Mr Peter Callander lived near Sevenoaks in a lovely old Georgian house, big enough and important enough to be referred to as a ‘seat’, surrounded by grounds sufficiently extensive to be referred to as an ‘estate’.
He had the ordering of its furniture, which meant that it was severe and comfortable. There was no Mrs Callander. She had died when Gladys was a baby of embarrassing diminutiveness. She had been many years younger than her husband, and Gladys often indulged in the disloyal speculation whether her mother had worried herself to death trying to understand her husband, or whether she understood him too well and accepted oblivion cheerfully.
For Gladys had no illusions about her father. Worthy man as he was, admirable pillar of society, she never deceived herself as to his limitations.
Three days after the coming of the telegram which announced the arrival of the infamous Pallard, she was walking up and down the lawn before Hill View—so Mr Callander’s country called—awaiting her father.
Horace was amusing himself with a croquet mallet. He was passionately fond of croquet, and was one of the best players in the county: this game and painting were his two known vices. He was of the pre-Raphaelite School and specialized in willowy maidens with red hair.
Now he threw down his mallet and came across the lawn to his sister, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his grey flannel trousers.
“Aren’t we going to have tea or something?” he asked.
“Father promised to be here by five,” she said; “but if you can’t wait, I will get something sent out to you.”
“Oh, don’t bother!” he said. He took a silver case from his pocket, selected a Virginian cigarette and lit it. “I wonder if father has seen that man?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t imagine so,” she answered dryly. “I hardly think that his enthusiasm for meeting us would survive father’s letter.”
“Yes, it was pretty warm,” admitted Horace admiringly. “The governor can be awfully cutting. By the way, Gladys dear, did you speak to him about—you know?”
A little frown of annoyance gathered on her forehead.
“Yes,” she said shortly, “and I wish I hadn’t. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“I’ve had my allowance, and, to be perfectly frank, I’ve used it up,” he confessed. “Wouldn’t he let you have any money?”
“No,” she said.
“You didn’t say it was for me?”
“Oh, don’t be afraid,” she said coldly. “If I had said it was for his dear chickabiddy, I should have got it. You had better ask yourself.”
The young man threw his cigarette away.
“You’re very unfair, Gladys,” he said with a reproving shake of his head; “very unfair. Father thinks no more of me than he does”
“Fiddlesticks!” interrupted the girl, with a little smile. “Why don’t you own up like a Briton? And why don’t you tell me what you want the money for? Father isn’t a niggard where you are concerned. He paid twenty pounds into your account not much more than a week ago. The bills for all your pastime material go straight to him; you do not even pay for your clothes or cigarettes.”
“I have a lot of expenses you know nothing about,” he began roughly, when the hoarse boom of Mr Callander’s motor horn sounded on the road without, and in a second or so his handsome car came into view round the clump of laurels which hid the lodge end of his restricted drive. He descended with the weary air of a man who had done a day’s work and was conscious of the fact.
At the sound of the motor horn two servants had hurried from the house, the one with a silver tea-tray, laden with the paraphernalia for afternoon tea, another with a wicker-work table.
Horace collected three chairs, and into one of these his father sank.
“Ah!” he said gratefully.
“Well, father,” said the girl, as she handed him his tea, “we are anxious to hear the news. Did you see our terrible cousin?”
Mr Callander, sipping his tea, shook his head. “I did not, but I spoke to him.” He put down his cup. “You would not imagine that, after receiving such a letter as I sent him at his hotel, he would wish to communicate with me again. Yet this morning he rang me up—actually rang me up!”
“Impertinence!” murmured Horace.
“So I thought, and the voice!” Mr Callander raised his hand in despair. “Coarse, uneducated, raucous. ‘Is that Callander’s’, he said: ‘it’s Misther Pallard of the Great West Central spakin’. I want to get through to ye’re boss.’”
Mr Callander was an excellent mimic, and Gladys shuddered as he faithfully reproduced the conversation.