Vile Bodies

By Evelyn Waugh

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Title: Vile Bodies

Author: Evelyn Waugh

Release date: February 9, 2026 [eBook #77900]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Chapman & Hall, 1930

Credits: Al Haines, Mark Akrigg, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VILE BODIES ***






                          [Cover Illustration]




                              Vile  Bodies


                              A  NOVEL  BY
                             EVELYN  WAUGH












                            CHAPMAN  &  HALL
                                 LONDON




                       FIRST  PUBLISHED  IN  1930
                      THIS  EDITION,  RESET,  1965
                    PRINTED  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY
                         BUTLER  &  TANNER  LTD
                            FROME  &  LONDON
                       CATALOGUE  NO.  4/5055/02




                             WITH  LOVE  TO
                    BRYAN  MOYNE  AND  DIANA  MOSLEY




                                Preface

This was a totally unplanned novel. I had the facility at the age of 25
to sit down at my table, set a few characters on the move, write 3000
words a day, and note with surprise what happened. The composition of
_Vile Bodies_ was interrupted by a sharp disturbance in my private life
and was finished in a very different mood from that in which it was
begun. The reader may, perhaps, notice the transition from gaiety to
bitterness.

It was the first of my books to be a popular success. _Decline and Fall_
had been well reviewed but its sales in its first year were small, fewer
than 3000 copies if I remember rightly. _Vile Bodies_ caught the public
fancy for extraneous reasons. ‘The Bright Young People’ with whom it
deals, and of whom I was a member rather on the fringe than in the
centre, were one of the newspaper topics of the time. They were totally
unlike the various, publicized groups of modern youth, being mostly of
good family and education and sharp intelligence, but they were equally
anarchic and short-lived. The jargon most of us spoke came new to the
novel reader and so captivated one prominent dramatic critic that for
weeks he introduced into articles week after week: ‘“Too sick-making”,
as Mr Waugh would say.’ There was also a pretty accurate description of
Mrs Rosa Lewis and her Cavendish Hotel, just on the brink of their
decline but still famous. I think I can claim that this was the first
English novel in which dialogue on the telephone plays a large part. For
reasons of novelty the many gross faults were overlooked. There were not
many comic writers at that time and I filled a gap. I began under the
brief influence of Ronald Firbank but struck out for myself. It is not a
book I enjoy re-reading but there are one or two funny scenes which
redeem it from banality. I like Colonel Blount, though he is a figure
from conventional farce. He was brilliantly played by Athol Stewart in a
very poor dramatic version. I may add that at the time I invented
‘Father Rothschild’ I had never met a Jesuit.

                                                                  E. W.

_Combe Florey_ 1964




    _‘Well in_ our _country,’ said Alice, still panting a little,
    ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for
    a long time, as we’ve been doing.’_

    _‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now_, here, _you
    see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same
    place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least
    twice as fast as that!’_



    _‘If I wasn’t real,’ Alice said—half laughing through her
    tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—‘I shouldn’t be able to
    cry.’_

    _‘I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?’ Tweedledum
    interrupted in a tone of great contempt._

      —A L I C E   T H R O U G H   T H E   L O O K I N G   G L A S S




                             _Chapter One_


It was clearly going to be a bad crossing.

With Asiatic resignation Father Rothschild S.J. put down his suitcase in
the corner of the bar and went on deck. (It was a small suitcase of
imitation crocodile hide. The initials stamped on it in Gothic
characters were not Father Rothschild’s, for he had borrowed it that
morning from the _valet-de-chambre_ of his hotel. It contained some
rudimentary underclothes, six important new books in six languages, a
false beard and a school atlas and gazetteer heavily annotated.)
Standing on the deck Father Rothschild leant his elbows on the rail,
rested his chin in his hands and surveyed the procession of passengers
coming up the gangway, each face eloquent of polite misgiving.

Very few of them were unknown to the Jesuit, for it was his happy knack
to remember everything that could possibly be learned about every one
who could possibly be of any importance. His tongue protruded very
slightly and, had they not all been so concerned with luggage and the
weather, some one might have observed in him a peculiar resemblance to
those plaster reproductions of the gargoyles of Notre Dame which may be
seen in the shop windows of artists’ colourmen tinted the colour of ‘Old
Ivory’, peering intently from among stencil outfits and plasticine and
tubes of water-colour paint. High above his head swung Mrs Melrose Ape’s
travel-worn Packard car, bearing the dust of three continents, against
the darkening sky, and up the companion-way at the head of her angels
strode Mrs Melrose Ape, the woman evangelist.

‘Faith.’

‘Here, Mrs Ape.’

‘Charity.’

‘Here, Mrs Ape.’

‘Fortitude.’

‘Here, Mrs Ape.’

‘Chastity. . . . Where is Chastity?’

‘Chastity didn’t feel well, Mrs Ape. She went below.’

‘That girl’s more trouble than she’s worth. Whenever there’s any packing
to be done, Chastity doesn’t feel well. Are all the rest here—Humility,
Prudence, Divine Discontent, Mercy, Justice and Creative Endeavour?’

‘Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs Ape. She got talking to a
gentleman in the train. . . . Oh, there she is.’

‘Got ’em?’ asked Mrs Ape.

Too breathless to speak, Creative Endeavour nodded. (Each of the angels
carried her wings in a little black box like a violin case.)

‘Right,’ said Mrs Ape, ‘and just you hold on to ’em tight and not so
much talking to gentlemen in trains. You’re angels, not a panto, see?’

The angels crowded together disconsolately. It was awful when Mrs Ape
was like this. My, how they would pinch Chastity and Creative Endeavour
when they got them alone in their nightshirts. It was bad enough their
going to be so sick without that they had Mrs Ape pitching into them
too.

Seeing their discomfort, Mrs Ape softened and smiled. She was nothing if
not ‘magnetic’.

‘Well, girls,’ she said, ‘I must be getting along. They say it’s going
to be rough, but don’t you believe it. If you have peace in your hearts
your stomach will look after itself, and remember if you _do_ feel
queer—_sing_. There’s nothing like it.’

‘Good-bye, Mrs Ape, and thank you,’ said the angels; they bobbed
prettily, turned about and trooped aft to the second-class part of the
ship. Mrs Ape watched them benignly, then, squaring her shoulders and
looking (except that she had really no beard to speak of) every inch a
sailor, strode resolutely forrard to the first-class bar.



Other prominent people were embarking, all very unhappy about the
weather; to avert the terrors of sea-sickness they had indulged in every
kind of civilized witchcraft, but they were lacking in faith.

Miss Runcible was there, and Miles Malpractice, and all the Younger Set.
They had spent a jolly morning strapping each other’s tummies with
sticking plaster (how Miss Runcible had wriggled).

The Right Honourable Walter Outrage, M.P., last week’s Prime Minister,
was there. Before breakfast that morning (which had suffered in
consequence) Mr Outrage had taken twice the maximum dose of a patent
preparation of chloral, and losing heart later had finished the bottle
in the train. He moved in an uneasy trance, closely escorted by the most
public-looking detective sergeants. These men had been with Mr Outrage
in Paris, and what they did not know about his goings on was not worth
knowing, at least from a novelist’s point of view. (When they spoke
about him to each other they called him ‘the Right Honourable Rape’, but
that was more by way of being a pun about his name than a criticism of
the conduct of his love affairs, in which, if the truth were known, he
displayed a notable diffidence and the liability to panic.)



Lady Throbbing and Mrs Blackwater, those twin sisters whose portrait by
Millais auctioned recently at Christie’s made a record in rock-bottom
prices, were sitting on one of the teak benches eating apples and
drinking what Lady Throbbing, with late Victorian _chic_, called ‘a
bottle of pop’, and Mrs Blackwater, more exotically, called
‘_champagne_’, pronouncing it as though it were French.

‘Surely, Kitty, that is Mr Outrage, last week’s Prime Minister.’

‘Nonsense, Fanny, where?’

‘Just in front of the two men with bowler hats, next to the clergyman.’

‘It is certainly like his photographs. How strange he looks.’

‘Just like poor Throbbing . . . all that last year.’

‘. . . And none of us even suspected . . . until they found the bottles
under the board in his dressing-room . . . and we all used to think it
was drink . . .’

‘I don’t think one finds _quite_ the same class as Prime Minister
nowadays, do you think?’

‘They say that only _one_ person has any influence with Mr Outrage
. . .’

‘At the Japanese Embassy . . .’

‘Of course, dear, not so loud. But tell me, Fanny, seriously, do you
think really and truly Mr Outrage has IT?’

‘He has a very nice figure for a man of his age.’

‘Yes, but _his_ age, and the bull-like type is so often disappointing.
Another glass? You will be grateful for it when the ship begins to
move.’

‘I quite thought we _were_ moving.’

‘How absurd you are, Fanny, and yet I can’t help laughing.’

So arm in arm and shaken by little giggles the two tipsy old ladies went
down to their cabin.

Of the other passengers, some had filled their ears with cotton wool,
others wore smoked glasses, while several ate dry captain’s biscuits
from paper bags, as Red Indians are said to eat snake’s flesh to make
them cunning. Mrs Hoop repeated feverishly over and over again a formula
she had learned from a yogi in New York City. A few ‘good sailors’,
whose luggage bore the labels of many voyages, strode aggressively about
smoking small, foul pipes and trying to get up a four of bridge.

Two minutes before the advertised time of departure, while the first
admonitory whistling and shouting was going on, a young man came on
board carrying his bag. There was nothing particularly remarkable about
his appearance. He looked exactly as young men like him do look; he was
carrying his own bag, which was disagreeably heavy, because he had no
money left in francs and very little left in anything else. He had been
two months in Paris writing a book and was coming home because, in the
course of his correspondence, he had got engaged to be married. His name
was Adam Fenwick-Symes.

Father Rothschild smiled at him in a kindly manner.

‘I doubt whether you remember me,’ he said. ‘We met at Oxford five years
ago at luncheon with the Dean of Balliol. I shall be interested to read
your book when it appears—an autobiography, I understand. And may I be
one of the first to congratulate you on your engagement? I am afraid you
will find your father-in-law a little eccentric—and forgetful. He had a
nasty attack of bronchitis this winter. It’s a draughty house—far too
big for these days. Well, I must go below now. It is going to be rough
and I am a bad sailor. We meet at Lady Metroland’s on the twelfth, if
not, as I hope, before.’

Before Adam had time to reply the Jesuit disappeared. Suddenly the head
popped back.

‘There is an extremely dangerous and disagreeable woman on board—a Mrs
Ape.’

Then he was gone again, and almost at once the boat began to slip away
from the quay towards the mouth of the harbour.

Sometimes the ship pitched and sometimes she rolled and sometimes she
stood quite still and shivered all over, poised above an abyss of dark
water; then she would go swooping down like a scenic railway train into
a windless hollow and up again with a rush into the gale; sometimes she
would burrow her path, with convulsive nosings and scramblings like a
terrier in a rabbit hole; and sometimes she would drop dead like a lift.
It was this last movement that caused the most havoc among the
passengers.

‘Oh,’ said the Bright Young People. ‘Oh, oh oh.’

‘It’s just exactly like being inside a cocktail shaker,’ said Miles
Malpractice. ‘Darling, your face—eau de Nil.’

‘Too, too sick-making,’ said Miss Runcible, with one of her rare flashes
of accuracy.



Kitty Blackwater and Fanny Throbbing lay one above the other in their
bunks rigid from wig to toe.

‘I wonder, do you think the _champagne_ . . . ?’

‘Kitty.’

‘Yes, Fanny, dear.’

‘Kitty, I think, in fact, I am sure I have some sal volatile. . . .
Kitty, I thought that perhaps as you are nearer . . . it would really
hardly be safe for me to try and descend . . . I might break a leg.’

‘Not after _champagne_, Fanny, do you think?’

‘But I need it. Of course, dear, _if it’s too much trouble_?’

‘Nothing is too much trouble, darling, you know that. But now I come to
think of it, I remember, quite clearly, for a fact, that you did _not_
pack the sal volatile.’

‘Oh, Kitty, oh, Kitty, please . . . you would be sorry for this if I
died . . . oh.’

‘But I saw the sal volatile on your dressing-table after your luggage
had gone down, dear. I remember thinking, I must take that down to
Fanny, and then, dear, I got confused over the tips, so you see . . .’

‘I . . . put . . . it . . . in . . . myself. . . . Next to my brushes
. . . you . . . beast.’

‘Oh, Fanny . . .’

‘Oh . . . Oh . . . Oh.’



To Father Rothschild no passage was worse than any other. He thought of
the sufferings of the saints, the mutability of human nature, the Four
Last Things, and between whiles repeated snatches of the penitential
psalms.



The Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition lay sunk in a rather glorious
coma, made splendid by dreams of Oriental imagery—of painted paper
houses; of golden dragons and gardens of almond blossom; of golden limbs
and almond eyes, humble and caressing; of very small golden feet among
almond blossoms; of little painted cups full of golden tea; of a golden
voice singing behind a painted paper screen; of humble, caressing little
golden hands and eyes shaped like almonds and the colour of night.

Outside his door two very limp detective sergeants had deserted their
posts.

‘The bloke as could make trouble on a ship like this ’ere deserves to
get away with it,’ they said.

The ship creaked in every plate, doors slammed, trunks fell about, the
wind howled; the screw, now out of the water, now in, raced and churned,
shaking down hat-boxes like ripe apples; but above all the roar and
clatter there rose from the second-class ladies’ saloon the despairing
voices of Mrs Ape’s angels, in frequently broken unison, singing,
singing, wildly, desperately, as though their hearts would break in the
effort and their minds lose their reason, Mrs Ape’s famous hymn, _There
ain’t no flies on the Lamb of God_.



The Captain and the Chief Officer sat on the bridge engrossed in a
crossword puzzle.

‘Looks like we may get some heavy weather if the wind gets up,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t wonder if there wasn’t a bit of a sea running to-night.’

‘Well, we can’t always have it quiet like this,’ said the Chief Officer.
‘Word of eighteen letters meaning carnivorous mammal. Search me if I
know how they do think of these things.’



Adam Fenwick-Symes sat among the good sailors in the smoking-room
drinking his third Irish whisky and wondering how soon he would feel
definitely ill. Already there was a vague depression gathering at the
top of his head. There were thirty-five minutes more, probably longer
with the head wind keeping them back.

Opposite him sat a much-travelled and chatty journalist telling him
smutty stories. From time to time Adam interposed some more or less
appropriate comment, ‘No, I say that’s a good one,’ or, ‘I must remember
that,’ or just ‘Ha, Ha, Ha,’ but his mind was not really in a receptive
condition.

Up went the ship, up, up, up, paused and then plunged down with a
sidelong slither. Adam caught at his glass and saved it. Then shut his
eyes.

‘Now I’ll tell you a drawing-room one,’ said the journalist.

Behind them a game of cards was in progress among the commercial gents.
At first they had rather a jolly time about it, saying, ‘What ho, she
bumps,’ or ‘Steady, the Buffs,’ when the cards and glasses and ash-tray
were thrown on to the floor, but in the last ten minutes they were
growing notably quieter. It was rather a nasty kind of hush.

‘. . . And forty aces and two-fifty for the rubber. Shall we cut again
or stay as we are?’

‘How about knocking off for a bit? Makes me tired—table moving about
all the time.’

‘Why, Arthur, you ain’t feeling ill, surely?’

‘’Course I ain’t feeling ill, only tired.’

‘Well, of course, if Arthur’s feeling ill . . .’

‘Who’d have thought of old Arthur feeling ill?’

‘I ain’t feeling ill, I tell you. Just tired. But if you boys want to go
on I’m not the one to spoil a game.’

‘Good old Arthur. ’Course he ain’t feeling ill. Look out for the cards,
Bill, up she goes again.’

‘What about one all round? Same again?’

‘Same again.’

‘Good luck, Arthur.’ ‘Good luck.’ ‘Here’s fun.’ ‘Down she goes.’

‘Whose deal? You dealt last, didn’t you, Mr Henderson?’

‘Yes, Arthur’s deal.’

‘Your deal, Arthur. Cheer up, old scout.’

‘Don’t you go doing that. It isn’t right to hit a chap on the back like
that.’

‘Look out with the cards, Arthur.’

‘Well, what d’you expect, being hit on the back like that. Makes me
tired.’

‘Here, I got fifteen cards.’

‘I wonder if you’ve heard this one,’ said the journalist. ‘There was a
man lived at Aberdeen, and he was terribly keen on fishing, so when he
married, he married a woman with worms. That’s rich, eh? You see he was
keen on fishing, see, and she had worms, see, he lived in Aberdeen.
That’s a good one that is.’

‘D’you know, I think I shall go on deck for a minute. A bit stuffy in
here, don’t you think?’

‘You can’t do that. The sea’s coming right over it all the time. Not
feeling queer, are you?’

‘No, of course I’m not feeling queer. I only thought a little fresh air
. . . Christ, why won’t the damn thing stop?’

‘Steady, old boy. I wouldn’t go trying to walk about, not if I were you.
Much better stay just where you are. What you want’s a spot of whisky.’

‘Not feeling ill, you know. Just stuffy.’

‘That’s all right, old boy. Trust Auntie.’

The bridge party was not being a success.

‘Hullo, Mr Henderson. What’s that spade?’

‘That’s the ace that is.’

‘I can see it’s the ace. What I mean you didn’t ought to have trumped
that last trick not if you had a spade.’

‘What d’you mean, didn’t ought to have trumped it? Trumps led.’

‘No, they did _not_. Arthur led a spade.’

‘He led a trump, didn’t you, Arthur?’

‘Arthur led a spade.’

‘He couldn’t have led a spade because for why he put a heart on my king
of spades when I thought he had the queen. He hasn’t got no spades.’

‘What d’you mean, not got no spades? I got the queen.’

‘Arthur, old man, you _must_ be feeling queer.’

‘No, I ain’t, I tell you, just tired. You’d be tired if you’d been hit
on the back same as I was . . . anyway I’m fed up with this game . . .
there go the cards again.’

This time no one troubled to pick them up. Presently Mr Henderson said,
‘Funny thing, don’t know why I feel all swimmy of a sudden. Must have
ate something that wasn’t quite right. You never can tell with foreign
foods—all messed up like they do.’

‘Now you mention it, I don’t feel too spry myself. Damn bad ventilation
on these Channel boats.’

‘That’s what it is. Ventilation. You said it.’

‘You know I’m funny. I never feel sea-sick, mind, but I often find going
on boats doesn’t agree with me.’

‘I’m like that, too.’

‘Ventilation . . . a disgrace.’

‘Lord, I shall be glad when we get to Dover. Home, sweet home, eh?’

Adam held on very tightly to the brass-bound edge of the table and felt
a little better. He was _not_ going to be sick, and that was that; not
with that gargoyle of a man opposite anyway. They _must_ be in sight of
land soon.



It was at this time, when things were at their lowest, that Mrs Ape
reappeared in the smoking-room. She stood for a second or two in the
entrance balanced between swinging door and swinging door-post; then as
the ship momentarily righted herself, she strode to the bar, her feet
well apart, her hands in the pockets of her tweed coat.

‘Double rum,’ she said and smiled magnetically at the miserable little
collection of men seated about the room. ‘Why, boys,’ she said, ‘but
you’re looking terrible put out over something. What’s it all about? Is
it your souls that’s wrong or is it that the ship won’t keep still?
Rough? ’Course it’s rough. But let me ask you this. If you’re put out
this way over just an hour’s sea-sickness’ (‘Not sea-sick, ventilation,’
said Mr Henderson mechanically), ‘what are you going to be like when you
make the mighty big journey that’s waiting for us all? Are you right
with God?’ said Mrs Ape. ‘Are you prepared for death?’

‘Oh, am I not?’ said Arthur. ‘I ’aven’t thought of nothing else for the
last half hour.’

‘Now, boys, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to sing a
song together, you and me.’ (‘Oh, God,’ said Adam.) ‘You may not know
it, but you are. You’ll feel better for it body _and_ soul. It’s a song
of Hope. You don’t hear much about Hope these days, do you? Plenty about
Faith, plenty about Charity. They’ve forgotten all about Hope. There’s
only one great evil in the world to-day. Despair. I know all about
England, and I tell you straight, boys, I’ve got the goods for you.
Hope’s what you want and Hope’s what I got. Here, steward, hand round
these leaflets. There’s the song on the back. Now all together . . .
sing. Five bob for you, steward, if you can shout me down. Splendid, all
together, boys.’

In a rich, very audible voice Mrs Ape led the singing. Her arms rose,
fell and fluttered with the rhythm of the song. The bar steward was hers
already—inaccurate sometimes in his reading of the words, but with a
sustained power in the low notes that defied competition. The journalist
joined in next and Arthur set up a little hum. Soon they were all at it,
singing like blazes, and it is undoubtedly true that they felt the
better for it.



Father Rothschild heard it and turned his face to the wall.



Kitty Blackwater heard it.

‘Fanny.’

‘Well.’

‘Fanny, dear, do you hear singing?’

‘Yes, dear, thank you.’

‘Fanny, dear, I hope they aren’t holding a _service_. I mean, dear, it
sounds so like a hymn. Do you think, possibly, we are _in danger_?
Fanny, are we going to be wrecked?’

‘I should be neither surprised nor sorry.’

‘Darling, how can you? . . . We should have heard it, shouldn’t we, if
we had actually _hit_ anything? . . . Fanny, dear, if you like I will
have a look for your sal volatile.’

‘I hardly think that would be any help, dear, since you _saw_ it on my
dressing-table.’

‘I may have been mistaken.’

‘You _said_ you _saw_ it.’



The captain heard it. ‘All the time I been at sea,’ he said, ‘I never
could stand for missionaries.’

‘Word of six letters beginning with ZB,’ said the chief officer,
‘meaning “used in astronomic calculation”.’

‘Z can’t be right,’ said the captain after a few minutes’ thought.



The Bright Young People heard it. ‘So like one’s first parties,’ said
Miss Runcible, ‘being sick with other people singing.’



Mrs Hoop heard it. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’m through with theosophy
after this journey. Reckon I’ll give the Catholics the once over.’



Aft, in the second-class saloon, where the screw was doing its worst,
the angels heard it. It was some time since they had given up singing.

‘Her again,’ said Divine Discontent.



Mr Outrage alone lay happily undisturbed, his mind absorbed in lovely
dream sequences of a world of little cooing voices, so caressing, so
humble; and dark eyes, night-coloured, the shape of almonds over painted
paper screens; little golden bodies, so flexible, so firm, so surprising
in the positions they assumed.



They were still singing in the smoking-room when, in very little more
than her usual time, the ship came into the harbour at Dover. Then Mrs
Ape, as was her invariable rule, took round the hat and collected nearly
two pounds, not counting her own five shillings which she got back from
the bar steward. ‘Salvation doesn’t do them the same good if they think
it’s free,’ was her favourite axiom.




                             _Chapter Two_


‘Have you anything to declare?’

‘Wings.’

‘Have you wore them?’

‘Sure.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

‘Divine Discontent gets all the smiles all the time,’ complained
Fortitude to Prudence. ‘Golly, but it’s good to be on dry land.’

Unsteadily, but with renewed hope, the passengers had disembarked.

Father Rothschild fluttered a diplomatic _laissez-passer_ and
disappeared in the large car that had been sent to meet him. The others
were jostling one another with their luggage, trying to attract the
Customs officers and longing for a cup of tea.

‘I got half a dozen of the best stowed away,’ confided the journalist.
‘They’re generally pretty easy after a bad crossing.’ And sure enough he
was soon settled in the corner of a first-class carriage (for the paper
was, of course, paying his expenses) with his luggage safely chalked in
the van.

It was some time before Adam could get attended to.

‘I’ve nothing but some very old clothes and some books,’ he said.

But here he showed himself deficient in tact, for the man’s casual air
disappeared in a flash.

‘Books, eh?’ he said. ‘And what sort of books, may I ask?’

‘Look for yourself.’

‘Thank _you_, that’s what I mean to do. _Books_, indeed.’

Adam wearily unstrapped and unlocked his suitcase.

‘Yes,’ said the Customs officer menacingly, as though his worst
suspicions had been confirmed, ‘I should just about say you had got some
books.’

One by one he took the books out and piled them on the counter. A copy
of Dante excited his especial disgust.

‘French, eh?’ he said. ‘I guessed as much, and pretty dirty, too, I
shouldn’t wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here
_books_’—how he said it!—‘in my list. Particularly against books the
Home Secretary is. If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we
can at least stop its being brought in from outside. That’s what he said
the other day in Parliament, and I says “Hear, hear. . . .” Hullo,
hullo, what’s this, may I ask?’

Gingerly, as though it might at any moment explode, he produced and laid
on the counter a large pile of type-script.

‘That’s a book too,’ said Adam. ‘One I’ve just written. It is my
memoirs.’

‘Ho, it is, is it? Well, I’ll take that along, too, to the chief. You
better come to.’

‘But I’ve got to catch the train.’

‘You come along. There’s worse things than missing trains,’ he hinted
darkly.

They went together into an inner office, the walls of which were lined
with contraband pornography and strange instruments, whose purpose Adam
could not guess. From the next room came the shrieks and yells of poor
Miss Runcible, who had been mistaken for a well-known jewel smuggler,
and was being stripped to the skin by two terrific wardresses.

‘Now then, what’s this about books?’ said the chief.

With the help of a printed list (which began ‘Aristotle, Works of
(Illustrated)’) they went through Adam’s books, laboriously, one at a
time, spelling out the titles.

Miss Runcible came through the office, working hard with lipstick and
compact.

‘Adam, darling, I never saw you on the boat,’ she said. ‘My dear, I
can’t _tell_ you the _things_ that have been happening to me in there.
The way they looked . . . too, too shaming. Positively surgical, my
dear, and _such_ wicked old women, just like _Dowagers_, my dear. As
soon as I get to London I shall ring up every Cabinet Minister and _all_
the newspapers and give them all the most shy-making details.’

The chief was at this time engrossed in Adam’s memoirs, giving vent at
intervals to a sinister chuckling sound that was partly triumphant and
partly derisive, but in the main genuinely appreciative.

‘Coo, Bert,’ he said. ‘Look at this; that’s rich, ain’t it?’

Presently he collected the sheets, tied them together and put them on
one side.

‘Well, see here,’ he said. ‘You can take these books on architecture and
the dictionary, and I don’t mind stretching a point for once and letting
you have the history books, too. But this book on Economics comes under
Subversive Propaganda. That you leaves behind. And this here
_Purgatorio_ doesn’t look right to me, so that stays behind, pending
inquiries. But as for this autobiography, that’s just downright dirt,
and we burns that straight away, see.’

‘But, good heavens, there isn’t a word in the book—you must be
misinterpreting it.’

‘Not so much of it. I knows dirt when I sees it or I shouldn’t be where
I am to-day.’

‘But do you realize that my whole livelihood depends on this book?’

‘And _my_ livelihood depends on stopping works like this coming into the
country. Now ’ook it quick if you don’t want a police-court case.’

‘Adam, angel, don’t fuss or we shall miss the train.’

Miss Runcible took his arm and led him back to the station and told him
all about a lovely party that was going to happen that night.



‘_Queer_, who felt queer?’

‘You did, Arthur.’

‘No I never . . . just tired.’

‘It certainly was stuffy in there just for a bit.’

‘Wonderful how that old girl cheered things up. Got a meeting next week
in the Albert Hall.’

‘Shouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t go. What do you say, Mr Henderson?’

‘She got a troupe of angels, so she said. All dressed up in white with
wings, lovely. Not a bad-looker herself, if it comes to that.’

‘What did you put in the plate, Arthur?’

‘Half-crown.’

‘So did I. Funny thing, I ain’t never give a half-crown like that
before. She kind of draws it out of you, damned if she doesn’t.’

‘You won’t get away from the Albert Hall not without putting your hand
in your pocket.’

‘No, but I’d like to see those angels dressed up, eh, Mr Henderson?’



‘Fanny, surely that is Agatha Runcible, poor Viola Chasm’s daughter?’

‘I wonder Viola allows her to go about like that. If she were my
daughter. . . .’

‘_Your_ daughter, Fanny. . . .’

‘Kitty, that was not kind.’

‘My dear, I only meant . . . have you, by the way, heard of her lately?’

‘The last we heard was worse than anything, Kitty. She has left Buenos
Aires. I am afraid she has severed her connection with Lady Metroland
altogether. They think that she is in some kind of touring company.’

‘Darling, I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned it, but whenever I
see Agatha Runcible I can’t help thinking . . . girls seem to know so
much nowadays. We had to learn everything for ourselves, didn’t we,
Fanny, and it took so long. If I’d had Agatha Runcible’s chances. . . .
Who is the young man with her?’

‘I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t think, do you? . . . He has that
self-contained look.’

‘He has very nice eyes. And he moves well.’

‘I dare say when it came to the point . . . Still, as I say, if I had
had Agatha Runcible’s advantages . . .’

‘What are you looking for, darling?’

‘Why, darling, such an extraordinary thing. Here _is_ the sal volatile
next to my brushes all the time.’

‘Fanny, how awful of me, if I’d only known . . .’

‘I dare say there must have been another bottle you saw on the
dressing-table, sweetest. Perhaps the maid put it there. You never know
at the Lotti, do you?’

‘Fanny, forgive me . . .’

‘But, dearest, what is there to forgive? After all, you _did see_
another bottle, didn’t you, Kitty darling?’

‘Why, look, there’s Miles.’

‘Miles?’

‘Your son, darling. My nephew, you know.’

‘_Miles._ Do you know, Kitty, I believe it is. He never comes to see me
now, the naughty boy.’

‘My dear, he looks terribly _tapette_.’

‘Darling, I know. It is a great grief to me. Only I try not to think
about it too much—he had so little chance with poor Throbbing what he
was.’

‘The sins of the fathers, Fanny . . .’



Somewhere not far from Maidstone Mr Outrage became fully conscious.
Opposite him in the carriage the two detectives slept, their bowler hats
jammed forwards on their foreheads, their mouths open, their huge red
hands lying limply in their laps. Rain beat on the windows; the carriage
was intensely cold and smelt of stale tobacco. Inside there were
advertisements of horrible picturesque ruins; outside in the rain were
hoardings advertising patent medicines and dog biscuits. ‘Every
Molassine dog cake wags a tail,’ Mr Outrage read, and the train repeated
over and over again, ‘Right Honourable gent, Right Honourable gent,
Right Honourable gentleman, Right Honourable gent . . .’



Adam got into the carriage with the Younger Set. They still looked a bit
queer, but they cheered up wonderfully when they heard about Miss
Runcible’s outrageous treatment at the hands of the Customs officers.

‘_Well_,’ they said, ‘_Well!_ how too, too shaming, Agatha, darling,’
they said. ‘How devastating, how un-policeman-like, how goat-like, how
sick-making, how too, too awful.’ And then they began talking about
Archie Schwert’s party that night.

‘Who’s Archie Schwert?’ asked Adam.

‘Oh, he’s someone new since you went away. The _most_ bogus man. Miles
discovered him, and since then he’s been climbing and climbing and
_climbing_, my dear, till he hardly knows us. He’s rather sweet, really,
only too terribly common, poor darling. He lives at the Ritz, and I
think that’s rather grand, don’t you?’

‘Is he giving his party there?’

‘My dear, of course not. In Edward Throbbing’s house. He’s Miles’
brother, you know, only he’s frightfully dim and political, and doesn’t
know anybody. He got ill and went to Kenya or somewhere and left his
perfectly sheepish house in Hertford Street, so we’ve all gone to live
there. You’d better come, too. The caretakers didn’t like it a bit at
first, but we gave them drinks and things, and now they’re simply
thrilled to the marrow about it and spend all their time cutting out
“bits”, my dear, from the papers about our goings on.

‘One awful thing is we haven’t got a car. Miles broke it, Edward’s, I
mean, and we simply can’t afford to get it mended, so I think we shall
have to move soon. Everything’s getting rather broken up, too, and
dirty, if you know what I mean. Because, you see, there aren’t any
servants, only the butler and his wife, and they are always tight now.
So demoralising. Mary Mouse has been a perfect angel, and sent us great
hampers of caviare and things. . . . She’s paying for Archie’s party
to-night, of course.’

‘Do you know, I rather think I’m going to be sick again?’

‘Oh, Miles!’

(Oh, Bright Young People!)



Packed all together in a second-class carriage, the angels were late in
recovering their good humour.

‘She’s taken Prudence off in her car again,’ said Divine Discontent, who
once, for one delirious fortnight, had been Mrs Ape’s favourite girl.
‘Can’t see what she sees in her. What’s London like, Fortitude? I never
been there but once.’

‘Just exactly heaven. Shops and all.’

‘What are the men like, Fortitude?’

‘Say, don’t you never think of nothing but _men_, Chastity?’

‘I should say I do. I was only asking.’

‘Well, they ain’t much to look at, not after the shops. But they has
their uses.’

