“These are for you,” she said. “Philippa won’t touch them. There! Let me choose you out some nice ones.”
The servant had followed her and now stood like a pompous and embarrassed policeman uncertain of his duty. It seemed to give Mrs. Renshaw some kind of inscrutable satisfaction to cause this embarrassment. She sat down beside the priest and handed him the grapes, one by one, as if he were a child.
“Brand orders these from London,” she remarked, “that’s why we get them now. I call it extravagance, but he will do it.” She sighed heavily. “Philippa,” she repeated, “prefers garden fruit so you mustn’t mind eating them. They’ll get bad if they’re not eaten.”
The servant hastened on tip-toe to the dining-room door, peered in, and returned to his post. He looked for all the world, thought Mr. Traherne, like a ruffled and disconsolate heron. “He’ll stand on one leg soon,” he said to himself.
“When do you expect your son home?” he enquired again. “Perhaps I might call at the cottage and walk back with him.”
“Yes, do!” Mrs. Renshaw cried with unexpected eagerness. “Do call at the cottage. It’ll be nice for you to join them. They’ll all be there—Mr. Sorio and the Doctor and Brand. Yes, do go in! It’ll be a relief to me to think of you with them. I’m sometimes afraid that cousin Tassar encourages dear Brand to drink too much of that stuff he likes to make. They will put spirits into it. I’m always telling them that lime juice would be just as nice. Yes, do go, Mr. Traherne, and insist on having lime juice!”
The priest looked at the lady, looked at the servant and looked at the hall door. He felt a faint scratching going on inside his cloak. Ricoletto was beginning to wake up.
“Well, I’ll go!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet.
At that moment the figure of Philippa, exquisitely dressed in a dark crimson gown, emerged from the dining-room. She advanced slowly towards them with more than her usual air of dramatic reserve. Mr. Traherne noticed that her lips were even redder than her dress. Her eyes looked dark and tired but they shone with a mischievous menace. She held out her hand sedately and as he took it, fumbling with his ulster, “I hope you enjoyed your grapes,” she said.
“You ought to apologize to Mr. Traherne for appearing before him at all in that wild costume,” remarked Mrs. Renshaw. “You wouldn’t think she’d been at the dentist’s all day, would you? She looks as if she were in a grand London house, doesn’t she, just waiting to go to a ball?”