An Old Captivity Read Online Free PDF Page B

carpet on the stairs made no sound. Lockwood was there before him; on a side table there was a decanter with glasses.
    “A glass of sherry, Mr. Ross?”
    “I should like one.”
    The older man poured out the sherry. “My daughter is dining out,” he said, conversationally. “It’s the Bach Choir to-night.”
    Ross said: “Oh, really?”
    For the first time he wondered what the family consisted of. It was a curious un-lived-in house, apart from the study. Probably, he thought, the wife was dead, and this girl kept house for her father.
    “Are you interested in music, Mr. Ross?”
    The pilot shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.”
    “My daughter is a great musician. They’re doing Beethoven to-night—the Fifth Symphony.”
    Ross said again: “Oh, really?” and drank his sherry. He felt awkward and tongue-tied, out of his depth. He was powerless to keep his end up in this sort of conversation, and he looked forward apprehensively to dinner in college.
    However, the evening passed off better than he had expected. They walked down to the college in the mellow evening sunshine, and drank another glass of sherry with the dons in the Senior Common Room. Presently Ross found himself seated at dinner at the high table in Hall above a crowd of two or three hundred undergraduates. On his right hand was a young don much the same age as he was himself, who was an officer in the Royal Air Force Reserve, and who talked of the games system in Canadian high schools. Ross got on all right with him, and appreciated Lockwood’s tact in making the arrangement. On his left was an elderly man whose subject seemed to be wood. The pilot was able to maintain a short discussion on the trees of Northern Canada. He got on better than he had expected, but it was a relief to him when it was over.
    He walked back in the twilight with Lockwood to the house in Norham Gardens. The streets were very quiet; the whole town seemed to be at peace. On the way the don said: “I have been thinking about our talk this afternoon. It’s evidently more of an undertaking than I had supposed. But I see no reason why we should not go.”
    Ross said: “Apart from the money side of it, there is no reason. We should be able to do what you want. If we fail, I think it will be because of something that we can’t provide against—blizzards, or a bad season for the ice or something like that.”
    They walked on in silence for a time. “We’ll talk about it again to-morrow morning after breakfast,” said Lockwood. “I shall have made up my mind by then.”
    They went into the house; a light showed beneath the study door. “My daughter is home before us,” said the older man. They passed through the hall into the lit room.
    “Alix,” said Lockwood. “This is Mr. Ross, who has come to talk to me about Greenland.”
    The girl got up, and held out her hand. “Good evening Mr. Ross.”
    She was a girl of medium height with grey eyes and pale yellow hair, worn long and arranged in two coils at the sides of her head. She had a high forehead accentuated by the style of her hair, and a long serious face with rather a determined chin. She had a good figure concealed and stultified by an unpleasing purple dress with a little frill of lace arranged around the throat. She had slender legs encased in grey cotton stockings; on her feet she wore black buckled shoes, plain, sensible, clumsy and very ugly. She had been sitting in a deep armchair and drinking Ovaltine; a violin in a case lay on the floor beside her.
    Lockwood said: “Whisky and soda, Mr. Ross?”
    “Thanks.”
    The don crossed to a side table and began manipulating the decanter and siphon. Over his shoulder he said to the girl: “How did the Symphony go?”
    She said: “Oh—all right, but for the third movement, I wish he’d do something about the ’cellos.” She brushed the hair back from her forehead. “We did the Sibelius thing afterwards.”
    “Was the Master