“Let’s have something younger. You know I’m really enjoying my dinner. Tell me about Mr. Blenkinsop, the one they all call Bertie.”
Monty laughed.
“How has he registered so far? Have you got him placed?”
“More or less. I heard that odious Sir Smedley Patteringham discussing him the day I arrived. ‘His heart rules his head,’ Daisy said—she loves that sort of inane cliché.”
“And what did Patteringham say to that?”
Mrs. Vanhaer twisted her mouth into a sour and sneering line, and gave a very passable imitation of Sir Smedley’s voice.
“‘It rules over a very small dominion,’ was the answer. Beyond that, and the fact that he’s clearly a nitwit, and looks like a rabbit, I’ve not much of a line on him.”
Monty shook his head sadly.
“Uncharitable, uncharitable, Mrs. Vanhaer. Bertie has distinct points. If he did not exist Mr. P. G. Wodehouse would certainly have been compelled to invent him. It is true that he has the smallest brain in Britain, and that his appearance is lamentable, but he’s quite good-natured and he’s the Conservative candidate for this part of the world. He’ll get in, too, at the next election.”
“In the States,” said Mrs. Vanhaer with decision, “he’d be earning twenty-five dollars a week, and nothing found. Modern democracy …”
“Is not a fit subject for conversation at dinner,” Monty hastily interjected.
“Among really intelligent folk,” added Mrs. Vanhaer, accepting the implied reproof. “Anyhow I’d rather vote for the sheep-faced man next to one of the nieces, as you call them, than for him.”
“That’s old Bursar Browne, as they call him. He’s been a country gentleman all his life, and is supposed to know all about farming and such like. For a time they made him Bursar of my old college at Oxford, and he nearly had them bankrupt in a couple of years. Besides, he dropped such frightful bricks whenever he put pen to paper that they just had to get rid of him.”
“What kind of bricks?”
“Well, I remember one in particular. It was part of his duties to compose an annual report about the events of the year and old members of the college. One year he sent round a circular to collect information and he put in it the sentence, The Bursar will be glad to hear of the deaths of all old members of the college,’ a very clumsy remark, which some of the older men resented. So he’s back again among his turnips—laying down the law to all the agriculturalists. But why, by the way, did you express such obvious dislike of my friend Sir Smedley Patteringham just now? Of course he’s caviare to the general, but I should have thought that you would have appreciated him.”
Both of them turned and looked at the thin, elderly man at the far end of the table.
“That odious man,” said Mrs. Vanhaer, “I could murder him. Why anyone should invite him to their house just has me beat. Do you know what he said to me when we were introduced?”
“No. What was it?”
“Why, I began to talk about the Elwoods because I knew that he knew them, and they’re old friends of mine —Sadie Elwood came from Virginia, you know—and I said that we might easily have met at their house, for I’d stayed there most part of last summer. And he looked at me down that long straggling nose of his and said: ‘Ah, yes, we might have met there. Mrs. Elwood really sets no limits to her hospitality.’ And I” (Mrs. Vanhaer’s voice was almost a snort) “I never realized till ten minutes too late how rude he was trying to be! That—that polecat!”
Monty laughed a little more heartily than his companion wished.
“A very characteristic utterance,” he said. “But I see that I must tell you all about the egregious Sir Smedley—and believe me you’ll get a bit of pleasure out of studying him if you take him the right way. Why, I could write a book about him—he’s one of my special subjects. But first of all I’ll answer your first question. Do you know what they meant in the eighteenth century by ‘storming the closet’?”
“No,” said Mrs. Vanhaer suspiciously, “and I’m not sure I ought to.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right. It meant this. When a politician was out of office and wanted to get in he would make himself so damned offensive and so tiresome in attacking the government that he’d force the king to give him a fat place and a big job just to keep him quiet. That’s been Smedley’s little game all his life. He’s got the tongue of a serpent, and what he says gets quoted. He’s the first person Daisy asks to every one of her parties, because she’s in terror of what he’d say about her if she didn’t. And half the hostesses in England are in the same boat. He is in fact the extreme egotist, and the most successful one I know. The man’s a perfect master of his trade—and he’s never done a stroke of work in his life except to make Smedley Patteringham more comfortable. A great friend of mine, an eminent lawyer, shrewd, worldly-wise, and humorous, has often pretended to me that he governs his life according to three great principles.”
