"Here we are!" said he. "This is my place. Come in and smoke! It must be past your dinner hour up at 'The Flutes.' Come and have something with me."
Harry laughed. "They have already ceased wondering at my erratic habits," he said. "New Zealand is a bad place for method."
He followed Bethel in. It was a tiny hall, and on entering he stumbled over an umbrella-stand that lounged forward in a rickety position. Bethel apologised. "We're in a bit of a mess," he said. "In fact, to tell the truth, we always are!" He hung his coat in the hall and led the way into the dining-room. Mrs. Bethel and her daughter came forward. The little woman was amazing in a dress of bright red silk and an absurd little yellow lace cap. Only half the table was laid; for the rest a shabby green cloth, spotted with ink, formed a background for an incoherent litter of papers and needlework. The walls were lined with books and there were some piled on the floor.
A cold shoulder of mutton, baked potatoes in their skins, a melancholy glass dish containing celery, and a salad bowl startlingly empty, lay waiting on the table.
"Anne," said Bethel, "I've brought a guest—up with the family port and let's be festive."
His great body seemed to fill the room, and he brought with him the breath of the sea and the wind. He began to carve the mutton like Siegfried making battle with Fafner, and indeed again and again during the evening he reminded Harry of Siegfried's impetuous humour and rejoicing animal spirits.
Mrs. Bethel was delighted. Her little eyes twinkled with excitement, her yellow cap was pushed awry, and her hands trembled with pleasure. It was obvious that a visitor was an unusual event. Miss Bethel had said very little, but she had given Harry that same smile that he had seen before. She busied herself now with the salad, and he watched her white fingers shine under the lamplight and the white curve of her neck as she bent over the bowl. She was dressed in some dark stuff—quite simple and unassuming, but he thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful.
He said very little, but he was quietly happy. Bethel did not talk very much; he was eating furiously—not greedily, but with great pleasure and satisfaction. Mrs. Bethel talked continuously. Her eyes shone and her cap bobbed on her head like a live thing.
"I said, Mr. Trojan, after our meeting the other day, that you would be a friend. I said so to Mary coming back. I felt sure that first day. It is so nice to have some one new in Pendragon—one gets used, you know, to the same faces and tired of them. In my old home, Penlicott in Surrey, near Marlwood Beeches—you change at Grayling Junction—or you used to; I think you go straight through now. But there you know we knew everybody. You really couldn't help it. There was really only the Vicar and the Doctor, and he was so old. Of course there were the Draytons; you must have heard of Mr. Herbert Drayton—he paints things—I forget quite what, but I know he's good. They all lived there—such a lot of them and most peculiar in their habits; but one gets used to anything. They all lived together for some time, about fifteen there were. Mother and I dined there once or twice, and they had the funniest dining-room with pictures of Job all round the room that were most queer and rather disagreeable; and they all liked different things to drink, so they each had a bottle—of something—separately. It looked quite funny to see the fifteen bottles, and then 'Job' on the wall, you know."
But he really hadn't paid very much attention to her. He had been thinking and wondering. How was it that a man like Bethel had married such a wife? He supposed that things had been different twenty years ago, with them as with him. It was strange to think of the difference that twenty years could make. She had been, perhaps, a little pretty, dainty thing then—the style of girl that a strong man like Bethel would fall in love with. Then he thought of Miss Bethel—what was her life with a mother like that and a father who never thought about her at all? She must, he thought, be lonely. He almost hoped that she was. It gave them kinship, because he was lonely too. The conversation was not very animated; Mrs. Bethel was suddenly silent—she seemed to have collapsed with the effort, and sat huddled up in her chair, with her hands in her lap.