The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford Read Free Book Online

taken an enormous fancy to Captain Warbeck. As he never altered his first opinion of people, and as his few favourites could commit nameless crimes without doing wrong in his eyes, Captain Warbeck was, henceforward, on a good wicket with Uncle Matthew.
    ‘He’s such a frightfully clever cove, literary you know, you wouldn’t believe the things he does. He writes books and criticizes pictures, and whacks hell out of the piano, though the pieces he plays aren’t up to much. Still, you can see what it would be like, if he learnt some of the tunes out of the
Country Girl
, for instance. Nothing would be too difficult for him, you can see that.’
    At dinner Captain Warbeck sitting next to Aunt Sadie, and Aunt Emily next to Uncle Matthew, were separated from each other, not only by four of us children (Bob was allowed to dine down, as he was going to Eton next half), but also by pools of darkness. The dining-room table was lit by three electric bulbs hanging in a bunch from the ceiling, and screened by a curtain of dark-red jap silk with a gold fringe. One spot of brilliant light was thus cast into the middle of the table, whilethe diners themselves, and their plates, sat outside it in total gloom. We all, naturally, had our eyes fixed upon the shadowy figure of the fiancé, and found a great deal in his behaviour to interest us. He talked to Aunt Sadie at first about gardens, plants, and flowering shrubs, a topic which was unknown at Alconleigh. The gardener saw to the garden, and that was that. It was quite half a mile from the house, and nobody went near it, except as a little walk sometimes in the summer. It seemed strange that a man who lived in London should know the names, the habits, and the medicinal properties of so many plants. Aunt Sadie politely tried to keep up with him, but could not altogether conceal her ignorance, though she partly veiled it in a mist of absent-mindedness.
    ‘And what is your soil here?’ asked Captain Warbeck.
    Aunt Sadie came down from the clouds with a happy smile, and said, triumphantly, for here was something she did know, ‘Clay’.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Captain.
    He produced a little jewelled box, took from it an enormous pill, swallowed it, to our amazement, without one sip to help it down, and said, as though to himself, but quite distinctly, ‘Then the water here will be madly binding’.
    When Logan, the butler, offered him shepherd’s pie (the food at Alconleigh was always good and plentiful, but of the homely schoolroom description) he said, again so that one did not quite know whether he meant to be overheard or not, ‘No, thank you, no twice-cooked meat. I am a wretched invalid, I must be careful, or I pay.’
    Aunt Sadie, who so much disliked hearing about health that people often took her for a Christian Scientist, which, indeed, she might have become had she not disliked hearing about religion even more, took absolutely no notice, but Bob asked with interest, what it was that twice-cooked meat did to one.
    ‘Oh, it imposes a most fearful strain on the juices, you might as well eat leather,’ replied Captain Warbeck, faintly, heaping onto his plate the whole of the salad. He said, again in that withdrawn voice:
    ‘Raw lettuce, anti-scorbutic,’ and, opening another box of even larger pills, he took two, murmuring, ‘Protein’.
    ‘How delicious your bread is,’ he said to Aunt Sadie, as though to make up for his rudeness in refusing the twice-cooked meat. ‘I’m sure it has the germ.’
    ‘What?’ said Aunt Sadie, turning from a whispered confabulation with Logan (‘ask Mrs Crabbe if she could quickly make some more salad’).
    ‘I was saying that I feel sure your delicious bread is made of stone-ground flour, containing a high proportion of the germ. In my bedroom at home I have a picture of a grain of wheat (magnified, naturally) which shows the germ. As you know, in white bread the germ, with its wonderful health-giving properties, is eliminated –