“He can wear some of my evening things, and give him pyjamas, and—one of your own razors, Bates.”
I will not have other people using my razors or my fountain pen.
Edmund had always been an anxiety and an expense to me. He was now the only incalculable element left in my ordered life. But Bates seemed to be waiting for something, and it was as though a gleam of Edmund’s endearing eyes, the crisp curl above his forehead, the flash of his teeth between merrily curved lips, were faintly reflected from the expectant look in Bates’s face.
“Oh, and, Bates, you can bring up a bottle of the ’47 port, and decant it carefully.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else from the cellar?”
“No,” I said. “I suppose there’s whisky and claret in the dining-room.”
“Very well, sir,” said Bates reproachfully as he closed the door.
“No,” I thought. “I’m hanged if I’m going to have champagne up. He’d only expect it every night, and he hasn’t even written for a year. Now of course he’s only coming for more money.”
Then I rang the bell and Bates returned with suspicious alacrity. “You’d better bring up a bottle of the ’93 Pommery,” I said.
It was one of those delightful days in March when there is real daylight in the late afternoon, with a white gleam in the sky, and a wind keen enough to make possible the indoor joys of winter.