Read Online Sheiks and Adders by Michael Innes - Free Book Online Page A

sustained by Master William Birch-Blackie. And there was to be much else. It would all be great fun, clearly, for the senior Birch-Blackies and such other spectators as had loved ones cavorting on the stage. On others it might a little pall.
    And not everybody was making for the theatre. Appleby was amused to see several men actually moving with a certain unobtrusiveness against the stream. And some of these recalcitrant persons appeared to be among the more exuberant of Mr Chitfield’s guests, at least if they were to be judged by their attire. As Mark Chitfield had observed, the majority of fancy costumes on view betrayed a certain yearning after exalted station, or at least an enhanced social consequence, on the part of their wearers: hence all the gentlemen in powder and knee-breeches and ladies in eighteenth century grande tenue . Any note of the broadly comical or grotesque (as with Mark’s own Deadly Sin) was confined to a scattering of males, and it was among these that the prospect of the theatrical entertainment didn’t seem to be much fun. One of the deep-sea divers, a couple of fantastically painted circus clowns, a Chinaman, a man in an ass’s head presumably to be thought of as Shakespeare’s transmogrified Bottom were among the defectors to be remarked. Perhaps like Mr Pring, these more enterprising persons were sloping off in quest of the bar.
    It was while Appleby was taking note of this that Mark appeared again, and this time he was accompanied by the hitherto absent Cherry. The young man had carried out his intention of changing into what might be called mufti; it was mufti of considerable elegance; he had moreover found time for a drastic scrub-up as well. These changes had turned him very definitely into the son of the house, in which role he was carrying out those duties of an amiable host to be expected of his still invisible father. The effect however was not without a hint of indulgence or even disdain for all the childishness round about him which those who detected it couldn’t have been too pleased with. Appleby didn’t make much of his sister’s attire. Cherry was wearing a sola topi and a trouser-suit of white drill which may have been designed to establish her either as a tropical explorer or as a Mem-sahib tagging along behind a tiger hunt. She would have looked quite well on the elephant upon which Appleby had earlier fancied himself in the character of a rajah. She was certainly remote from being any sort of mediaeval princess.
    ‘Hullo, Sir John!’ she said. ‘Patty told me you’d turned up. Good on you!’
    ‘It’s all being most enjoyable, Miss Chitfield.’ And Appleby added – perhaps as judging this response to be on the conventional side – ‘Has Patty gone to bed?’
    ‘Why ever should she do that? Is she feeling ill?’
    ‘No – but she said she was longing for bedtime.’
    ‘Our parents oughtn’t to have named her Patience,’ Mark said. ‘It’s a shockingly rustic name, for one thing. And, for another, it was tempting providence. Patty has turned out to be without an atom of the quality in her composition. Not like me. I’m cascading it over this whole idiotic revel.’
    ‘No doubt you’re doing your best,’ Appleby said. ‘I hope, by the way, that one of you is going to introduce me to your parents. I’d like to pay them my respects.’
    ‘It would have to be right-about-turn for my mother.’ Mark jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘She’ll be in that enormous tent, presiding over the people who are dishing out the refreshments.’
    ‘She’s a sensible woman at times,’ Cherry said concessively, ‘and can put first things first. But my father is bound to be in the theatre, so come along. It’s very much his thing.’
    ‘So I supposed. I’ve just met, incidentally, one of his business associates. At least he claimed to be that. A drouthy character called Pring.’
    ‘Good Lord!’ Mark said. ‘Is Pring out already? It must be the work of