‘Say, did you hear that? You’re a cute one, Fortitude. Did you hear what
Fortitude said? She said “they have their uses”.’

‘What, shops?’

‘No, silly, men.’

‘_Men._ That’s a good one, I should say.’

Presently the train arrived at Victoria, and all these passengers were
scattered all over London.



Adam left his bag at Shepheard’s Hotel, and drove straight to Henrietta
Street to see his publishers. It was nearly closing time, so that most
of the staff had packed up and gone home, but by good fortune Mr Sam
Benfleet, the junior director with whom Adam always did his business,
was still in his room correcting proofs for one of his women novelists.
He was a competent young man, with a restrained elegance of appearance
(the stenographer always trembled slightly when she brought him his cup
of tea).

‘No, she can’t print that,’ he kept saying, endorsing one after another
of the printer’s protests. ‘No, damn it, she can’t print _that_. She’ll
have us all in prison.’ For it was one of his most exacting duties to
‘ginger up’ the more reticent of the manuscripts submitted and ‘tone
down’ the more ‘outspoken’ until he had reduced them all to the
acceptable moral standard of his day.

He greeted Adam with the utmost cordiality.

‘Well, well, Adam, how are you? This is nice. Sit down. Have a
cigarette. What a day to arrive in London. Did you have a good
crossing?’

‘Not too good.’

‘I say, I _am_ sorry. Nothing so beastly as a beastly crossing, is
there? Why don’t you come round to dinner at Wimpole Street to-night?
I’ve got some rather nice Americans coming. Where are you staying?’

‘At “Shepheard’s”—Lottie Crump’s.’

‘Well, that’s always fun. I’ve been trying to get an autobiography out
of Lottie for ten years. And that reminds me. You’re bringing us your
manuscript, aren’t you? Old Rampole was asking about it only the other
day. It’s a week overdue, you know. I hope you’ll like the preliminary
notices we’ve sent out. We’ve fixed the day of publication for the
second week in December, so as to give it a fortnight’s run before
Johnnie Hoop’s autobiography. That’s going to be a seller. Sails a bit
near the wind in places. We had to cut out some things—you know what
old Rampole is. Johnnie didn’t like it a bit. But I’m looking forward
terribly to reading yours.’

‘Well, Sam, rather an awful thing happened about that . . .’

‘I say, I hope you’re not going to say it’s not finished. The date on
the contract, you know . . .’

‘Oh, it’s finished all right. Burnt.’

‘Burnt?’

‘Burnt.’

‘What an awful thing. I hope you are insured.’

Adam explained the circumstances of the destruction of his
autobiography. There was a longish pause while Sam Benfleet thought.

‘What worries me is how are we going to make that sound convincing to
old Rampole.’

‘I should think it sounded convincing enough.’

‘You don’t know old Rampole. It’s sometimes very difficult for me, Adam,
working under him. Now if I had my own way I’d say, “Take your own time.
Start again. Don’t worry . . .” But there’s old Rampole. He’s a devil
for contracts, you know, and you did _say_, didn’t you . . . ? It’s all
very difficult. You know, I wish it hadn’t happened.’

‘So do I, oddly enough,’ said Adam.

‘There’s another difficulty. You’ve had an advance already, haven’t you?
Fifty pounds, wasn’t it? Well, you know, _that_ makes things very
difficult. Old Rampole never likes big advances like that to young
authors. You know I hate to say it, but I can’t help feeling that the
best thing would be for you to repay the advance—plus interest, of
course, old Rampole would insist on that—and cancel the contract. Then
if you ever thought of re-writing the book, well, of course, we should
be delighted to consider it. I suppose that—well, I mean, it _would_ be
quite _convenient_, and all that, to repay the advance?’

‘Not only inconvenient, but impossible,’ said Adam in no particular
manner.

There was another pause.

‘Deuced awkward,’ said Sam Benfleet. ‘It’s a shame the way the Customs
House officers are allowed to take the law into their own hands. Quite
ignorant men, too. Liberty of the subject, I mean, and all that. I tell
you what we’ll do. We’ll start a correspondence about it in the _New
Statesman_. . . . It is all so deuced awkward. But I think I can see a
way out. I suppose you could get the book rewritten in time for the
Spring List? Well, we’ll cancel the contract and forget all about the
advance. No, no, my dear fellow, don’t thank me. If only I was alone
here I’d be doing that kind of thing all day. Now instead we’ll have a
new contract. It won’t be quite so good as the last, I’m afraid. Old
Rampole wouldn’t stand for that. I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you our
standard first-novel contract. I’ve got a printed form here. It won’t
take a minute to fill up. Just sign here.’

‘May I just see the terms?’

‘Of course, my dear fellow. They look a bit hard at first, I know, but
it’s our usual form. We made a very special case for you, you know. It’s
very simple. No royalty on the first two thousand, then a royalty of two
and a half per cent., rising to five per cent, on the tenth thousand. We
retain serial, cinema, dramatic, American, Colonial and translation
rights, of course. And, of course, an option on your next twelve books
on the same terms. It’s a very straightforward arrangement really.
Doesn’t leave room for any of the disputes which embitter the relations
of author and publisher. Most of our authors are working on a contract
like that. . . . Splendid. Now don’t you bother any more about that
advance. I understand _perfectly_, and I’ll square old Rampole somehow,
even if it comes out of my director’s fees.’

‘Square old Rampole,’ repeated Mr Benfleet thoughtfully as Adam went
downstairs. It was fortunate, he reflected, that none of the authors
ever came across the senior partner, that benign old gentleman, who once
a week drove up to board meetings from the country, whose chief interest
in the business was confined to the progress of a little book of his own
about bee-keeping, which they had published twenty years ago and, though
he did not know it, allowed long ago to drop out of print. He often
wondered in his uneasy moments what he would find to say when Rampole
died.



It was about now that Adam remembered that he was engaged to be married.
The name of his young lady was Nina Blount. So he went into a tube
station to a telephone-box, which smelt rather nasty, and rang her up.

‘Hullo.’

‘Hullo.’

‘May I speak to Miss Blount, please?’

‘I’ll just see if she’s in,’ said Miss Blount’s voice. ‘Who’s speaking,
please?’ She was always rather snobbish about the fiction of having
someone to answer the telephone.

‘Mr Fenwick-Symes.’

‘Oh.’

‘Adam, you know. . . . How are you, Nina?’

‘Well, I’ve got rather a pain just at present.’

‘Poor Nina, shall I come round and see you?’

‘No, don’t do that, darling, because I’m just going to have a bath. Why
don’t we dine together?’

‘Well, I asked Agatha Runcible to dinner.’

‘Why?’

‘She’d just had all her clothes taken off by some sailors.’

‘Yes, I know, it’s all in the evening paper to-night. . . . Well, I’ll
tell you what. Let’s meet at Archie Schwert’s party. Are you going?’

‘I rather said I would.’

‘That’s all right, then. Don’t dress up. No one will, except Archie.’

‘Oh, I say. Nina, there’s one thing—I don’t think I shall be able to
marry you after all.’

‘Oh, _Adam_, you are a bore. Why not?’

‘They burnt my book.’

‘Beasts. Who did?’

‘I’ll tell you about it to-night.’

‘Yes, _do_. Good-bye, darling.’

‘Good-bye, my sweet.’

He hung up the receiver and left the telephone-box. People had crowded
into the Underground station for shelter from the rain, and were shaking
their umbrellas and reading their evening papers. Adam could see the
headlines over their shoulders.

                     PEER’S DAUGHTER’S DOVER ORDEAL
                     SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS BY SOCIETY
                                 BEAUTY
                       HON. A. RUNCIBLE SAYS ‘TOO
                                SHAMING’

‘Poor pretty,’ said an indignant old woman at his elbow. ‘Disgraceful, I
calls it. And such a good sweet face. I see her picture in the papers
only yesterday. Nasty prying minds. That’s what they got. And her poor
father and all. Look, Jane, there’s a piece about him, too. “Interviewed
at the Carlton Club this evening, Lord Chasm,” that’s her dad, “refused
to make a definite statement. ‘The matter shall not be allowed to rest
here,’ he said.” _And_ quite right, too, I says. You know I feels about
that girl just as though it was me own daughter. Seeing her picture so
often and our Sarah having done the back stairs, Tuesdays, at them flats
where her aunt used to live—the one as had that ’orrible divorce last
year.’

Adam bought a paper. He had just ten shillings left in the world. It was
too wet to walk, so he took a very crowded tube train to Dover Street
and hurried across in the rain to Shepheard’s Hotel (which, for the
purposes of the narrative, may be assumed to stand at the corner of Hay
Hill).




                            _Chapter Three_


Lottie Crump, proprietress of Shepheard’s Hotel, Dover Street, attended
invariably by two Cairn terriers, is a happy reminder to us that the
splendours of the Edwardian era were not entirely confined to Lady
Anchorage or Mrs Blackwater. She is a fine figure of a woman, singularly
unscathed by any sort of misfortune and superbly oblivious of those
changes in the social order which agitate the more observant _grandes
dames_ of her period. When the war broke out she took down the signed
photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the
men-servants’ lavatory; it was her one combative action; since then she
has had her worries—income-tax forms and drink restrictions and young
men whose fathers she used to know, who give her bad cheques, but these
have been soon forgotten; one can go to Shepheard’s parched with
modernity any day, if Lottie likes one’s face, and still draw up, cool
and uncontaminated, great, healing draughts from the well of Edwardian
certainty.

Shepheard’s has a plain, neatly pointed brick front and large, plain
doorway. Inside it is like a country house. Lottie is a great one for
sales, and likes, whenever one of the great houses of her day is being
sold up, to take away something for old times’ sake. There is a good
deal too much furniture at Shepheard’s, some of it rare, some of it
hideous beyond description; there is plenty of red plush and red morocco
and innumerable wedding presents of the ’eighties; in particular many of
those massive, mechanical devices covered with crests and monograms, and
associated in some way with cigars. It is the sort of house in which one
expects to find croquet mallets and polo sticks in the bathroom, and
children’s toys at the bottom of one’s chest of drawers, and an estate
map and an archery target—exuding straw—and a bicycle and one of those
walking-sticks which turn into saws, somewhere in passages, between
baize doors, smelling of damp. (As a matter of fact, all you are likely
to find in your room at Lottie’s is an empty champagne bottle or two and
a crumpled camisole.)

The servants, like the furniture, are old and have seen aristocratic
service. Doge, the head waiter, who is hard of hearing, partially blind,
and tortured with gout, was once a Rothschild’s butler. He had, in fact,
on more than one occasion in Father Rothschild’s youth, dandled him on
his knee, when he came with his father (at one time the fifteenth
richest man in the world) to visit his still richer cousins, but it
would be unlike him to pretend that he ever really liked the embryo
Jesuit who was ‘too clever by half’, given to asking extraordinary
questions, and endowed with a penetrating acumen in the detection of
falsehood and exaggeration.

Besides Doge, there are innumerable old housemaids always trotting about
with cans of hot water and clean towels. There is also a young Italian
who does most of the work and gets horribly insulted by Lottie, who once
caught him powdering his nose, and will not let him forget it. Indeed,
it is one of the few facts in Lottie’s recent experience that seems
always accessible.

Lottie’s parlour, in which most of the life of Shepheard’s centres,
contains a comprehensive collection of signed photographs. Most of the
male members of the royal families of Europe are represented (except the
ex-Emperor of Germany who has not been reinstated, although there was a
distinct return of sentiment towards him on the occasion of his second
marriage). There are photographs of young men on horses riding in
steeple-chases, of elderly men leading in the winners of ‘classic’
races, of horses alone and of young men alone, dressed in tight, white
collars or in the uniform of the Brigade of Guards. There are
caricatures by ‘Spy’, and photographs cut from illustrated papers, many
of them with brief obituary notices, ‘killed in action’. There are
photographs of yachts in full sail and of elderly men in yachting caps;
there are some funny pictures of the earliest kind of motor car. There
are very few writers or painters and no actors, for Lottie is true to
the sound old snobbery of pound sterling and strawberry leaves.

Lottie was standing in the hall abusing the Italian waiter when Adam
arrived.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are a stranger. Come along in. We were just
thinking about having a little drink. You’ll find a lot of your friends
here.’

She led Adam into the parlour, where they found several men, none of
whom Adam had ever seen before.

‘You all know Lord Thingummy, don’t you?’ said Lottie.

‘Mr Symes,’ said Adam.

‘Yes, dear, that’s what I said. Bless you, I knew you before you were
born. How’s your father? Not dead, is he?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid he is.’

‘Well, I never. I could tell you some things about him. Now let me
introduce you—that’s Mr What’s-his-name, you remember him, don’t you?
And over there in the corner, that’s the Major, and there’s Mr
What-d’you-call-him, and that’s an American, and there’s the King of
Ruritania.’

‘Alas, no longer,’ said a sad, bearded man.

‘Poor chap,’ said Lottie Crump, who always had a weak spot for royalty,
even when deposed. ‘It’s a shame. They gave him the boot after the war.
Hasn’t got a penny. Not that he ever did have much. His wife’s locked up
in a looney house, too.’

‘Poor Maria Christina. It is true how Mrs Crump says. Her brains, they
are quite gone out. All the time she thinks everyone is a bomb.’

‘It’s perfectly true, poor old girl,’ said Lottie with relish. ‘I drove
the King down Saturday to see her . . . (I won’t have him travelling
third class). It fair brought tears to my eyes. Kept skipping about all
the time, she did, dodging. Thought they were throwing things at her.’

‘It is one strange thing, too,’ said the King. ‘All my family they have
bombs thrown at them, but the Queen, never. My poor Uncle Joseph he blow
all to bits one night at the opera, and my sister she find three bombs
in her bed. But my wife, never. But one day her maid is brushing her
hair before dinner, and she said, “Madam,” she said, “the cook has had
lesson from the cook at the French Legation”—the food at my home was
not what you call _chic_. One day it was mutton hot, then mutton cold,
then the same mutton hot again, but less nicer, not _chic_, you
understand me—“he has had lesson from the French cook,” the maid say,
“and he has made one big bomb as a surprise for your dinner party
to-night for the Swedish Minister.” Then the poor Queen say “Oh”, like
so, and since then always her poor brains has was all no-how.’

The ex-King of Ruritania sighed heavily and lit a cigar.

‘Well,’ said Lottie, brushing aside a tear, ‘what about a little drink?
Here, you over there, your Honour Judge What’s-your-name, how about a
drink for the gentlemen?’

The American, who, like all the listeners, had been profoundly moved by
the ex-King’s recitation, roused himself to bow and say, ‘I shall esteem
it a great honour if His Majesty and yourself, Mrs Crump, and these
other good gentlemen . . .’

‘That’s the way,’ said Lottie. ‘Hi, there, where’s my Fairy Prince?
Powdering hisself again, I suppose. Come here, Nancy, and put away the
beauty cream.’

In came the waiter.

‘Bottle of wine,’ said Lottie, ‘with Judge Thingummy there.’ (Unless
specified in detail, all drinks are champagne in Lottie’s parlour. There
is also a mysterious game played with dice which always ends with
someone giving a bottle of wine to every one in the room, but Lottie has
an equitable soul and she generally sees to it, in making up the bills,
that the richest people pay for everything.)

After the third or fourth bottle of wine Lottie said, ‘Who d’you think
we’ve got dining upstairs to-night? _Prime Minister._’

‘Me, I have never liked Prime Ministers. They talk and talk and then
they talk more. “Sir, you must sign that.” “Sir, you must go here and
there.” “Sir, you must do up that button before you give audience to the
black plenipotentiary from Liberia.” Pah! After the war my people give
me the bird, yes, but they throw my Prime Minister out of the window,
bump right bang on the floor. Ha, ha.’

‘He ain’t alone either,’ said Lottie with a terrific wink.

‘What, Sir James Brown?’ said the Major, shocked in spite of himself. ‘I
don’t believe it.’

‘No, name of Outrage.’

‘He’s not Prime Minister.’

‘Yes, he is. I saw it in the paper.’

‘No, he’s not. He went out of office last week.’

‘Well I never. How they keep changing. I’ve no patience with it. Doge.
Doge. What’s the Prime Minister’s name?’

‘Beg pardon, mum.’

‘What’s the name of the Prime Minister?

‘Not to-night, I don’t think, mum, not as I’ve been informed anyway.’

‘What’s the name of the Prime Minister, you stupid old man?’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, mum. I didn’t quite hear you. Sir James Brown,
mum, Bart. A very nice gentleman, so I’ve been told. Conservative, I’ve
heard said. Gloucestershire they come from, I think.’

