29 Three Men and a Maid

Mrs. Hignett experienced no diminution of her annoyance. She had not seen her nephew Sam for ten years and would have been willing to extend the period. She remembered him as an untidy small boy who, once or twice, during his school holidays, had disturbed the cloistral peace of Windles with his beastly presence. However, blood being thicker than water, and all that sort of thing, she supposed she would have to give him five minutes. She went into the sitting-room and found there a young man who looked more or less like all other young men, though perhaps rather fitter than most. He had grown a good deal since she had last met him, as men will do between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, and was now about six feet in height, about forty inches round the chest, and in weight about one hundred and eighty pounds. He had a brown and amiable face, marred at the moment by an expression of discomfort somewhat akin to that of a cat in a strange alley.

“Hallo, Aunt Adeline!” he said awkwardly.

“Well, Samuel!” said Mrs. Hignett.

There was a pause. Mrs. Hignett, who was not fond of young men and disliked having her mornings broken into, was thinking that he had not improved in the slightest degree since their last meeting; and Sam, who imagined that he had long since grown to man’s estate and put off childish things, was embarrassed to discover that his aunt still affected him as of old. That is to say, she made him feel as if he had omitted to shave, and, in addition to that, had swallowed some drug which had caused him to swell unpleasantly, particularly about the hands and feet.

“Jolly morning,” said Sam, perseveringly.

“So I imagine. I have not yet been out.”

“Thought I’d look in and see how you were.”

“That was very kind of you. The morning is my busy time, but … yes, that was very kind of you!”

There was another pause.

“How do you like America?” said Sam.

“I dislike it exceedingly.”

“Yes? Well, of course some people do. Prohibition and all that. Personally, it doesn’t affect me. I can take it or leave it alone.”

“The reason I dislike America—” began Mrs. Hignett bridling.

“I like it myself,” said Sam. “I’ve had a wonderful time. Everybody’s treated me like a rich uncle. I’ve been in Detroit, you know, and they practically gave me the city and asked me if I’d like another to take home in my pocket. Never saw anything like it. I might have been the missing heir. I think America’s the greatest invention on record.”

“And what brought you to America?” said Mrs. Hignett, unmoved by this rhapsody.

“Oh, I came over to play golf. In a tournament, you know.”

“Surely at your age,” said Mrs. Hignett, disapprovingly, “you could be better occupied. Do you spend your whole time playing golf?”

“Oh, no. I hunt a bit and shoot a bit and I swim a good lot, and I still play football occasionally.”

“I wonder your father does not insist on your doing some useful work.”

“He is beginning to harp on the subject rather. I suppose I shall take a stab at it sooner or later. Father says I ought to get married, too.”

“He is perfectly right.”

“I suppose old Eustace will be getting hitched up one of these days?” said Sam.

Mrs. Hignett started violently.

“Why do you say that?”

“Eh?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, well, he’s a romantic sort of fellow. Writes poetry and all that.”

“There is no likelihood at all of Eustace marrying. He is of a shy and retiring temperament and sees few women. He is almost a recluse.”

Sam was aware of this and had frequently regretted it. He had always been fond of his cousin and in that half- amused and rather patronising way in which men of thews and sinews are fond of the weaker brethren who run more to pallor and intellect; and he had always felt that if Eustace had not had to retire to Windles to spend his life with a woman whom from his earliest years he had always considered the Empress of the Wash-outs much might have been made of him. Both at school and at Oxford, Eustace had been—if not a sport—at least a decidedly cheery old bean. Sam remembered Eustace at school breaking gas globes with a slipper in a positively rollicking manner. He remembered him at Oxford playing up to him manfully at the piano on the occasion when he had done that imitation of Frank Tinney which had been such a hit at the Trinity smoker. Yes, Eustace had had the makings of a pretty sound egg, and it was too bad that he had allowed his mother to coop him up down in the country miles away from anywhere.

“Eustace is returning to England on Saturday,” said Mrs. Hignett. She spoke a little wistfully. She had not been parted from her son since he had come down from Oxford; and she would have liked to keep him with her till the end of her lecturing tour. That, however, was out of the question. It was imperative that, while she was away, he should be at Windles. Nothing would have induced her to leave the place at the mercy of servants who might trample over the flower-beds, scratch the polished floors, and forget to cover up the canary at night. “He sails on the Atlantic.”

“That’s splendid,” said Sam. “I’m sailing on the Atlantic myself. I’ll go down to the office and see if we can’t have a stateroom together. But where is he going to live when he gets to England?”

“Where is he going to live? Why, at Windles, of course. Where else?”