Ivy was not yet down when he was shewn into the grim, shadow-filled drawing-room, but her mother welcomed him with nervous warmth. As she turned to the light, Eric saw a thin, small woman with the incongruous remains of a loveable, baby prettiness under her lined skin and her air of being never at ease. While Mr. Justice Maitland was still an unproved junior, her friends murmured that she was throwing away both herself and the snug dowry which came to her from the family business of wholesale chemists, but the initial advantage was first equalized and then turned against her; the rearing of five children tied her to the house, and her speech and outlook hinted that she had not kept pace with her husband’s social advancement.
“It’s very good of you to let me invite myself like this,” said Eric, as he shook hands with her. “As I reminded Ivy, you _were_ kind enough to ask me once before, when I couldn’t come.”
“It’s a great honour, I’m sure. And I expect you’re ever so much run after.”
The judge laid aside the book that he had been reading and raised himself with slow solemnity from his chair.
“It’s not our _first_ meeting, Mr. Lane; you’re not likely to remember that,” he said with austere geniality. “I knew your father in old days and I did in fact meet you not so many months after your arrival in this troubled world of ours. I should like to think that your kindness to our daughter means that you are not going to drop your early friends now that you are famous.”
The hollow click which his eye-glasses, after glissading down his nose, struck out of his shirt-front was for a moment disconcerting; but the bleak, formidable smile which accompanied the words apprised Eric that his host was venturing on badinage. He hastened to smile sympathetically, as he took in the details of appearance and manner. Sir James Maitland was tall and spare, with a long, blue-grained jaw, plentiful grey hair and light, steady eyes set deep under bushy brows. His clothes, like himself, were deliberately old-fashioned; the loose-cut trousers accentuated his thin, bent legs, and a low double collar gave him the hungry, long neck of a vulture. Eric was prepared to find him pompous and despotic in his grave moments and tedious in all; he felt like a reveller who had strayed inadvertently into a grave-yard where the distant fragrance and music that he had left were swallowed in chilling mustiness and silence. If any one for a moment ceased talking in that house, the brooding spirit of melancholy would claim them all in forfeit.