Philip lit his pipe.  Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana tobacco, which he rolled himself.  Sally cleared away.  Philip was reserved, and it embarrassed him to be the recipient of so many confidences.  Athelny, with his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature.  He reminded Philip a good deal of Cronshaw.  He appeared to have the same independence of thought, the same bohemianism, but he had an infinitely more vivacious temperament; his mind was coarser, and he had not that interest in the abstract which made Cronshaw’s conversation so captivating.  Athelny was very proud of the county family to which he belonged; he showed Philip photographs of an Elizabethan mansion, and told him: 

“The Athelnys have lived there for seven centuries, my boy.  Ah, if you saw the chimney-pieces and the ceilings!”

There was a cupboard in the wainscoting and from this he took a family tree.  He showed it to Philip with child-like satisfaction.  It was indeed imposing.

“You see how the family names recur, Thorpe, Athelstan, Harold, Edward; I’ve used the family names for my sons.  And the girls, you see, I’ve given Spanish names to.”

An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze.  Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school.  While he pointed out the great alliances which his ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection with the ancient family whose tree he was displaying.

LXXXVIII

There was a knock at the door and a troop of children came in.  They were clean and tidy, now.  Their faces shone with soap, and their hair was plastered down; they were going to Sunday school under Sally’s charge.  Athelny joked with them in his dramatic, exuberant fashion, and you could see that he was devoted to them all.  His pride in their good health and their good looks was touching.  Philip felt that they were a little shy in his presence, and when their father sent them off they fled from the room in evident relief.  In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny appeared.  She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe.  She had on a plain black dress, a hat with cheap flowers, and was forcing her hands, red and coarse from much work, into black kid gloves.

“I’m going to church, Athelny,” she said.  “There’s nothing you’ll be wanting, is there?”

“Only your prayers, my Betty.”

“They won’t do you much good, you’re too far gone for that,” she smiled.  Then, turning to Philip, she drawled:  “I can’t get him to go to church.  He’s no better than an atheist.”