A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,55
veranda. Dora passed me a glass of lemon squash with a warning glance. I rolled my eyes at her, and took a seat, stretching out my booted legs onto the arms of the planter’s chair as Ryder had done.
“It’s lovely country for walking, isn’t it?” Halliwell offered. I thawed a little then, and we fell to discussing the countryside. “Of course, one must always be careful of the wildlife, but it gives a fillip of excitement to one’s existence, I find. Danger lurks around every thornbush here. I am always telling Evelyn to be cautious when she goes out to paint.”
“Is she an artist?” Dora inquired politely.
“After a fashion. She does like to try to capture the landscapes here, so different from our native Kent. But she makes no claim to talent like Mr. Parrymore.”
“Kit’s talent is extraordinary,” I agreed. “He has developed tremendously as an artist since the time I knew him in New York.”
Halliwell sat forward eagerly. “His paintings are so full of life, of vibrancy—don’t you find? They almost seem to have a pulse, they are so alive.”
Dora sipped at her lemon squash while I lit a cigarette. “You surprise me, Mr. Halliwell. I wouldn’t have expected a clergyman to feel so strongly about art.”
He laughed. “I admit I do not have the same calling as many of my fellow men of the cloth. It was a decision of my parents’ making. We were brought up on a small estate outside of Canterbury. Our elder brother was the heir, of course, and Evelyn and I were made to follow the plan our parents laid out. I was sent into the church and she was to keep house for me. But our first love was always art. Alas, I was never given proper tuition in the subject, so my technique has never developed. Evelyn received some very rudimentary training from a drawing master for a few months. I’m afraid that is the extent of our formal education,” he added, his expression rueful.
I could tell Dora was about to say something pointlessly soothing, so I cut in.
“Why didn’t you run away?”
He blinked, like a rabbit just up from his hole. “I beg your pardon?”
I took a long pull on my cigarette just to heighten the moment. “Why didn’t you run away? Take your life in your own hands and make what you wanted out of it?”
He stared at me for a long minute, no doubt as mystified as if I had been speaking Mandarin.
At last he laughed again, apparently deciding I was harmless and perhaps a little mentally defective. “My dear lady, what a question! How simple you make it sound and how impossible.”
“Difficult,” I corrected. “Not impossible.” Dora stirred beside me, and I didn’t have to look at her to know she was wearing her disapproving expression. That’s what I always found so tiresome about the English. The long list of Things That Must Not Be Said.
“Not impossible,” I repeated. “You simply had to make up your mind to do without your parents’ help. Say goodbye to their money and you say goodbye to their interference.”
“You are serious,” he said slowly.
“As a grave. Nobody should have to do what they don’t want just because some moneybags relative makes it so. Purse strings are puppet strings, Mr. Halliwell. They can be cut.”
Dora couldn’t take it anymore. “She’s joking, of course, Mr. Halliwell,” she said soothingly. “She doesn’t actually believe that or she wouldn’t be here herself.”
It wasn’t like Dora to air the family’s dirty linen, but my reasons for being in Africa were common knowledge. It was, however, a symptom of her annoyance with me that she mentioned it.
“Oh, I believe every word of it. I just happen to be a hypocrite.” I bared my teeth at Mr. Halliwell in a crocodile smile. “I like nice things and I would be less than useless with a job.”
“A job!” He reached for his handkerchief and passed it over his brow. “I should think not. No properly brought up young lady should have to work for money.”
“I suppose Evelyn toils away at the mission school purely in hopes of a heavenly reward?”
Dora jumped to her feet. “Mr. Halliwell, have I shown you the changes I’m making to the garden? I should love to have your opinion. No, no, bring your drink. It’s too hot to go walking without some refreshment.” They left the veranda, but not before she gave me a backward glance that would have scalded milk.