“I beg your pardon,” he apologised. “I permitted my attention to wander. The coming of your uncle reminds me of a task which I still have to perform.”
He left her with a little bow, and turning towards the house, stiff, formal, precise, keeping always in the middle of the path and ascending the grey stone steps with measured tread, disappeared a few moments later through the wide-flung oak doors. She watched him until he was out of sight, unaccountably disturbed. Then Gregory came and claimed her. There was to be still another set of tennis.
CHAPTER VII
Endacott laughed cynically but not altogether unkindly when Claire had finished her carefully prepared little speech that night after dinner. Their coffee had been served as usual out of doors under the cedar tree and Claire had returned with her uncle to the study, still pleading the cause which the events of the afternoon had made to her almost vital. He went at once to the sideboard and helped himself to a whisky and soda.
“It is fortunate, Claire,” he said, “that I am a person of even temperament; fortunate for you, perhaps, that I appreciate your presence here and your companionship so much. I have listened to you, I think you will admit, with patience. I shall now be as frank with you as I was with your Aunt Angèle last evening.”
He took a long gulp of his drink, uncovered a tobacco jar and filled his small pipe. Afterwards he exchanged his dinner coat for a dressing gown which had been placed on a chair in readiness, tied it round him and seated himself at the writing table. He dragged the steel-clamped coffer of manuscripts to his side and produced the key from his pocket. He did not at once open it, however. He swung around and faced Claire.
“You women,” he pronounced, “stir my anger with these violent partialities. God knows your Aunt Angèle has nothing to love those Ballastons for. Yet she in her pleading was even worse than you. Father and son, they are both of the same mould; selfish, intolerant, proud, good to look at, if you will, but parasites in the great world of deeds and thoughts. I will grant them courage but I deny them principle. I ask myself in wonder why I find you pleading for them? Well, I know. They have the gifts women love, the gifts which make women miserable. Fools! Your Aunt Angèle is a fool! You are a fool!”
“I don’t think we are anything of the sort, Uncle,” she retorted bravely. “I can’t even see that it is foolish to ask a perfectly reasonable thing for people whom you like. Sir Bertram may be everything that you say. I only know that I like him. I don’t like bad people as a rule, but I like him.”
“And what about the son?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing, his thin but bushy eyebrows coming together.
“I like him too,” she declared stubbornly. “I was very angry with him on the steamer coming over, but since then I think that I understand him better.”