Part 9 (1/2)
Immediately I was riled. Why should I get riled because she says that Mrs. Toller is going to take a house for eighty pounds a year? I just rustled the newspaper. Why on earth couldn't I say, 'Good lord, is she?'
or something like that? Why on earth couldn't I even not rustle the newspaper? She knows what it means when I rustle the paper. I meant her to know. Why should I? It's the easiest thing on earth for me to respond to what she says. I know perfectly well what she's getting at. I could easily have said that Mrs. Toller would have old Toller in the workhouse one of these days if he didn't watch it. I could have said, 'She'll be keeping three servants next, and she can't keep one as it is.' Mabel would have loved that. She'd have laughed.”
He thought, ”Why should she love that sort of tripe--gossip?”
He thought, ”d.a.m.n it, why shouldn't she? Why should I mind? Why should I rustle the newspaper? She can't enter into things that interest me; but I can, I could enter into things that interest her. Why don't I? Of course I can see perfectly clearly how she looks at things. It's just as rotten for her that I can't talk with her about her ideas as it is rotten for me that she doesn't see my ideas. And it isn't rotten for me.
I don't mind it. I don't expect it. I don't expect it....”
And at that precise moment of his thoughts, the garrulous Hapgood, seeing his face, could have said to another, as he said before, ”There!
See what I mean? Looks as though he'd lost something and was wondering where it was. Ha!”
III
A genial shouting and the clatter of agitated hoofs jerked Sabre from his thoughts.
”Hullo! Hi! Help! Out collision-mats! Stop the cab! Look out, Sabre!
_Sabre!_”
He suddenly became aware--and he jammed on his brakes and dismounted by straddling a leg to the ground--that in the narrow lane he was between two plunging horses. Their riders had divided to make way for his bemused approach. They had violently sundered, expecting him to stop, until he was almost on top of them, and one of the pair was now engaged in placating his horse, which resented this sudden s.n.a.t.c.hing at bit and p.r.i.c.k of spur, and persuading it to return to the level road.
On one side the lane was banked steeply up in a cutting. The horse of the rider on this side stood on its hind legs and appeared to be performing a series of postman's double knocks on the bank with its forelegs. Lord Tybar, who bestrode it, and who did not seem to be at all concerned by his horse copying a postman, looked over his shoulder at Sabre, showing an amused grin, and said, ”Thanks, Sabre. This is jolly.
I like this. Come on, old girl. This way down. Keep pa.s.sing on, please.”
The old girl, an extraordinarily big and handsome chestnut mare, dropped her forelegs to the level of the road, where she exchanged the postman's knocking for a complicated and exceedingly nimble dance, largely on two legs.
Lord Tybar, against her evident intentions, skilfully directed the steps of this dance into a turning movement so that she and her rider now faced Sabre; and while she bounded through the concluding movements of the _pas seul_ he continued in the same whimsical tone and with the same engaging smile, ”Thanks still more, Sabre. This is extraordinarily good for the liver. Devilish graceful, aren't I? See, I'm only holding on with one hand! Marvellous. No charge for this.” And as the mare came to rest and quivered at Sabre with her beautiful nostrils, ”Ah, the music's stopped. Delicious. How well your step suits mine!”
”a.s.s!” laughed a voice above them; and Sabre, who had almost forgotten there was another horse when he had abruptly wakened and dismounted, looked up at it.
The other horse was standing with complete and entirely unconcerned statuesqueness on the low bank which bounded the lane on his other side.
Lady Tybar had taken it--or it had taken Lady Tybar--out of danger in a sideways bound, and horse and rider remained precisely where the sideways bound had taken them as if it were exactly where they had intended to go all that morning, and as if they were now settled there for all time as a living equestrian statue,--a singularly striking and beautiful statue.
”We are up here,” said Lady Tybar. Her voice had a very clear, fine note. ”We are rather beautiful up here, don't you think? Rather darlings? No one takes the faintest notice of us; we might be off the earth. But we don't mind a bit. Hullo, Derry and Toms, Marko is actually taking off his hat to us. Bow, Derry.”
Her horse, as if he perfectly understood, tossed his head, and she drew attention to it with a deprecatory little gesture of her hand and then said, ”Shall we come down now? Is your dance quite finished, Tony? Are you content, Marko? All right. We'll descend. This is us descending.
Lady Tybar, who is a superb horsewoman, descending a precipice on her beautiful half-bred Derry and Toms, a winner at several shows.”
Derry and Toms stepped down off the bank with complete a.s.surance and superb dignity. With equal precision, moving his feet as though there were marked for them certain exact spots which he covered with infinite lightness and exact.i.tude, he turned about and stood beside his partner in exquisite and immobile pose.
IV
Thus the two riders faced Sabre, smiling upon him. He stood holding his bicycle immediately in front of them. The mare continued to quiver her beautiful nostrils at him; every now and then she blew a little agitated puff through them, causing them to expand and reveal yet more exquisitely their glorious softness and delicacy.
Sabre thought that the riders, with their horses, made the most striking, and somehow affecting picture of virile and graceful beauty he could ever have imagined.
Lord Tybar, who was thirty-two, was debonair and attractive of countenance to a degree. His eyes, which were grey, were extraordinarily mirthful, mischievous. A supremely airy and careless and bold spirit looked through those eyes and shone through their flashes and glints and sparkles of diamond light. His face was thin and of tanned olive.
His face seemed to say to the world, challengingly, ”I am here!