“The people round here have taken to him wonderful,” put in Fortune.
Nutley looked sharply at him; he stood by the table, demure, grizzled, and perfectly respectful.
“Why, has he been round talking to the people?”
“A good deal, sir, among the tenants like. Wonderful how he gets on with them, for a city-bred man. I don’t hold with city-breeding, myself. Will you be staying to luncheon, sir?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Nutley, preoccupied and profoundly suspicious.
VII
Suspicious of Chase, though he couldn’t justify his suspicion. Tested even by the severity of the solicitor’s standards, Chase’s behaviour and conversation during luncheon were irreproachable. No sooner had he entered the house than he began briskly talking of business. Yet Nutley continued to eye him as one who beneath reasonable words and a bland demeanour nourishes a secret and a joke; a silent and deeply-buried understanding. He talked sedately enough, keeping to the subject even with a certain rigour—acreage, rents, building possibilities; an intelligent interest. Still, Nutley could have sworn there was irony in it. Irony from Chase? Weedy, irritable little man, Chase. Not to-day, though; not irritable to-day. In a good temper. (Ironical?) Playing the host, sitting at the head of the refectory-table while Nutley sat at the side. Naturally. Very cordial, very open-handed with the port. Quite at home in the dining-room, ordering his dog to a corner; and in the library too, with his pipes and tobacco strewn about. How long ago was it, since Nutley was warning him not to slip on the polished boards?
Then a stroll round the garden, Chase with crumbs in his pocket for the peacocks. When they saw him, two or three hopped majestically down from the parapet, and came stalking towards him. Accustomed to crumbs evidently. “You haven’t had them destroyed, then?” said Nutley, eyeing them with mistrust and disapproval, and Chase laughed without answering. Up the centre walk of the garden, and back by the herbaceous borders along the walls: lilac, wistaria, patches of tulips, colonies of iris. All the while Chase never deviated from the topic of selling. He pointed out the house, folded in the hollow down the gentle slope of the garden. “Not bad, for those who like it. Thirty thousand for the house, I think you said?” “Then why the devil,” Nutley wanted to say, but refrained from saying, “do you turn away people who come in a big car?” They strolled down the slope, Chase breaking from the lilac bushes an armful of the heavy plumes. He seemed to do it with an unknowing gesture, as though he couldn’t keep his hands off flowers, and then to be embarrassed on discovering in his arms the wealth that he had gathered. It was as though he had kept an adequate guard over his tongue while allowing his gestures to escape him. He took Nutley round to the entrance, where the station cab was waiting, and unlocked the gate with the key he carried in his pocket.
“You go back to Wolverhampton to-morrow?” said Mr. Nutley, preparing to depart.
“That’s it,” replied Chase. Did he look sly, or didn’t he?