“Well, I always used to call her ‘Nona.’
She’d have thought it funny, as you call it,
to put anything else. I tell you it’s just
her way.”
“Well, I think it’s a very funny way and
I think anybody else would think so. I don’t
like her. I never did like her.”
There seemed no more to say.
He walked up to his room. He closed the door
behind him and sat on a straight-backed chair, his
legs outthrust. Failure? He had come back
home thus suddenly with immensely good intentions.
Failure? On the whole, no. There was a great
deal more he could have said downstairs, and a great
deal more he had felt uncommonly inclined to say.
But he had left the morning room without saying it,
and that was good; that redeemed his sudden return
from absolute failure.
Why had he returned? He “worked back”
through the morning on the Fargus principle.
Not because of his thoughts after the Twyning business;
not because of the disturbance of the Twyning business.
No. He had returned because he had seen Nona.
Thoughts—feelings—had been stirred
within him by meeting her. And it had suddenly
been rather hateful to have those thoughts and to
feel that—that Mabel had no place in them.
Well, why had he come up here? What was he doing
up here? Well, it hadn’t been altogether
successful. Mabel hadn’t been particularly
excited to see him. No, but that didn’t
count. Why should she be? He had gone off
after breakfast, glum as a bear. Well, then there
was that niggling business over why he had returned.
Always like that. Never plump out over a thing
he put up. Niggling. And then this infernal
business about the letter. That word “funny.”
She must have used it a hundred times. Still....
The niggling had been carried off, they had gone into
the garden together; and this infernal letter business—at
least he had come away without boiling over about it.
Much better to have come away as he did.... Still....
A gong boomed enormously through the house. It
had been one of her father’s wedding presents
to Mabel and it always reminded Sabre of the Dean’s,
her father’s voice. The Dean’s voice
boomed, swelling into a loud boom when he was in mid-speech
and reverberating into a distant boom as his periods
terminated. This was the warning gong for lunch.
In ten minutes, in this perfectly ordered house, a
different gong, a set of chimes, would announce that
lunch was ready. The reverberations had scarcely
ceased when Low Jinks, although she had caused the
reverberations, appeared in his room with a brass can
of hot water.
“Mr. Boom Bagshaw has not arrived yet, sir,”
said Low Jinks; “but the mistress thought we
wouldn’t wait any longer.”
She displaced the ewer from the basin and substituted
the brass can. She covered the can with a white
towel, uncovered the soap dish, and disappeared, closing
the door as softly as if it and the doorpost were
padded with velvet. Perfect establishment!
