‘Oh,’ said his friend, ‘but you’re just the type he likes. He prefers ordinary—it’s a stupid word—I mean normal, people, because their reactions are more valuable.’
‘Shall I be expected to react?’ asked Hugh, with nervous facetiousness.
‘Ha! Ha!’ laughed Valentine, poking him gently—‘we never quite know what he’ll be up to. But you will come, won’t you?’
Hugh Curtis had said he would.
All the same, when Saturday morning came he began to regret his decision and to wonder whether it might not honourably be reversed. He was a man in early middle life, rather set in his ideas, and, though not specially a snob, unable to help testing a new acquaintance by the standards of the circle to which he belonged. This circle had never warmly welcomed Valentine Ostrop; he was the most unconventional of Hugh’s friends. Hugh liked him when they were alone together, but directly Valentine fell in with kindred spirits he developed a kind of foppishness of manner that Hugh instinctively disliked. He had no curiosity about his friends, and thought it out of place in personal relationships, so he had never troubled to ask himself what this altered demeanour of Valentine’s, when surrounded by his cronies, might denote. But he had a shrewd idea that Munt would bring out Valentine’s less sympathetic side. Could he send a telegram saying he had been unexpectedly detained? Hugh turned the idea over; but partly from principle, partly from laziness (he hated the mental effort of inventing false circumstances to justify change of plans), he decided he couldn’t. His letter of acceptance had been so unconditional. He also had the fleeting notion (a totally unreasonable one) that Munt would somehow find out and be nasty about it.
So he did the best he could for himself; looked out the latest train that would get him to Lowlands in decent time for dinner, and telegraphed that he would come by that. He would arrive at the house, he calculated, soon after seven. ‘Even if dinner is as late as half-past eight,’ he thought to himself ‘they won’t be able to do me much harm in an hour and a quarter.’ This habit of mentally assuring to himself periods of comparative immunity from unknown perils had begun at school. ‘Whatever I’ve done,’ he used to say to himself, ‘they can’t kill me.’ With the war, this saving reservation had to be dropped: they could kill him, that was what they were there for. But now that peace was here the little mental amulet once more diffused its healing properties; Hugh had recourse to it more often than he would have admitted. Absurdly enough he invoked it now. But it annoyed him that he would arrive in the dusk of the September evening. He liked to get his first impression of a new place by daylight.
Hugh Curtis’s anxiety to come late had not been shared by the other two guests. They arrived at Lowlands in time for tea. Though they had not travelled together, Ostrop motoring down, they met practically on the doorstep, and each privately suspected the other of wanting to have his host for a few moments to himself.
But it seemed unlikely that their wish would have been gratified even if they had not both been struck by the same idea. Tea came in, the water bubbled in the urn, but still Munt did not present himself, and at last Ostrop asked his fellow-guest to make the tea.
‘You must be deputy-host,’ he said; ‘you know Dick so well, better than I do.’
This was true. Ostrop had long wanted to meet Tony Bettisher who, after the death of someone vaguely known to Valentine as Squarchy, ranked as Munt’s oldest and closest friend. He was a short, dark, thickset man, whose appearance gave no clue to his character or pursuits. He had, Valentine knew, a job at the British Museum, but, to look at, he might easily have been a stockbroker.
‘I suppose you know this place at every season of the year,’ Valentine said. ‘This is the first time I’ve been here in the autumn. How lovely everything looks.’
He gazed out at the wooded valley and the horizon fringed with trees. The scent of burning garden-refuse drifted in through the windows.
‘Yes, I’m a pretty frequent visitor,’ answered Bettisher, busy with the teapot.
‘I gather from his letter that Dick has just returned from abroad,’ said Valentine. ‘Why does he leave England on the rare occasions when it’s tolerable? Does he do it for fun, or does he have to?’ He put his head on one side and contemplated Bettisher with a look of mock despair.
Bettisher handed him a cup of tea.
‘I think he goes when the spirit moves him.’
‘Yes, but what spirit?’ cried Valentine with an affected petulance of manner. ‘Of course, our Richard is a law unto himself: we all know that. But he must have some motive. I don’t suppose he’s fond of travelling. It’s so uncomfortable. Now Dick cares for his comforts. That’s why he travels with so much luggage.’
‘Oh does he?’ inquired Bettisher. ‘Have you been with him?’
‘No, but the Sherlock Holmes in me discovered that,’ declared Valentine triumphantly. ‘The trusty Franklin hadn’t time to put it away. Two large crates. Now would you call that personal luggage?’ His voice was for ever underlining: it pounced upon ‘personal’ like a hawk on a dove.
‘Perambulators, perhaps,’ suggested Bettisher laconically. ‘Oh, do you think so? Do you think he collects perambulators? That would explain everything!’
‘What would it explain?’ asked Bettisher, stirring in his chair.
‘Why, his collection, of course!’ exclaimed Valentine, jumping up and bending on Bettisher an intensely serious gaze. ‘It would explain why he doesn’t invite us to see it, and why he’s so shy of talking about it. Don’t you see? An unmarried man, a bachelor, sine prole as far as we know, with whole attics-full of perambulators! It would be too fantastic. The world would laugh, and Richard, much as we love him, is terribly serious. Do you imagine it’s a kind of vice?’
‘All collecting is a form of vice.’
‘Oh no, Bettisher, don’t be hard, don’t be cynical—a substitute for vice. But tell me before he comes—he must come soon, the laws of hospitality demand it—am I right in my surmise?’
‘Which? You have made so many.’
‘I mean that what he goes abroad for, what he fills his house with, what he thinks about when we’re not with him—in a word, what he collects, is perambulators?’
Valentine paused dramatically.
Bettisher did not speak. His eyelids flickered and the skin about his eyes made a sharp movement inwards. He was beginning to open his mouth when Valentine broke in:
‘Oh no, of course, you’re in his confidence, your lips are sealed. Don’t tell me, you mustn’t, I forbid you to!’
‘What’s that he’s not to tell you?’ said a voice from the other end of the room.
‘Oh, Dick!’ cried Valentine, ‘what a start you gave me! You must learn to move a little less like a dome of silence, mustn’t he, Bettisher?’
Their host came forward to meet them, on silent feet and laughing soundlessly. He was a small, thin, slightly built man, very well turned out and with a conscious elegance of carriage.
‘But I thought you didn’t know Bettisher?’ he said, when their greetings had been accomplished. ‘Yet when I come in I find you with difficulty stemming the flood of confidences pouring from his lips.’
His voice was slightly ironical, it seemed at the same moment to ask a question and to make a statement.
‘Oh, we’ve been together for hours,’ said Valentine airily, ‘and had the most enchanting conversation. Guess what we talked about.’
‘Not about me, I hope?’