‘There, what did I say?’ said Lottie triumphantly.

‘It is one very extraordinary thing, your British Constitution,’ said
the ex-King of Ruritania. ‘All the time when I was young they taught me
nothing but British Constitution. My tutor had been a master at your
Eton school. And now when I come to England always there is a different
Prime Minister and no one knows which is which.’

‘Oh, sir,’ said the Major, ‘that’s because of the Liberal Party.’

‘Liberals? Yes. We, too, had Liberals. I tell you something now, I had a
gold fountain-pen. My godfather, the good Archduke of Austria, give me
one gold fountain-pen with eagles on him. I loved my gold fountain-pen.’
Tears stood in the King’s eyes. Champagne was a rare luxury to him now.
‘I loved very well my pen with the little eagles. And one day there was
a Liberal Minister. A Count Tampen, one man, Mrs Crump, of exceedingly
evilness. He come to talk to me and he stood at my little escritoire and
he thump and talk too much about somethings I not understand, and when
he go—where was my gold fountain-pen with eagles—gone too.’

‘Poor old King,’ said Lottie. ‘I tell you what. You have another drink.’

‘. . . Esteem it a great honour,’ said the American, ‘if your Majesty
and these gentlemen and Mrs Crump . . .’

‘Doge, tell my little love-bird to come hopping in . . . you there,
Judge wants another bottle of wine.’

‘. . . Should honour it a great esteem . . . esteem it a great honour if
Mrs Majesty and these gentlemen and His Crump . . .’

‘That’s all right, Judge. Another bottle coming.’

‘. . . Should esteem it a great Crump if his honour and these Majesties
and Mrs Gentlemen . . .’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all right, Judge. Don’t let him fall down, boys. Bless
me, how these Americans do drink.’

‘. . . I should Crump it a great Majesty if Mrs Esteem . . .’

And his Honour Judge Skimp of the Federal High Court began to laugh
rather a lot. (It must be remembered in all these people’s favour that
none of them had yet dined.)

Now there was a very bland, natty, moustachioed young man sitting there
who had been drinking away quietly in the corner without talking to
anyone except for an occasional ‘Cheerio’ to Judge Skimp. Suddenly he
got up and said:

‘Bet-you-can’t-do-this.’

He put three halfpennies on the table, moved them about very
deliberately for a bit, and then looked up with an expression of pride.
‘Only touched each halfpenny five times, and changed their positions
twice,’ he said. ‘Do-it-again if you like.’

‘Well, isn’t he a clever boy?’ said Lottie. ‘Wherever did they teach you
that?’

‘Chap-in-a-train showed me,’ he said.

‘It didn’t look very hard,’ said Adam.

‘Just-you-try. Bet-you-anything-you-like you can’t do it.’

‘How much will you bet?’ Lottie loved this kind of thing.

‘Anything-you-like. Five hundred pounds.’

‘Go on,’ said Lottie. ‘You do it. He’s got lots of money.’

‘All right,’ said Adam.

He took the halfpennies and moved them about just as the young man had
done. When he finished he said, ‘How’s that?’

‘Well I’m jiggered,’ said the young man. ‘Never saw anyone do it like
that before. I’ve won a lot of money this week with that trick. Here you
are.’ And he took out a note-case and gave Adam a five-hundred-pound
note. Then he sat down in his corner again.

‘Well,’ said Lottie with approval, ‘that’s sporting. Give the boys a
drink for that.’

So they all had another drink.

Presently the young man stood up again.

‘Toss you double-or-quits,’ he said. ‘Best-out-of-three.’

‘All right,’ said Adam.

They tossed twice and Adam won both times.

‘Well I’m jiggered,’ said the young man, handing over another note.
‘You’re a lucky chap.’

‘He’s got pots of money,’ said Lottie. ‘A thousand pounds is nothing to
him.’

She liked to feel like that about all her guests. Actually in this young
man’s case she was wrong. He happened to have all that money in his
pocket because he had just sold out his few remaining securities to buy
a new motor car. So next day he bought a second-hand motor bicycle
instead.

Adam felt a little dizzy, so he had another drink.

‘D’you mind if I telephone?’ he said.

He rang up Nina Blount.

‘Is that Nina?’

‘Adam, dear, you’re tight already.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘I can hear it. What is it? I’m just going out to dinner.’

‘I just rang up to say that it’s all right about our getting married.
I’ve got a thousand pounds.’

‘Oh good. How?’

‘I’ll tell you when we meet. Where are you dining?’

‘Ritz. Archie. Darling. I _am_ glad about our getting married.’

‘So am I. But don’t let’s get intense about it.’

‘I wasn’t, and anyway you’re tight.’

He went back to the parlour. Miss Runcible had arrived and was standing
in the hall very much dressed up.

‘Who’s that tart?’ asked Lottie.

‘That’s not a tart, Lottie, that’s Agatha Runcible.’

‘Looks like a tart. How do you do, my dear, come in. We’re just thinking
of having a little drink. You know everyone here, of course, don’t you?
That’s the King with the beard. . . . No, dearie, the King of Ruritania.
You didn’t mind my taking you for a tart, did you, dear? You look so
like one, got up like that. Of course, I can see you aren’t now.’

‘_My dear_,’ said Miss Runcible, ‘if you’d seen me this afternoon . . .’
and she began to tell Lottie Crump about the Customs House.

‘What would you do if you suddenly got a thousand pounds?’ Adam asked.

‘A thousand _pound_,’ said the King, his eyes growing dreamy at this
absurd vision. ‘Well, first I should buy a house and a motor car and a
yacht and a new pair of gloves, and then I would start one little
newspaper in my country to say that I must come back and be the King,
and then I don’t know what I do, but I have such fun and grandness
again.’

‘But you can’t do all that with a thousand pounds, you know, sir.’

‘No . . . can’t I not? . . . not with thousand pound. . . . Oh, well,
then I think I buy a gold pen with eagles on him like the Liberals
stole.’

‘I know what I’d do,’ said the Major. ‘I’d put it on a horse.’

‘What horse?’

‘I can tell you a likely outsider for the November Handicap. Horse named
Indian Runner. It’s at twenty to one at present, and the odds are likely
to lengthen. Now if you were to put a thousand on him to win and he won,
why you’d be rich, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, so I would. How marvellous. D’you know, I think I’ll do that. It’s
a _very_ good idea. How can I do it?’

‘Just you give me the thousand and I’ll arrange it.’

‘I say, that’s awfully nice of you.’

‘Not at all.’

‘No, really, I think that’s frightfully nice of you. Look, here’s the
money. Have a drink, won’t you?’

‘No, you have one with me.’

‘I said it first.’

‘Let’s both have one, then.’

‘Wait a minute though, I must go and telephone about this.’

He rang up the Ritz and got on to Nina.

‘Darling, you do telephone a lot, don’t you?’

‘Nina, I’ve something very important to say.’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘Nina, have you heard of a horse called Indian Runner?’

‘Yes, I think so. Why?’

‘What sort of a horse is it?’

‘My dear, quite the worst sort of horse. Mary Mouse’s mother owns it.’

‘Not a good horse?’

‘No.’

‘Not likely to win the November Handicap, I mean.’

‘Quite sure not to. I don’t suppose it’ll run even. Why?’

‘I say, Nina, d’you know I don’t think we shall be able to get married
after all.’

‘Why not, my sweet?’

‘You see, I’ve put my thousand pounds on Indian Runner.’

‘That was silly. Can’t you get it back?’

‘I gave it to a Major.’

‘What sort of a Major?’

‘Rather a drunk one. I don’t know his name.’

‘Well, I should try and catch him. I must go back and eat now.
Good-bye.’

But when he got back to Lottie’s parlour the Major was gone.

‘What Major?’ said Lottie, when he asked about him. ‘I never saw a
Major.’

‘The one you introduced me to in the corner.’

‘How d’you know he’s a Major?’

‘You said he was.’

‘My dear boy, I’ve never seen him before. Now I come to think of it, he
did look like a Major, didn’t he? But this sweet little girlie here is
telling me a story. Go on, my dear. I can hardly bear to hear it, it’s
so wicked.’

While Miss Runcible finished her story (which began to sound each time
she told it more and more like the most lubricious kind of anti-Turkish
propaganda) the ex-King of Ruritania told Adam about a Major _he_ had
known, who had come from Prussia to reorganize the Ruritanian Army. He
had disappeared south, taking with him all the mess plate of the Royal
Guard, and the Lord Chamberlain’s wife, and a valuable pair of
candlesticks from the Chapel Royal.

By the time Miss Runcible had finished, Lottie was in a high state of
indignation.

‘The very idea of it,’ she said. ‘The dirty hounds. And I used to know
your poor father, too, before you were born _or_ thought of. I’ll talk
to the Prime Minister about this,’ she said, taking up the telephone.
‘Give me Outrage,’ she said to the exchange boy. ‘He’s up in number
twelve with a Japanese.’

‘Outrage isn’t Prime Minister, Lottie.’

‘Of course he is. Didn’t Doge say so. . . . Hullo, is that Outrage? This
is Lottie. A fine chap you are, I don’t think. Tearing the clothes off
the back of a poor innocent girl.’

Lottie prattled on.

Mr Outrage had finished dinner, and, as a matter of fact, the phrasing
of this accusation was not wholly inappropriate to his mood. It was some
minutes before he began to realize that all this talk was only about
Miss Runcible. By that time Lottie’s flow of invective had come to an
end, but she finished finely.

‘Outrage your name, and Outrage your nature,’ she said, banging down the
receiver. ‘And that’s what I think of _him_. Now how about a little
drink?’

But her party was breaking up. The Major was gone. Judge Skimp was
sleeping, his fine white hair in an ash-tray. Adam and Miss Runcible
were talking about where they would dine. Soon only the King remained.
He gave her his arm with a grace he had acquired many years ago; far
away in his sunny little palace, under a great chandelier which
scattered with stars of light like stones from a broken necklace, a
crimson carpet woven with a pattern of crowned ciphers.

So Lottie and the King went in to dinner together.

Upstairs in No. 12, which is a suite of notable grandeur, Mr Outrage was
sliding back down the path of self-confidence he had so laboriously
climbed. He really would have brought matters to a crisis if it had not
been for that telephone, he told himself, but now the Baroness was
saying she was sure he was busy, must be wanting her to go: would he
order her car.

It was so difficult. For a European the implications of an invitation to
dinner _tête-à-tête_ in a private room at Shepheard’s were definitely
clear. Her acceptance on the first night of his return to England had
thrown him into a flutter of expectation. But all through dinner she had
been so self-possessed, so supremely social. Yet, surely, just before
the telephone rang, surely then, when they left the table and moved to
the fire, there had been _something_ in the atmosphere. But you never
know with Orientals. He clutched his knees and said in a voice which
sounded very extraordinary to him, must she go, it was lovely after a
fortnight, and then, desperately, he had thought of her in Paris such a
lot. (Oh, for words, words! That massed treasury of speech that was his
to squander at will, to send bowling and spinning in golden pieces over
the floor of the House of Commons; that glorious largesse of vocables he
cast far and wide, in ringing handfuls about his constituency!)

The little Baroness Yoshiwara, her golden hands clasped in the lap of
her golden Paquin frock, sat where she had been sent, more puzzled than
Mr Outrage, waiting for orders. What did the clever Englishman want? If
he was busy with his telephone, why did he not send her away; tell her
another time to come: if he wanted to be loved, why did he not tell her
to come over to him? Why did he not pick her out of her red plush chair
and sit her on his knee? Was she, perhaps, looking ugly to-night? She
had thought not. It was so hard to know what these Occidentals wanted.

Then the telephone rang again.

‘Will you hold on a minute? Father Rothschild wants to speak to you,’
said a voice. ‘. . . Is that you, Outrage? Will you be good enough to
come round and see me as soon as you can? There are several things which
I must discuss with you.’

‘Really, Rothschild . . . I don’t see why I should. I have a guest.’

‘The baroness had better return immediately. The waiter who brought you
your coffee has a brother at the Japanese Embassy.’

‘Good God, has he? But why don’t you go and worry Brown? He’s P.M., you
know, not me.’

‘You will be in office to-morrow. . . . As soon as possible, please, at
my usual address.’

‘Oh, all right.’

‘Why, of course.’




                             _Chapter Four_


At Archie Schwert’s party the fifteenth Marquess of Vanburgh, Earl
Vanburgh de Brendon, Baron Brendon, Lord of the Five Isles and
Hereditary Grand Falconer to the Kingdom of Connaught, said to the
eighth Earl of Balcairn, Viscount Erdinge, Baron Cairn of Balcairn, Red
Knight of Lancaster, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and Chenonceaux
Herald to the Duchy of Aquitaine, ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this a
repulsive party? What are you going to say about it?’ for they were both
of them, as it happened, gossip writers for the daily papers.

‘I’ve just telephoned my story through,’ said Lord Balcairn. ‘And now
I’m going, thank God.’

‘I can’t think of what to say,’ said Lord Vanburgh. ‘My editress said
yesterday she was tired of seeing the same names over and over
again—and here they are again, all of them. There’s Nina Blount’s
engagement being broken off, but she’s not got any publicity value to
speak of. Agatha Runcible’s usually worth a couple of paragraphs, but
they’re featuring her as a front-page news story to-morrow over this
Customs House business.’

‘I made rather a good thing over Edward Throbbing being in a log shanty
in Canada which he built himself with the help of one Red Indian. I
thought that was fairly good because, you see, I could contrast that
with Miles being dressed as a Red Indian to-night, don’t you think so,
or don’t you?’

‘I say, that’s rather good, may I use it?’

‘Well, you can have the shanty, but the Red Indian’s mine.’

‘Where is he actually?’

‘Heaven knows, Government House at Ottawa, I think.’

‘Who’s that awful-looking woman? I’m sure she’s famous in some way. It’s
not Mrs Melrose Ape, is it? I heard she was coming.’

‘Who?’

‘That one. Making up to Nina.’

‘Good lord, no. She’s no one. Mrs Panrast she’s called now.’

‘She seems to know you.’

‘Yes, I’ve known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she’s my mother.’

‘My dear, how too shaming. D’you mind if I put that in?’

‘I’d sooner you didn’t. The family can’t bear her. She’s been divorced
twice since then, you know.’

‘My dear, of course not, I quite understand.’

Five minutes later he was busy at the telephone dictating his story.
‘. . . Orchid stop, new paragraph. One of the most striking women in the
room was Mrs Panrast—P-A-N-R-A-S-T-, no, T for telephone, you
know—formerly Countess of Balcairn. She dresses with that severely
masculine chic, italics, which American women know so well how to
assume, stop. Her son, comma, the present Earl, comma, was with her,
stop. Lord Balcairn is one of the few young men about town. . . .

‘. . . the Hon. Miles Malpractice was dressed as a Red Indian. He is at
present living in the house of his brother, Lord Throbbing, at which
yesterday’s party was held. His choice of costume was particularly—what
shall I say? hullo, yes—was particularly piquant, italics, since the
latest reports of Lord Throbbing say that he is living in a log shack in
Canada which he built with his own hands, aided by one Red Indian
servant, stop. . . .’



You see, that was the kind of party Archie Schwert’s party was.



Miss Mouse (in a very enterprising frock by Cheruit) sat on a chair with
her eyes popping out of her head. She never _could_ get used to so much
excitement, never. To-night she had brought a little friend with her—a
Miss Brown—because it was so much more fun if one had some one to talk
to. It was too thrilling to see all that dull money her father had
amassed, metamorphosed in this way into so much glitter and noise and so
many bored young faces. Archie Schwert, as he passed, champagne bottle
in hand, paused to say, ‘How are you, Mary darling? Quite all right?’

‘That’s Archie Schwert,’ said Miss Mouse to Miss Brown. ‘Isn’t he too
clever?’

‘Is he?’ said Miss Brown, who would have liked a drink, but didn’t know
quite how to set about it. ‘You _are_ lucky to know such amusing people,
Mary darling. I never see any one.’

‘Wasn’t the invitation clever? Johnnie Hoop wrote it.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose it was. But you know, was it dreadful of me, I
hadn’t heard of any of the names.’[A]

-----

[A] Perhaps it should be explained—there were at this time three sorts
of formal invitation card; there was the nice sensible copybook hand
sort with a name and _At Home_ and a date and time and address; then
there was the sort that came from Chelsea, _Noel and Audrey are having a
little whoopee on Saturday evening: do please come and bring a bottle
too, if you can_; and finally there was the sort that Johnnie Hoop used
to adapt from _Blast_ and Marinetti’s _Futurist Manifesto_. These had
two columns of close print; in one was a list of all the things Johnnie
hated, and in the other all the things he thought he liked. Most of the
parties which Miss Mouse financed had invitations written by Johnnie
Hoop.

