Read The Empty House for Free Online Page B

an Apache.
    "I thought it was a new face. Are you on your own?"
    "N . . . no. I've come with Alice and Tom . . . but . . ." She looked back. "I've lost them . . . they're coming . . . somewhere ..."
    "I'm Dominic Barnet ..."
    "Oh . . . it's your party ..."
    "No, my father's, really. At least he's paid for the barrel of beer which makes it his party and my mother bought the sausages. Come on . . . let's get something to drink," and he grabbed her arm with an even firmer grip and marched her down into the seething, noisy fire-lit circle of activity. "Hey, Dad . . . here's someone who hasn't got a drink ..."
    A huge bearded figure, medieval in the strange light, straightened up from the tap of the barrel. "Well, here's one for her," he said, and Virginia found herself holding an enormous mug of beer. "And here's a sausage." The young man whisked one nearly off a passing tray and handed it to her, impaled on a stick. Virginia took that too, and was just about to embark upon some polite social conversation when Dominic saw another familiar face across the circle of firelight, yelled "Mariana!" or some such name, and was away, leaving Virginia once more alone.
    She searched in the darkness for the Lingards but could not find them. But everyone else was sitting, so she sat too, with the enormous beer mug in one hand and the sausage, still too hot to eat, in the other. The firelight scorched her face and the wind was cold on her back and blew her hair all over her face. She took a mouthful of beer. She had never drunk beer before and immediately wanted to sneeze. She did so, enormously and from behind her an amused voice said, "Bless you."
    Virginia recovered from the sneeze and said, 'Thank you," and looked up to see who had blessed her, and saw a large young man in corduroysand rubber boots and a massive Norwegian sweater. He was grinning down at her and the firelight turned his brown face to the colour of copper.
    She said, "It was the beer that made me sneeze."
    He squatted beside her, took the mug gently from her hand and laid it on the ground between them. "You might sneeze again and then you'd spill it all and that would be a waste."
    "Yes."
    "You have to be a friend of the Barnets."
    "Why do you say that?"
    "I haven't seen you before."
    "No, I'm not. I came with the Lingards."
    "Alice and Tom? Are they here?"
    "Yes, somewhere."
    He sounded so pleased that the Lingards were here that Virginia fully expected him to go, then and there, in search of them, but instead he settled himself more comfortably on the grass beside her, and seemed quite happy to remain silent, simply watching in some amusement, the rest of the party. Virginia ate her sausage, and when she had finished and he still had said nothing, she decided that she would try again.
    "Are you a friend of the Barnets?"
    "Urn ..." His attention interrupted, he turned to look at her, his eyes a clear and unwinking blue. "Sorry?"
    "I wondered if you were a friend of the Barnets, that's all."
    He laughed. "I'd better be. These are my fields they're desecrating."
    "Then you must be Eustace Philips."
    He considered this. "Yes," he said at last. "I suppose I must be."
    Soon after that he was called away . . . some of his Guernseys had wandered in from a neighbouring field and a batty girl who had drunk too much wine thought that she was being attacked by a bull and had thrown a pretty fit of hysterics. So Eustace went to put the matter to rights, and Virginia was presently claimed by Alice and Tom, and although she spent the rest of the evening watching out for him, she did not see Eustace Philips again.
    The party, however, was a wild and memorable success. Near midnight, with the beer finished, and the bottles going round, and the food all eaten and the fire piled with driftwood until the flames sprang twenty feet high or more, Alice suggested gently that perhaps it might be a good idea if they went home.
    "Your mother will be sitting up thinking you've either been raped or