Read Online The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart - Free Book Online Page B

anywhere within daily reach of people, but I didn’t say so. I asked: ‘How long have you been here?’
    ‘Nearly a year. I came last July.’
    ‘I see. Well, it’s a relief to know she’s all right. So I’ll be able to see her?’
    He hesitated, apparently on the brink of saying something, then gave that odd little shake of the head again, and ran his hand back over his brow, almost as if he were smoothing away some physical discomfort like a headache. I saw Hamid watching him curiously.
    ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you’ve something to tell me, go ahead. But let’s sit down, shall we?’
    He followed me into the shade of the divan, and we sat down. I laced my fingers round one knee and turned to regard him. He still looked uncomfortable, though not in the physical sense; his long body looked relaxed enough, and his hands were slack on his knees. But there was a tight knot of worry between his brows.
    ‘How long since you heard from your great-aunt?’ he asked at length.
    ‘If you mean how long since I myself did, I never have. In fact I only remember seeing her about three times in my life, and the last time was when I was about seven, but my family hears from her now and again. There was a letter last year some time – just before Christmas, I think it was. She certainly wrote as if she were fairly fit and in her right – that is, fairly fit, But it didn’t bother much with news.’
    I got the idea that he knew what I meant, but he didn’t smile. He was frowning down at his hands. ‘I only asked because—’ A pause, then he looked up suddenly. ‘Miss Mansel, how much do you and your family know about the way she lives here?’
    ‘I suppose we know very little, except the obvious things, that she’s perhaps getting a bit more eccentric as she gets older, and that she’s made her life out here for so long that it isn’t very likely she’ll ever want to move and come home again. You’ll have gathered that our family’s never been very strong on family ties and all that, and of course lately Great-Aunt Harriet’s had this thing about cutting all her ties with England home and beauty – that’s almost all her letters have been about, when she wrote at all. Don’t think the familyminded, they didn’t. What she does is her own affair. But since I came out here I’ve heard a bit more about her, and I gather that now it’s a pretty far-out kind of eccentricity … I mean, all this Lady Hester Stanhope imitation. Is it really true? Does she really live like that? Mr Lethman, she isn’t really bats, is she?’
    ‘No, oh no,’ he said quickly. He was looking immensely relieved. ‘I wondered if you knew about that. It wouldn’t be very easy to start explaining from scratch, but if you know the Stanhope story it makes it relatively simple. I won’t say your great-aunt deliberately set out to be a modern “Lady of the Lebanon”, but when she first settled here at Dar Ibrahim she did keep a bit of state, and various people made the comparison to her, and then she discovered that the old Stanhope legend was still very much alive among the country Arabs, and she herself got a good deal of benefit from it in the way of service and influence and – you know, the various by-products of celebrity. It was the locals who started calling her “Lady Harriet”, and it simply stuck. Your great-aunt was amused at first, I gather, and then she discovered it suited her to be a “character”, and in the way these things have, it gradually grew beyond the point where it could be stopped, and certainly beyond the point where she could treat it as a joke, even to herself. I don’t know if you can understand this?’
    ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t detach herself any more, so she simply went with it.’
    ‘That’s it. Nor did she want to detach herself. She’d lived out here for so long, and in a way she’d made it her country, and in a curious way I believe she feels shehas a kind of right to the