-----

‘My dear, of course you have,’ said Miss Mouse, feeling somewhere in her
depths—those unplumbed places in Miss Mouse’s soul—a tiny, most
unaccustomed flicker of superiority; for she had gone through that
invitation word by word in papa’s library some days ago and knew all
about it.

She almost wished in this new mood of exaltation that she had come to
the party in fancy dress. It was called a Savage party, that is to say
that Johnnie Hoop had written on the invitation that they were to come
dressed as savages. Numbers of them had done so; Johnnie himself in a
mask and black gloves represented the Maharanee of Pukkapore, somewhat
to the annoyance of the Maharajah, who happened to drop in. The real
aristocracy, the younger members of those two or three great brewing
families which rule London, had done nothing about it. They had come on
from a dance and stood in a little group by themselves, aloof, amused
but not amusing. Pit-a-pat went the heart of Miss Mouse. How she longed
to tear down her dazzling frock to her hips and dance like a Bacchante
before them all. One day she would surprise them all, thought Miss
Mouse.



There was a famous actor making jokes (but it was not so much what he
said as the way he said it that made the people laugh who did laugh).
‘I’ve come to the party as a wild widower,’ he said. They were that kind
of joke—but, of course, he made a droll face when he said it.

Miss Runcible had changed into Hawaiian costume and was the life and
soul of the evening.

She had heard some one say something about an Independent Labour Party,
and was furious that she had not been asked.

There were two men with a lot of explosive powder taking photographs in
another room. Their flashes and bangs had rather a disquieting effect on
the party, causing a feeling of tension, because every one looked
negligent and said what a bore the papers were, and how _too_ like
Archie to let the photographers come, but most of them as a matter of
fact wanted dreadfully to be photographed and the others were frozen
with unaffected terror that they might be taken unawares and then their
mamas would know where they had been when they said they were at the
Bicesters’ dance, and then there would be a row again, which was so
_exhausting_, if nothing else.

There were Adam and Nina getting rather sentimental.

‘D’you know,’ she said, pulling out a lump, ‘I’d quite made up my mind
that your hair was dark?’ Archie Schwert, pausing with a bottle of
champagne, said, ‘Don’t be so sadistic, Nina.’

‘Go away, hog’s rump,’ said Adam, in Cockney, adding, in softer tones,
‘Are you disappointed?’

‘Well, no, but it’s rather disconcerting getting engaged to some one
with dark hair and finding it’s fair.’

‘Anyway, we aren’t engaged any more, are we—or are we?’

‘I’m not sure that we’re not. How much money _have_ you, Adam?’

‘Literally, none, my dear. Poor Agatha had to pay for dinner as it was,
and God knows what I’m going to do about Lottie Crump’s bill.’

‘Of course, you know—Adam, don’t fall asleep—there’s always papa. I
believe he’s really much richer than he looks. He might give us some
money until your books start paying.’

‘You know, if I wrote a book a month I should be free of that contract
in a year. . . . I hadn’t thought of that before. I don’t at all see why
I shouldn’t do that, do you? . . . or do you?’

‘Of course not, darling. I’ll tell you what. We’ll go down and see papa
to-morrow, shall we?’

‘Yes, that would be divine, darling.’

‘Adam, don’t go to sleep.’

‘Sorry, darling, what I meant was that that would be divine.’

And he went to sleep for a little, with his head in her lap.

‘Pretty as a picture,’ said Archie, in Cockney, passing with a bottle of
champagne in his hand.

‘Wake up, Adam,’ said Nina, pulling out more hair. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘That would be divine. . . . I say, have I been asleep?’

‘Yes, for hours and hours. You looked rather sweet.’

‘And you sat there. . . . I say, Nina, you are getting
sentimental. . . . Where are we going?’

There were about a dozen people left at the party; that hard kernel of
gaiety that never breaks. It was about three o’clock.

‘Let’s go to Lottie Crump’s and have a drink,’ said Adam.

So they all got into two taxicabs and drove across Berkeley Square to
Dover Street. But at Shepheard’s the night porter said that Mrs Crump
had just gone to bed. He thought that Judge Skimp was still up with some
friends; would they like to join them? They went up to Judge Skimp’s
suite, but there had been a disaster there with a chandelier that one of
his young ladies had tried to swing on. They were bathing her forehead
with champagne; two of them were asleep.

So Adam’s party went out again, into the rain.

‘Of course, there’s always the Ritz,’ said Archie. ‘I believe the night
porter can usually get one a drink.’ But he said it in the sort of voice
that made all the others say, no, the Ritz was too, too boring at that
time of night.

They went to Agatha Runcible’s house, which was quite near, but she
found that she’d lost her latchkey, so that was no good. Soon some one
would say those fatal words, ‘Well, I think it’s time for me to go to
bed. Can I give any one a lift to Knightsbridge?’ and the party would be
over.

But instead a little breathless voice said, ‘Why don’t you come to _my_
house?’

It was Miss Brown.

So they all got into taxicabs again and drove rather a long way to Miss
Brown’s house. She turned on the lights in a sombre dining-room and gave
them glasses of whisky and soda. (She turned out to be rather a good
hostess, though over-zealous.) Then Miles said he wanted something to
eat, so they all went downstairs into a huge kitchen lined with every
shape of pot and pan and found some eggs and some bacon and Miss Brown
cooked them. Then they had some more whisky upstairs and Adam feel
asleep again. Presently Vanburgh said, ‘D’you mind if I use the
telephone? I must just send the rest of my story to the paper.’ Miss
Brown took him to a study that looked almost like an office, and he
dictated the rest of his column, and then he came back and had some more
whisky.

It was a lovely evening for Miss Brown. Flushed with successful
hospitality, she trotted from guest to guest, offering here a box of
matches, there a cigar, there a fruit from the enormous gilt dishes on
the sideboard. To think that all these brilliant people, whom she had
heard so much about, with what envy, from Miss Mouse, should be here in
papa’s dining-room, calling her ‘my dear’ and ‘darling’. And when at
last they said they really had to go, Miss Runcible said, ‘Well, _I_
can’t go, because I’ve lost my latchkey. D’you mind awfully if I sleep
here?’

Miss Brown, her heart in her mouth, but in the most natural way
possible, said, ‘Of course not, Agatha darling, that would be divine.’

And then Miss Runcible said, ‘How too divine of you, darling.’

_Rapture!_



At half-past nine the next morning the Brown family came down to
breakfast in the dining-room.

There were four quiet girls (of whom the Miss Brown who had given the
party was the youngest), their brother worked in a motor shop and had
had to get off early. They were seated at the table when their mama came
down.

‘Now, children,’ she said, ‘do try to remember to talk to your father at
breakfast. He was quite hurt yesterday. He feels out of things. It’s so
easy to bring him into the conversation if you take a little trouble,
and he does so enjoy hearing about everything.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ they said. ‘We do try, you know.’

‘And what was the Bicesters’ dance like, Jane?’ she said, pouring out
some coffee. ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘It was just too divine,’ said the youngest Miss Brown.

‘It was _what_, Jane?’

‘I mean it was _lovely_, Mama.’

‘So I should think. You girls are very lucky nowadays. There were not
nearly so many dances when I was your age. Perhaps two a week in the
season, you know, but _none_ before Christmas ever.’

‘Mama.’

‘Yes, Jane.’

‘Mama. I asked a girl to stay the night.’

‘Yes, dear. When? We’re rather full up, you know.’

‘Last night, Mama.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to do. Did she accept?’

‘Yes, she’s here now.’

‘_Well_. . . . Ambrose, will you tell Mrs Sparrow to put on another
egg?’

‘I’m very sorry, my lady, Mrs Sparrow can’t understand it, but there
_are_ no eggs this morning. She thinks there must have been burglars.’

‘Nonsense, Ambrose, who ever heard of burglars coming into a house to
steal eggs?’

‘The shells were all over the floor, my lady.’

‘I see. That’s all, thank you, Ambrose. Well, Jane, has your guest eaten
all our eggs too?’

‘Well, I’m afraid she has . . . at least . . . I mean.’

At this moment Agatha Runcible came down to breakfast. She was not
looking her best really in the morning light.

‘Good morning, all,’ she said in Cockney. ‘I’ve found the right room at
last. D’you know, I popped into a study or something. There was a sweet
old boy sitting at a desk. He _did_ look surprised to see me. Was it
your papa?’

‘This is Mama,’ said Jane.

‘How are you?’ said Miss Runcible. ‘I say, I think it’s quite too sweet
of you to let me come down to breakfast like this.’ (It must be
remembered that she was still in Hawaiian costume.) ‘Are you sure you’re
not _furious_ with me? All this is really much more embarrassing for
_me_, isn’t it, don’t you think . . . or don’t you?’

‘Do you take tea or coffee?’ at last Jane’s mother managed to say.
‘Jane, dear, give your friend some breakfast.’ For in the course of a
long public life she had formed the opinion that a judicious offer of
food eased most social situations.

Then Jane’s father came in.

‘Martha, the most extraordinary thing! . . . I think I must be losing my
reason. I was in my study just now going over that speech for this
afternoon, when suddenly the door opened and in came a sort of dancing
Hottentot woman half-naked. It just said, “Oh, how shy-making,” and then
disappeared, and . . . oh . . .’ For he had suddenly caught sight of
Miss Runcible ‘. . . oh . . . how do you do? . . . How . . .’

‘I don’t think you have met my husband before.’

‘Only for a second,’ said Miss Runcible.

‘I hope you slept well,’ said Jane’s father desperately.

‘Martha never told me we had a guest. Forgive me if I appeared
inhospitable . . . I—er . . . Oh, why doesn’t somebody else say
something.’

Miss Runcible, too, was feeling the strain. She picked up the morning
paper.

‘Here’s something terribly funny,’ she said, by way of making
conversation. ‘Shall I read it to you?’

‘“_Midnight Orgies at No. 10._” My dear, isn’t that divine? Listen,
“_What must be the most extraordinary party of the little season took
place in the small hours of this morning at No. 10, Downing Street. At
about 4 a.m. the policemen who are always posted outside the Prime
Minister’s residence were surprised to witness_”—Isn’t this too
amusing—“_the arrival of a fleet of taxis, from which emerged a gay
throng in exotic fancy dress_”—How I should have loved to have seen it.
Can’t you imagine what they were like?—“_the hostess of what was
described by one of the guests as the brightest party the Bright Young
People have yet given, was no other than Miss Jane Brown, the youngest
of the Prime Minister’s four lovely daughters. The Honourable Agatha
. . ._” Why, what an extraordinary thing. . . . Oh, my God!’

Suddenly light came flooding in on Miss Runcible’s mind as once when, in
her débutante days, she had gone behind the scenes at a charity matinée,
and returning had stepped through the wrong door and found herself in a
blaze of flood-lights on the stage in the middle of the last act of
_Othello_. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said, looking round the Brown breakfast
table. ‘Isn’t that just too bad of Vanburgh. He’s always doing that kind
of thing. It really would serve him right if we complained and he lost
his job, don’t you think so, Sir James . . . or . . . don’t you?’

Miss Runcible paused and met the eyes of the Brown family once more.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said, ‘this really is all too bogus.’

Then she turned round and, trailing garlands of equatorial flowers, fled
out of the room and out of the house to the huge delight and profit of
the crowd of reporters and Press photographers who were already massed
round the historic front door.




                             _Chapter Five_


Adam woke up feeling terribly ill. He rang his bell once or twice, but
nobody came. Later he woke up again and rang the bell. The Italian
waiter appeared, undulating slightly in the doorway. Adam ordered
breakfast. Lottie came in and sat on his bed.

‘Had a nice breakfast, dear?’ she said.

‘Not yet,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve only just woken up.’

‘That’s right,’ said Lottie. ‘Nothing like a nice breakfast. There was a
young lady for you on the ’phone, but I can’t remember what it was she
said at the minute. We’ve all been upside down this morning. Such a
fuss. Had the police in, we have, ever since I don’t know what time,
drinking up my wine and asking questions and putting their noses where
they’re not wanted. All because Flossie must needs go and swing on the
chandelier. She never had any sense, Flossie. Well, she’s learned her
lesson now, poor girl. Whoever heard of such a thing—swinging on a
chandelier. Poor Judge What’s-his-name is in a terrible state about it.
I said to him it’s not so much the price of the chandelier, I said. What
money can make, money can mend, I said, and that’s the truth, isn’t it,
dear? But what I mind, I said, is having a death in the house and all
the fuss. It doesn’t do _any one_ any good having people killing
theirselves in a house like Flossie did. Now what may _you_ want, my
Italian queen?’ said Lottie as the waiter came in with a tray, the smell
of kippers contending with _nuit de Noel_ rather disagreeably.

‘Gentleman’s breakfast,’ said the waiter.

‘And how many _more_ breakfasts do you think he wants, I should like to
know? He’s had his breakfast hours ago while you were powdering your
nose downstairs, haven’t you, dear?’

‘No,’ said Adam, ‘as a matter of fact, no.’

‘There, do you hear what the gentleman says? _He_ doesn’t want two
breakfasts. Don’t stand there wiggling your behind at me. Take it away
quick or I’ll catch you such a smack. . . . That’s just the way—once
you get the police in every one gets all upset. There’s that boy brings
you two breakfasts and I dare say there’s some poor fellow along the
passage somewhere who hasn’t had any breakfast at all. You can’t get
anywhere without a nice breakfast. Half the young fellows as come here
now don’t have anything except a _cachet Faivre_ and some orange juice.
It’s not right,’ said Lottie, ‘and I’ve spoken to that boy about using
scent twenty times if I’ve spoken once.’

The waiter’s head appeared, and with it another wave of _nuit de Noel_.

‘If you please, madam, the inspectors want to speak to you downstairs,
madam.’

‘All right, my little bird of paradise, I’ll be there.’

Lottie trotted away and the waiter came sidling back bearing his tray of
kippers and leering at Adam with a horrible intimacy.

‘Turn on my bath, will you, please,’ said Adam.

‘Alas, there is a gentleman asleep in the bath. Shall I wake him?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

The waiter stood about fingering the brass knobs at the end of the bed,
smiling ingratiatingly. Then he produced from under his coat a gardenia,
slightly browned at the edges. (He had found it in an evening coat he
had just been brushing.)

Would the signor perhaps like a buttonhole? . . . Madame Crump was so
severe . . . it was nice sometimes to be able to have a talk with the
gentlemen . . .

‘No,’ said Adam. ‘Go away.’ For he had a headache.

The waiter sighed deeply, and walked with pettish steps to the door;
sighed again and took the gardenia to the gentleman in the bathroom.

Adam ate some breakfast. No kipper, he reflected, is ever as good as it
smells; how this too earthly contact with flesh and bone spoiled the
first happy exhilaration; if only one could live, as Jehovah was said to
have done, on the savour of burnt offerings. He lay back for a little in
his bed thinking about the smells of food, of the greasy horror of fried
fish and the deeply moving smell that came from it; of the intoxicating
breath of bakeries and the dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners of
enchanting aromatic foods that should be carried under the nose, snuffed
and thrown to the dogs . . . endless dinners, in which one could
alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety,
while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy. . . . Oh
for the wings of a dove, thought Adam, wandering a little from the point
as he fell asleep again (every one is liable to this ninetyish feeling
in the early morning after a party).



Presently the telephone by Adam’s bed began ringing.

‘Hullo, yes.’

‘Lady to speak to you. . . . Hullo, is that you, Adam?’

‘Is that Nina?’

‘How are you, my darling?’

‘_Oh, Nina. . . ._’

‘My poor sweet, I feel like that, too. Listen, angel. You haven’t
forgotten that you’re going to see my papa to-day, have you . . . or
have you? I’ve just sent him a wire to say that you’re going to lunch
with him. D’you know where he lives?’

‘But you’re coming too?’

‘Well, no. I don’t think I will, if you don’t mind. . . . I’ve got
rather a pain.’

‘My dear, if you _knew_ what a pain I’ve got. . . .’

‘Yes, but that’s different, darling. Anyway, there’s no object in our
both going.’

‘But what am I to say?’

‘_Darling_, don’t be tiresome. You know perfectly well. Just ask him for
some money.’

‘Will he like that?’

‘Yes, darling, of course he will. Why will you go _on_? I’ve got to get
up now. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. . . . Ring me up when you get
back and tell me what papa said. By the way, have you seen the paper
this morning?—there’s something so funny about last night. _Too_ bad of
Van. Good-bye.’

