‘Yes, of course, Michael dear,’ said Amabelle gloomily. It seemed hard that she should have been at such pains to retire from Lewes Park on purpose to avoid this very boring scene, only to find that Michael was staying in the next house to hers.
‘Are you staying at Compton Bobbin?’
‘I arrived yesterday.’
‘How did you find out that I was here?’
‘By a fortunate chance. I happened to go for a little stroll before lunch with Bobby, and just as we got on to the Stow Road a large blue Bentley drove past, and Bobby said, “Oh, look, there’s Amabelle’s car.” Not my usual luck, it would have been more like me to have stayed here three weeks without knowing that you were in the neighbourhood at all.’
Amabelle looked pensively into the fire. She did not and never had possessed a large blue Bentley. She thought out a few pungent observations which might be made to Sir Roderick when he came for his next game of bridge.
‘Bobby is a very naughty little boy; he needs a thoroughly good spanking,’ she said.
‘It’s really amazing how much he has grown up since I was in England last,’ said Michael. ‘Of course, it is three years, but even so it seems like a conjuring trick. When I left he was a little boy, rather young for his age. Now he is more like a man of thirty.’
‘Eton does that for them. Bobby has a peculiar character, I must say. I suppose he is the one complete egotist of this generation. It is very lucky for him, because it means that he will never, in his whole life, know the meaning of the word boredom. He will always be quite happy so long as he is with other people, because it is wildly interesting to him to watch the effect that he is producing, and their reactions to his personality. If they like him, so much the better; if not, there is the entrancing problem of how to make them. Leave him alone and he would collapse, of course; but in company, of whatever description, he is contented and amused, and always will be. Perfect from his point of view, because he will never have to be alone in his whole life presumably, and for the rare occasions when loneliness will be forced upon him he has a certain weapon of self-defence, an absolutely inexhaustible facility for sleeping.’
‘Yes, I should think that sums up his character pretty well,’ said Michael, who had taken no great fancy for his cousin. ‘And now that we are on the subject of Bobby, what’s all this mystery about his tutor? Is he Fisher or is he Fotheringay?’
‘By the way, yes, I must explain that to you, because it’s all my doing really. His name is Paul Fotheringay, a great friend of mine. He very much wanted to read the journal of Lady Maria Bobbin with a view to writing her life. Your aunt wouldn’t hear of lending it to him, which he very politely asked if she would do, so Bobby and I between us arranged for him to come down here under another name as Bobby’s tutor. You won’t go and muck it all up, now will you, Michael darling?’
‘Really, Amabelle, you are a baby. If you can play a trick on anybody you will. Poor Aunt Gloria; what a shame!’
‘Honestly, I can’t see any harm in it. In so far as anybody can have an influence over Bobby, Paul’s will only be for the good, and as for the book on Lady Maria’s Life and Works, I think it may be very well done and most amusing.’
‘It will certainly be amusing, from what I remember of the journal,’ said Michael, ‘although it will probably be a case of laughing at and not with my poor great-grandmother. Philadelphia has become extraordinarily pretty since I saw her last, by the way.’
‘Paul says she is so intelligent. He says she hardly ever speaks but that she has the most “heavenly instincts”. I think he is falling in love with her, you know.’
Michael looked rather thoughtful on hearing this, and presently took his departure, saying, ‘Good-bye then, my dear, dear friend. Please allow me to come and see you again soon. “Friendship,” Lord Byron said, “is love without its wings,” and that is a very consoling thought for me.’
When he had gone Amabelle went up to the nursery, where Elspeth Paula was having her evening meal.
‘Oh, you cad,’ she said to Sally, ‘how could you have left me like that? You must have seen I didn’t want to be alone with him; you are a monster, Sally darling.’
‘It had to be, sooner or later,’ said Sally calmly. ‘Well what happened?’
‘Oh, it was all most exhausting, you know, and frightfully dull. The same old arguments over and over again, just like a debate on protection versus free trade, each side knowing exactly what the other will say next and neither having any intention whatever of being convinced. Poor Michael, it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he’d been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can’t bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago.’
‘Even boring as he is?’
‘Yes, I think so. One never can tell, of course. It was all this nonsense about love that put me off so much. And of course he is a cracking old bore, isn’t
