The Leithen Stories

by John Buchan

  Vernon, talking idly to Tom Nantley, suddenly found himself addressed.

  ‘Your mare wants practice in jumping stone walls,’ she said. ‘You’ll cut her knees to ribbons. Better try her in caps next time.’

  You can cut into a conversation gracefully, and you can cut in rudely. This girl did it rudely. I could see Vernon’s face harden as he replied that this bit of the Mivern country was strange to him.

  ‘It’s the only decent going in the shire. I’m sick of the rotten pastures in the vale country. What on earth does one hunt for except for pace?’

  ‘Some of us hunt to follow hounds,’ was Vernon’s curt rejoinder.

  She laughed – a rather ugly hard little laugh. ‘Follow your grandmother! If hounds are all you care about you may as well go beagling! Give me a cigarette, will you?’

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t any,’ he replied.

  Several men proffered cases. ‘You’ll find heaps, Corrie dear,’ Mollie Nantley said, ‘in the box behind you.’ The girl reached behind her for the box and offered it to Vernon. When he declined she demanded a match, and Vernon, with an ill grace, lit her cigarette. It was plain that he detested her manners.

  So most certainly did I. The little incident I had witnessed was oddly ill-bred and brazen. And yet ‘brazen’ was not quite the word, for it implies self-consciousness. This masterful girl had no shadow of doubt as to her behaviour. She seemed to claim the right to domineer, like a barbaric princess accustomed to an obsequious court. Yes, ‘barbaric’ was the right epithet. Mollie had called her ‘Corrie’ and the name fitted her. No doubt she had been baptised Cora or Corisande, names which for me recalled the spangles and sawdust of a circus.

  She had decided that Vernon was the most interesting of the lot of us, and she promptly annexed him, moving to his side and swinging on an arm of a tapestry chair. But Vernon was a hard fellow to drive against his will. His air was a frigid courtesy, and presently he went up to his hostess. ‘We must be off, Lady Nantley,’ he said, ‘for it’s getting dark and we are eight miles from home.’ He collected two of the men and three of the hunting girls, like a chaperone at a ball, shook hands with Mollie and Tom, nodded to me, and marched to the door.

  The girl, who was apparently my fellow-guest, followed him with her eyes, and her scarlet lips seemed to twitch in a flicker of amusement. If she had been rude, so had been Vernon, and, had she known it, it was something of a triumph to have cracked his adamantine good manners. When the party had gone, she strolled to the front of the hearth, stretched her arms above her head, and yawned.

  ‘Lord, how stiff I am!’ she proclaimed. ‘Heigho for a bath! I hope you’ve the right kind of bath salts, Mollie, or I’ll be on crutches tomorrow. Come and talk to me, Dolly!’ She picked up her crop, made a noose with the lash around the waist of one of the daughters of the house and drew her with her. The child, to my surprise, went smilingly.

  I, too, had a bath, and read papers till it was time to dress. I felt happier about Vernon, for the sight of his unmistakable ill-temper seemed to bring him into the common human category. I had never seen him show dislike so markedly to any human being as to that atrocious girl, and I considered that it would be a good thing if his Olympian calm could be ruffled more often in the same way. I wondered casually who she could be, and why the Nantleys should have her to stay. Probably she was some daughter of profiteers who had bought her way into an unfamiliar world, though that would not explain her presence at Wirlesdon. But an ill-bred young woman did not interest me enough for my thoughts to dwell long on her, and my only prayer was that I might not be placed next her at dinner.

  It was a very young party which I found assembled in Mollie’s sitting-room, and a hasty glance convinced me that I would be sent in with Mrs Lamington. Old Folliot was there, and presently he sidled up to me to tell me a new piece of gossip. Having been out all day in strong air I was ravenous, and impatient for the announcement of dinner.

  ‘Now, who are we waiting for?’ Tom Nantley fussed around. ‘Oh, Corrie, of course. Corrie is always late. Confound that girl, she has probably gone to sleep in her bath. Pam, you go and dig her out … Hullo, here she comes at last!’

