There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

upon an easel and flick a splash or speck of pigment just where it was wanted might reasonably be expected to make a better show as a marksman than Geoffrey was contriving on his uncle Basil’s range.
    At the beginning I was next to hopeless myself. With a shot-gun I can acquit myself just below mediocrity; my efforts raise friendly ridicule in others, but not the embarrassment which attends going out with a positive duffer. A revolver was an unfamiliar weapon and, I felt, a futile one. If one is inexpert one has to stand so near the target that it is difficult not to feel that it would be altogether simpler to step up to it and use one’s fists. And I doubt if I should have attempted to improve had it not been for Wilfred.
    Wilfred abundantly entertained us with what may be termed the lore of the revolver: its evolution from a primitive form, its mechanisms, the ballistic laws involved. To escape this I concentrated on marksmanship and as the morning’s rather desultory sport wore on I found myself making progress. But Geoffrey, if anything, seemed less proficient than at the start. At eight paces he was unable to put two bullets within a foot of each other. Anne was laughing at him and this – perhaps because their alliance was commonly unflagging and directed upon every trifle – he seemed not to like. He continued to take part with a sort of scornful irritation infinitely shocking, I don’t doubt, to those who cherished orthodox attitudes to sport.
    And among these, inevitably, was Cecil. Cecil had taken upon himself what I thought of as his touch-line pose. Just so would he stand on his playing fields, encouraging (at a sort of modified shout, which ingeniously consulted both dignity and vehemence) the muddy manoeuvrings of his pupils. He had never himself stepped on a rugger field in his life; I could remember him, on the strength of a weak heart, spending most of his afternoons in the school library. But it would have been difficult to guess this of the headmaster who was keen on the game. Or difficult for all but schoolboys. Wilfred had told me how Cecil was found out. He had for some fatal weeks failed to master the significance of the shout, ‘All on’. This, apparently a technical term connected with the off-side rule, Cecil had carelessly taken for granted as an exclamation of simple encouragement. He had used it as that – to the horror of the school, so that the thing became a legend. The mistake was, one can guess, an uneasy memory in Cecil’s mind. But here he was in his best athletic impersonation exclaiming ‘By Jove’ with manly vehemence and ‘Oh, good shot!’ as if a bull’s-eye was the rational passport to his extreme regard.
    ‘Cousin Cecil is ardent,’ Anne said.
    ‘He relaxes the bow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘He pulls the trigger. He encourages the warriors. He calls upon the gods. And presently, surely, he will distribute the prizes.’
    ‘But Cousin Wilfred distributes marks. There is emphasis on good conduct and second in importance is general knowledge. A prize may conceivably follow at the end of the year.’
    They were at it again. Cecil and Wilfred were out of earshot; the parody was for my benefit alone. I realized that they had been reading my last book, The Kinsmen – having borrowed, no doubt, the copy I had sent to Basil. The reiterated mockery irritated me; perhaps it was because of this that I suddenly saw these two as a couple of precious spongers. They were quite frankly out to extract money – an income, a settlement or whatever it might be – from Wilfred. And they thought to veil the social indecency of this attitude behind a screen of sophisticated talk. At the moment my talk. I turned to Anne. ‘Are you sure,’ I asked, ‘that you are conducting your operations in quite the right way?’
    I ought not to have intervened; it was no business of mine. Basically, too, my sympathies were on their side. As a painter Geoffrey had a real line, and he was sticking to it.