Chapter 23

MR. CHAFFERY AT HOME.

The golden mists of delight lifted a little on Monday, when Mr. and
Mrs. G.E. Lewisham went to call on his mother-in-law and
Mr. Chaffery. Mrs. Lewisham went in evident apprehension, but clouds
of glory still hung about Lewisham's head, and his manner was heroic.
He wore a cotton shirt and linen collar, and a very nice black satin
tie that Mrs. Lewisham had bought on her own responsibility during the
day. She naturally wanted him to look all right.

Mrs. Chaffery appeared in the half light of the passage as the top of
a grimy cap over Ethel's shoulder and two black sleeves about her
neck. She emerged as a small, middle-aged woman, with a thin little
nose between silver-rimmed spectacles, a weak mouth and perplexed
eyes, a queer little dust-lined woman with the oddest resemblance to
Ethel in her face. She was trembling visibly with nervous agitation.

She hesitated, peering, and then kissed Mr. Lewisham effusively. "And
this is Mr. Lewisham!" she said as she did so.

She was the third thing feminine to kiss Lewisham since the
promiscuous days of his babyhood. "I was so afraid--There!" She
laughed hysterically.

"You'll excuse my saying that it's comforting to see you--honest like
and young. Not but what Ethel ... _He_ has been something dreadful,"
said Mrs. Chaffery. "You didn't ought to have written about that
mesmerising. And of all letters that which Jane wrote--there! But
he's waiting and listening--"

"Are we to go downstairs, Mums?" asked Ethel.

"He's waiting for you there," said Mrs. Chaffery. She held a dismal
little oil lamp, and they descended a tenebrous spiral structure into
an underground breakfast-room lit by gas that shone through a
partially frosted globe with cut-glass stars. That descent had a
distinctly depressing effect upon Lewisham. He went first. He took a
deep breath at the door. What on earth was Chaffery going to say? Not
that he cared, of course.

Chaffery was standing with his back to the fire, trimming his
finger-nails with a pocket-knife. His gilt glasses were tilted forward
so as to make an inflamed knob at the top of his long nose, and he
regarded Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham over them with--Lewisham doubted his
eyes for a moment--but it was positively a smile, an essentially
waggish smile.

"You've come back," he said quite cheerfully over Lewisham to
Ethel. There was a hint of falsetto in his voice.

"She has called to see her mother," said Lewisham. "You, I believe,
are Mr. Chaffery?"

"I would like to know who the Deuce _you_ are?" said Chaffery,
suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through