The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [12]
As was so often the case, my dear Emerson’s thoughts were the reflection of my own, though he did not express them quite as delicately as I would have done. Squinting narrowly at his sister-in-law, he demanded, ‘She is not pregnant again, surely? It is unnatural, Peabody. I cannot conceive why a woman –’
‘Hush, Emerson,’ I said, poking him gently with my parasol.
Emerson looked warily at Ramses. He had never fully recovered from a conversation the previous winter, during which he had been obliged to discuss with Ramses certain matters which do not ordinarily interest an English gentleman until he has reached the age of twenty-five or thirty.
Ramses stood stooped under the weight of the cat, who was lying across his narrow shoulders; but Ramses had been known to talk – at length – under even more adverse conditions. ‘I am eager to question Aunt Evelyn concerning that,’ he remarked. ‘The information you gave me, Papa, was inadequate to explain why any sensible individual would place himself – or, particularly, herself – in positions that are at best unnatural and at worst –’
‘Be still, Ramses,’ Emerson shouted, crimsoning. ‘I told you never to discuss –’
‘You are not to ask your Aunt Evelyn anything of the kind,’ I exclaimed.
Ramses said nothing. His silence suggested that he was working on ways to get around my prohibition. I had no doubt he would succeed.
Thanks to Emerson’s imposing physical presence and loud voice we were among the first to disembark, and I rushed towards Evelyn with outstretched arms. Conceive of my surprise when, just as I was about to enter her fond embrace, I was seized by a tall, portly individual in a black frock coat and silk hat, who pressed me to his enormous stomach and planted a whiskery kiss on my forehead. Extricating myself instantly from his embrace, I was about to retaliate with a shrewd blow from my handy parasol when the man exclaimed, ‘My dear sister!’
I was his sister. That is to say, he was my brother – my brother James, whom I had not seen for several years (because I had taken considerable pains to avoid him).
It was no wonder I had not recognized him immediately. Once he had been stout. Now the only words that could begin to do justice to his size were words such as corpulent, obese, and elephantine. Limp whiskers framed a face as round and red as a hunting moon. Instead of retreating into a normal neck, his chins advanced, roll upon roll, until they met a swelling corporation uninterrupted by any hint of a waistline. When he smiled, as he was smiling now, his cheeks swelled up and squeezed his eyes into slits.
‘What the devil are you doing here, James?’ I demanded.
From my dear Evelyn, standing to one side, came a gentle cough of remonstrance. I directed a nod of apology to her, but I did not feel obliged to apologize to James for my blunt but understandable language.
‘Why, I am here to welcome you, of course,’ was James’s smooth reply. ‘It has been too long, dearest of sisters; the time has come for familial affection to mend the rents of misunderstanding.’
Emerson had wasted no time in clasping his brother’s hand and pumping it with the hearty force that is the Englishman’s manner of displaying affection in public. Placing a brotherly arm around Evelyn’s slim shoulders, he remarked, ‘Is that James? Good Gad, Peabody, how fat he has become. So much for the roast beef of old England, eh? And the port and the Madeira and the claret! Why doesn’t he go away?’
‘He says he has come to welcome us home,’ I explained.
‘Nonsense, Peabody. He must want something from you; he never comes to see us unless he wants something. Find out what it is, tell him “no,” and let us be off.’