“Oh, I don't!” said Randall, with all his accustomed urbanity. “I regard it as a tribute.” He perceived a speck of dust on his sleeve, and carefully flicked it away with the glove he was holding. “Which reminds me,” he said, “that I quite forgot to congratulate my clever Aunt Zoë on the beautiful words she gave to the world through the medium of the Press. I shall have to go to the Poplars, after all.”
Rumbold's lips twitched in spite of himself, but he only said: “Why bother?”
“Oh, I never neglect little acts of courtesy,” said Randall.
Mrs Rumbold watched him stroll away towards his hired car, and remarked that he was a caution.
“Queer chap,” Rumbold said, looking after him. “I've never known what to make of him. Is it all pose, or is he as malicious as he seems to want us to think?”
Randall's relatives entertained no doubts on this point His arrival at the Poplars was greeted by only one member of the family with any sort of acclaim, and that one, surprisingly enough, was Stella, who, from the window in the library, saw him alight from his car, and exclaimed: “Oh, good! Here's Randall!”
Mrs Matthews, rudely interrupted in the middle of the soulful lecture she was delivering on Death, Human Frailty, and her own thoughts during the Burial Service, sighed, and said that it made her doubly sad to think that her own daughter should have so little interest in Serious Things. Miss Matthews, sniffing into a damp handkerchief, said that it only needed that, and in any case she would like to know what Zoë thought poor Gregory's death had to do with her; and Guy, staring at his sister, ejaculated: “Good? Have you gone batty, or something?”
“No,” snapped Stella, “I haven't! I'd sooner have Randall being waspish than this—this atmosphere of faked-up emotion! At least he's normal, but you and Mother and Aunt Harriet are like people out of a Russian play!”
“I hope,” said Mrs Matthews, a quiver of anger in her voice, “that you are overwrought, Stella. That could be the only possible excuse for you. You grieve me more than I can say.”
Randall had entered the room at the beginning of this speech, and stood on the threshold, regarding his aunt with anxious concern. “No, no, we can't believe that!” he said soothingly. “You are bereft of the power of self-expression for the moment, perhaps, but you will find words, my dear aunt, if you give yourself time. After all, when have you ever failed to find words suitable to any occasion?”