The coffee room at the Load of Mischief was not large enough to let the company distribute itself at different tables, each party conversing in low tones and eyeing its neighbours with suspicion. A single long table accommodated them all, an arrangement which called for a constant exercise of forced geniality. Bredon and Leyland were both in a mood of contemplation, puzzling out the secret of the room upstairs; Brinkman was plainly nervous, and eager to avoid discussing the tragedy; Angela knew, from experience in such situations, the value of silence. Only the old gentleman seemed quite at his ease, dragging in the subject of Mottram with complete sangfroid and in a tone of irony which seemed inseparable from his personality. Brinkman parried these topical references with considerable adroitness, showing himself as he did so a travelled man and a man of intelligence, though without much gift of humour.
Thus, in reply to a conventional question about his day’s sport, the old gentleman returned, “No, I cannot say that I caught any. I think, however, that I may claim without boasting to have frightened a few of them. It is an extraordinary thing to me that Mottram, who was one of your grotesquely rich men, should have come down for his fishing to an impossible place like this, where every rise deserves a paragraph in the local paper. If I were odiously rich, I would go to one of these places in Scotland, or Norway, even, though I confess that I loathe the Scandinavians. I have never met them, but the extravagant praise bestowed upon them by my childhood’s geography books makes them detestable to me.”
“I think,” said Brinkman, “that you would find some redeeming vices among the Swedes. But poor Mottram’s reason was a simple one; he belonged to these parts; Chilthorpe was his home town.”
“Indeed,” said the old gentleman, wincing slightly at the Americanism.
“Oo, yes,” said Angela, “we saw Mottram on the map. Was he a sort of local squire, then?”
“Nothing of that sort,” replied Brinkman. “His people took their name from the place, not the other way round. He started here with a big shop, which he turned over to some relations of his when he made good at Pullford. He quarrelled with them afterward, but he always had a sentimental feeling for the place. It’s astonishing what a number of group names there are still left in England. There is no clan system to explain it. Yet I suppose every tenth family in this place is called ‘Pillock.’ ”
“It suggests the accident of birth,” admitted the old gentleman, “rather than choice. And poor Mottram’s family, you say, came from the district?”
“They had been here, I believe, for generations. But this habit of naming the man from the place is curiously English. Most nations have the patronymic instinct; the Welsh, for example, or the Russians. But with us, apparently, if a stranger moved into a new district, he became John of Chilthorpe, and his descendants were Chilthorpes forever.”
“A strange taste,” pursued the old gentleman, harping on the unwelcome subject, “to want to come and lay your bones among your ancestors. It causes so much fuss and even scandal. For myself, if I ever decided to put a term to my own existence, I should go to some abominable place—Margate, for example—and try to give it a bad name by being washed up just underneath the pier.”
“You would fail, sir,” objected Brinkman; “I mean, as far as giving it a bad name was concerned. You do not give things a good name or a bad name nowadays; you only give them an advertisement. I honestly believe that if a firm advertised its own cigarettes as beastly it would draw money from an inquisitive public.”
“Mrs. Davis has had an inquisitive public today. I assure you, when I went out this morning I was followed for a considerable distance by a crowd of small boys who probably thought that I intended to drag the river. By the way, if they do drag the river, it will be interesting to find out whether there were, after all, any fish in it. You will let me be present, sir?” turning to Leyland, who was plainly annoyed by the appeal. Angela had to strike in and ask who was the character in Happy Thoughts who was always asking his friends to come down and drag the pond. So the uneasy conversation zigzagged on, Mr. Pulteney always returning to the subject which occupied their thoughts, the rest heading him off. Bredon was deliberately silent. He meant to have an interview with Brinkman afterward, and he was determined that Brinkman should have no chance of sizing him up beforehand.
The opportunity was found without difficulty after supper; Brinkman succumbed at once to the offer of a cigar and a walk in the clear air of the summer evening. Bredon had suggested sitting on
