Mrs. Osborne did not at once follow this.
“And since when have you said your grace after your tea, Eddie?” she asked.
“Oh, it wasn’t for my tea,” said he, “I was just thinking of everything, teas and breakfasts and luncheons and dinners and work and play and enjoyment alike. I’m thankful, I am thankful for it all.”
Then Mrs. Osborne understood and held out her plump hand with its large knuckles and immense jewelled rings to her husband.
“Eddie, my love,” she said, “and Lor’, here comes Alfred. Don’t go kissing my hand before him. He’d think it so silly.”
“Silly or not, Mrs. O., here goes,” said her husband, and imprinted a resounding caress on it.
Round the corner of the house had come a queer wizened little figure. Alfred, for all the heat of the day, was dressed in black broadcloth, wore a species of buckled goloshes over his shoes and had a plaid rug over his shoulders. From above the garish colours of this rose a very small head, which would have been seen to be bald had not its owner worn over it a cap of Harris tweed, the peak of which almost came over his eye. Below that appeared a thin little aquiline nose, a mouth so tight and thin-lipped that it looked as if it was not meant to open, and cheeks so hollow that they looked as if they were being sucked in by voluntary contraction. His walk was peculiar as his dress: he moved one foot a little forward and then put the other level with it. The same process repeated led to an extraordinarily deliberate progression.
Alfred was Mr. Osborne’s elder brother, older than him by some ten years. He had entered a broker’s office as clerk at the age of fifteen, and in the intervening years had, by means of careful and studied speculation, amassed a fortune, that had made Mr. Osborne on a former occasion remark that Claude would be a richer man than his father without ever having done a stroke of work for it. For Alfred (unmarried as yet) had made Claude his heir, a benefaction in return for which he “took it out” of Claude’s father and mother. By one of those strange fantasies of Nature which must supply her with so great a fund of amusement, he united to an unrivalled habit of being right with regard to the future movements of the stock market, an equally unrivalled eye for the merits of pictures, and had for years bought very cheaply such works as dealers and connoisseurs would run up and wrangle for at Christie’s a few years later. Here the inimitable humour of the construction of his nature came in, for well as he loved a picture, he loved a financial transaction a little more dearly, and sometimes he had collected works of an artist of no particular merit, in the consciousness that when dealers knew that he was buying them, they would begin to put the price up. Then he would gently unload, and leave them with unmarketable wares on their hands. He delighted in dealers, because they ministered to his recondite sense of fun; they did not delight in him, because they never knew whether he was collecting because he saw merit in an artist, or because his design was to make them think that such merit existed. One or two had tried to make friends with him, and asked him to dinner. He ate their dinners with a great appreciation, and scored off them worst of all. By some further strange freak of fancy, Nature had made it easy for him to acquire all that which his brother and sister-in-law could not acquire at all, for brother Alfred, in spite of his ridiculous clothes had the manner, the voice, and the ways of an eccentric and high-lineaged duke, cynical if you will, and of amazing ill-temper, a fancy which Mrs. Osborne delicately alluded to as being worried. He also gave the impression of infernal wickedness, a quality which he was quite lacking in, except as regards his ill-tempers. It was an undoubted fact that he invariably got the better of other competitors in speculating and picture dealing and such perfectly legitimate pursuits, which they might be inclined to attribute to diabolical alliances.
He crept toward the tea table, looked at his brother’s hand, which was held out in salutation, as if it was an insect, rejected it, and sat down pulling his shawl more closely about his shoulders.
“Fresh from your triumphs in the House, my dear Edward!” he said. “You positively reek of prosperity. You seem to be hot.”