For a moment Vincelle lingered while Pendleton made his arrangement with the driver, and then they entered the house together. And it astonished Vincelle. It was so extraordinarily full of light and colour; on either side of the hall were open doors, showing big rooms brightly carpeted, with blazing fires and flowers everywhere. From some distant region he heard voices, laughter, footsteps. The man-servant ushered them into a smaller room, carpeted in red, and lined with book shelves, where on a little table before the hearth stood a huge punch bowl; he proffered and they accepted; then he led them up the fine stairway to a bedroom which was hospitably ready for them with a roaring fire. He returned with a jug of hot water.
“Dinner in half an hour, gentlemen,” he said, and went away.
No use denying that Vincelle was impressed. Certainly they didn’t do things in this way at home. Jugs of hot water, instead of a chilly and possibly very distant bathroom, wood fires instead of hot-air registers and gas logs, flowers in February, instead of potted palms and rubber plants. Moreover, this idea of leaving it to a servant to welcome guests impressed him by its casualness; his mother always received visitors with ceremony, as soon as they crossed the threshold. He recognized here something exotic and rather disturbing; he got up and went over to the bureau, where he could critically regard himself, for he had decided that, after all, he would try to please.
He was a handsome fellow, very dark; he had heavy features and a sullen and obstinate mouth; he was not very tall, but stalwart and powerful. He was twenty-five, and though he looked even younger, owing perhaps to that tragic sulkiness, he had a thoroughly adult and responsible air. He was no fop, like Pendleton; there was sobriety and decorum in the cut of his coat; he was even then every inch the business man. Evening dress did not become his thick-set figure, but he was naturally not aware of that.
“Do they have a gong—or send after you when dinner’s ready?” he asked, still intent upon his image.
“They do not! You’re supposed to know, and if you’re late, they don’t wait for you. Come on! You’re lovely enough!” said Pendleton. He surveyed his friend good-humouredly; it didn’t disturb him that Vincelle was handsome and he was not, or that Vincelle had money and was almost sure to make more. The Masons wouldn’t care about that. He was consoled by certain advantages of his own; he was lively, cheerful, witty in a very mild way; everyone liked him; he was, in an innocuous sense, a “ladies’ man,” master of the utterly lost art of polite flirtation. He was tall, slender, elegant, with a long, sharp nose and a bulging forehead; his hair and eyebrows were so light as to look almost white; he had wrinkles about his little blue eyes; it is of no significance to say that he was twenty-seven, because he was ageless, and would be in no way different ten or twenty years later.
“Come on!” he said, again.
In great decorum, conscious of their immaculate appearance and their value as eligible and admirable young men, they descended the stairs and entered the drawing-room. The subtle air of excitement which Vincelle had felt upon entering the house was intensified here, the same abundance of light and flowers, and a big fire. But with the addition now of an agreeable babel of voices.
Pendleton led him forward to a stout lady in black silk, with an august, kindly face and a very high colour.
“Mrs. Mason,” he said, “may I present——”