While Adam was dressing, he realized that he did not know where he was
to go. He rang up again. ‘By the way, Nina, where does your papa live?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? It’s a house called Doubting, and it’s all falling
down really. You go to Aylesbury by train and then take a taxi. They’re
the most expensive taxis in the world, too. . . . Have you got any
money?’

Adam looked on the dressing-table: ‘About seven shillings,’ he said.

‘My dear, that’s not enough. You’ll have to make poor papa pay for the
taxi.’

‘Will he like that?’

‘Yes, of course, he’s an angel.’

‘I wish you’d come too, Nina.’

‘Darling, I told you. I’ve got such a pain.’

Downstairs, as Lottie had said, everything was upside down. That is to
say that there were policemen and reporters teeming in every corner of
the hotel, each with a bottle of champagne and a glass. Lottie, Doge,
Judge Skimp, the Inspector, four plain-clothes men and the body were in
Judge Skimp’s suite.

‘What is _not_ clear to me, sir,’ said the Inspector, ‘is what
_prompted_ the young lady to swing on the chandelier. Not wishing to
cause offence, sir, and begging your pardon, was she . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ said Judge Skimp, ‘she was.’

‘_Exactly_,’ said the Inspector. ‘A clear case of misadventure, eh, Mrs
Crump? There’ll have to be an inquest, of course, but I think probably I
shall be able to arrange things so that there is no mention of your name
in the case, sir . . . well, that’s very kind of you, Mrs Crump, perhaps
just one more glass.’

‘Lottie,’ said Adam, ‘can you lend me some money?’

‘Money, dear? Of course. Doge, have you got any money?’

‘I was asleep at the time myself, mum, and was not even made aware of
the occurrence until I was called this morning. Being slightly deaf, the
sound of the disaster . . .’

‘Judge What’s-your-name, got any money?’

‘I should take it as a great privilege if I could be of any assistance
. . .’

‘That’s right, give some to young Thingummy here. That all you want,
deary? Don’t run away. We’re just thinking of having a little
drink. . . . No, not that wine, dear, it’s what we keep for the police.
I’ve just ordered a better bottle if my young butterfly would bring it
along.’

Adam had a glass of champagne, hoping it would make him feel a little
better. It made him feel much worse.

Then he went to Marylebone. It was Armistice Day, and they were selling
artificial poppies in the streets. As he reached the station it struck
eleven and for two minutes all over the country every one was quiet and
serious. Then he went to Aylesbury, reading on the way Balcairn’s
account of Archie Schwert’s party. He was pleased to see himself
described as ‘the brilliant young novelist’, and wondered whether Nina’s
papa read gossip paragraphs, and supposed not. The two women opposite
him in the carriage obviously did.

‘I no sooner opened the paper,’ said one, ‘than I was on the ’phone _at
once_ to all the ladies of the committee, and we’d sent off a wire to
our Member before one o’clock. We know how to make things hum at the
Bois. I’ve got a copy of what we sent. Look. _Members of the Committee
of the Ladies’ Conservative Association at Chesham Bois wish to express
their extreme displeasure at reports in this morning’s paper of midnight
party at No. 10. They call upon Captain Crutwell_—that’s our Member;
such a nice stamp of man—_strenuously to withhold support to Prime
Minister_. It cost nearly four shillings, but, as I said at the time, it
was not a moment to spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar. Don’t you
agree, Mrs Ithewaite?’

‘I do, indeed, Mrs Orraway-Smith. It is clearly a case in which a
mandate from the constituencies is required. I’ll talk to our chairwoman
at Wendover.’

‘Yes, do, Mrs Ithewaite. It is in a case like this that the woman’s vote
can count.’

‘If it’s a choice between my moral judgement and the nationalization of
banking, I prefer nationalization, if you see what I mean.’

‘Exactly what I think. Such a terrible example to the lower classes,
_apart from everything_.’

‘That’s what I mean. There’s our Agnes, now. How can I stop her having
young men in the kitchen when she knows that Sir James Brown has parties
like that at all hours of the night. . . .’

They were both wearing hats like nothing on earth, which bobbed and
nodded as they spoke.



At Aylesbury Adam got into a Ford taxi and asked to be taken to a house
called Doubting.

‘Doubting ’All?’

‘Well, I suppose so. Is it falling down?’

‘Could do with a lick of paint,’ said the driver, a spotty youth. ‘Name
of Blount.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Long way from here Doubting ’All is. Cost you fifteen bob.’

‘All right.’

‘If you’re a commercial, I can tell you straight it ain’t no use going
to ’im. Young feller asked me the way there this morning. Driving a
Morris. Wanted to sell him a vacuum cleaner. Old boy ’ad answered an
advertisement asking for a demonstration. When he got there the old boy
wouldn’t even look at it. Can you beat that?’

‘No, I’m not trying to sell him anything—at least not exactly.’

‘Personal visit, perhaps.’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’

Satisfied that his passenger was in earnest about the journey, the
taxi-driver put on some coats—for it was raining—got out of his seat
and cranked up the engine. Presently they started.

They drove for a mile or two past bungalows and villas and timbered
public houses to a village in which every house seemed to be a garage
and filling station. Here they left the main road and Adam’s discomfort
became acute.

At last they came to twin octagonal lodges and some heraldic gate-posts
and large wrought-iron gates, behind which could be seen a broad sweep
of ill-kept drive.

‘Doubting ’All,’ said the driver.

He blew his horn once or twice, but no lodge-keeper’s wife, aproned and
apple-cheeked, appeared to bob them in. He got out and shook the gates
reproachfully.

‘Chained-and-locked,’ he said. ‘Try another way.’

They drove on for another mile; on the side of the Hall the road was
bordered by dripping trees and a dilapidated stone wall; presently they
reached some cottages and a white gate. This they opened and turned into
a rough track, separated from the park by low iron railings. There were
sheep grazing on either side. One of them had strayed into the drive. It
fled before them in a frenzied trot, stopping and looking round over its
dirty tail and then plunging on again until its agitation brought it to
the side of the path, where they overtook it and passed it.

The track led to some stables, then behind rows of hothouses, among
potting-sheds and heaps of drenched leaves, past nondescript
outbuildings that had once been laundry and bakery and brewhouse and a
huge kennel where once some one had kept a bear, until suddenly it
turned by a clump of holly and elms and laurel bushes into an open space
that had once been laid with gravel. A lofty Palladian façade stretched
before them and in front of it an equestrian statue pointed a baton
imperiously down the main drive.

‘’Ere y’are,’ said the driver.

Adam paid him and went up the steps to the front door. He rang the bell
and waited. Nothing happened. Presently he rang again. At this moment
the door opened.

‘Don’t ring twice,’ said a very angry old man. ‘What do you want?’

‘Is Mr Blount in?’

‘There’s no Mr Blount here. This is Colonel Blount’s house.’

‘I’m sorry. . . . I think the Colonel is expecting me to luncheon.’

‘Nonsense. I’m Colonel Blount,’ and he shut the door.

The Ford had disappeared. It was still raining hard. Adam rang again.

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Blount, appearing instantly.

‘I wonder if you’d let me telephone to the station for a taxi?’

‘Not on the telephone. . . . It’s raining. Why don’t you come in? It’s
absurd to walk to the station in this. Have you come about the vacuum
cleaner?’

‘No.’

‘Funny, I’ve been expecting a man all the morning to show me a vacuum
cleaner. Come in, do. Won’t you stay to luncheon?’

‘I should love to.’

‘Splendid. I get very little company nowadays. You must forgive me for
opening the door to you myself. My butler is in bed to-day. He suffers
terribly in his feet when it is wet. Both my footmen were killed in the
war. . . . Put your hat and coat here. I hope you haven’t got wet. . . .
I’m sorry you didn’t bring the vacuum cleaner . . . but never mind. How
are you?’ he said, suddenly holding out his hand.

They shook hands and Colonel Blount led the way down a long corridor,
lined with marble busts on yellow marble pedestals, to a large room full
of furniture, with a fire burning in a fine rococo fireplace. There was
a large leather-topped walnut writing-table under a window opening on to
a terrace. Colonel Blount picked up a telegram and read it.

‘I’d quite forgotten,’ he said in some confusion. ‘I’m afraid you’ll
think me very discourteous, but it is, after all, impossible for me to
ask you to luncheon. I have a guest coming on very intimate family
business. You understand, don’t you? . . . To tell you the truth, it’s
some young rascal who wants to marry my daughter. I must see him alone
to discuss settlements.’

‘Well, I want to marry your daughter, too,’ said Adam.

‘What an extraordinary coincidence. Are you sure you do?’

‘Perhaps the telegram may be about me. What does it say?’

‘“_Engaged to marry Adam Symes. Expect him luncheon. Nina._” Are you
Adam Symes?’

‘Yes.’

‘My dear boy, why didn’t you say so before, instead of going on about a
vacuum cleaner? How are you?’

They shook hands again.

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Colonel Blount, ‘we will keep our business
until after luncheon. I’m afraid everything is looking very bare at
present. You must come down and see the gardens in the summer. We had
some lovely hydrangeas last year. I don’t think I shall live here
another winter. Too big for an old man. I was looking at some of the
houses they’re putting up outside Aylesbury. Did you see them coming
along? Nice little red houses. Bathroom and everything. Quite cheap,
too, and near the cinematographs. I hope you are fond of the
cinematograph too? The Rector and I go a great deal. I hope you’ll like
the Rector. Common little man rather. But he’s got a motor car, useful
that. How long are you staying?’

‘I promised Nina I’d be back to-night.’

‘That’s a pity. They change the film at the Electra Palace. We might
have gone.’

An elderly woman servant came in to announce luncheon. ‘What is at the
Electra Palace, do you know, Mrs Florin?’

‘Greta Garbo in _Venetian Kisses_, I think, sir.’

‘I don’t really think I like Greta Garbo. I’ve tried to,’ said Colonel
Blount, ‘but I just don’t.’

They went in to luncheon in a huge dining-room dark with family
portraits.

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Colonel Blount, ‘I prefer not to talk at
meals.’

He propped a morocco-bound volume of _Punch_ before his plate against a
vast silver urn, from which grew a small castor-oil plant.

‘Give Mr Symes a book,’ he said.

Mrs Florin put another volume of _Punch_ beside Adam.

‘If you come across anything really funny read it to me,’ said Colonel
Blount.

Then they had luncheon.

They were nearly an hour over luncheon. Course followed course in
disconcerting abundance while Colonel Blount ate and ate, turning the
leaves of his book and chuckling frequently. They ate hare soup and
boiled turbot and stewed sweetbreads and black Bredenham ham with
Madeira sauce and roast pheasant and a rum omelette and toasted cheese
and fruit. First they drank sherry, then claret, then port. Then Colonel
Blount shut his book with a broad sweep of his arm rather as the
headmaster of Adam’s private school used to shut the Bible after evening
prayers, folded his napkin carefully and stuffed it into a massive
silver ring, muttered some words of grace and finally stood up, saying:

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a little nap,’ and
trotted out of the room.

‘There’s a fire in the library, sir,’ said Mrs Florin. ‘I’ll bring you
your coffee there. The Colonel doesn’t have coffee, he finds it
interferes with his afternoon sleep. What time would you like your
afternoon tea, sir?’

‘I ought really to be getting back to London. How long will it be before
the Colonel comes down, do you think?’

‘Well, it all depends, sir. Not usually till about five or half-past.
Then he reads until dinner at seven and after dinner gets the Rector to
drive him in to the pictures. A sedentary life, as you might say.’

She led Adam into the library and put a silver coffee-pot at his elbow.

‘I’ll bring you tea at four,’ she said.

Adam sat in front of the fire in a deep armchair. Outside the rain beat
on the double windows. There were several magazines in the
library—mostly cheap weeklies devoted to the cinema. There was a
stuffed owl and a case of early British remains, bone pins and bits of
pottery and a skull, which had been dug up in the park many years ago
and catalogued by Nina’s governess. There was a cabinet containing the
relics of Nina’s various collecting fevers—some butterflies and a
beetle or two, some fossils and some birds’ eggs and a few postage
stamps. There were some bookcases of superbly unreadable books, a gun, a
butterfly net, an alpenstock in the corner. There were catalogues of
agricultural machines and acetylene plants, lawn mowers, ‘sports
requisites’. There was a fire screen worked with a coat of arms. The
chimney-piece was hung with the embroidered saddle-cloths of Colonel
Blount’s regiment of Lancers. There was an engraving of all the members
of the Royal Yacht Squadron, with a little plan in the corner, marked to
show who was who. There were many other things of equal interest
besides, but before Adam had noticed any more he was fast asleep.

Mrs Florin woke him at four. The coffee had disappeared and its place
was taken by a silver tray with a lace cloth on it. There was a silver
tea-pot, and a silver kettle with a little spirit-lamp underneath, and a
silver cream jug and a covered silver dish full of muffins. There was
also hot buttered toast and honey and gentleman’s relish and a chocolate
cake, a cherry cake, a seed cake and a fruit cake and some tomato
sandwiches and pepper and salt and currant bread and butter.

‘Would you care for a lightly boiled egg, sir? The Colonel generally has
one if he’s awake.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Adam. He felt a thousand times better for his
rest. When Nina and he were married, he thought, they would often come
down there for the day after a really serious party. For the first time
he noticed an obese liver and white spaniel, which was waking up, too,
on the hearthrug.

‘Please not to give her muffins,’ said Mrs Florin, ‘it’s the one thing
she’s not supposed to have, and the Colonel will give them to her. He
loves that dog,’ she added with a burst of confidence. ‘Takes her to the
pictures with him of an evening. Not that she can appreciate them really
like a human can.’

Adam gave her—the spaniel, not Mrs Florin—a gentle prod with his foot
and a lump of sugar. She licked his shoe with evident cordiality. Adam
was not above feeling flattered by friendliness in dogs.

He had finished his tea and was filling his pipe when Colonel Blount
came into the library.

‘Who the devil are you?’ said his host.

‘Adam Symes,’ said Adam.

‘Never heard of you. How did you get in? Who gave you tea? What do you
want?’

‘You asked me to luncheon,’ said Adam. ‘I came about being married to
Nina.’

‘My dear boy, of course. How absurd of me. I’ve such a bad memory for
names. It comes of seeing so few people. How are you?’

They shook hands again.

‘So you’re the young man who’s engaged to Nina,’ said the Colonel,
eyeing him for the first time in the way prospective sons-in-laws are
supposed to be eyed. ‘Now what in the world do you want to get married
for? I shouldn’t, you know, really I shouldn’t. Are you rich?’

‘No, not at present, I’m afraid, that’s rather what I wanted to talk
about.’

‘How much money have you got?’

‘Well, sir, actually at the moment I haven’t got any at all.’

‘When did you last have any?’

‘I had a thousand pounds last night, but I gave it all to a drunk
Major.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Well, I hoped he’d put it on Indian Runner for the November Handicap.’

‘Never heard of the horse. Didn’t he?’

‘I don’t think he can have.’

‘When will you next have some money?’

‘When I’ve written some books.’

‘How many books?’

‘Twelve.’

‘How much will you have then?’

‘Probably fifty pounds advance on my thirteenth book.’

‘And how long will it take you to write twelve books?’

‘About a year.’

‘How long would it take most people?’

‘About twenty years. Of course, put like that I do see that it sounds
rather hopeless . . . but, you see, Nina and I hoped that you, that is,
that perhaps for the next year until I get my twelve books written, that
you might help us . . .’

‘How could I help you? I’ve never written a book in my life.’

‘No, we thought you might give us some money.’

‘You thought that, did you?’

‘Yes, that’s what we thought . . .’

Colonel Blount looked at him gravely for some time. Then he said, ‘I
think that an admirable idea. I don’t see any reason at all why I
shouldn’t. How much do you want?’

‘That’s really terribly good of you, sir . . . Well, you know, just
enough to live on quietly for a bit. I hardly know . . .’

‘Well, would a thousand pounds be any help?’

‘Yes, it would indeed. We shall both be terribly grateful.’

‘Not at all, my dear boy. Not at all. What did you say your name was?’

‘Adam Symes.’

Colonel Blount went to the table and wrote out a cheque. ‘There you
are,’ he said. ‘Now don’t go giving that away to another drunk major.’

‘Really, sir! I don’t know how to thank you. Nina . . .’

