Chapter 7 - Page 2

excellent footing with Miss Churchill. I seemed quite unawares to have
asserted myself a social equal, a person not to be treated as a casual
journalist. I became, in fact, not the representative of the _Hour_--but
an Etchingham Granger that competitive forces had compelled to accept a
journalistic plum. I began to see the line I was to take throughout my
interviewing campaign. On the one hand, I was "one of us," who had
temporarily strayed beyond the pale; on the other, I was to be a sort of
great author's bottle-holder.

A side door, behind Miss Churchill, opened gently. There was something
very characteristic in the tentative manner of its coming ajar. It
seemed to say: "Why any noisy vigour?" It seemed to be propelled by a
contemplative person with many things on his mind. A tall, grey man in
the doorway leaned the greater part of his weight on the arm that was
stretched down to the handle. He was looking thoughtfully at a letter
that he held in his other hand. A face familiar enough in caricatures
suddenly grew real to me--more real than the face of one's nearest
friends, yet older than one had any wish to expect. It was as if I had
gazed more intently than usual at the face of a man I saw daily, and had
found him older and greyer than he had ever seemed before--as if I had
begun to realise that the world had moved on.

He said, languidly--almost protestingly, "What am I to do about the Duc
de Mersch?"

Miss Churchill turned swiftly, almost apprehensively, toward him. She
uttered my name and he gave the slightest of starts of annoyance--a
start that meant, "Why wasn't I warned before?" This irritated me; I
knew well enough what were his relations with de Mersch, and the man
took me for a little eavesdropper, I suppose. His attitudes were rather
grotesque, of the sort that would pass in a person of his eminence. He
stuck his eye-glasses on the end of his nose, looked at me
short-sightedly, took them off and looked again. He had the air of
looking down from an immense height--of needing a telescope.

"Oh, ah ... Mrs. Granger's son, I presume.... I wasn't aware...." The
hesitation of his manner made me feel as if we never should get
anywhere--not for years and years.

"No," I said, rather brusquely, "I'm only from the _Hour_."

He thought me one of Fox's messengers then, said that Fox might have
written: "Have saved you the trouble, I mean ... or...."

He had the air of wishing to be amiable, of wishing, even, to please me
by proving that he was aware of my identity.

"Oh," I said, a little loftily, "I haven't any message, I've only come
to interview you." An expression of