VIII
Bertram was surprised to meet Joyce’s father in the Charing Cross Road on a day when he thought his elderly relative was at Ottery Park, deep in Domesday Book, or the Manorial system of England, or the Rights of Villeinage, or some other musty historical work in which he seemed to find much interest and drama, in spite of the more exciting events of contemporary life. Bertram wouldn’t have noticed him but for the remarks of two passers-by.
“Do you know that old buffer?”
“No. Who?”
“The Earl of Ottery. You remember? Colonial Secretary before the War. The most reactionary old swine—”
Bertram was intending to take a slogging walk up to the north of London, to avoid one of Joyce’s tea-parties to Kenneth Murless and his crowd—he was not in a mood for Kenneth’s brilliant repartee—but he decided that it might be well to have a word with his father-in-law.
Lord Ottery was staring in at the window of a clothier’s shop in which a number of garments were labelled “Ready to Wear” and “Hardly Soiled.”
He was a heavy, broad-shouldered man, with a ruddy face, rather freckled round the eyes, and a reddish, unkempt beard and moustache. The professional sharper would have “spotted” him as a simple farmer up to London for the day, and an easy prey for the gold-brick story. And the sharper would have been extremely disillusioned.
“What are you doing here, sir?” asked Bertram, touching him on his arm.
Lord Ottery stared at him in a vague way for a moment, as though wondering who the deuce he might be, and then greeted him with fair geniality.