“She is too kind for words, but”—Cynthia looked at her husband deprecatingly—“dear Aunt Jane can be rather boring.”
“Ah, no companion for _you_. She belongs to another generation.” His bushy eyebrows contracted and his voice became grave. “_My_ generation. We old folk are poor companions.”
“She doesn’t belong to your generation.” Cynthia flushed, and her lips trembled. She put out her hand and laid it on her husband’s arm. “You are the best of companions—a companion that I have missed dreadfully.”
“There!” General Beckford laughed gaily. “Did you hear that, Ridsdale? That’s the sort of thing we old chaps like—even if we aren’t vain enough to think we deserve it. Leave that where it is, Yates.”
Yates was about to remove the hand-bag and take it to his master’s room.
“And you can go to Euston now—no hurry. Take a bus.”
“Smoking permitted?” And the General bowed again to his wife. “Light your cigarette, Ridsdale. No, I mustn’t have any coffee on top of whisky and soda.”
The little group at the table sat comfortably enough and talked lightly and easily. But somehow the presence of General Beckford had destroyed the graceful charm of the room.
He looked too big, too rough and shaggy for his delicately pretty surroundings. His grey hair was rumpled and unbrushed after the journey; his coarse grey suit suggested wild moorlands and brawling streams; his whole aspect was savagely picturesque rather than neatly refined.
No contrast could have been greater than that offered by the smooth, well-brushed, nicely polished young man who sat opposite to him on the other side of the small round table. The electric light shone upon Mr. Ridsdale’s black cloth and black silk, his stiff white shirt and soft white waistcoat, his jewelled buttons, his pearl studs, his butterfly tie, his white hand fingering a cigarette-tube, his smooth forehead, and his sleek hair plastered and brushed back with studious art and infinite care. He seemed elegant, shapely, even beautiful, when you compared him with his travel-stained, unkempt host.
All the charm had been banished by the new-comer. It was another room now. And the ugly hand-bag on the distant chair seemed like an aggressive symbol of proprietorship. It seemed to be saying that, although one might wish the General at the deuce, one could not ask him to go there, because in sober fact the room belonged to him.