I put no limit at all to his daring, but I could safely put a limit to his endurance since he was my own age. So when Jim at last left me at the Warren, I locked the door, relaxed and cheerfully damned the consequences. I had not been in the cottage for nearly thirty-six hours. The letter from Admiral Cunobel, to which Aunt Georgina had referred, was there waiting for me; it was a warm and genial invitation to come over and stay whenever I liked and for as long as I could.
I felt free to do so, at any rate for a week. I was determined not to involve Georgina and a stranger — even if lie had rocked my cradle — in my affairs, but it seemed improbable that my follower could soon begin again to pad along my trail. I had to be found. His careful reconnaissance had to be made.
Hide and Seek
Next morning I telephoned to the admiral and embarked on one of those very English cross-country journeys which delight me. There is no silence which sings so noticeably in the ears as that of a remote railway junction in the middle of meadows with no village in sight when the noise of the departing train has died away.
Admiral Cunobel had chosen for his retirement a graystone Jacobean farmhouse on the southern tip of the Cotswolds, where he seemed entirely contented with village affairs and his garden. Chipping Marton struck me as a livelier spot than Hernsholt. It was linked with the world, whereas the Midland village, though not far from London, was lost in its pastures. Its first inhabitants had not merely collected together into a Saxon lump; they had built their solid, stone houses in full consciousness of geography. Go downhill on one side and you came to the Severn Estuary. Go downhill on the other and you hit the road from London to Bristol.
The admiral ran the place. He considered it his duty. Chipping Marton, on the other hand, had no use whatever for naval discipline, though it respected energy. Cunobel and his village seemed to live in a state of mutual and exasperated affection.
He drove me home from the station, gave me a drink and then took me round to the vicarage. Georgina was shelling peas in the kitchen. Nur Jehan was also in the kitchen — all fourteen hands of him, colored much as a Siamese cat except that his magnificent tail was deep cream. He breathed down the back of Georgina’s neck with heavy sentimentality.
Georgina pushed his head aside and kissed me on both cheeks, putting an unexpected warmth into her usual formal salutation.
“My dear Charles!” she exclaimed. “I do hope I didn’t alarm you.”
“Not in the least. But if you were in front of the stove instead of the sink and he butted you …”
“What I said on the telephone, I mean. I felt afterwards I might have exaggerated the situation.”
“Georgi, it could not be exaggerated,” said the admiral indignantly.
Nur Jehan, observing that our attention was engaged, took a hearty mouthful from the bowl of peas and blew the rest on the floor.
“In some ways it certainly could not,” Georgina replied. “I draw the line at that damned horse in the kitchen, and I shall have the back-door latch replaced by a mortice lock.”
“Do it myself!” said the admiral. “I’ll come down with a screwdriver tonight. But you can cope, Georgi —always could! It’s that girl I’m sorry for.”
“Which girl?” I asked him.
“Benita, his daughter. She shouldn’t have to chuck everything and come down here to the rescue every three months.”
“I have noticed, Peregrine,” said my aunt, “that long service behind the mast, or whatever it is, produces an unnatural view of women.”
“Well, my dear, you must admit that she does come down to the rescue.”
“A mere refusal to face her duty to herself, which is to make a career. Miss Gillon, Charles, very sensibly decided on a profession instead of resigning herself to becoming a namby-pamby old maid in the country. She has a gift for vulgar drawing and is employed by advertising agencies.”
“You mean a vulgar gift for drawing, Georgi.”
“I mean just what I say, Peregrine. I consider some of her drawings extremely vulgar and not at all funny. She is obsessed by desert islands. And I do wish you would not interrupt. Benita does not like London. And I am forced to the conclusion that she frequently comes down to rescue her father when he does not need rescuing at all.”
I was faintly suspicious. My aunt had never said a word about the vicar’s daughter, or perhaps she had passed so lightly over the name that I assumed it belonged to some loyal parishioner. I had been somewhat too occupied to remember the admiral’s staunch feeling for the proprieties. Since he wouldn’t put Georgina up himself because of the absence of any female relative, it stood to reason that the vicar — whom I knew to be a widower — must have the essential woman in residence.
The admiral’s vicar came in from the garden, bringing with him a lot of mud and some vague and hearty apologies. I liked him at once. He had merry eyes and an air of almost Bohemian preoccupation. I mean that his disregard for the things of this world was casual rather than saintly.
He was full of praise of my aunt, who, he said, was an excellent influence on all of them — all of them. Nur Jehan appeared to resent being included or, more probably, felt that the vicar’s pat on entering the kitchen had been insufficient. He gently nipped his owner’s shoulder.
“Pure Persian Arab,” Matthew Gillon explained to me proudly. “A parishioner of mine brought him home from Kerman where he had been vice-consul. Nur Jehan comes from the Kerman desert, and as a foal he was brought up in the family tent, which I believe is very usual. So when my friend settled here he had not the heart to keep him out of the house. I do not think he wished to. Both his boys had been killed in the war, and the stallion, I’m afraid, was all he had left to love. A lonely man. After only a year in our midst he passed away, leaving me this superb young three-year-old. So I did not like to change Nur Jehan’s habits too suddenly. Poor fellow, he deeply felt the loss of his father —his owner, I mean.”
“He is completely untrained,” Georgina said severely.
“He gets out of the glebe meadow and terrifies the village children, let alone passing motorists.”
“I’m getting on with the fences as fast as I possibly can singlehanded, Mrs. Dennim,” the vicar protested weakly. “And you yourself advised me to remember the — ah —stud fees.”
“Georgi, don’t tell me you’re encouraging him in this folly!” the admiral accused her. “And when you know very well that this wretched stallion …”
“I don’t agree at all,” Aunt Georgina interrupted. “Nur Jehan is merely a late developer whose interest has not yet been correctly aroused. As a lifelong bachelor you should sympathize.”
“But, dammit, I…”
“Valparaiso does not count, Peregrine.”
“Hell!” said the admiral, turning a deeper shade of tortoise.
“And if Mr. Gillon will only feed himself properly as well as Nur Jehan,” Georgina went on unruffled, “I see no reason why they should not be a great credit to the village. Nur Jehan is a more dignified investment than tomatoes under glass.”
“What sort of mount is he?” I asked, for everyone seemed to be hypnotized into treating the Arab as if he were a prize buck rabbit.
“Being ridden,” Georgina explained, “is one of the many duties, Charles, which Nur Jehan does not greatly enjoy. And he refuses to be ridden by a woman at all.”
I thought that most improbable — the sort of romantic nonsense which appeals to the unscientific. But who was
I to argue with Aunt Georgina on a matter of horses? I had been a horseman at the age of seventeen. The Hungarian branch of the family had seen to that. Since then I had merely used horses whenever they were available and the most convenient method of transport.