Dr. Lucian, waiting in the hall, did not look out of the windows, but gazed round him, the familiar interior taking a new value as he gave it an attention that he had not given it for years.
The furniture was of heavy Spanish mahogany, the large armchairs upholstered in a blue-grey tapestry that was repeated in the long curtains dividing the hall from the approach to the smoking-room, library, and gun-room. The high, narrow black oak mantelshelf bore five admirable specimens of famille verte.
On the panelled walls hung portraits, all of them rather bad, of Aviolets, in heavy gilt frames. A large writing-table gleamed with silver and dark-green leather with gilt lettering on it, and a smaller table held newspapers and periodicals in orderly array. China stood in glass-fronted cabinets against the walls, and pot plants were grouped on either side of the oak staircase. There were no books, except the four that were all bound alike in loose green leather covers: “Postal Guide,” “Whittaker’s Almanac,” “Bradshaw,” and “A.B.C.,” standing together in a little green stand.
Besides the tapestry curtains, a further door opened out of the hall and Lucian amused himself by conjecturing what lay behind it. He knew that it was Lady Aviolet’s morning-room, but he had never been inside it.
He guessed at pink chintz, rather shabby now, and a writing-table fitted with innumerable pigeon-holes, laden with papers, leaflets, silver photograph frames, and little scarlet woolly garments stabbed together by wooden knitting-needles. A feeble water-colour painting of two young boys probably hung above the table—Ford and Jim Aviolet.
He felt sure that a great many smaller water-colours covered the walls, and that a draped easel set across a corner supported a representation of some such picture as Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World” or Watts’ “Love and Death.” There would be three or four little tables crowded with silver, and silver-gilt trifles, photographs of relatives, and a number of silver vases filled with flowers. A looking-glass would hang over the fireplace, and on the marble mantelshelf would be an ornamental clock, out of order, and a number of other photographs in silver or mosaic-work frames. A revolving bookcase might possibly stand in the middle of the room, containing books on gardening, one or two volumes of Kipling, a work of Whyte Melville’s, and some standard poetry.
No animal, he thought, would be allowed inside the morning-room, although Lady Aviolet was fond of Pug, and he lay in the hall now, panting and snorting. No one was fond of the black Persian cat, except Ford, to whom she belonged, but the black Persian cat, with scrupulous fairness, was also allowed to lie in the hall, like Pug.
Lady Aviolet, when she hurried in at last, even said, “Well, Puss,” as she went past, but she said it without conviction.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Lucian. I wanted to find some old illustrated papers to amuse my little grandson ... you know what children are like, in bed. You’ve not seen little Cecil yet?”
“No.”