  In her hunting-kit she had looked handsome in an outlandish way, but as she swept down – without any apology – on our hungry mob there was no question of her beauty. For one thing she walked superbly. Few women can walk, and the trouble about the new fashion in clothes is that it emphasizes ugly movement. She wore a gown of a shade of green which would have ruined most people’s looks, but she managed to carry it off, and something more. For a young girl she was far too heavily made up, but that too she forced one to accept. I suddenly had a new view of her, and realized that there was quality here, a masterfulness which might charm, an arrogance which perhaps was not blasé but virginal.

  I realised, too, that I had seen her before. This was the girl whom Vernon and I had watched at my cousin’s dance in July. I wondered if he had understood this in their encounter at the tea-table.

  I had barely recovered from this surprise, when I had another. Folliot’s hand was on my arm and he was purring in my ear:

  ‘We talked once of Shelley Arabin, and I told you he left no children. My memory betrayed me, for that young lady is his daughter. She has the true Arabin eyes and all their unfathomable conceit. She is what in my day we would have called “shocking bad form”. Rather common, I think.’

  From which I knew that she must have dealt hardly with old Folliot.

  At dinner I sat between Mollie and Mrs Lamington, and since my hostess had the garrulous Cheviot on her right hand, I devoted myself to my other neighbour. That charming lady, who gives to political intrigue what time she can spare from horse-flesh, had so much to tell me that I had no need to exert myself. She was eloquent on the immense importance of certain pending Imperial appointments, especially on the need of selecting men with the right kind of wives, the inference being that George Lamington’s obvious deficiencies might be atoned for by the merits of his lady. I must have assented to everything that she said, for she told Mollie afterwards that the war had improved me enormously and had broadened my mind. But as a matter of fact I was thinking of Miss Arabin.

  She sat nearly opposite to me, and I could watch her without staring. Her manner seemed to alternate between an almost hoydenish vivacity and complete abstraction. At one moment she would have her young neighbours laughing and protesting volubly, and then she would be apparently deaf to what they said, so that they either talked across her or turned to their other partners … In these latter moods her eyes seemed almost sightless, so wholly were they lacking in focus or expression. Sometimes they rested on the table flowers, sometimes on the wall before her, sometimes on Mrs Lamington and myself – but they were always unseeing. Instead of their former sullenness, they seemed to have a brooding innocence … I noticed, too, the quality of her voice when she spoke. It was singularly arresting – clear, high and vital. She talked the usual staccato slang, but though she rarely finished a sentence grammatically, the cadence and intonation were always rounded off to a satisfying close. Only her laugh was ugly, as if it were a forced thing. Every other sound that came from her had a musical completeness.

  She had the foreign trick of smoking before the close of dinner, and, as if to preserve her beautiful fingers from contamination, before lighting a cigarette she would draw on her right hand a silk glove of the same colour as her gown. The Nantleys seemed to be accustomed to this habit, but it at last withdrew Mrs Lamington from her Imperial propaganda.

  ‘What an extraordinary young woman!’ she whispered to me. ‘Who is she? Is she a little mad, or only foreign?’

  I paraphrased old Folliot in my reply: ‘Pure English, but lives abroad.’

  The green glove somehow recalled that April evening at Plakos. This outlandish creature was interesting, for God knew what strange things were in her upbringing and her ancestry. Folliot was an old fool; she might be odious, but she was assuredly not �
�common’. As it chanced the end of dinner found her in one of her fits of absent-mindedness, and she trailed out of the room with the other women like a sleepwalker. The two youngsters who had been her companions at table stared after her till the door closed.

