“Bit choppy, I suppose, what?” he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and down Lady Underhill’s nervous system like an electric needle. “I was afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?”
Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.
“It’s an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing,” said Algy Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. “I’ve known fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the world—round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of thing—yield up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely yield up their immortal soul! Don’t know why. Rummy, but there it is!”
“I’m like that myself,” assented Ronny Devereux. “That dashed trip from Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard, stoked to the eyebrows with seasick remedies, swearing that this time I’ll fool ’em, but down I go ten minutes after we’ve started and the next thing I know is somebody saying, ‘Well, well! So this is Dover!’“
“It’s exactly the same with me,” said Freddie, delighted with the smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. “Whether it’s the hot, greasy smell of the engines —”
“It’s not the engines,” contended Ronny Devereux.
“Stands to reason it can’t be. I rather like the smell of engines. This station is reeking with the smell of engine-grease, and I can drink it in and enjoy it.” He sniffed luxuriantly. “It’s something else.”
“Ronny’s right,” said Algy cordially. “It isn’t the engines. It’s the way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down —” He shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right a spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up and down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes, had an excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again quickly.
“Be quiet!” she snapped.
“I was only saying —”
“Be quiet!”
“Oh, rather!”
Lady Underhill wrestled with herself. She was a woman of great will-power and accustomed to triumph over the weaknesses of the flesh. After awhile her eyes opened. She had forced herself, against the evidence of her senses, to recognize that this was a platform on which she stood and not a deck.
There was a pause. Algy, damped, was temporarily out of action, and his friends had for the moment nothing to remark.
“I’m afraid you had a trying journey, mother,” said Derek. “The train was very late.”
“Now, train-sickness,” said Algy, coming to the surface again, “is a thing lots of people suffer from. Never could understand it myself.”
“I’ve never had a touch of train-sickness,” said Ronny.
“Oh, I have,” said Freddie. “I’ve often felt rotten on a train. I get floating spots in front of my eyes and a sort of heaving sensation, and everything kind of goes black —”
“Mr Rooke!”
“Eh?”
“I should be greatly obliged if you would keep these confidences for the ear of your medical adviser.”
“Freddie,” intervened Derek hastily, “my mother’s rather tired. Do you think you could be going ahead and getting a taxi?”
“My dear old chap, of course! Get you one in a second. Come along, Algy. Pick up the old waukeesis, Ronny.”
And Freddie, accompanied by his henchmen, ambled off, well pleased with himself. He had, he felt, helped to break the ice for Derek and had seen him safely through those awkward opening stages. Now he could totter off with a light heart and get a bite of lunch.
Lady Underhill’s eyes glittered. They were small, keen, black eyes, unlike Derek’s, which were large and brown. In their other features the two were obviously mother and son. Each had the same long upper lip, the same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge.