At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [54]
Fancy made him seem to emphasise the word ‘Mrs.’, as if he wished to cast doubt on the legal union of the two of them. Quiggin started, then mumbled my name grudgingly. Smith threw open the door, bawling out his announcement, and propelled us within.
Erridge was sitting at a desk, the upper part surmounted by a glass-fronted bookcase filled with volumes enclosed for the most part in yellow paper wrappers. He jumped up immediately we entered, removing his spectacles and stumbling forward confusedly, as if our arrival was totally unexpected. He had been writing, and the open flap of the desk was covered with letters and papers which now cascaded to the floor; where they lay in a heap for the rest of the time we were in the house. A dark wall-paper and heavy mahogany furniture, not very different in style to that exiled to the back parts of the house, made the room seem smaller than its real extent, which was in fact considerable. There were no pictures, though rectangular discoloured patches on the walls showed where frames had once hung. Over the fireplace hung a chart which I took to be the Tolland pedigree, but on closer examination proved to illustrate in descending scale some principle of economic distribution. Shelves holding more books—classics, Baedekers and a couple of bound copies of the Boy’s Own Paper—covered the far wall. At the end of the room stood a table littered with current newspapers and magazines. Another smaller table had been laid with four places for a meal.
It was clear that Erridge lived and moved and had his being in this room. I wondered whether he also spent his nights there on the sofa. Such rough and ready accommodation might easily be in keeping with his tenets: except that the sofa looked rather too comfortable to assuage at night-time his guilt for being rich. Still embarrassed, so it seemed, by the unexpectedness of our arrival, he had now begun to walk quickly up and down the room, as if to give expression and relief to the nervous tension he felt. Quiggin, his own self-possession completely restored by contact with his host—like the warm glow that comes after a plunge in cold water—must have recognised these symptoms in Erridge as normal enough. He took Mona by the arm and drew her towards the window, where the two of them stood side by side, looking down at the gardens and the park beyond. They began to discuss together some feature of the landscape.
Left by myself in the middle of the room, I was at first uncertain whether to join Quiggin and Mona in their survey of the Thrubworth grounds, or, by interrupting his pacing with some conventional remark, to follow up Erridge’s vague but general greeting to the three of us on arrival. The latter course threatened to entail an attempt to march up and down the room beside him: like officers waiting for a parade to begin. On the other hand, to move away towards Quiggin and the window would seem ineffective and unfriendly, Idecided to glance at the economic chart for a minute or two in the hope that the situation might assume a less enigmatic aspect; but when a moment later Erridge paused by his desk, and began laboriously to straighten some of the few papers that remained there, I saw that he and I, sooner or later, must establish some kind of host-guest relationship, however uneasy, if we were to spend an evening together. The quicker this were done the better, so far as my own peace of mind was concerned. I therefore tackled him without further delay.
‘I saw your butler some months ago at the Jeavonses’.’
Erridge started, at last coming to himself.
‘Oh, did you, yes,’ he said, laughing uncomfortably, but at least putting down the pages of typescript which he was shuffling together. ‘Smith went there while I was—while I was away—doing this—this—sort of investigation. He has been with me for—oh, I don’t know—several years. Our other butler died. He had something ghastly wrong with his inside. Something really horrible. It was quite sudden. Smith is rather a peculiar man. He doesn’t have very good health either. You