VI
When Nutley came again, a fortnight after the funeral, to his surprise he met Chase in the park with Thane, the greyhound, at his heels.
“Good gracious,” he said, “I thought you were in Wolverhampton?”
“So I was. I thought I’d come back to see how things were going on. I arrived two days ago.”
“But I saw Fortune last week, and he never mentioned your coming,” pursued Mr. Nutley, mystified.
“No, I daresay he didn’t; in point of fact, he knew nothing about it until I turned up here.”
“What, you didn’t let the servants know?”
“No, I didn’t,” Chase entered suddenly upon a definite dislike of Mr. Nutley. He felt a relief as soon as he had realized it; he felt more settled and definite in his mind, cleared of the cobwebs of a vague uneasiness. Nutley was too inquisitorial, too managing altogether. Blackboys was his own to come to, if he chose. Still his own—for another month.
“What on earth have you got there?” said Nutley peering at a crumpled bunch that Chase carried in his hand.
“Butcher-boys,” replied Chase.
“They’re wild orchids,” said Mr. Nutley, after peering a little closer. “Why do you call them butcher-boys?”
“That’s what the children call them,” mumbled Chase, “I don’t know them by any other name. Ugly things, anyhow,” he added, flinging them violently away.
“Soft, soft,” said Nutley to himself, tapping his forehead as he walked on alone.
He proceeded towards the house. Queer of Chase, to come back like that, without a word to anyone. What about that business of his in Wolverhampton? He seemed to be less anxious about that now. As though he couldn’t leave matters to Nutley and Farebrother, Solicitors and Estate Agents, without slipping back to see to things himself! Spying, no less. Queer, sly, silent fellow, mooning about the park, carrying wild orchids. “Butcher-boys,” he had called them. What children had he been consorting with, to learn that country name? There had been an odd look in his eye, too, when Nutley had come upon him, as though he were vexed at being seen, and would have liked to slink off in the opposite direction. Queer, too, that he should have made no reference to the approaching sale. He might at least have asked whether the estate office had received any private applications. But Nutley had already noticed that he took very little interest in the subject of the sale. An unsatisfactory employer, except in so far as he never interfered; it was unsatisfactory never to know whether one’s employer approved of what was being done or not.
And under his irritability was another grievance: the suspicion that Chase was a dark horse. The solicitor had always marked down Blackboys as a ripe plum to fall into his hands when old Miss Chase died—obstinate, opinionated, old Phillida Chase. He had never considered the heir at all. It was almost as though he looked upon himself as the heir—the impatient heir, hostile and vindictive towards the coveted inheritance.
Nutley reached the house, where, his hand upon the latch of the little wooden gate, he was checked by a padlock within the hasp. He was irritated, and shook the latch roughly. He thought that the quiet house, safe behind its gate and its sleeping moat, smiled and mocked him. Then, more sensibly, he pulled the bell beside the gate, and waited till the tinkle inside the house brought Fortune hurrying to open.
“What’s this affair, eh, Fortune?” said Nutley with false good-humour, pointing to the padlock.
“The padlock, sir? That’s there by Mr. Chase’s orders,” replied Fortune demurely.
“Mr. Chase’s orders?” repeated Mr. Nutley, not believing his own ears.
“Mr. Chase has been very much annoyed, sir, by motoring parties coming to look over the house, and making free of the place.”
“But they may have been intending purchasers!” Mr. Nutley almost shrieked, touched upon the raw.
“Yes, sir, they all had orders to view. All except one party, that is, that came yesterday. Mr. Chase turned them away, sir.”
“Turned them away?”
“Yes, sir. They came in a big car. Mr. Chase talked to them himself, through the gate. He had the key in his pocket. No, sir, he wouldn’t unlock it. He said that if they wanted to buy the house they would have the opportunity of doing so at the auction. Yes, sir, they seemed considerably annoyed. They said they had come from London on purpose. They said they should have thought that if anyone had a house to sell, he would have been only too glad to show parties over it, order or no order. They said, especially if the house was so unsaleable, two hours by train from London and not up to date in any way. Mr. Chase said, very curt-like, that if they wanted an up-to-date house, Blackboys was not likely to suit them. He just lifted his cap, and wished them good-evening, and came back by himself into the house, with the key still in his pocket, and the car drove away. Very insolent sort of people they were, sir, I must say.”
Fortune delivered himself of this recital in a tone that was a strange compound of respect, reticence, and a secret relish. During its telling he had followed Mr. Nutley’s attentive progress into the house, until they arrived in the panelled library where the coral-coloured tulips reared themselves so luminously against the sobriety of the books and of the oak. Mr. Nutley noticed them, because it was easier to pass a comment on a bowl of flowers than upon Chase’s inexplicable behaviour.
“Yes, sir, very pretty; Mr. Chase puts them there,” said Fortune, with the satisfaction of one who adds a final touch to a suggestive sketch.
“Shouldn’t have thought he’d ever looked at a flower in his life,” muttered Nutley.
He deposited his bag on the table, and turned to the butler.
“Quite between you and me, Fortune, what you tell me surprises me very much—about the visiting parties, I mean. And the padlock. Um—the padlock. I always thought Mr. Chase very quiet; but you don’t, do you, think him soft?”
Fortune knew that Nutley enjoyed saying that. He remembered how he had caught Chase, the day before, studying bumbledories on the low garden wall; but he withheld the bumbledories from Mr. Nutley.
“It wouldn’t be unnatural, sir,” he submitted, “if Mr. Chase had a feeling about Blackboys being in the market?”
“Feeling? pooh!” said Mr. Nutley. He said “Pooh!” again to reassure himself, because he knew that Fortune, stupid, sentimental, and shrewd, had hit the nail on the head. “He’d never set eyes on Blackboys until three weeks ago. Besides, what could he do with the place except put it in the market? Tell me that? Absurd!”
He was sorting papers out of his black bag. Their neat stiffness gave him the reassuring sense of being here among matters which he competently understood. This was his province. He would have said, had he been asked a day earlier, that it was Chase’s province too. Now he was not so sure.
“Sentimentality!” he snorted. It was his most damning criticism.
Chase’s pipe was lying on the table beside the tulips; he picked it up and regarded it with a mixture of reproach and indignation. It reposed mutely in his hand.
“Ridiculous!” said Nutley, dashing it down again as though that settled the matter.
“The people round here have taken to him wonderful,” put in Fortune.
Nutley looked sharply at him; he stood by the table, demure, grizzled, and perfectly respectful.
“Why, has he been round talking to the people?”
“A good deal, sir, among the tenants like. Wonderful how he gets on with them, for a city-bred man. I don’t hold with city-breeding, myself. Will you be staying to luncheon, sir?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Nutley, preoccupied and profoundly suspicious.