  Later in the drawing-room I returned to my first impression. The girl was detestable. I would have liked a sleepy evening of bridge, but the young harpy turned the sober halls of Wirlesdon into a cabaret. She behaved like a man-eating shark, and swept every male, except Tom Nantley, Folliot and myself, into her retinue. They danced in the library, because of its polished empty floor, and when I looked in I saw that the kind of dances were not what I should have chosen for youth, and was glad that Pam and Dolly had been sent to bed. I heard a clear voice declaring that it was ‘devilish slow’ and I knew to whom the voice belonged. At the door I passed old Folliot on his way to his room, and he shook his head and murmured ‘Common.’ This time I almost agreed with him.

  In the drawing-room I found my hostess skimming the weekly press and drew up a chair beside her. Mollie Nantley and I count cousinship, though the relation is slightly more remote, and she has long been my very good friend. She laid down her paper and prepared to talk.

  ‘I was so glad to see Colonel Milburne again. He looks so well too. But, Ned dear, you ought to get him to go about more, for he’s really a little old-maidish. He was scared to death by Corrie Arabin.’

  ‘Well, isn’t she rather – shall we say disconcerting? More by token, who is she?’

  ‘Poor little Corrie! She’s the only child of a rather horrible man who died last year – Shelley Arabin. Did you never hear of him? He married a sort of cousin of mine and treated her shamefully. Corrie had the most miserable upbringing – somewhere in Greece, you know, and in Rome and Paris, and at the worst kind of girls’ school where they teach the children to be snobs and powder their noses and go to confession. The school wouldn’t have mattered, for the Arabins are Romans, and Corrie couldn’t be a snob if she tried, but her home life would have ruined St Theresa. She was in London last summer with the Ertzbergers, and I was rather unhappy about her living among cosmopolitan Jew rastaquouères, so I am trying to do what I can for her this winter. Fortunately she has taken madly to hunting and she goes most beautifully. She has never had a chance, poor child. You must be kind to her, Ned.’

  I said that I was not in the habit of being brutal to young women, but that she was not likely to want my kindness. ‘She seems to be a success in her way. These boys follow her like sheep.’

  ‘Oh, she has had one kind of success, but not the best kind. She casts an extraordinary spell over young men, and does not care a straw for one of them. I might be nervous about Hugo, but I’m not in the least, for she is utterly sexless – more like a wild boy. It is no good trying to improve her manners, for she is quite unconscious of them. I don’t think there is an atom of harm in her, and she has delightful things about her – she is charming to Pam and Dolly, and they adore her, and she is simply the most honest creature ever born. She must get it from her mother, for Shelley was an infamous liar.’

  Mollie’s comely face, with her glorious golden-red hair slightly greying at the temples, had a look of compassionate motherliness. With all her vagueness, she is one of the shrewdest women of my acquaintance, and I have a deep respect for her judgement. If she let her adored Pam and Dolly make friends of Miss Arabin, Miss Arabin must be something more than the cabaret girl of my first impression.

  ‘But I’m not happy about her,’ Mollie went on. ‘I can’t see her future. She ought to marry, and the odds are terribly against her marrying the right man. Boys flock after her, but the really nice men – like Colonel Milburne – fly from her like the plague. They don’t understand that her bad form is not our bad form, but simply foreignness … And she’s so terribly strong-minded. I know that she hates everything connected with her early life, and yet she insists on going back to that Greek place. Her father left her quite well off, I believe – Tom says so and he has looked into her affairs – and she ought to settle down here and acclimatise herself. All her superficial oddities would soon drop off, for she is so clever she could make herself whatever she wanted. It is what she wants, too, for she loves England and English ways. But there is a touch of “daftness” about her, a kind of freakishness which I can never understand. I suppose it is the Arabin blood.’

  Mollie sighed.

  ‘I try to be tolerant about youth,’ she added, ‘but I sometimes long to box its ears. Besides, there is the difficulty about the others. I am quite sure of Corrie up to a point, but I can’t be responsible for the young men. George Cheviot shows every inclination to make a fool of himself about her, and what am I to say to his mother? Really, having Corrie in the house is like domesticating a destroying angel.’

  ‘You’re the kindest of women,’ I said, ‘but I think you’ve taken on a job too hard for you. You can’t mix oil and wine. You’ll never fit Miss Arabin into your world. She belongs to a different one.’

