The Return of Mr Campion: A Collection of 13 Short Stories (The Albert Campion Mysteries) by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Agora Books
Published: 2019-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Sweet and Low

“It’s a nice day.”

“Beautiful.”

“Been nice all this week.”

“Very.”

“Is that an over-reach on your off foreleg?”

“No. He cut it on a piece of filthy tin in your long meadow. It’s practically healed.”

“Oh, sorry. About the tin, I mean. It’s a nice day.”

“Beautiful. I’m late for lunch. Goodbye.”

Susan turned Taffy abruptly and trotted off smartly down the lower road, and that was that.

She did not look back at the young man who was so long that he seemed to fit into his small open car with difficulty but was sufficiently feminine to hope that he noticed how flat her shoulders were under her new brown hacking coat.

When she was certain she had heard the car turn the corner on to the Tipton road she relaxed considerably and permitted Taffy to drop into the leisurely trot he liked best.

Susan was resolutely against heart-searching. Her attitude toward Phil Biringstone was, she reflected, cold, impersonal and a trifle worldly. He could break his neck for all she cared. No; perhaps not actually his neck, but his leg or an arm. Or anyway he could shake himself up a bit and lose some of his wretched superiority. Courage like his was all very well in Susan’s opinion. If a man has been born in the saddle — well, practically so — it’s perfectly natural for him to feel more at home on a horse than on his own two enormous feet. But even if he is so incredibly brave and does take jumps in the hunting field that make one go cold inside and does ride a notoriously nappy six-year-old to victory in the point-to-point, leaving the Army struggling like bogged goats at the seventh fence, is there any reason why he should go all condescending to a girl on a very good pony when he finds her scrambling through a patch of furze in an undignified attempt to avoid a three-foot hedge with a ditch on the other side?

The incident had taken place at the final meet of the season. Susan had been getting on very nicely, with Taffy nosing his way like a pointer among the furze and cautiously feeling every step with his little round hooves before he trusted their combined weight on the spongy clay, when Phil Birlingstone had left the hunt to come after her and, with a face as scarlet as his coat, had bellowed ungallantly:

“Look out! Look out, you little idiot! There’s a mass of rabbit-holes in there. You’ll kill yourself or your poor beast.”

That in itself had been insulting enough. But when Geraldine Partington-Drew had joined him on her magnificent bay (“only eight-fifty, my dear. They positively gave her to me because I could manage her”) Susan had tasted mud. They sat towering over her on their great mounts and actually laughed — or at least Geraldine had laughed. Phil had merely scowled until Susan backed the protesting Taffy into the open meadow again. Then Geraldine had ridden off, calling to Phil to follow her, and actually, of course, to make them watch her take the jump as cleanly and clearly as a cat.

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