The Bloody Wood Read Online Free PDF Page A

something out of the bizarre things people do. But I’m afraid I must be boring you frightfully, sir.’ Bobby produced this well-bred young man’s conventional deference and diffidence with his familiar faint irony. It wasn’t a quality for which there was much scope, Appleby supposed, in the fabricating of Latin verses. ‘In fact,’ Bobby went on, ‘we’re rather a boring crowd at Charne.’
    ‘I’ve never been in the least of that opinion.’ Appleby said this firmly enough to constitute a rebuke. ‘And at least you’ve made your way here in quite a hurry, surely? The Oxford summer term can’t be over.’
    ‘I cut out a week early. It’s one of the advantages of being a prize boy. The old gentlemen indulge you. The subject of the composition I’m working on, you know, is Rus in Urbe . I told our President that I needed immediate rus , and that another week of urbs would be fatal to my starting at all. He beamed approval and pressed my hand at parting. And here I am.’
    ‘And everybody is pleased.’ Since Bobby was now laughing, Appleby laughed too. Like most young men, Bobby Angrave could strike his elders as tiresome enough at times. But one of the tiresome habits of youth is judging it necessary to lay a kind of smoke-screen over their more generous impulses. It might well be that Bobby had cut short a thoroughly enjoyable term at Oxford in order to be with his uncle in this grim period. And he hadn’t perhaps known that his aunt was clinging to her habit of filling – or quarter-filling – Charne with guests.
    ‘What do you think of my cousin Martine Rivière?’ Bobby asked abruptly.
    ‘I haven’t had much conversation with her, so far. She’s clever, isn’t she?’
    ‘Yes – unlike that poor old thicky, Diana Page.’ Bobby began mounting the steps to the terrace. ‘I suppose Martine trundles Diana round as a kind of foil.’
    ‘I rather like Diana. As a matter of fact, you might find her–’ Appleby checked himself. He had been about to say ‘a good deal more responsive in certain ways than Martine is ever likely to be’. But if Bobby didn’t know this – he told himself – it had perhaps better not be put in his head. For there was a lurking ruthlessness in Bobby – the ruthlessness, and perhaps even the chilly sensuality, that goes with the theoretical mind. And Diana, after all, was very young. So, instead, he said lightly: ‘Is it Martine who has drawn you so quickly to Charne?’
    ‘I had heard she was here.’
    ‘You find her attractive?’
    ‘Oh, decidedly. In other circumstances, I can imagine myself hunting her like mad. Of course, nothing much would come of it, even when everything had. But that might be the essence of fun. Or that’s my guess. But I’m totally ignorant, of course. The mundus muliebris isn’t my affair. Still, I’m keeping an eye on Martine.’
    Appleby, beset by the peculiar discomfort that attends the reception of callow talk, said nothing. At least it would be an error to suppose that this accomplished young man didn’t know his way around in the sphere just touched upon. There was no harm in that. Nevertheless he felt that, for the moment, he and Bobby Angrave had enjoyed enough of each other’s company.
    ‘I’ll take one more turn along the terrace,’ he said, ‘and then follow you in. It will let me finish this cigar. I’ve always suspected that your aunt doesn’t love the things.’
    ‘Aunt Grace is a fastidious woman.’ Bobby nodded, prepared to turn away. ‘It must make it all additionally formidable for her – wouldn’t you say? I believe that dying doesn’t merely have those terrors and agonies. It has its bad smells as well. Enjoy your cigar.’
    And Bobby walked off towards the house. The moonlight thrust a pale shadow before him on the gravel. Appleby stood still for a moment, and watched him go. He was far from convinced that Bobby had scored any sort of alpha during this curious half-hour.

 
     
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    It had been to