  ‘I wonder what it is?’

  A few hours ago I should have said it was the world of cabarets and Riviera hotels and Ertzbergers. After what you have told me I’m not so sure. But anyhow it’s not our world.’

  As I went to bed I heard the jigging of dance music from the library, and even in so large a house as Wirlesdon its echoes seemed to pursue me as I dropped into sleep. The result was that I had remarkable dreams, in which Miss Arabin, dressed in the spangles of a circus performer and riding a piebald horse, insisted on my piloting her with the Mivern, while the Master and Vernon looked on in stony disapproval.

  The next morning was frosty and clear, and I came down to breakfast to find my hostess alone in the dining-room.

  ‘Corrie behaved disgracefully last night,’ I was informed. ‘She started some silly rag with George Cheviot and made hay of Mr Harcus’s bedroom. Tom had to get up and read the Riot Act in the small hours. I have been to her room and found her asleep, but as soon as she wakes I am going to talk to her very seriously. It is more than bad manners, it is an offence against hospitality.’

  I went to church with Tom and his daughters, and when we returned we found Miss Arabin breakfasting before the hall fire on grapes and coffee, with the usual young men in attendance. If she had been given a lecture by her hostess, there was no sign of it in her face. She looked amazingly brilliant – all in brown, with a jumper of brown arabesque and long amber ear-rings. A russet silk glove clothed the hand in which she held her cigarette.

  Vernon came over to luncheon and sat next to Mollie, while at the other end of the table I was placed between Miss Arabin and Lady Altrincham. The girl scarcely threw a word to me, being occupied in discussing quite intelligently with Hugo Brune the international position of Turkey. I could not avoid overhearing some of their talk, and I realised that when she chose she could behave like a civilised being. It might be that Mollie’s morning discourse had borne fruit. Her voice was delightful to listen to, with its full clear tones and delicate modulations. And then, after her habit, her attention wandered, and Hugo’s platitudes fell on unheeding ears. She was staring at a picture of a Jacobean Nantley on the wall, and presently her eyes moved up the table and rested on Vernon.

  She spoke to me at last.

  ‘Who is the man next to Mollie – the man who came to tea last night? You know him, don’t you?’

  I told her his name.

  ‘A soldier?’ she asked.

  ‘Has been. Does nothing at present. He has a place in Westmorland.’

  ‘You are friends?’

  ‘The closest.’ There was something about the girl’s brusqueness which made me want to answer in monosyllables. Then she suddenly took my breath away.

  ‘He is unhappy,’ she said. ‘He looks as if he had lost his way.’

  She turned to Hugo, and, with an urbanity which I had thought impossible, apologised for her inattention and took up the conversation at the point at which she had dropped it.

 
; Her words made me keep my eyes on Vernon. Unhappy! There was little sign of it in his lean smiling face, with the tanned cheeks and steady eyes. Mollie was clearly delighted with him; perhaps her maternal heart had marked him down for Dolly. Lost his way? On the contrary he seemed at complete ease with the world. Was this strange girl a sorceress to discover what was hidden deep in only two men’s minds? I had a sense that Vernon and Miss Arabin, with nothing on earth in common, had yet a certain affinity. Each had a strain of romance in them – romance and the unpredictable.

  Vernon had motored over to Wirlesdon and proposed to walk back, so I accompanied him for part of the road. I was glad of a chance for a talk, for I was miserably conscious that we were slipping away from each other. I didn’t see how I could help it, for I was immersed in practical affairs, while he would persist in living for a dream. Before the war I had been half under the spell of that dream, but four years’ campaigning had given me a distaste for the fantastic and set my feet very solidly on the rock of facts. Our two circles of comprehension, which used to intersect, had now become self-contained.

  I asked him what he was doing with himself, and he said hunting and shooting and dabbling in books. He was writing something – I think about primitive Greek religion, in consequence of some notions he had picked up during his service in the Aegean.