‘Not another word. Now I expect that you will want to be off to London
again. We’ll send Mrs Florin across to the Rectory and make the Rector
drive you to the station. Useful having a neighbour with a motor car.
They charge fivepence on the buses from here to Aylesbury. _Robbers._’



It does not befall many young men to be given a thousand pounds by a
complete stranger twice on successive evenings. Adam laughed aloud in
the Rector’s car as they drove to the station. The Rector, who had been
in the middle of writing a sermon and resented with daily increasing
feeling Colonel Blount’s neighbourly appropriation of his car and
himself, kept his eyes fixed on the streaming windscreen, pretending not
to notice. Adam laughed all the way to Aylesbury, sitting and holding
his knees and shaking all over. The Rector could hardly bring himself to
say good-night when they parted in the station yard.

There was half an hour to wait for a train and the leaking roof and wet
railway lines had a sobering effect on Adam. He bought an evening paper.
On the front page was an exquisitely funny photograph of Miss Runcible
in Hawaiian costume tumbling down the steps of No. 10 Downing Street.
The Government had fallen that afternoon, he read, being defeated on a
motion rising from the answer to a question about the treatment of Miss
Runcible by Customs House officers. It was generally held in
Parliamentary circles that the deciding factor in this reverse had been
the revolt of the Liberals and the Nonconformist members at the
revelations of the life that was led at No. 10, Downing Street, during
Sir James Brown’s tenancy. The _Evening Mail_ had a leading article,
which drew a fine analogy between Public and Domestic Purity, between
sobriety in the family and in the State.

There was another small paragraph which interested Adam.

                     ‘_Tragedy in West-End Hotel._

    ‘_The death occurred early this morning at a private hotel in
    Dover Street of Miss Florence Ducane, described as being of
    independent means, following an accident in which Miss Ducane
    fell from a chandelier which she was attempting to mend. The
    inquest will be held to-morrow, which will be followed by the
    cremation at Golders Green. Miss Ducane, who was formerly
    connected with the stage, was well known in business circles._’

Which only showed, thought Adam, how much better Lottie Crump knew the
business of avoiding undesirable publicity than Sir James Brown.



When Adam reached London the rain had stopped, but there was a thin fog
drifting in belts before a damp wind. The station was crowded with
office workers hurrying with attaché cases and evening papers to catch
their evening trains home, coughing and sneezing as they went. They
still wore their poppies. Adam went to a telephone-box and rang up Nina.
She had left a message for him that she was having cocktails at Margot
Metroland’s house. He drove to Shepheard’s.

‘Lottie,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a thousand pounds.’

‘Have you, now,’ said Lottie indifferently. She lived on the assumption
that every one she knew always had several thousand pounds. It was to
her as though he had said, ‘Lottie, I have a tall hat.’

‘Can you lend me some money till to-morrow till I cash the cheque?’

‘What a boy you are for borrowing. Just like your poor father. Here, you
in the corner, lend Mr What-d’you-call-him some money.’

A tall Guardsman shook his retreating forehead and twirled his
moustaches.

‘No good coming to me, Lottie,’ he said in a voice trained to command.

‘Mean hound,’ said Lottie. ‘Where’s that American?’

Judge Skimp, who, since his experiences that morning, had become
profoundly Anglophile, produced two tenpound notes. ‘I shall be only too
proud and honoured . . .’ he said.

‘Good old Judge Thingummy,’ said Lottie. ‘That’s the way.’

Adam hurried out into the hall as another bottle of champagne popped
festively in the parlour.

‘Doge, ring up the Daimler Hire Company and order a car in my name. Tell
it to go round to Lady Metroland’s—Pastmaster House, Hill Street,’ he
said. Then he put on his hat and walked down Hay Hill, swinging an
umbrella and laughing again, only more quietly, to himself.

At Lady Metroland’s he kept on his coat and waited in the hall.

‘Will you please tell Miss Blount I’ve called for her? No, I won’t go
up.’

He looked at the hats on the table. Clearly there was quite a party. Two
or three silk hats of people who had dressed early, the rest soft and
black like his own. Then he began to dance again, jigging to himself in
simple high spirits.

In a minute Nina came down the broad Adam staircase.

‘Darling, why didn’t you come up? It’s so rude. Margot is longing to see
you.’

‘I’m so sorry, Nina. I couldn’t face a party. I’m so excited.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘Everything. I’ll tell you in the car.’

‘Car?’

‘Yes, it’ll be here in a minute. We’re going down to the country for
dinner. I can’t tell you how clever I’ve been.’

‘But what have you done, darling? Do stop dancing about.’

‘Can’t stop. You’ve no idea how clever I am.’

‘Adam. Are you tight again?’

‘Look out of the window and see if you can see a Daimler waiting.’

‘Adam, what _have_ you been doing? I will be told.’

‘Look,’ said Adam, producing the cheque. ‘Whatcher think of that?’ he
added in Cockney.

‘_My dear_, a thousand pounds. Did papa give you that?’

‘I earned it,’ said Adam. ‘Oh, I earned it. You should have seen the
luncheon I ate and the jokes I read. I’m going to be married to-morrow.
Oh, Nina, would Margot hate it if I sang in her hall?’

‘She’d simply loathe it, darling, and so should I. I’m going to take
care of that cheque. You remember what happened the last time you were
given a thousand pounds.’

‘That’s what your papa said.’

‘Did you tell him that?’

‘I told him everything—and he gave me a thousand pounds.’

‘. . . Poor Adam . . .’ said Nina suddenly.

‘Why did you say that?’

‘I don’t know. . . . I believe this is your car. . . .’

‘Nina, why did you say “Poor Adam”?’

‘. . . Did I? . . . Oh, I don’t know. . . . Oh, I do adore you so.’

‘I’m going to be married to-morrow. Are you?’

‘Yes, I expect so, dear.’

The chauffeur got rather bored while they tried to decide where they
would dine. At every place he suggested they gave a little wail of
dismay. ‘But that’s sure to be full of awful people we know,’ they said.
Maidenhead, Thame, Brighton, he suggested. Finally they decided to go to
Arundel.

‘It’ll be nearly nine before we get there,’ the chauffeur said. ‘Now
there’s a very nice hotel at Bray. . . .’

But they went to Arundel.

‘We’ll be married to-morrow,’ said Adam in the car. ‘And we won’t ask
anybody to the wedding at all. And we’ll go abroad at once, and just not
come back till I’ve written all those books. Nina, isn’t it divine?
Where shall we go?’

‘Anywhere you like, only rather warm, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t believe you really think we are going to be married, Nina, do
you, or do you?’

‘I don’t know . . . it’s only that I don’t believe that really divine
things like that ever do happen. . . . I don’t know why. . . . Oh, I do
like you so much to-night. If only you _knew_ how sweet you looked
skipping about in Margot’s hall all by yourself. I’d been watching you
for hours before I came down.’

‘I shall send the car back,’ said Adam, as they drove through
Pulborough. ‘We can go home by train.’

‘If there is a train.’

‘There’s bound to be,’ said Adam. But this raised a question in both
their minds that had been unobtrusively agitating them throughout the
journey. Neither said any more on the subject, but there was a distinct
air of constraint in the Daimler from Pulborough onwards.

This question was settled when they reached the hotel at Arundel.

‘We want dinner,’ said Adam, ‘and a room for the night.’

‘_Darling_, am I going to be seduced?’

‘I’m afraid you are. Do you mind terribly?’

‘Not as much as all that,’ said Nina, and added in Cockney, ‘Charmed,
I’m sure.’

Every one had finished dinner. They dined alone in a corner of the
coffee-room, while the other waiters laid the tables for breakfast,
looking at them resentfully. It was the dreariest kind of English
dinner. After dinner the lounge was awful; there were some golfers in
dinner-jackets playing bridge, and two old ladies. Adam and Nina went
across the stable-yard to the tap-room and sat until closing time in a
warm haze of tobacco smoke listening to the intermittent gossip of the
towns-people. They sat hand-in-hand, unembarrassed; after the first
minute no one noticed them. Just before closing time Adam stood a round
of drinks. They said:

‘Good health, sir. Best respects, madam,’ and the barman said, ‘Come
along, please. Finish your drinks, please,’ in a peculiar sing-song
tone.

There was a clock chiming as they crossed the yard and a slightly drunk
farmer trying to start up his car. Then they went up an oak staircase
lined with blunderbusses and coaching prints to their room.

They had no luggage (the chambermaid remarked on this next day to the
young man who worked at the wireless shop, saying that that was the
worst of being in a main road hotel. You got all sorts).

Adam undressed very quickly and got into bed; Nina more slowly arranging
her clothes on the chair and fingering the ornaments on the
chimney-piece with less than her usual self-possession. At last she put
out the light.

‘Do you know,’ she said, trembling slightly as she got into bed, ‘this
is the first time this has happened to me?’

‘It’s great fun,’ said Adam, ‘I promise you.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Nina seriously, ‘I wasn’t saying anything against
it. I was only saying that it hadn’t happened before. . . . Oh,
Adam. . . .’



‘And you said that really divine things didn’t happen,’ said Adam in the
middle of the night.

‘I don’t think that this is at all divine,’ said Nina. ‘It’s given me a
pain. And—my dear, that reminds me. I’ve something terribly important
to say to you in the morning.’

‘What?’

‘Not now, darling. Let’s go to sleep for a little, don’t you think?’

Before Nina was properly awake Adam dressed and went out into the rain
to get a shave. He came back bringing two toothbrushes and a bright red
celluloid comb. Nina sat up in bed and combed her hair. She put Adam’s
coat over her back.

‘My dear, you look exactly like _La Vie Parisienne_,’ said Adam, turning
round from brushing his teeth.

Then she threw off the coat and jumped out of bed, and he told her that
she looked like a fashion drawing without the clothes. Nina was rather
pleased about that, but she said that it was cold and that she still had
a pain, only not so bad as it was. Then she dressed and they went
downstairs.

Every one else had had breakfast and the waiters were laying the tables
for luncheon.

‘By the way,’ said Adam. ‘You said there was something you wanted to
say.’

‘Oh, yes, so there is. My dear, something quite awful.’

‘Do tell me.’

‘Well, it’s about that cheque papa gave you. I’m afraid it won’t help us
as much as you thought.’

‘But, darling, it’s a thousand pounds, isn’t it?’

‘Just look at it, my sweet.’ She took it out of her bag and handed it
across the table.

‘I don’t see anything wrong with it,’ said Adam.

‘Not the signature?’

‘Why, good lord, the old idiot’s signed it “Charlie Chaplin”.’

‘That’s what I mean, darling.’

‘But can’t we get him to alter it? He must be dotty. I’ll go down and
see him again to-day.’

‘I shouldn’t do that, dear . . . don’t you see. . . . Of course, he’s
very old, and . . . I dare say you may have made things sound a little
odd . . . don’t you think, dear, _he_ must have thought _you_ a little
dotty? . . . I mean . . . perhaps . . . that cheque was a kind of joke.’

‘Well I’m damned . . . this really is a bore. When everything seemed to
be going so well, too. When did you notice the signature, Nina?’

‘As soon as you showed it to me, at Margot’s. Only you looked so happy I
didn’t like to say anything. . . . You did look happy, you know, Adam,
and so sweet. I think I really fell in love with you for the first time
when I saw you dancing all alone in the hall.’

‘Well I’m damned,’ said Adam again. ‘The old devil.’

‘Anyway, you’ve had some fun out of it, haven’t you . . . or haven’t
you?’

‘Haven’t _you_?’

‘My dear, I never hated anything so much in my life . . . still, as long
as you enjoyed it that’s something.’

‘I say, Nina,’ said Adam after some time, ‘we shan’t be able to get
married after all.’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘It _is_ a bore, isn’t it?’

Later he said, ‘I expect that parson thought I was dotty too.’

And later, ‘As a matter of fact, it’s rather a good joke, don’t you
think?’

‘I think it’s divine.’

In the train Nina said: ‘It’s awful to think that I shall probably
never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by
yourself.’




                             _Chapter Six_


That evening Lady Metroland gave a party for Mrs Melrose Ape. Adam found
the telegram of invitation waiting for him on his return to Shepheard’s.
(Lottie had already used the prepaid reply to do some betting with. Some
one had given her a tip for the November Handicap and she wanted to
‘make her little flutter’ before she forgot the name.) He also found an
invitation to luncheon from Simon Balcairn.

The food at Shepheard’s tends to be mostly game-pie—quite black inside
and full of beaks and shot and inexplicable vertebræ—so Adam was quite
pleased to lunch with Simon Balcairn, though he knew there must be some
slightly sinister motive behind this sudden hospitality.

They lunched _Chez Espinosa_, the second most expensive restaurant in
London; it was full of oilcloth and Lalique glass, and the sort of
people who liked that sort of thing went there continually and said how
awful it was.

‘I hope you don’t mind coming to this awful restaurant,’ said Balcairn.
‘The truth is that I get meals free if I mention them occasionally in my
page. Not drinks, unfortunately. Who’s here, Alphonse?’ he asked the
_maître d’hôtel_.

Alphonse handed him the typewritten slip that was always kept for gossip
writers.

‘H’m, yes. Quite a good list this morning, Alphonse. I’ll do what I can
about it.’

‘Thank you, sir. A table for two? A cocktail?’

‘No, I don’t think I want a cocktail. I really haven’t time. Will you
have one, Adam? They aren’t very good here.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Adam.

‘Sure?’ said Balcairn, already making for their table.

When they were being helped to caviare he looked at the wine list.

‘The lager is rather good,’ he said. ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘Whatever you’re having. . . . I think some lager would be lovely.’

‘Two small bottles of lager, please. . . . Are you sure you really like
that better than anything?’

‘Yes, really, thank you.’

Simon Balcairn looked about him gloomily, occasionally adding a new name
to his list. (It is so depressing to be in a profession in which
literally all conversation is ‘shop’.)

Presently he said, with a deadly air of carelessness:

‘Margot Metroland’s got a party to-night, hasn’t she? Are you going?’

‘I think probably. I usually like Margot’s parties, don’t you?’

‘Yes. . . . Adam, I’ll tell you a very odd thing. She hasn’t sent me an
invitation to this one.’

‘I expect she will. I only got mine this morning.’

‘. . . Yes . . . who’s that woman just come in in the fur coat? I know
her so well by sight.’

‘Isn’t it Lady Everyman?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Another name was added to the list. Balcairn paused in
utmost gloom and ate some salad. ‘The thing is . . . she told Agatha
Runcible she wasn’t _going_ to ask me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Apparently she’s in a rage about something I said about something she
said about Miles.’

‘People do take things so seriously,’ said Adam encouragingly.

‘It means ruin for me,’ said Lord Balcairn. ‘Isn’t that Pamela Popham?’

‘I haven’t the least idea.’

‘I’m sure it is . . . I must look up the spelling in the stud book when
I get back. I got into awful trouble about spelling the other day. . . .
Ruin. . . . She’s asked Vanburgh.’

‘Well, he’s some sort of cousin, isn’t he?’

‘It’s so damned unfair. All my cousins are in lunatic asylums or else
they live in the country and do indelicate things with wild animals
. . . Except my mamma, and that’s worse . . . they were furious at the
office about Van getting that Downing Street “scoop”. If I miss this
party I may as well leave Fleet Street for good . . . I may as well put
my head into a gas-oven and have done with it . . . I’m sure if Margot
knew how much it meant to me she wouldn’t mind my coming.’

Great tears stood in his eyes threatening to overflow.

‘All this last week,’ he said, ‘I’ve been reduced to making up my page
from the Court Circular and Debrett . . . No one ever asks me anywhere
now . . .’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Adam, ‘I know Margot pretty well. If you like
I’ll ring her up and ask if I may bring you.’

‘Will you? Will you, Adam? If only you really would. Let’s go and do it
at once. We’ve no time for coffee or liqueurs. Quick, we can telephone
from my office . . . yes, that black hat and my umbrella, no, I’ve lost
the number . . . there, no, there, oh do hurry. . . . Yes, a taxi . . .’

They were out in the street and into a taxi before Adam had time to say
any more. Soon they were imbedded in a traffic block in the Strand, and
after a time they reached Balcairn’s office in Fleet Street.

They went up to a tiny room with ‘Social’ written on the glass of the
door. Its interior seemed not to justify its name. There was one chair,
a typewriter, a telephone, some books of reference and a considerable
litter of photographs. Balcairn’s immediate superior sat in the one
chair.

‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘So you’re back. Where you been?’

‘Espinosa. Here’s the list.’

The social editress read it through. ‘Can’t have Kitty Blackwater,’ she
said. ‘Had her yesterday. Others’ll do. Write ’em down to a couple of
paragraphs. Suppose you didn’t notice what they were wearing?’

‘Yes,’ said Balcairn eagerly. ‘All of them.’

