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Lady Mary liked Mr. Satterthwaite. For all her gentleness of manner, she was a woman who had very definite views on the subject of whom she did or did not like.
Mr. Satterthwaite sipped China tea from a Dresden cup, and ate a microscopic sandwich and chatted. On his last visit they had found many friends and acquaintances in common. Their talk today began on the same subject, but gradually drifted into more intimate channels. Mr. Satterthwaite was a sympathetic person—he listened to the troubles of other people and did not intrude his own. Even on his last visit it had seemed natural to Lady Mary to speak to him of her preoccupation with her daughter’s future. She talked now as she would have talked to a friend of many years’ standing.
“Egg is so headstrong,” she said. “She flings herself into a thing heart and soul. You know, Mr. Satterthwaite, I do not like the way she is—well, mixing herself up in this distressing business. It—Egg would laugh at me, I know—but it doesn’t seem to be ladylike.”
She flushed as she spoke. Her brown eyes, gentle and ingenuous, looked with childish appeal at Mr. Satterthwaite.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I confess that I don’t quite like it myself. I know that it’s simply an old-fashioned prejudice, but there it is. All the same,” he twinkled at her, “we can’t expect young ladies to sit at home and sew and shudder at the idea of crimes of violence in these enlightened days.”
“I don’t like to think of murder,” said Lady Mary. “I never, never dreamed that I should be mixed up in anything of that kind. It was dreadful.” She shivered. “Poor Sir Bartholomew.”
“You didn’t know him very well?” hazarded Mr. Satterthwaite.
“I think I’d only met him twice. The first time about a year ago, when he came down to stay with Sir Charles for a weekend, and the second time was on that dreadful evening when poor Mr. Babbington died. I was really most surprised when his invitation arrived. I accepted because I thought Egg would enjoy it. She hasn’t many treats, poor child, and—well, she had seemed a little down in the mouth, as though she didn’t take any intere
st in anything. I thought a big house party might cheer her up.”
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.
“Tell me something about Oliver Manders,” he said. “The young fellow rather interests me.”
“I think he’s clever,” said Lady Mary. “Of course, things have been difficult for him….”
She flushed, and then in answer to the plain inquiry of Mr. Satterthwaite’s glance she went on.
“You see, his father wasn’t married to his mother….”
“Really? I had no idea of that.”
“Everyone knows about it down here, otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything about it. Old Mrs. Manders, Oliver’s grandmother, lives at Dunboyne, that biggish house on the Plymouth road. Her husband was a lawyer down here. Her son went into a city firm and did very well. He’s quite a rich man. The daughter was a good-looking girl, and she became absolutely infatuated with a married man. I blame him very much indeed. Anyway, in the end, after a lot of scandal, they went off together. His wife wouldn’t divorce him. The girl died not long after Oliver was born. His uncle in London took charge of him. He and his wife had no children of their own. The boy divided his time between them and his grandmother. He always came down here for his summer holidays.”
She paused and then went on:
“I always felt sorry for him. I still do. I think that terribly conceited manner of his is a good deal put on.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr. Satterthwaite. “It’s a very common phenomenon. If I ever see anyone who appears to think a lot of themselves and boasts unceasingly, I always know that there’s a secret sense of inferiority somewhere.”
“It seems very odd.”
“An inferiority complex is a very peculiar thing. Crippen, for instance, undoubtedly suffered from it. It’s at the back of a lot of crimes. The desire to assert one’s personality.”
“It seems very strange to me,” murmured Lady Mary.
She seemed to shrink a little. Mr. Satterthwaite looked at her with an almost sentimental eye. He liked her graceful figure with the sloping shoulders, the soft brown of her eyes, her complete absence of makeup. He thought:
“She must have been a beauty when she was young….”
Not a flaunting beauty, not a rose—no, a modest, charming violet, hiding its sweetness….
His thoughts ran serenely in the idiom of his young days….
He remembered incidents in his own youth.
Presently he found himself telling Lady Mary about his own love affair—the only love affair he had ever had. Rather a poor love affair by the standards of today, but very dear to Mr. Satterthwaite.
He told her about the Girl, and how pretty she was, and of how they had gone together to see the bluebells at Kew. He had meant to propose to her that day. He had imagined (so he put it) that she reciprocated his sentiments. And then, as they were standing looking at the bluebells, she had confided in him…He had discovered that she loved another. And he had hidden the thoughts surging in his breast and had taken up the rôle of the faithful Friend.
It was not, perhaps, a very full-blooded romance, but it sounded well in the dim-faded chintz and eggshell china atmosphere of Lady Mary’s drawing room.