“What are they? I didn’t know that lawyers ever had principles.”
“‘Self not service,’ is one, ‘Live and let die,’ the second—and, most important of all, ‘The best is good enough for me.’ In my friend’s case these principles are an elaborate joke, for he has the kindest of hearts, but I’ve often thought that Patteringham really never deviates from his observance of them. Lately, I think, he’s added a fourth—‘Anything to give pain.’”
“Pain,” snorted Mrs. Vanhaer, “he gives me the pip. And anyhow let an old woman remind you that life doesn’t really offer any compensation for cynics. I’ve never met a happy egotist or a happy cynic yet.”
Her voice had lost its asperity, and she smiled at Monty a look of shrewd understanding.
Monty nodded agreement and watched his companion transfer an enormous helping of ice to her plate.
“I like the simple pleasures,” she continued, regarding the ice with favour, “but come on, we haven’t gone round the table yet. You see those three opposite?”
Her voice sank to a whisper, and she indicated Cynthia, who was sitting between Basil and Robin, exactly opposite to Monty and herself.
But Monty had no need to look up to know to whom she referred. All through dinner he had out of the corner of his eye watched the two men struggling each to secure for himself Cynthia’s undivided attention. The gloves were off, and so far honours seemed to be easy.
“Yes, I know all about those three,” he answered.
“Oh, that’s just too bad, and I was saving them up to the last to tell you all about them. Anyhow I’ve got to tell you this. Those two writing-men are head over heels in love with Cynthia, and she knows it. They won’t give each other any quarter, either, however much they may be friends. There’s a drama for you, Mr. Renshaw.”
She pronounced it “drammer,” but Monty did not wince. He was much too interested in discovering exactly how the affair was working itself out.
“Yes,” went on Mrs. Vanhaer impressively, “the situation is as full of drammer as … as …”
“As an egg is full of meat,” suggested Monty helpfully.
“As a film actress is full of sex appeal,” concluded Mrs. Vanhaer triumphantly, for she liked to finish her own sentences.
“Which of them, do you think, looks like winning?”
“I just don’t know. All these last two days they’ve been hard at it. If Mr. Paraday-Royne drags her away for golf all by themselves in the morning, then Mr. Hedley plays tennis with her all the afternoon, and she—well, she knows her stuff, I’ll say that.”
Her eyes twinkled.
“But which do you want to win?”
Mrs Vanhaer considered the question carefully.
“See here,” she answered at length, “when I get back to Boston I shall talk a whole heap about those two men and their books and all the long conversations I’ve had with them about literatoor. I’ll tell them what a beautiful man the Paraday-Royne creature is, and all about Mr. Hedley’s psychological insight. But if you ask me right now I’d s
ay they’re a couple of poops compared to Cynthia, and I hope she won’t have either of them. Still of the two it seems to me that Mr. Paraday-Royne is the greater danger, and I think, on the whole, he’s had more of her society than the other. Now you watch me correct the balance.”
“Mr. Paraday-Royne,” she said.
“Ah, yes,” said Basil, whose attention was entirely on Cynthia.
“Don’t forget that you’re going to play golf with me to-morrow morning; you promised, you know. You’re to give me a half …”
“I’m. sorry, Mrs. Vanhaer, I’m afraid I …”
“Oh, yes, you did promise, and I’m looking forward to it just too terribly. Nobody ever put me off.”
“What about making it a foursome?” suggested Basil, attempting to make the best of a bad job. “We might get Cynthia and …”
“No,” said Mrs. Vanhaer firmly. “I’m a single woman—where golf is concerned—and I want you all to myself; you haven’t told me half enough about all your beautiful books. Besides, I can never really talk in a foursome.”
She turned back to Monty and winked shamelessly.
At Lady Dormansland’s end of the table conversation had become general. Sir William Pindle was, it seemed, discussing with discretion the other members of the Cabinet.
“If it is proper for me to hint a fault (he was saying)—a very small one—I might suggest that my colleague has a tendency—and I would have you understand that it is only a tendency, and not in itself blameworthy—indeed perhaps necessary in these democratic days—a tendency, as I was saying, to put all his goods in the—ah—shop-window.”
