"There's Ayres!" Goodenough said as they drew up at the front steps. Santley knew Ayres fairly well. "He says Mrs. Phillimore has been dreaming—about the drains. There's no question of Ann not being here for at least some weeks more."
A gentle-faced rather timid looking man with a diffident manner came forward now with a smile and shook hands. Then he turned and rang the front door bell for them. There was no answer. Ayres looked as distressed as though he were the host.
"I think the parlourmaid must be busy...it's a busy household...these old houses make a great deal of work...Does your chauffeur know where the garage is? I can show him the—ah, here's Mrs. Moncrieff," he finished in tones of great relief.
Lavinia welcomed them warmly, hoped they would excuse the lack of men servants, and told them that lunch would be ready in half an hour.
"What brings you down here?" Goodenough asked Ayres, as the latter volunteered to show them to their rooms. "I thought it was the tableaux, but you've evidently been installed for days."
"Well," Ayres said importantly, "I'm here really as watchdog. Young Pusey is staying down here. He wants to look into one of our patents on behalf of his firm. That's very nice, but we don't want him to learn too much," and Ayres chuckled. "Moncrieff's a clever chap, and some of his newer ideas are worth keeping to ourselves for a bit...ah, here we are, Mr. Santley."
Santley stepped into a charming sitting-room, a north room which he could use as a studio should he wish it. A very comfortable bedroom opened off it, and if the house was short of maidservants, it seemed to make up for it in electric contrivances.
Just before one o'clock Flavelle Bruton arrived. She looked magnificent, and Santley, who was in the square, ill-kept lounge, wondered what did it. She had on a black pony-skin coat with silver fox around the neck, and a frock of peacock blue which seemed to set off her dead white skin. Lavinia seemed delighted to see her; as for Moncrieff, he barely glanced at her, though he brought a chair forward and pressed the merits of some particular cocktail on her attention. Something electric seemed to have entered with her. It used to be Lavinia who had this power, but she, to-day, seemed not at all her usual gay self. So pale was she that Santley thought of Mrs. Phillimore, and wondered whether any unpleasant scenes had taken place while he was in Belgium. But the maids looked the kind to leave at any hint of that sort of thing, and they were the same ones he had seen before.
"By the way," Flavelle said in her deep throaty voice, "there are a couple of the quaintest people roaming your drive. Are they safe?" Her eyes were beautiful as she glanced around her, talking and laughing. Now the lights were blue, as though a sheet of blue crystal lay over old amber, now the blue was gone, and you saw them as sheer green. Now that too passed and left them shining hazel. She did not glance at her host, Santley noticed, though she seemed to include him in her light easy talk. She was like a jet of flame in the room, and Santley found himself wondering whether he would not break his custom and ask her to sit to him.
"Those will be the 'Mishes,'" Lavinia said laughingly. "Friends of Ann Bladeshaw. You haven't met her yet? Oh, a charming girl, trying out some wonderful theories of education on Dolly and Dilly."
"And on other people," breathed Goodenough half to himself, half to Santley.
"She'll probably bring them in shortly," Moncrieff said, "when the glasses are out of the way."
"Twins? Yours?" Flavelle looked smilingly at Lavinia.
"No. They're distant little cousins of my husband's. But the Mishes—that's the name the twins give them, and it's too good not to use—are coming to lunch too. You don't mind—" to Moncrieff, whose brow had darkened. "They're not coming down again. This is their final visit to Ann. By chance, I too, met them in the drive, and I really couldn't help asking them to the one meal."
"Am I expected to ask him to say grace?" Moncrieff demanded in a tone that made them laugh.
Almost on the instant Ann and the twins came in followed by a prim looking couple. The woman was young and not bad looking, but as atrociously dressed as was her husband whose clothes seemed to have been made about the year the Prince Consort died. Glancing at them now and again at lunch, Santley did not care for either face. Both were absolutely vacant, as far as showing character was concerned. That meant, in his experience, that they had either purposely kept their faces blank, which was not likely in the case of missionaries or, they had such feeble characters that no records showed. But missionaries—among the islands to which they seemed to have been sent, many of whom were inhabited by cannibals...surely courage, and devotion to duty, and love of God, and a contempt for comfort, and even for life, should all be recorded. Yet not one of these qualities showed. The woman, when she smiled—that drawer aside of veils as a rule—merely looked sly. But the man looked like a fat lug, Santley thought. Yet both the children seemed devoted to them. Santley told himself that he must be unjust.
The usual skirmish between the twins took place as they were leaving, after having been quite remarkably good during the meal itself.
"I saw Dod this morning," Dilly announced with understandable pride in her tone.
"You didn't! You never did! No one never did!" came from Dolly in tones that were indignant, yet just a trifle awed.
"Saw God?" Moncrieff repeated, grinning, "What was He like?"
"Just an eye in the clouds—like on the nalter cloth—Ann told us that meant Dod—'broidered on the nalter cloth. Well, I saw, the same eye in the clouds looking down at me."
"That wasn't God," Dolly said contemptuously now, "God isn't just an eye! He looks like Great Uncle John."
"Dod isn't old," Dilly said to that. "Great Uncle John's ever so old."
"Yes He is. He's lived ever since—oh, ever since ever!" Dolly said firmly. "Hasn't He, Mr. Mish?"
"Since the beginning of time," came in a sonorous, pulpit-like tone from the missionary, who was eyeing his refilled glass with a look of ecstasy.
"So He's older than Great Uncle John!" Dolly said triumphantly. "Lots!"
"But, Mr. Mish was all wrong about David and Jon'than. Ann said so. He's wrong now!" Dilly said, uncrushed.
"I said YOU were all wrong," Ann explained promptly.
"'Muddied up with Cain and Abel,' you said, but it was Mr. Mish was muddied. I told you 'xactly what he told me. All 'bout how they fought, and how David killed Jon'than with a stone!"
Mr. Mish spluttered into his wine glass and all but choked at the laughter that swept round the room. Mrs. Mish gave Dilly a look which, to Santley, suggested a fondness for skinning small children. That look seemed to Santley oddly out of place. Every one was laughing at the child. Now Mrs. Mish was laughing too. As was her husband. But why that look of real fury and of something rather horrid...vindictive...? Santley told himself that he was getting to read all sorts of black things into the simplest expressions, just because he disliked the couple.
But they were not coming down again. They spoke of a fortnight in town to let Mr. Mish work at the London Library and then they expected to return to Galapagos.
"What a life for a pretty girl!" Flavelle said, as Ann vanished from sight a few minutes later with the Mishes and the children.
"And with missionaries thrown in," Goodenough said rather sourly. "But if a wilful woman maun hae her way, what of a wilful girl?"
"Rather a dreadful couple..." Flavelle went on slowly. "Forgive my criticising your guests, Lavinia—" Lavinia's smile gave her the 'Mishes' to say what she liked about, "—but personally I should count the spoons. He has a taking eye."
"The poor chap shows how frightfully fattening bananas and breadfruit and cocoanuts are." Goodenough looked with pardonable complacency at the reflection of his own spare frame in the glass opposite.
"I'll put Harry on it," Lavinia said promptly. "He's getting so thin that I'm worried every time he walks over grating." And the talk became frivolous.