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By Root 2638 0

Jeavons drawing-room. I was by no means sure that I felt myself equally at ease. The atmosphere of the house was not exactly restful. The other persons who made up the party were nondescript enough, but there was also the feeling that one had penetrated the outskirts of a secret society. Mrs. Conyers had seemed as subject as myself to this sense of disquiet. Perhaps it was merely that she had passed on to me her own agitation; for I was sure she was agitated about something. Lovell had certainly tried to prepare me for an unusual household, but to absorb such antecedent descriptions is never easy. Molly Jeavons’s noisy, absolutely unrestrained directness of manner was of a kind that suggested both simplicity of nature and certainty of her own position: both characteristics that can stimulate that streak of social cruelty that few lack. There could be no doubt that Tolland was showing signs of preparing himself for some onslaught. The reason for his fears soon became apparent.

‘I didn’t know you ever met anyone but your own relations, Alfred,’ she said, evidently determined to pursue that subject. ‘You always pretend to me that you never go anywhere. I only got you here tonight because you wanted to hear from her own lips Mrs. Conyers’s story about the Empress Frederick. I believe your quiet evenings at home are all make-believe and that you live a disgracefully fast life—the gayest of gay bachelors.’

Tolland denied this imputation emphatically. He did not seem in the least flattered at the suggestion that he might be, so far as social life was concerned, a dark horse. He was patently without the smallest personal vanity, open or secret, on the matter of cutting a dash in life. He came at last to the end of his protests.

‘Alfred was talking about his family all through dinner,’ said Molly Jeavons, turning once more to me. ‘You know they are all in trouble—every blessed one of them.’

‘It’s too bad of you to say that, Molly. I only asked for your advice about some of my nephews and nieces.’

Now he sounded thoroughly aggrieved, although at the same time unwilling to withdraw voluntarily from a conversation devoted to his relations.

‘What’s the matter with the Tollands this time, Aunt Molly?’ asked Lovell.

He had been making a tour of the room, ending with our group.

‘Oh, it’s Erridge again,’ she said.

She spoke as if the question were hardly worth asking.

‘What’s Erridge’s latest?’

Lovell, for his part, spoke as one expecting to hear an enjoyable piece of gossip about a character always to be relied upon to provide a good story.

‘Living as a tramp,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘So I’m told at least. Somewhere in the Midlands. Grew a beard. He has still got it, they say. I don’t think he actually slept in casual wards. The other tramps must have had an awful time if he did. As a child he used to talk in his sleep and bawl the house down with night terrors.’

‘Is he doing that now?’ asked Lovell. ‘Being a tramp, I mean, not bawling the house down—though I shouldn’t wonder if he doesn’t have night terrors still.’

‘He is back at Thrubworth. Getting cleaned up after his adventures—as much as Erry ever gets cleaned up. Smith goes back tomorrow. I am more and more coming to think that Smith is more trouble than he is worth. It’s convenient to have a manservant in the house, but I found this morning we were completely out of gin, and I know at least two inches remained in the bottle left when we went to bed last night.’

Lovell was obviously disappointed that nothing more sensational about Erridge was to be revealed.

‘Feingold had some story about “a lord” who was doing “social research”,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be Erridge. I don’t expect the dumps he stopped at were any more uncomfortable than he has made Thrubworth by now. The whole place has been under dust-sheets since he succeeded, hasn’t it? Do you know Erridge, Nick? He must be about a contemporary of yours.’

‘He is a year or two older. I used to know him by sight. His brother, George Tolland, was nearer my age, though I didn’t know him either. But he isn’t “Erridge