“The window is curiously empty,” commented Sir Smedley acidly. Lady Dormansland plunged to the rescue.
“Do try the melon, Sir Smedley. I grow them myself, you know, and I’m really proud of them this year.”
“The melon,” said Sir Smedley, “has been calculated by scientists to contain ninety-eight per cent of water, and is considered a good fruit—as an appetizer. I will, however, taste it as it’s your own growing.”
He helped himself to a slice, and tasted it cautiously.
“I hope you find it good,” said his hostess with determined brightness.
“If you can imagine water which is solid, and which is not, however, ice, you can form a fairly accurate idea of this particular melon.”
“Oh, dear,” cried Lady Dormansland, “I’m afraid you don’t like the flavour, then. Don’t eat it, Sir Smedley.”
“I have no intention whatever of doing so,” replied the egotist, who had already selected a peach from the dish in front of him.
“I hope you like the peach?” asked Lady Dormansland after an anxious pause.
Sir Smedley Patteringham considered the question carefully before he made his reply.
“It is,” he said at length, “superior to the melon.”
Lady Dormansland breathed freely once more.
“I always think it remarkable,” she said, “that so many of our poets and writers love to describe fruit and flowers in the garden, and say nothing worth saying about fruit or indeed food of any kind on the dining-table.”
Her effort to change the conversation into safer channels was not a successful one.
“On the contrary,” said Sir Smedley with decision, “there is much good writing about food. Some really excellent things have been said on that topic. And that reminds me of a magnificent account of a dish, served, I fancy, in a railway train. Perhaps some one here can tell me who wrote it? It goes like this.
“‘Turbot,’ said the waiter, as he handed me a plate on which were some bones, an eyeball, and a piece of black mackintosh.”
He looked round challengingly, but no one hazarded a guess at the author. Lady Dormansland, realizing a little later that there had been turbot for the fish that evening, caught the eye of Lady Sevenoaks, and shepherded the ladies somewhat hastily from the dining-room.
Chapter X
“Variety’s the source of joy below,
From whence still fresh revolving pleasures flow.
In books and love, the mind one end pursues,
And only change th’ expiring flame renews.”
JOHN GAY
As the men shifted their chairs to fill the gaps, Monty noted with amusement that Basil and Robin moved away from one another without hesitation. He, for his own part, prepared to listen with as good a grace as possible to a disquisition from Bursar Browne on the prices of agricultural produce, though he was aware that his attention was fixed rather on the rest of the company than on his immediate neighbour. Watching Sir Smedley and Bullerton punishing the port with an assiduity which the vintage warranted, he was afraid that he might have to fill the rôle of listener and observer for a lengthy period. His fear was ungrounded. Lord Dormansland knew his place in his own household much too well to deprive his wife of male society longer than was absolutely necessary. With a little sigh of resignation he suggested joining the ladies as soon as politeness allowed him.
In her character as hostess Lady Dormansland was not accustomed to allow her guests to relax or to contrive their own amusements. With her air of determined brightness she imposed upon all such amusements and recreations as seemed to her suitable. To organize the lives of others in their minor details was a source of pleasure to her, and she was never really happy if her guests enjoyed themselves in any manner not suggested by herself. So now, as the men trooped into the drawing-room, she met them with her proposal for the evening’s entertainment.
“We must have our bridge,” she declared, “I simply couldn’t go to bed without it. I think we ought to have three tables to-night. And those who don’t play must go to the billiard-room. Robert, you must take them there. (Lord Dormansland signified his assent.) But before we start on the serious games of the evening I do think we ought to have some sort of intellectual game for all of us. There are so many clever people here; it would be a pity not to do something like that.”
“That would be lovely,” declared Mrs. Vanhaer.
“Now what shall we play?” Lady Dormansland looked round expectantly, but no one volunteered a suggestion.
