The Gazebo Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jack! What extraordinary creatures men are! I should have said she had let herself go completely – but there’s no accounting for tastes. Of course Winifred makes a perfect slave of her, but that’s their look-out.’
    Nicholas said that he thought he had better start in on his stuff in the attic.
    He was astonished at his own anger. It might have broken out once, but five years of some very odd places had taught him self-control. His temper could still flare up at a spark, but he could keep the blinds drawn and the shutters barred whilst he dealt with it. In some of those places the merest momentary failure to control himself could have meant instant and imminent danger. He had walked strange paths, watched strange rites, kept strange company.
    Ella Harrison, accompanying him to the foot of the attic stair, had no idea how much pleasure it would have given him to strangle her. He was better looking than in that old photograph that Emmy was so proud of. She admired slim, dark men, and naturally he would admire her. Just his type – bright hair, plenty of curves, plenty of colour. She felt very much pleased with herself and with him.
    Up in the attic Nicholas was being appalled at the amount of stuff he had dumped there. There were three trunks full of things that had belonged to his mother. Some of them were valuable. All had been thought worth preserving. He had been going to go through them with Althea. There was an enormous blanket-box, the contents most carefully looked after and annually camphored by Emmy.
    Only last May she had made a special journey from Devonshire for the purpose. There was a linen-chest. There were stacks and stacks and stacks of books. There were pictures – portraits of grandparents and great-great-grandparents. He remembered an enchanting Regency lady in clinging muslin with a blue riband in her hair. What was he to do with her – what was he to do with any of them? Leave them to the dust of Ella Harrison’s attic? He had a feeling that they would prefer it to her company downstairs.
    He lifted the lid of yet another box and discovered photograph albums jammed down upon a mass of letters and papers. They would have to be gone through – but how and where? The idea of remaining with the Harrisons for more than the very briefest of visits filled him with horror. A dreadful woman and poor old Jack the completely trodden worm. Yet where if not here could he deal with such a mass of stuff? He couldn’t drag it to an hotel, he couldn’t cart it down to Devonshire, where Emmy would think him impious if he destroyed so much as a second-cousin’s photograph. So what was he to do except stick it out here and get on with the job as fast as he could? He supposed that quite three-quarters of the letters and papers would be for the scrap-heap. He thought he had better get going on them.
    There was an empty clothes-basket in the corner which would do nicely to hold the discards. He had it about a third full, when he picked up a battered book on engineering. He couldn’t remember having ever possessed such a thing, but when he turned to the fly-leaf it had his grandfather’s name in it. As he tossed it into the basket, half-a-dozen unmounted photographs fell out from between the pages and fluttered down upon the attic floor. They were at least seventy years younger than the book. They were, in fact, no more than six years old, and he had taken them himself. They were all photographs of Althea Graham, some of them taken in the garden here, and some of them in the Grahams’ garden. There was a very bad one of her with Emmy’s cat Ptolemy on her lap. Ptolemy was hating every moment of it, and when Ptolemy hated anything he made himself felt. The scene came flashing back. The photograph was a bad one, because Althea was trying not to laugh, Emmy kept saying ‘Don’t!’, and just as he touched the camera off Ptolemy scratched and fled. The whole thing came back with extraordinary vividness – Emmy