There Came Both Mist and Snow Read Free Page A

glass I could almost have believed myself involved in some incident of banditry. Wilfred opened the door, climbed in, and tossed his weapon carelessly on the seat. ‘I hope,’ I enquired, ‘that it isn’t loaded?’
    My cousin laughed, at the same time sitting down so heavily that I felt myself bounced towards the roof of the cab. ‘My dear Arthur,’ he said, ‘you understand the principle of the Verona drop?’
    ‘Emphatically not.’
    ‘The Verona drop is a fragile bubble of glass which, under certain conditions, will resist a sharp blow with a hammer. What is called the safety catch on a rifle or revolver embodies just the same principle. A bump or joint’ – and Wilfred tossed the revolver to the floor – ‘merely increases the security with which the whole mechanism is locked.’
    Somewhat reassured, I reflected that Wilfred Foxcroft had not changed. Or his little habits had not changed. I remembered the jar against one’s spine which that same slumping down on a hard bench at school could cause. From his schooldays too dated the irritating trick of accompanying every act of communication with some fragment of useless lore; he had the mental habits of an industrious but unimaginative squirrel and his head was a lumber-room of Verona drops and similar debris. I have sometimes thought that his quarrel with Basil – that enduring mountaineering quarrel which made me so surprised to see him at Belrive now – was not unconnected with this turn of mind. Wilfred’s conversation was like an automatic machine: you dropped in some piece of conversation small coin and out came a dry biscuit – always virtually the same dry biscuit. And Basil’s was perhaps rather like a comptometer: you pressed the keys and could rely on the relevant factual analysis taking place. The two tendencies came sufficiently close to each other to be mutually irritating. This irritation, exacerbated by enforced companionship and by privation, had been responsible as I always supposed for the rift. But here now was Wilfred back at the Priory and it would be decent to express my pleasure in the fact. I did this as simply as I could. ‘Wilfred,’ I said, ‘it is delightful to see you here again.’
    Wilfred tapped at the butt of the revolver with his foot until the barrel satisfied his sense of order lying parallel to the driver’s seat. ‘The suggestion of coming down,’ he said, ‘was a good one. A change at this time of the year is a capital thing. During the three winter months the incidence of common cold is nearly seven per cent lower in the provinces than in London.’
    I looked at him curiously. The statistics were of no interest to me, but my attention was held by the turn of phrase which had preceded them. The suggestion of coming down was a good one. Wilfred was perfectly capable of talking the King’s English and this clumsy phrase was a deliberate ambiguity. Had the quarrel been made up on his initiative or on Basil’s? It was impossible to say.
    ‘Quite a family party,’ Wilfred was continuing. ‘Hubert and Geoffrey, Lucy, Cecil, Anne. I’m told that there are now only eight serious painters in England contriving to make more than four hundred a year. How lucky for you that people still buy books.’
    ‘Still read books,’ I corrected – taking an involuntary nibble at the biscuit as it shot from the machine. ‘Bankers, I suppose, are still in demand?’
    Wilfred, a banker and a wealthy one, smiled complacently. ‘Hubert, of course, is doing well enough. The portrait commissions keep coming in. But Geoffrey, who hasn’t at all followed in his father’s tradition, doesn’t make a penny. It’s hard on that thwarted little tigress Anne. Do you know the price of a small prepared canvas?’ And Wilfred, although devoid as I knew of any interest in the fine arts, proceeded to a detailed estimate of the working expenses of a painter. This monologue the reader will not expect me to report and I shall attempt