Rich Relatives

wm RICH RELATIVES COMPTONMACKENZIE I WuM LIBRARY UNIVERSITY CF CALIFORNIA BiVEKSlDE Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT RICH RELATIVES BY THE SJME AUTHOR THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT CARNIVAL I SINISTER STREET : VOL. SINISTER STREET: VOL. II GUY AND PAULINE SYLVIA SCARLETT SYLVIA AND MICHAEL POOR RELATIONS THE VANITY GIRL [Copyright : Martin Seeker] RICH RELATIVES By COMPTON MACKENZIE a LONDON: MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXXI f^L>0^5 TO ALICE AND CHRISTOPHER STONE THIS THEME IN A MINOR November isth, 1920 Chapter One may have been that the porter at York railway station ITwas irritated by Sunday duty, or it may have been that not the outward signs of wealth in his client were whatever the he to her. conspicuous ; cause, spoke rudely Yet Jasmine Grant was not a figure that ought to have aroused the insolence of a porter, even if he was on Sunday her black clothes were not fashionable duty. To be sure, ; and a journey from the South of Italy to the North of England, to cut having obliterated what slight pretensions they might once have possessed, had left her definitely draggled. Although the news of having to wait nearly five hours for the train to Spaborough had brought tears of disappointment into her tears been their eyes, and although the appeal of had spoilt by off with the back of a being rubbed — dusty glove, Jasmine's beauty was there all the time a dark, Southern beauty of jetty from brown a slim lashes curling away eyes starry-hearted ; Southern charm of sunburnt, boyish hands. Something she had of a young cypress in moonlight, something of a violon- for cello, with that voice as deep as her eyes. But the porter to she was only something of a nuisance, and when she began lament again the long wait he broke in as rudely as before : " Now it's not a bit of good you nagging at me, miss. If the ' it can I ? 4.42 goes at 4.42, I can't make go before 4.42, Then perhaps the thought of his own daughters at home, or perhaps the comforting intuition that there would be shrimps for tea at the close of this weary day, stirred his better nature. " Why don't you take a little mouch round the walls ? 7 8 Rich Relatives That's what people mostly does who get stuck in York. They mouch round the walls if it's fine, like it is, and if it's raining they mouch round the Minister. And I've known people, I have, who've actually come to York to mouch round the walls, so you needn't be so aggravated at having to see them whether you like it or not, as you might say. And now," he concluded, " I suppose the next thing is you'll want to put your luggage " in the cloak-room ! He spoke with a sense of sacrilege, as if Jasmine had sug- gested laying her luggage on the high altar of the Minster. " Well, that means me having to go and get a truck," he " grumbled, because the cloak-room's at the other end of the station from what we are here." The poor girl was already well aware of the vastness of York railway station, a vastness that was accentuated by its empti- ness on this fine Sunday afternoon. Fresh tears brimmed over her lids and as in limestone caverns ; mighty stalagmites drop upon the explorer, so now from the remote roof of glass and iron a smutty drop descended upon Jasmine's nose. " " Come far, have you ? asked the porter, with this display of kindly interest apologizing as it were for the behaviour of the station's roof. " Italy." " " Organland, eh ? The thought of Italy turned his mind toward music, and he went whistling off to fetch a truck, leaving his client beside a heap of luggage that seemed an intrusion on the Sabbath peace of the railway station. From anyone except porters or touring actors accustomed all their lives to the infinite variations of human luggage, Jasmine's collection, which alternately in the eyes of its owner Rich Relatives 9 appeared much too large and much too small, too pretentious have and too insignificant, too defiant and too pathetic, might won more than a passing regard. But since the sparse fre- or quenters of the station were all either porters actors, nobody- looked twice at the leather portmanteau stamped SHOLTO GRANT, at the hold-all of carpet-bagging worked in a design of the Paschal Lamb, at the two narrow wooden crates labelled or with permits to export modern works of art from Italy, at a decrepit basket of fruit covered with vine leaves and with bunches of tricoloured ribbon and as for tied up ; the owner, she was by this time so hopelessly bedraggled by the effort of bringing this luggage from the island of Sirene train to to the city of York only to find that there was no on Spaborough for five hours that nobody looked twice at her. Somewhere outside in the sheepish sunlight of England an engine screamed with delight at having escaped from the station somewhere in the station a re- ; deep dust-eclipsed triever howled each time he managed to wind his chain attached. Then a round the pillar to which it was lug- until it gage train ran down a dulcimer scale of jolts finally rumbled away into silence like the inside of a hungry giant before he falls after which there was no sound of asleep ; any- roof thing except the dripping of condensed steam from the to the platform. Jasmine began to wonder if there would ever be another train to anywhere this Sunday, and if the on the porter intended to leave her alone with her luggage platform until to-morrow morning. Everything in England was so different from what she had been accustomed to all her life behaved here with such rudeness and such evident ; people dislike of being troubled that perhaps . but her appre- hensions were interrupted by the whining of the porter's io Rich Relatives truck, which he pushed before him like a truant child being thumped homeward by its mother. The luggage was put on the truck, and the porter, cheered by the noise he was making, broke into a vivacious narrative, of which Jasmine did not understand a single word until he stopped before the door of the cloak-room and was able to enunciate this last sentence without the accompaniment of unoiled wheels : "... and which, of course, made it very uncomfortable for 1 ' her through her being related to them. At the moment the difficulty of persuading a surly cloak- room clerk, even more indignant than the porter at being made to work on Sunday afternoon, that the two crates were lawful luggage for passengers, prevented Jasmine's attempting to trace the of the last remark but she origin porter's ; when was blinking in the sunlight outside the station preparatory to her promenade of the walls of York, it recurred to her, and its appropriateness to her own situation made her regret that she had not heard more about Her and Them. Was not she herself feeling so uncomfortable on account of her relationship to Them, so miserable rather that if another obstacle arose in her path she would turn back and . yes, wicked though the thought undoubtedly was, and imperil though it might her soul should she die before it was absolved . yes, indeed she really would turn back and drown herself in that ptizzo nero they called the English Channel. Here she was searching for a wall in a city that looked as large as Naples. Well, if she did not find it, she would accept her failure as an omen that fate desired her withdrawal from life. But no sooner had Jasmine walked a short way from the station than she found that the wall was ubiquitous, and that she would apparently be unable to in York without on it so she proceed anywhere walking ; Rich Relatives n turned aside down a narrow passage, climbed a short flight of steps, and without thinking any more of suicide she achieved that prospect of the city which had been so highly recom- mended by the porter. It was the midday Sabbath hour, when the bells at last were silent and since it was fine the had achieved ; August weather, sky a watery and pious blue like a nun's eyes. Before her and behind her the river of the wall flowed through a champaign of roofs from which towers and rose like trees but more interest- spires ; ing to Jasmine's lonely mood were the small back gardens immediately below the parapet on either side, from which the faintly acrid perfume of late summer flowers came up mingled with beefy smells from the various windows of the small houses beyond, where the shadowy inmates were eating their Sunday dinners. She felt that if this were Italy a friendly hand would be beckoning to her from one of those windows an invitation to join the party, and it was with another grudge against England that she sat down alone on a municipal bench to eat from a triangular cardboard box six triangular ham sandwiches. The restless alchemy of nature had set to work to change the essences of the container and the contents, so that the sandwiches tasted more like cardboard and the cardboard felt more like it sandwiches ; no doubt would even have tasted more like sandwiches if Jasmine had eaten the box, which she might easily have done, for her taste had been blunted by the long journey, and she would have chewed ambrosia as mechanically had ambrosia been offered to her.

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