Chapter 2

The car moved on, and she allowed herself to feel self-revealed in the
dignity of Castle Craven. Its very steepness was dramatic and
Shakespearean. Between little grey crowded houses, the cobbled street
swept up and through the black throat of an old gate. There was a sudden
enlargement of the sky. The tall houses drew back under the smiling
white clouds. A church tower with six pinnacles, each topped by a gilded
vane, made a glittering against the blueness. In the centre of the great
space a market cross rallied the town. There were houses of stone and
houses of Georgian brick, and a row of pollarded limes shading the
fronts of a line of shops. On the left a golden head swinging on an iron
bracket overhung the broad pavement. A little farther on the White Hart
Inn wore upon the top of its white-pillared portico a turban of flowers.
Two red ’buses, and half-a-dozen cars were drawn up by the Cross.

The obvious Pybus drew in towards the Saracen’s Head.

“Well, here we are.”

He was made to measure.

2

Double glass doors opened from the vestibule into the hall of the
Saracen’s Head. Directly opposite to you as you entered was the office,
with the registration book open upon the counter, and the fluffy fair
head of Miss Vallence—the bookkeeper and reception clerk—visible
between a green-baize letter-board and a time-table of the local ’bus
service. A strip of faded red carpet stretched from the glass doors to
the office. Four cane chairs and two smokers’ tables were arranged
symmetrically, one either side of this red strip of carpet.

On the right and the left, passages led to the lounge and the
coffee-room. A flight of stairs, covered with the same red carpet,
disappeared between two green china pedestals supporting aspidistras in
cherry-coloured pots. Between one of these pedestals and the office
window with a big brass gong hanging behind him like a halo, a little
man in a black alpaca coat stood for some eight hours each day.

He was the hotel “boots,” but his activities were various. He was a sort
of watch-dog and cicerone. Whenever a car drew up he would go out to
meet it. He carried up luggage, and carried it down again. He sold odd
stamps, and provided luggage labels, and distributed the morning papers,
and was sent upon errands. The Saracen’s Head knew him as John. His
rather big and well-polished black boots had—in that particular place
between the china pedestal and the office window—impressed a blurred,
worn mark upon the carpet. His digressions were frequent and various,
but returning from them he would resume his place by the brass gong like
a spider returning to the centre of its web.

His appearance was not a little remarkable. Imagine the head of a Roman
emperor upon the body of a boy of fourteen. He was old, how old nobody
knew. His brilliantly white hair fitted his big head like a legal wig.
He had very blue eyes, and a grey, inscrutable, resolute face.

“John——!”

“Yes, Miss,”—or, “Yes, sir.”

He had manners and dignity in an age which is peculiarly lacking in both
of them. Understanding people put him down as having been a servant in
some house of quality, a footman, or perhaps a groom. There was
something about him that suggested horses. Moreover, he could stand
quite still under the eyes of the hotel’s loungers, and such stillness
is rare. He might appear a funny little old fellow in his black alpaca
coat and grey trousers, and very clean as to the collar, but not so
funny as many a young fellow-my-lad might think. You took him
courteously, or you did not take him at all. Those blue eyes of his
could be as disconcerting as the eyes of Marius were to the slave.

3

It happened that this old Roman was standing in his usual place in front
of the brass gong when Mr. Conrad Pybus’s car pulled up at the curb. The
blue bonnet was the colour of a French soldier’s tunic. Every sort of
car pulled up at the Saracen’s Head, and their cargoes were as various
as the cars. But this was a car of quality, and old John walked along
the strip of carpet and out down the two well-whitened steps. He did not
hurry. He was both brisk and deliberate.

“Allow me, madam.”

The lady was in the act of opening the door of the coupé. Old John saw
her and not the man, for—in the act of leaning forward—she obscured
the figure of Mr. Conrad Pybus. She was a gentlewoman—as well as a
lady. She exhaled an indefinable perfume, and was smart with an
exquisite and simple rightness. Her dark and jocund eyes smiled at old
John from under the brim of a black hat. She was wearing a simple tweed
suit in which purples and browns were blended.

John held the door open for her.

“Any luggage, madam?”

There was something roguish in her glance.

“No; no luggage, thank you.”

“Very good, madam. The lounge is on the left. I will show the gentleman
the garage.”

She crossed the pavement and went up the two white steps, and old John
stood holding the handle of the coupé door. He was looking at Mr. Conrad
Pybus. His blue eyes seemed to grow very large with a staring,
challenging intensity. Mr. Pybus stared back, but his eyes were the eyes
of a man profoundly astonished and nonplussed. Also—he was profoundly
disturbed. His big, white face seemed to hang there in the interior of
the coupé like a bladder of lard. A gloved hand rested tentatively on
the knob of the gear lever.

There was an extraordinary stillness. It may have lasted for ten
seconds. Then the interlocked glances of the two men seemed to fall
apart, or rather—the younger man’s eyes flinched from the older one’s.
Old John was closing the door when a voice intervened.

“Oh, I have left my bag.”

She had come back for her vanity bag, and old John recovered it from the
seat, and closed the door of the coupé with a gesture of crisp
fierceness.

“The garage is on the left, sir, through the arch.”

Mr. Pybus, staring straight ahead through the wind-screen, pulled the
gear lever over.

“Are you taking lunch, sir?”

“I am.”

“You’ll find a side door in the yard, sir. Gentlemen’s lavatory just
inside, first on the right.”

Old John, turning with deliberation, walked back into the hotel, and his
white head regained its yellow halo as he resumed his place in front of
the brass gong.

4

That he as a man should sit calmly down to lunch after cutting his own
father was beyond Mr. Conrad Pybus’s capacity. Obviously he was not
himself, or rather—he was too much himself. He had reverted—and
without realising his reversion—to the little barbarisms of the
struggling thirties when he had scuffled with life in his shirt-sleeves.