“I’ve been interviewing your man,” she said rather defiantly. “He produced that from the pocket of the car.”
“You overwhelm me with your kindness, Miss Gale,” said he. “I should never have had the courage to ask for it.”
The case contained the one-armed man’s patent combination knife and fork.
“Courage is such a funny thing,” said Olivia. “A man will walk up to a machine-gun in action and knock the gunner out with the butt end of a rifle; but if he’s sitting in a draught in a woman’s drawing-room and catching his death of cold, he daren’t get up and shut the window. These are real eggs, although they’re camouflaged in a Chinese scramble. One faithful hen is still doing her one minute day. The others are on strike.”
She felt curiously exhilarated on this first actual occasion of asserting her independence. Only once before had she entertained guests at her own table, and these were her uncle and aunt from Clapham, the Edward Gales, who came to her mother’s funeral. They were colourless suburban folk who were pained by her polite rejection of their proposal to make her home with them on a paying footing, and reproached her for extravagance in giving them butter (of which, nevertheless, they ate greedily) instead of margarine. Her uncle was a pallid pharmaceutical chemist and lived above the shop, and his wife, a thin-lipped, negative blonde, had few interests in life outside the Nonconformist Communion into which she had dragged him. Olivia had seen them only once before, also at a funeral, that of a younger brother who had died at the age of three. Her robustious country-loving, horse-loving, dog-loving, pig-loving father had never got on with his bloodless brother. A staunch supporter of the Church of England to the extent of renting a pew in the Parish Church in which, in spite of the best intentions, he had never found time to sit, he confessedly hated dissent and all its works, especially those undertaken by Mrs. Edward. His vice of generosity did not accord with their parsimonious virtues. Once, Olivia remembered, he had dined with them at Clapham and returned complaining of starvation. “One kidney between the three of us,” he declared. “And they gave me the middle gristly bit!” So Olivia felt no call of the blood to Clapham. And, for all her inherited hospitable impulses, she had been glad when, having critically picked the funeral baked meats to the last bone, they had gone off in sorrow over her wicked prodigality and lack of true Christian feeling. But for their dreary and passing shadows she had eaten alone—she caught her breath to think of it—ever since her father’s last leave—shortly before he died at Etaples—eighteen months ago. Her hostess-ship at the present moment was a bubbling joy. Only her sense of values restrained her from ordering up a bottle of champagne. She contented herself with a bottle of old Corton—her father had been a judge of full red wines, burgundy and port, and had stocked a small but well-selected cellar, and had taught Olivia what is good that a girl should know concerning them.
She watched her guest’s first sip, as her father had been wont to watch, and flushed with pleasure when he paused, as though taken aback, sniffed, sipped again, and said:
“Either new conditions are making me take all sorts of geese for swans, or you’re giving me a remarkable wine.”
She burst out radiantly: “How lovely of you to spot it! It’s a Corton, 1887.”
“But forgive me for saying so,” he remarked. “It’s not a wine you should spill on any casual tramp. Oh, of course,” he protested in anticipation. “Your politeness will assure me that I’m not a casual tramp. But I am.”
“I owed you something for bringing you on a fool’s errand. Besides, I wanted to show you what Todger’s could do when it liked!”