pontifically presenting a whole
street to some hesitating motorist. But with the gloved hand the
illusion ended. The blue-and-white striped shirt-cuff, nicely
protruding from the blue sleeve, marked the particular Pybus. No
man could have been better tailored. His hats came from Pont's in
St. James's Street.

She examined him with one swift and inclusive stare while he
remained for a moment in that attitude of civic dignity, presenting
her to Castle Craven, that hill town, grey under a kind of blue
murk, the lapis of a horizon that was tumbled with clouds. She saw
the red gold gleam of a wheat field, ripe on a green hillside. The
world seemed a welter of hill-tops, green and grey and silver, or
bewigged with smooth beech woods. The distances appeared immense.

But beside her and very much in the foreground was Conrad Pybus,
solid and obvious, all black and white, a heavy man who could not
sit comfortably in her presence. He had been trying so hard to
impress her. He wanted her to marry him. And she, with the
merciless eyes of a woman who had no illusions, saw him as a
glorified and rather flashy stockbroker's clerk, a morning-paper
man, worth perhaps fifteen thousand pounds a year. He had a place--
Chlois Court--in Berkshire.

She allowed herself to agree with him.

"All those clouds massed up there. Rather fine. How much have we
done?"

"Oh--about seventy. You wouldn't know it in this 'bus, would you?
An hour and a half. Not so bad."

His large, white face, with its unblinking blue eyes and a very
black moustache, reminded her somehow of the face of a chef. But
why a chef? How oddly one associated things! Only--that particular
sort of face seemed to call for a chef's white cap. She smiled.

"You are going to give me lunch there?"

His right hand reached for the gear lever.

"Of course. Saracen's Head. I wired them before we started."

The car went softly down into the valley where the Brent ran under
the grey span of an old bridge between the steep greenness of
overhanging trees. "Aunt Ursy" was peering into a little mirror.
She had one of those ivory skins that are proof against sunburn or
worry, and neither her skin nor her hair needed attention. Conrad
Pybus was showing her how he could handle a car on the narrow
steeps of the ascent into Castle Craven. He was very conscious of
her sitting there, squinting at her sleek face in that provoking
little mirror. Yes, she was "it," as much "it" as the car he was
driving, but she would take more handling. Oh--yes--much more
handling. He might be a new man, but Chlois Court had a ripe and
proper atmosphere.