“Pity. Lindale could have taken it home, and run his eye over it. If you're going my way, I'll walk along with you, Lindale.”
“I'm afraid I'm not, sir. We didn't come in the car. I'm going by way of the footpath.”
“Yes, yes, that's all right, so am I. Going to have a look at my new plantation. My land stretches as far as the path, behind this place, you know.”
“Now nobody must go before they've had a drink,” interposed Mrs. Haswell hospitably.
“Nothing more for me, thank you,” Mr. Drybeck said. “I must not hurry my kind chauffeur, but I have promised my housekeeper I will not be late. She likes to go to the cinema in Bellingham on Saturday evening, you know, and so I make it a rule to have an early supper to accommodate her.”
“By Jove, yes!” said the Major, glancing at his watch. “I must be getting along too!”
“Perhaps I had better go quietly away,” said Gavin, setting down his empty glass. “Something tells me I am not popular. Of course, I see now: I should have presented those papers to the Squire on bent knee, instead of handing them casually to his wife. It is all the fault of my upbringing.”
“If you want a lift, it'll be a bit of a tight squeeze, but I'll see what I can do,” said Charles, disregarding this speech.
“No, I shall wend my lonely way home, a solitary and pathetic figure. Goodbye, Mrs. Haswelclass="underline" so very many thanks! I enjoyed myself enormously.”
He followed the car-party to the drive, and saw them set off before limping in their wake.
“I say, is it all right? I mean, oughtn't you to have given him a lift?” asked Abby, who was sitting beside Charles in the front of the sports car. “Does it hurt him to walk?”
“Lord, no!” said Charles. “He can walk for miles. Just can't play games.”
“It must be fairly rotten for him, I should think.”
“Oh, I don't know!” said Charles, with cheerful unconcern. “He's always been like it, you see. Trades on it, if you ask me. People like my mother are sorry for him, and think they've got to make allowances for him. That's why he's so bloody rude.”
“I must say, it was the outside edge to walk off like that, and leave Mavis stranded,” admitted Abby.
“Yes, and absolutely typical. Does it for effect. Walter Plenmeller was a God-Awful type too, though I daresay being smashed up in the War had something to do with that. I say, sir,” he called over his shoulder to Mr. Drybeck, “were all the Plenmellers as bad as Walter and Gavin?”
“I was not acquainted with all the Plenmellers,” replied Mr. Drybeck precisely. “The family has been established in the county for five centuries.”
“Probably accounts for it,” said Charles. “Run to seed.”
“Tragic affair, Walter Plenmeller's death,” remarked the Major. “Never more shocked in my life! I must say, though I don't like Gavin, I was damned sorry for him. Of course, the poor chap wasn't in his right mind, but it can't have been pleasant for Gavin.”
“He committed suicide, didn't he?” said Abby. “Aunt Miriam's always a bit cagey about it. What happened?”
“Gassed himself, and left a letter to Gavin, practically accusing him of having driven him to it,” said Charles briefly, swinging the car round the corner into the High Street. “It was all rot, of course: he used to have the most ghastly migraines, and I suppose they got to be a bit too much for him.”
“Set me down at the cross-roads, Charles,” said the Major, leaning forward to tap him on the shoulder. “No need to come any farther.”
“Sure, sir?” said Charles, beginning to slow down.
“Quite sure—and many thanks for the lift!” said the Major, as the car stopped. “Goodbye, Miss Dearham: I hope we shall have the opportunity of playing again before you go back to town. Goodbye, Drybeck. Right away, Charles!”
They left the Major striding off in the direction of Ultima Thule, and turned the corner into the Trindale road. A few hundred yards along it, Charles stopped again to set down Mr. Drybeck, and then drove forward, and into Fox Lane.
“Come in and have a drink!” invited Abby. “Aunt Miriam would adore you to. She never drinks anything herself, but she's firmly convinced I can't exist without having gin laid on, practically like running hot and cold water, so she lays in quantities whenever I come to stay. She's an absolute toot, you know. Most people's aunts disapprove madly of cocktails, and say "Surely you don't need another, dear?" but she never does. In fact, you'd think she was a confirmed soak, the way she fills up the glasses.”
“Of course I'm coming in,” said Charles, swinging his long legs out of the car, and slamming the door. “That's why I brought you home.”
“I've a good mind not to ask you.”
“Wouldn't be any use at all. I've been hopelessly in love with your Aunt Miriam for years, and I shan't wait to be asked. What's more, she's my Aunt Miriam too.”
“She is not!”
“You ask her! She adopted me when I was a kid,” said Charles, opening the wicket-gate into the neat little garden of Fox Cottage, and stooping to thump with hearty goodwill, apparently much appreciated, the elderly and stout black Labrador, who had advanced ponderously to greet him. “You see! Even Rex knows I'm persona grata here, and you wouldn't say he was bursting with intelligence, would you? Go on, you old fool, get out of the light!”
“No, and I wouldn't say he had any discrimination either,” replied Abby, with spirit. “He'd welcome any tramp to the house.”
She glanced up to see how this retort was being received, and found that Charles was looking at her with a smile in his eyes, and something more than that. “Would he?” he said.
“Yes, he's—he's disastrously friendly,” she said, aware of a rising blush. “Oh, there's Aunt Miriam, at the window, beckoning to us! Come on!”
Charles followed her into the cottage.
Miss Patterdale, in happy unconsciousness of having timed her interruption inopportunely, greeted them with a nod, and said, addressing herself to Abby: “Well? Had a good time?”
“Lovely!” replied Abby.
“She can't very well say anything else,” Charles pointed out. “I was her host.”
“I don't suppose that would stop her. Have some gin!” said Miss Patterdale, supporting the character given her by her niece. “You'd better mix it yourself: I bought the things the man said people put in gin. I hope they're all right.”
Charles grinned, surveying the array of bottles set forth on the Welsh dresser. “Something for every taste. You have been going it, Aunt Miriam! Let's experiment!”
“What on earth is it?” asked Abby, presently receiving a glass from him, and cautiously sipping its contents.
“The discovery of the age. And a glass of nice, moderately pure orangeade for Aunt Miriam,” Charles said, putting a glass into Miss Patterdale's hand, and disposing his large person on the sofa beside her.
“You haven't put anything in it, have you?” said Miss Patterdale suspiciously.
“Of course I haven't! What do you take me for?”
Miss Patterdale regarded him with grim affection. “I'm not at all sure. You were one of the naughtiest little boys I ever encountered: that I do know!”
“That was before I came under your influence. Best of my Aunts.”
“Get along with you! Who was at your party? Besides Thaddeus Drybeck, and the Major! I know they were there.”
“Everyone was at our party, except you and Our Flora. In fact, it was the success of the season. The Major told us that Our Flora was expecting a litter. No, I don't mean that, though she looks so like an Ultima herself that I almost might.”
“Ullapool,” said Miss Patterdale. “I ran into Flora on the common, and she told me.”
“Ullapool!” exclaimed Charles reverently. “That's a new one on me, and it has my unqualified approval.”
“It isn't as good as Ultima Uplift,” objected Abby. “That's my favourite, easily!”
“What, more than Umbrella?” said Charles incredulously.
This, naturally, led to a lively discussion on the respective merits of all the more absurd names which Mrs. Midgeholme had bestowed on her Pekes. Miss Patterdale, entering into the argument, said in her incisive way: “You're both wrong. Ultima Urf was the best.”