It was with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance that he saw Lord Inverbroom walking towards him along Alfred Road when he left the Stores that afternoon. The curiosity was due to the desire to see how Lord Inverbroom would behave, whether he would cross the street or cut him dead; the annoyance arose from the fact that he could not determine how to behave himself at this awkward encounter. But when he observed that there was to be no cutting or crossing the street at all, but perfect cordiality and an outstretched hand, it faintly and pleasantly occurred to him that, owing to his letter, there might be forthcoming another election at the Club, with a request that he would submit himself to a further suffrage. That would certainly have pleased him, for he had sufficient revengefulness in his character to decline such a proposition with thanks.
No such proposition was submitted to him.
‘I was just going to leave this note at your office, Sir Thomas,’ said Lord Inverbroom. ‘May I give it you instead and save myself a further walk? It is just the acknowledgment of your letter about the termination of our lease. Perhaps you will glance at it, to see that it is in order.’
Keeling felt, in spite of his business-like habits, that this was unnecessary. True, this was a matter of business, and he should have verified the correctness of Lord Inverbroom’s information. But instead he merely put it into his pocket.
‘That is all right,’ he said.
‘Are you going home?’ asked the other. ‘My wife, I know, is calling on Lady Keeling, and she will pick me up there. If she has not been so fortunate as to find Lady Keeling in, she will wait for me in the motor. May we not walk down there together?’
‘I shall be delighted,’ said Keeling. He still did not know how to behave, but was gradually becoming aware that no ‘behaviour’ was necessary. ‘Behaviour’ as such, did not seem to exist for his companion, and he could not help wondering what took its place.
‘My wife is furious with me,’ Lord Inverbroom went on. ‘I have succumbed to the Leonardo book, instead of having the dining-room ceiling whitewashed. She has a materialistic mind, preferring whitewash to Leonardo. Besides, as I told her, she never looks at the ceiling, and I shall often look at my book. Have you come across anything lately which life is not worth living without? Perhaps you had better not tell me if you have, or I shall practise some further domestic economy.’
‘I shall be very pleased to show you anything I’ve got,’ said Keeling. ‘We will have a cup of tea in my library unless Lady Inverbroom is waiting in your motor.’
‘Ah, that would be a great treat. Let us do that, in any case, Sir Thomas. Surely we can go in some back way so as to escape my wife’s notice if she is really waiting outside. It will do her good to wait: she is very impatient.’