Part 18 (1/2)
Then he said: ”By the way, do you know Colonel Grey?”
”Oh, yes. He was here a lot up to a little while ago. Then he had a row, the inevitable row, with Lord Loudwater, and he hasn't been here since.
He dropped on to Lord Loudwater for bullying Lady Loudwater, and he didn't drop on him lightly either. h.e.l.l, I fancy, was what he gave him.”
”Yes; I gathered that something of the kind had taken place. What kind of a man is the Colonel?” said Mr. Flexen carelessly.
”The best man in the world not to have a row with. He's a cold terror,”
said Mr. Manley, in a tone of enthusiastic conviction. ”He always seems rather cooler than a cuc.u.mber. But my belief is that that coolness is just the mask of really violent emotions. I saw them working once. I came in on the end of his row with Loudwater--just the end of it--my goodness!
From my point of view, the dramatist's, you know, he's the most interesting person in the county--bar Lady Loudwater, of course.”
”I should never have thought him a terror,” said Mr. Flexen, in a tone of somewhat incredulous surprise. ”I had a talk with him this evening about Lord Loudwater's death, and he seemed to me to be a pleasant enough fellow and an excellent soldier. I take it that he's very keen on his career in the Army?”
”Not a bit of it. The war is merely a side issue with him,” said Mr.
Manley in an a.s.sured tone. ”I know from what he told me himself. We were talking over our experiences.”
”But, hang it all! he's a V. C.!” cried Mr. Flexen.
”Yes, he's a V. C. all right. But that's because he's one of those men who have the knack of taking an interest in everything they turn their hands to, and doing it well. But his two pa.s.sions are Chinese art and women,” said Mr. Manley.
”Women?” said Mr. Flexen. ”He didn't strike me as being that kind of man at all. He seemed a quite simple, straightforward soldier.”
”Simplicity and a pa.s.sion for Chinese art don't go together--at least, not what is usually called simplicity,” said Mr. Manley dryly. ”A friend of mine, who knows all about him, told me that he had had more really serious love affairs than any other man in London. He seems to be one of those men who fall in love hard every time they fall in love. He said that it was one of the mysteries of the polite world how he had kept out of the Divorce Court.”
”Sounds an odd type,” said Mr. Flexen, storing up the information, and marking how little it agreed with his own observation of Colonel Grey.
”And you say that Lady Loudwater is interesting too?”
”Oh, come! Are you pumping me or merely pulling my leg?” said Mr. Manley.
”Surely you can see that Lady Loudwater is pure Italian Renaissance. She is one of those subtle, mysterious creatures that Leonardo and Luini were always painting, compact of emotion.”
”It's so long since I was at Balliol, and then I was doing Indian Civil work--the languages, you know. I've forgotten all I knew about the Renaissance in Italy, and I don't look at many pictures. All the same, I think you're wrong--your dramatic imagination, you know. My own idea is that Lady Loudwater, at any rate, is a quite simple creature.”
”It isn't mine,” said Mr. Manley firmly. ”She's a great deal too intelligent to be simple, and she comes of far too intelligent a family.”
”What family?” said Mr. Flexen.
”She's a Quainton, with Italian blood in her veins.”
”The deuce she is!” cried Mr. Flexen, and half a dozen stories of the Quaintons rose in his mind.
He must amend his impressions of Lady Loudwater.
”And she has a keener sense of humour than any woman I ever came across,”
said Mr. Manley, driving his contention home.
”Has she?” said Mr. Flexen.
There was a pause. Then Mr. Manley said in a musing tone: ”Do you suppose that Colonel Grey finds her simple?”
”What? You don't think that there is really anything serious between them?” said Mr. Flexen quickly.