“I’m out to lunch.”
“Yes, Sir Charles.”
“Tell Parker that if one of my letters is ever left again on the table after I have gone, I shall speak to Lady Repton.”
“Yes, Sir Charles.”
“The car is not to be used on any account.”
“No, Sir Charles.”
He turned round abruptly and went down the steps and into the street, while one of his large footmen shut the huge door ever so gently behind him.
He was a man of such character, who conducted his household so firmly, that the man, though now five months in his service, dared exchange no jest with the butler who went quietly off to his own part of the house again. It was a singular proof of what rigid domestic government can do.
From her room Maria, Lady Repton, when she was quite sure that her husband was gone, slunk downstairs. With a cunning that was now a trifle threadbare, she discovered from Parker the housekeeper, from the secretary, from the butler, by methods which she fondly believed to be indirect, what plans her husband had formed for the day. She sighed to learn that she might not have the car, for she had designed to go and see her dear old friend widow, Mrs. Hulker, formerly of Newcastle, now of Ealing, a woman of great culture and refinement and one who gave Maria, Lady Repton, nearly all her information upon books and life. Of course there was always the Tube and the Underground, but they greatly wearied this elderly lady, and it was too far to drive. She sighed a little at her husband’s order.
He, meanwhile, was out in Oxford Street, and with the rapidity that distinguishes successful men, had decided not to take a motor-bus but to walk. The March day was cold and clear and breezy, and he went eastward at a happy gait. He did not need to be at his work until close upon eleven, and even that he knew to be full early for at least one colleague, the stupidest of all the Directors, a certain Bingham, upon whose late rising he counted. For the intolerable tedium of arguing against a man who invariably took the unintelligent side was one of the few things which caused Sir Charles to betray some slight shade of impatience.