“Oh, I was!”
Miss Ora Blake had a large round pink face, large round blue eyes, and a lot of white fluffy curls surmounted by two bows of blue satin ribbon and a little frill of lace. She gazed solemnly at Clarice and said,
“When I was young a girl wouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? We saw a great deal of each other when I was here before.”
“Seven years ago.”
Clarice laughed.
“We were very friendly, you know-and I don’t forget my friends.”
Seven years ago! Miss Ora began to make calculations. Edward couldn’t have been much more than a schoolboy-eighteen at the outside. Because he wasn’t more than twenty-five now. She remembered him in his pram. Yes, he would have been eighteen when Miss Dean came down to nurse James Random through that attack of influenza. And she was already trained then. She might look young, but she must be several years older than Edward. That bright colour of hers was deceptive. Miss Ora decided to her own satisfaction that Clarice Dean might quite easily be as much as thirty.
She said tartly,
“That was a very large basket of apples.”
“Mrs. Alexander said-”
“Mrs. Alexander wants to sell her fruit. But my sister Mildred won’t be pleased-she won’t be pleased at all. She will think we have been extravagant. She does not care for fruit herself, and we shall have to be tactful. You had better tell Mrs. Deacon to put the apples away out of sight and return the basket when she goes to her dinner.”
CHAPTER VI
Arnold Random walked down the south drive until he came to the lodge, where he paused for a moment before lifting the latch of the wicket gate. He was a man of medium height with a spare frame and features of the family type. Most of the Randoms had these features-dark and straight, with brown or hazel eyes. But they could be worn with a difference. In James Random they had been permeated with benevolence. Jonathan had not had them at all, having inherited the fair Foxwell strain from his mother-fair and foolish, as local gossip went. In Edward the type had reappeared, emphasized, if anything, by its temporary eclipse. In Arnold it was, as it were, refined. He had the distinguished turn of the head, the upright carriage, and the beautiful hands of the aristocrat. He could, as Lord Burlingham had once remarked, have won a prize for looking down his nose against any man in England. He looked down it now at Emmeline’s garden. Then he lifted the latch, took a few steps along the narrow paved path which led up to the door, and looked again.
The garden was a rectangular patch cut out of the park- flower-beds and roses on this side, and vegetables at the back. It should have been meticulously neat and tidy-a lodge garden should always be tidy. In point of fact it never was, and never had been since his brother James had let Emmeline have it. Arnold frowned at the recollection. It was not that he had any objection to flower-beds as such. He could recall a very neat and tasteful arrangement of scarlet geraniums, yellow calceolarias and blue lobelias, never a dead bloom, never a leaf out of place. But that was in old Hardy’s time. Ever since Emmeline had been here things had been going from bad to worse. Great sprawling Michaelmas daisies and sunflowers. Pink and white anemones. Snapdragon and mignonette growing among the roses. And a lot of other half gone-over things whose names he didn’t pretend to know. And the roses! The place was fairly smothered with them! They certainly throve-the air was quite heavy with their scent. But how unpruned, how completely out of hand! They would certainly have to go. The place was a wilderness. And the climbers on the lodge must be drastically reduced.
It was at this point that something stirred in the undergrowth and Lucifer, late Smut, emerged, walking delicately, black tail uplifted, eyes glowing like jewels in the sun. Mr. Random did not like cats. He said, “Shoo!” Lucifer sprang, did an exciting kind of twist in mid air, came down at right angles, and made off like a flash of black lightning with his tail in a double kink. Scheherazade sunning herself on the windowsill watched unmoved, but Toby, a very ugly cat with abnormally long hind legs and only one ear, jumped down and vanished into a tangle of mint and lavender. He had been kicked and illtreated in his youth before Emmeline rescued him, and he did not quite forget it. When people said “Shoo!” he shoo’d. There were three other cats in sight, but they did not take any notice. Arnold Random looked bleakly at them and let the knocker fall rather hard against Emmeline’s front door.
She had quite a small kitten in her arms as she opened it. Its mother, a pretty grey half-Persian, walked beside her, mewing in a plaintive manner. Emmeline wore a blue smock. Her fair hair was not as tidy as it might have been. She had been turning out her little back room, and that had meant moving Amina and her kittens. Amina didn’t like it at all, and one of the kittens had crawled under the tallboy which had come to her from the same grandmother as the piano, and wouldn’t come out. Amina was rapidly becoming distracted, and it was really a most inconvenient moment for Arnold to call. She would not, of course, have dreamed of letting him know this, so she smiled her sweet, vague smile and said, “How kind of you! Do come in!”
Amina’s basket was, quite temporarily, in the middle of the drawing-room floor. A small shrieking kitten scrabbled at the edge in a frantic effort to escape. Emmeline pushed it back, gave it the one she was holding for company, and carried the basket through to the kitchen, followed by Amina, who walked processionally with her tail stiffly erect and mourned in a really piercing manner.
The noise died down, and Emmeline shut two doors and made her apologies.
“I am so sorry, Arnold. She doesn’t like the kittens being moved.”
“So I observed.”
Emmeline had long ceased to expect warmth from Arnold, but he was not always quite as bleak as this. He was going to be difficult, and she would never get the back room done, to say nothing of the kitten under the tallboy. Trying to look on the bright side, it occurred to her that it might get tired of being there and come out. She folded her hands in her lap and gazed attentively at her brother-in-law. Quite impossible to look at him without seeing that he was put out. Men were rather easily put out by house-cleaning and things being out of their proper place. Even her dear Jonathan, who was always so good-tempered- Her thoughts broke off, because Arnold said,
“I am told that Edward is here.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I am informed that Lord Burlingham is giving him the agency.”
“Oh, yes-so kind of him.”
“Indeed? It had not struck me in that light. If I had to find a word to describe Lord Burlingham’s behaviour I think I should have used the epithet ‘impertinent.’ But there is no need for us to discuss the matter. It merely occurred to me to wonder what arrangement Edward intended to make. I understand that Mr. Barr is to retain the agent’s house, and I must say I should not consider it at all suitable for Edward to lodge in the village, even if there were anyone able and willing to take him in”
A pretty pink colour came into Emmeline’s cheeks.
“But Arnold, he will stay with me. Of course. I have never thought of anything else, and nor has he-at least-”
“That is a pity.”
“Oh, no!”
Arnold had remained standing. He walked now to the window. Another of those accursed cats lay stretched among the cushions of the low, broad seat-a yellow one this time, and probably shedding its hairs all over the place. Even if he had felt any slight weakening-and Emmeline’s eyes had done some heart-melting in their time-the sight would have stiffened him. The place was positively insanitary! He turned and said coldly,