Free Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

dense—”
    â€œCertainly not. She is rationalizing her dream.”
    â€œYou don’t mind?”
    â€œOn the contrary, if she wishes, I will be a Rector. But—but I am still perplexed. I ask myself, Why am I a Professor? Why am I here? You and your friends, why should you involve yourselves? Why?”
    Andrew walked across to the window and looked out at the moonshiny night. Very far away an owl hooted; then silence again, dropping like dew.
    â€œWell, at Cambridge they thought rather a lot of you.”
    â€œThen I am to be respected, yes. Cheered, after a discourse—if you happen to agree with my opinions. But you and your friends—I may tell you, I do not agree—believe me to be in some sort of danger. I saw that young man who drove the car put a pistol in his pocket! If there are such risks, why should you take them?”
    â€œWell, we think you’re a valuable sort of man.”
    â€œAnd that is sufficient?”
    Andrew hesitated. Then he turned round from the window, and all his father came out in him as he answered.
    â€œIf you must know—there’s also the sporting interest of the thing.…”
    The effect of this admission was not such as he expected. Adam Belinski leaped up from the bed with a beaming smile.
    â€œThat is such a pleasure to me,” he said warmly, “you do not know!”
    VII
    There were several things Andrew did not yet know about Mr. Belinski; for even left-wing authorities on European literature have their human side, and Andrew, being young, expected people (and especially celebrities) to be all of a piece. He would have been much surprised, and even rather shocked, to know the true reason of both Mr. Belinski’s melancholia and his reluctance to leave London; but the fact was that besides being interested in prose, Mr. Belinski was also interested in women.
    He was particularly sensitive to certain attributes in them. These included length from hip to knee, ability to interpret Chopin, very dark eyes, very light eyes, impregnable virtue, insatiable temperament, and a trustful disposition; and a week before the party in Hampstead he had met a young lady who combined no less than three of them. She was tall, dark and virtuous; the married daughter of his landlady. When John Frewen espied him behind the piano, such was the vision that filled Belinski’s thoughts: lovely and cruel Maria Dillon. No wonder he looked wretched. And when Andrew followed and argued with him—hopeless yet ever hoping, repulsed yet enchanted, in the first throes of a new passion—how could Belinski tear himself away? He couldn’t. But at last he was given notice; and so allowed himself to be carried off into Devonshire under armed guard.
    And Adam Belinski had also a conscience, though an erratic one. The precautions taken by young Andrew had touched him: he felt he had pulled a double bluff, assuring the boy there was no danger, yet allowing him to believe in it. Now Andrew’s confession had put all to rights; he too, in a sense, had deceived Belinski: he was not all pure altruism, he was enjoying himself like hell; and so they were quits.
    Mr. Belinski lay between the smooth, cool, lavender-scented sheets and thought of Maria Dillon. He found her image curiously hard to fix: it was overlaid by too many other impressions, of the great house, of the candle-lit dinner table, of Lady Carmel and Sir Henry. This was no unusual phenomenon with him: ardent in pursuit, he was also rather easily distracted. Besides, he was in Devonshire, and Maria in London. (As Hortense was in Paris, and Sonia in Warsaw, and another girl in Budapest.) “Good-bye, Maria!” thought Mr. Belinski sadly; luxuriated a moment in this fresh loss, and so fell into a sound sleep.
    VIII
    Dear Uncle Arn,
    I waited at table to-night for the first time. Two guests, a friend of Mr. Andrews and the Professor, and Mr. Syrett said I might have been worse. The only