Lady Dormansland’s proposal was no sudden whim. The truth was that she really detested bridge, though she regarded herself as an authority on the game. Years before, when she had first begun to play, she had announced her devotion to it—she had, so to speak, publicly proclaimed her patronage and taken the game of bridge under her protection. Ever since, her unquenchable pugnacity had prevented her from withdrawing from the position which she had taken up. She had announced that bridge was her favourite game; it was so, and so it must remain, for she was a woman to whom second thoughts were unknown. Retreats, recantations, compromises—such words belonged to women of inferior breed. She was convinced, it is true, that she invariably held bad cards—and she regarded this phenomenon as a sort of lèse-majesté on the part of fortune; she suspected, and often declared, that her partners always misunderstood her and involved her in disasters; she knew from the evidence of her chequebook that she lost considerable sums of money. In fact she played exceedingly badly and always over-called her hands, though no one dared to tell her so. So now, whilst proclaiming her desire for a game, and indeed announcing the necessity of following out the accustomed ritual, she nevertheless put forth all her efforts to postpone as long as she could the evil hour when she must actually begin to play.
“I know what we’ll do,” she said, as though struck by a happy inspiration—“not actually a game, but really much more amusing. There are lots of literary people here; we’ll make each of them tell us a story in turn. I’m sure it must be much easier to tell a story than to write one down. And how delicious to hear a story now, and then read it in a month or two in Blackwood’s or, or—Blackwood’s or some magazine like that. Now, Mr. Hedley, I always love reading what you write; come and sit by me and tell us all a story to start the others off.”
Robin Hedley looked almost as embarrassed as he felt. “Doe
s the woman think I’m a sort of court fool to amuse her guests?” he thought angrily to himself. Aloud he stammered a not very gracious excuse.
“I really can’t, Lady Dormansland, much as I should like to. The sort of things I write are not suitable; I don’t work or think in that kind of way at all. I should only bore you.”
“Then some one else must give you a lead,” said his hostess, who was quite undaunted by his refusal. “Basil, you shall begin; I know you won’t fail me.”
Basil Paraday-Royne owed his social success in no small measure to his willingness to fall in with the whims and fancies of those who entertained him. Hostesses were always charmed by his enthusiasm in carrying out their suggestions. He was, too, a natural exhibitionist, and he was not averse from showing off before Cynthia, especially after Robin had declined to shine. He smiled therefore a deprecating but not unwilling assent, and the rest of the party settled themselves in comfort to listen to him.
“Well, let me see,” he began. “I’ll do my best, but this is rather a sudden call. I think, perhaps, I’ll tell you a little tale that came to my notice a short while ago. It’s hardly a story—nothing so important as that—call it a sketch, a pastiche, a vignette, an impression—what you will, but remember that it’s the merest trifle. Still it does, I think, just flash a light for a moment on a woman’s character, and to me it’s vivid enough, and—a little sad. I’ll call it—let me see—I’ll call it ‘Mrs. Millabie’s Vase.’”
“What a divine title,” murmured Mrs. Vanhaer. Monty, who could not see her face, was unable to gauge her precise meaning.
“Mrs. Millabie was a widow, and she lived in a flat not very far from Sloane Square. She was thirty-five or perhaps a trifle more, but at night she looked thirty, and she knew as much about dresses as most dressmakers, and more, I fancy, about make-up than an act …, than, shall we say, the beauty specialist of the Daily View. (A hasty glance at Angela Greyne had caused him to change the end of his sentence.) Mrs. Millabie was bright and cheerful and helpful and popular. Yes, universally and deservedly popular. If any of her friends needed some one at the last moment to complete a party for dinner or lunch or the theatre or bridge—it was to her they turned. She enjoyed things so much that she made any party go; if she lost at bridge (which she seldom did, for she played exceedingly well) she would lose with the most charming grace; it was a pleasure to receive a note from her—so delicately and appropriately phrased would it be, and yet so warmly affectionate. And then her devotion to her late husband! She hardly ever spoke of him, but when she did her gaiety would be for a moment dimmed, and she would relapse into silence. And then, as though determined that her own private grief should not spoil the happiness of her friends, she would become the gayest and most cheerful of them all. ‘Too pathetic!’ her friends would say, ‘why, she ought to have married again years ago! How can such a sweet and amusing creature, so full of life and so clever, and quite well off too, have remained a widow?’ But in spite of all her friends Mrs. Millabie remained faithful to the memory of her husband; with a sweet yet sad little smile she would contrive to ward off the advances of all her many admirers. I wonder, can you picture her to yourselves at all?”
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