Chapter 1

=* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *=

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions.
These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook
(other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are
making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions
applies, please contact a FP administrator before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright
in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country’s
copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT
DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

_Title:_ Old Pybus
_Date of first publication:_ 1928
_Author:_ Warwick (George) Deeping (1877-1950)
_Date first posted:_ Aug. 10, 2014
_Date last updated:_ Aug. 10, 2014
Faded Page eBook #20140813

This ebook was produced by: Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Alex White & the
online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

OLD PYBUS

BY WARWICK DEEPING

[Illustration]

1928
NEW YORK·ALFRED·A·KNOPF

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To the Mary in my Wife_

BOOKS BY
WARWICK DEEPING
* * * * *
* * * * *

SORRELL AND SON · 1926
DOOMSDAY · 1927
KITTY · 1927
UTHER AND IGRAINE · 1928
(_in The Blue Jade Library_)
OLD PYBUS · 1928

_Old Pybus_

Chapter One

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 that 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 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,
O—yes—much more handling. He might be a new man, but Chlois Court had
a ripe and proper atmosphere.

While she, consummate worldling, but coolly honest, as many worldlings
are, watched a high stone garden-wall glide by, its greyness tufted with
Siberian wallflower and draped with aubrietia. Colour! Of course! The
man had no colour. Moreover, he possessed one of those heavy white skins
which resemble greasy vellum. Hence the “chef complex.” Yes—that
settled it, for, whatever she might be, she was like most women, richly
fastidious, a saint in her æsthetics, if something of a vagrant in her
morals.

Meanwhile Conrad Pybus’s blue car, with its black coupé and silver
snout, climbed the steep and tortuous Bridge Street into Castle Craven.
He drove with a confident care. He was doing the thing well, and it was
no use doing things badly in the presence of Ursula Calmady.

“Might be the Brooklands test-hill. Oh—you idiot!”

Balked by a Ford van that pulled out in front of him without a
by-your-leave or a signal, he had to hold the car on the steep hill. The
lady glanced at his face. He had the air of saying to himself things
that in her presence could not be said.

She smiled to herself.

“No—my dear, no. You are not a bad sort, but in six months you would be
saying those things aloud.”