‘Well, you won’t have room to use it. We got to keep everything down for
Lady M.’s party. I’ve cut out the D. of Devonshire altogether. By the
way, the photograph you used yesterday wasn’t the present Countess of
Everyman. It’s an old one of the Dowager. We had ’em both on the ’phone
about it, going on something awful. That’s _you_, again. Got your invite
for to-night?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You better get it quick. I got to have a first-hand story before we go
to press, see? By the way, know anything about this? Lady R.’s maid sent
it in to-day.’ She picked up a slip of paper: ‘“Rumoured engagement
broken off between Adam Fenwick-Symes, only son of the late Professor
Oliver Fenwick-Symes, and Nina Blount, of Doubting Hall, Aylesbury.”
Never heard of either. Ain’t even been announced, so far as I’m aware
of.’

‘You’d better ask him. This is Adam Symes.’

‘Hullo, no offence meant, I’m sure. . . . What about it?’

‘It is neither announced nor broken off.’

‘N.B.G. in fact, eh? Then _that_ goes _there_.’ She put the slip into
the wastepaper basket. ‘That girl’s sent us a lot of bad stuff lately.
Well, I’m off for a bit of lunch. I’ll be over at the Garden Club if
anything urgent turns up. So long.’

The editress went out, banging the door labelled ‘Social’, and whistled
as she went down the passage.

‘You see how they treat me,’ said Lord Balcairn. ‘They were all over me
when I first arrived. I do so wish I were dead.’

‘Don’t cry,’ said Adam, ‘it’s too shy-making.’

‘I can’t help it . . . oh, do come in.’

The door marked ‘Social’ opened and a small boy came in.

‘Lord Circumference’s butler downstairs with some engagements and a
divorce.’

‘Tell him to leave them.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

‘That’s the only person in this office who’s ever polite to me,’ said
Balcairn as the messenger disappeared. ‘I wish I had something to leave
him in my will. . . . Do ring up Margot. Then I shall at any rate know
the worst. . . . Come in.’

‘Gentleman of the name of General Strapper downstairs. Wants to see you
very particular.’

‘What about?’

‘Couldn’t say, my lord, but he’s got a whip. Seems very put out about
something.’

‘Tell him the social editor is having luncheon. . . . Do ring up
Margot.’

Adam said, ‘Margot, may I bring some one with me to-night?’

‘Well, Adam, I really don’t think you can. I can’t imagine how
everyone’s going to get in as it is. I’m terribly sorry, who is it?’

‘Simon Balcairn. He’s particularly anxious to come.’

‘I dare say he is. I’m rather against that young man. He’s written
things about me in the papers.’

‘_Please_, Margot.’

‘Certainly not. I won’t have him inside my house. I’ve only asked Van on
the strictest understanding that he doesn’t write anything about it. I
don’t wish to have anything more to do with Simon Balcairn.’

‘My dear, how _rich_ you sound.’

‘I feel my full income when that young man is mentioned. Good-bye. See
you to-night.’

‘You needn’t tell me,’ said Balcairn. ‘I know what she’s said . . . it’s
no good, is it?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Done for . . .’ said Balcairn. ‘. . . End of the tether. . . .’ He
turned over some slips of paper listlessly. ‘Would it interest you to
hear that Agatha and Archie are engaged?’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Neither do I. One of our people has just sent it in. Half of what they
send us is lies, and the other half libel . . . they sent us a long
story about Miles and Pamela Popham having spent last night at
Arundel. . . . But we couldn’t use it even if it were true, which it
obviously isn’t, knowing Miles. Thank you for doing what you could . . .
good-bye.’

Downstairs in the outer office there was an altercation in progress. A
large man of military appearance was shaking and stamping in front of a
middle-aged woman. Adam recognized the social editress.

‘Answer me, yes or no,’ the big man was saying. ‘Are you or are you not
responsible for this damnable lie about my daughter?’

(He had read in Simon Balcairn’s column that his daughter had been seen
at a night club. To any one better acquainted with Miss Strapper’s
habits of life the paragraph was particularly reticent.)

‘Yes, or no,’ cried the General, ‘or I’ll shake the life out of you.’

‘No.’

‘Then who is? Let me get hold of the cad who wrote it. Where is he?’
roared the General.

‘Upstairs,’ the social editress managed to say.

‘More trouble for Simon,’ thought Adam.



Adam went to pick Nina up at her flat. They had arranged to go to a
cinema together. She said, ‘You’re much later than you said. It’s so
boring to be late for a talkie.’

He said, ‘Talkies are boring, anyhow.’

They treated each other quite differently after their night’s
experiences. Adam was inclined to be egotistical and despondent; Nina
was rather grown-up and disillusioned and distinctly cross. Adam began
to say that as far as he could see he would have to live on at
Shepheard’s now for the rest of his life, or at any rate for the rest of
Lottie’s life, as it wouldn’t be fair to leave without paying the bill.

Then Nina said, ‘Do be amusing, Adam. I can’t bear you when you’re not
amusing.’

Then Adam began to tell her about Simon Balcairn and Margot’s party. He
described how he had seen Simon being horse-whipped in the middle of the
office.

Nina said, ‘Yes, that’s amusing. Go on like that.’

The story of Simon’s whipping lasted them all the way to the cinema.
They were very late for the film Nina wanted to see, and that set them
back again. They didn’t speak for a long time. Then Nina said _à propos_
of the film, ‘All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical
pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.’

Adam said, ‘You’ll enjoy it more next time.’

Nina said, ‘_Next time_,’ and told him that he took too much for
granted.

Adam said that was a phrase which only prostitutes used.

Then they started a real quarrel which lasted all through the film and
all the way to Nina’s flat and all the time she was cutting up a lemon
and making a cocktail, until Adam said that if she didn’t stop going on
he would ravish her there and then on her own hearthrug.

Then Nina went on.

But by the time that Adam went to dress she had climbed down enough to
admit that perhaps love was a thing one could grow to be fond of after a
time, like smoking a pipe. Still she maintained that it made one feel
very ill at first, and she doubted if it was worth it.

Then they began to argue at the top of the lift about whether acquired
tastes were ever worth acquiring. Adam said it was imitation, and that
it was natural to man to be imitative, so that acquired tastes were
natural.

But the presence of the lift boy stopped that argument coming to a
solution as the other had done.



‘My, ain’t this classy,’ said Divine Discontent.

‘It’s all right,’ said Chastity in a worldly voice. ‘Nothing to make a
song and dance about.’

‘Who’s making a song and dance? I just said it was classy—and it _is_
classy, ain’t it?’

‘I suppose everything’s classy to _some_ people.’

‘Now you two,’ said Temperance, who had been put in charge of the angels
for the evening, ‘don’t you start anything in here, not with your wings
on. Mrs Ape won’t stand for scrapping in wings, and you know it.’

‘Who’s starting anything?’

‘Well, you are then.’

‘Oh, it’s no use talking to Chastity. She’s too high and mighty to be an
angel now. Went out for a drive with Mrs Panrast in a Rolls Royce,’ said
Fortitude. ‘I saw her. I was so sorry it rained all the time, or it
might have been quite enjoyable, mightn’t it, Chastity?’

‘Well, you ought to be glad. Leaves the _men_ for you, Fortitude. Only
they don’t seem to want to take advantage, do they?’

Then they talked about men for some time. Divine Discontent thought the
second footman had nice eyes.

‘And he knows it,’ said Temperance.

They were all having supper together in what was still called the
schoolroom in Lady Metroland’s house. From the window they could see the
guests arriving for the party. In spite of the rain quite a large crowd
had collected on either side of the awning to criticize the cloaks with
appreciative ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ or contemptuous sniffs. Cars and taxis
drove up in close succession. Lady Circumference splashed up the street
in goloshes, wearing a high fender of diamonds under a tartan umbrella.
The Bright Young People came popping all together, out of some one’s
electric brougham like a litter of pigs, and ran squealing up the steps.
Some ‘gate-crashers’ who had made the mistake of coming in Victorian
fancy dress were detected and repulsed. They hurried home to change for
a second assault. No one wanted to miss Mrs Ape’s _début_.

But the angels were rather uneasy. They had been dressed ever since
seven o’clock in their white shifts, gold sashes and wings. It was now
past ten, and the strain was beginning to tell, for it was impossible to
sit back comfortably in wings.

‘Oh, I wish they’d hurry up so we could get it over,’ said Creative
Endeavour. ‘Mrs Ape said we could have some champagne afterwards if we
sang nice.’

‘I don’t mind betting _she’s_ doing herself pretty well, down there.’

‘_Chastity!_’

‘Oh, _all_ right.’

Then the footman with the nice eyes came to clear the table. He gave
them a friendly wink as he shut the door. ‘Pretty creatures,’ he
thought. ‘Blooming shame that they’re so religious . . . wasting the
best years of their lives.’

(There had been a grave debate in the servants’ hall about the exact
status of angels. Even Mr Blenkinsop, the butler, had been uncertain.
‘Angels are certainly not guests,’ he had said, ‘and I don’t think they
are deputations. Nor they ain’t governesses either, nor clergy not
strictly speaking; they’re not entertainers, because entertainers _dine_
nowadays, the more’s the pity.’

‘I believe they’re decorators,’ said Mrs Blouse, ‘or else charitable
workers.’

‘Charitable workers are governesses, Mrs Blouse. There is nothing to be
gained by multiplying social distinctions indefinitely. Decorators are
either guests or workmen.’

After further discussion the conclusion was reached that angels were
nurses, and that became the official ruling of the household. But the
second footman was of the opinion that they were ‘young persons’, pure
and simple, ‘and very nice too’, for nurses cannot, except in very rare
cases, be winked at, and clearly angels could.)

‘What we want to know, Chastity,’ said Creative Endeavour, ‘is how you
come to take up with Mrs Panrast at all.’

‘Yes,’ said the Angels, ‘yes. It’s not like _you_, Chastity, to go
riding in a motor car with a woman.’ They fluttered their feathers in a
menacing way. ‘Let’s third-degree her,’ said Humility with rather nasty
relish.

(There was a system of impromptu jurisdiction among the Angels which
began with innuendo, went on to crossexamination, pinches and slaps and
ended, as a rule, in tears and kisses.)

Faced by this circle of spiteful and haloed faces, Chastity began to
lose her air of superiority.

‘Why shouldn’t I ride with a friend,’ she asked plaintively, ‘without
all you girls pitching on me like this?’

‘_Friend_,’ said Creative Endeavour. ‘You never saw her before to-day,’
and she gave her a nasty pinch just above the elbow.

‘_Ooooh!_’ said Chastity. ‘_OOh, please_ . . . beast.’

Then they all pinched her all over, but precisely and judiciously, so as
not to disturb her wings or halo, for this was no orgy (sometimes in
their bedrooms, they gave way, but not here, in Lady Metroland’s
schoolroom, before an important first night).

‘Ooh,’ said Chastity, ‘_OOh, ow, ooh, ow. Please_, beasts, swine, cads
. . . _please_ . . . oh . . . well, if you must know, I thought she
_was_ a man.’

‘Thought she was a _man_, Chastity? That doesn’t sound right to me.’

‘Well, she looks like a man and—and she _goes on_ like a man. I saw her
sitting at a table in a tea-shop. She hadn’t got a hat on, and I
couldn’t see her skirt . . . ooh . . . how can I tell you if you keep
pinching . . . and she smiled and so, well, I went and had some tea with
her, and she said would I go out with her in her motor car, and I said
yes and, ooh, I wish I hadn’t now.’

‘What did she say in the motor car, Chastity?’

‘I forget—nothing much.’

‘Oh, what.’ ‘Do tell us.’ ‘We’ll never pinch you again if you tell us.’
‘I’m sorry if I hurt you, Chastity, do tell _me_.’ ‘You’d _better_ tell
us.’

‘No, I can’t, _really_—I don’t remember, I tell you.’

‘Give her another little nip, girls.’

‘Ooh, ooh, ooh, _stop_. I’ll tell you.’

Their heads were close together and they were so deeply engrossed in the
story that they did not hear Mrs Ape’s entry.

‘Smut again,’ said a terrible voice. ‘Girls, I’m sick ashamed of you.’

Mrs Ape looked magnificent in a gown of heavy gold brocade embroidered
with texts.

‘I’m sick ashamed of you,’ repeated Mrs Ape, ‘and you’ve made Chastity
cry again, just before the big act. If you must bully some one, _why_
choose Chastity? You all know by this time that crying always gives her
a red nose. How do _I_ look, I should like to know, standing up in front
of a lot of angels with red noses. You don’t ever think of nothing but
your own pleasures, do you? _Sluts._’ This last word was spoken with a
depth of expression that set the angels trembling. ‘There’ll be no
champagne for any one to-night, see. And if you don’t sing perfectly,
I’ll give the whole lot of you a good hiding, see. Now, come on, now,
and for the love of the Lamb, Chastity, _do something to your nose_.
They’ll think it’s a temperance meeting to see you like that.’

It was a brilliant scene into which the disconsolate angels trooped two
minutes later. Margot Metroland shook hands with each of them as they
came to the foot of the staircase, appraising them, one by one, with an
expert eye.

‘You don’t look happy, my dear,’ she found time to say to Chastity, as
she led them across the ballroom to their platform, banked in orchids at
the far end. ‘If you feel you want a change, let me know later, and I
can get you a job in South America. _I mean it._’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Chastity, ‘but I could never leave Mrs Ape.’

‘Well, think it over, child. You’re far too pretty a girl to waste your
time singing hymns. Tell that other girl, the red-headed one, that I can
probably find a place for her, too.’

‘What, Humility? Don’t you have nothing to do with her. She’s a fiend.’

‘Well, some men like rough stuff, but I don’t want any one who makes
trouble with the other girls.’

‘She makes trouble all right. Look at that bruise.’

‘My dear!’

Margot Metroland and Mrs Ape led the angels up the steps between the
orchids and stood them at the back of the platform facing the room.
Chastity stood next to Creative Endeavour.

‘Please, Chastity, I’m sorry if we hurt you,’ said Creative Endeavour.
‘I didn’t pinch hard, did I?’

‘Yes,’ said Chastity. ‘Like hell you did.’

A slightly sticky hand tried to take hers, but she clenched her fist.
She would go to South America and work for Lady Metroland . . . and she
wouldn’t say anything about it to Humility either. She glared straight
in front of her, saw Mrs Panrast and dropped her eyes.



The ballroom was filled with little gilt chairs and the chairs with
people. Lord Vanburgh, conveniently seated near the door, through which
he could slip away to the telephone, was taking them all in. They were
almost all, in some way or another, notable. The motives for Margot
Metroland’s second marriage[B] had been mixed, but entirely worldly;
chief among them had been the desire to reestablish her somewhat shaken
social position, and her party that night testified to her success, for
while many people can entertain the Prime Minister and the Duchess of
Stayle and Lady Circumference, and anybody can, and often against her
will does, entertain Miles Malpractice and Agatha Runcible, it is only a
very confident hostess who will invite both these sets together at the
same time, differing, as they do, upon almost all questions of principle
and deportment. Standing near Vanburgh, by the door, was a figure who
seemed in himself to typify the change that had come over Pastmaster
House when Margot Beste-Chetwynd became Lady Metroland; an unobtrusive
man of rather less than average height, whose black beard, falling in
tight burnished curls, nearly concealed the order of St Michael and St
George which he wore round his neck; he wore a large signet ring on the
little finger of his left hand outside his white glove; there was an
orchid in his buttonhole. His eyes, youthful but grave, wandered among
the crowd; occasionally he bowed with grace and decision. Several people
were asking about him.

-----

[B] See _Decline and Fall_.

-----

‘See the beaver with the medal,’ said Humility to Faith.

‘Who is that _very_ important young man?’ asked Mrs Blackwater of Lady
Throbbing.

‘I don’t know, dear. He bowed to _you_.’

‘He bowed to _you_, dear.’

‘How very nice . . . I wasn’t quite sure. . . . He reminds me a little
of dear Prince Anrep.’

‘It’s so nice in these days, isn’t it, dearest, to see some one who
really looks . . . don’t you think?’

‘You mean the beard?’

‘_The beard among other things_, darling.’



Father Rothschild was conspiring with Mr Outrage and Lord Metroland. He
stopped short in the middle of his sentence.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but there are spies everywhere. That man with
the beard, do you know him?’

Lord Metroland thought vaguely he had something to do with the Foreign
Office; Mr Outrage seemed to remember having seen him before.

‘_Exactly_,’ said Father Rothschild. ‘I think it would be better if we
continued our conversation in private. I have been watching him. _He is
bowing across the room to empty places and to people whose backs are
turned to him._’ The Great Men withdrew to Lord Metroland’s study.
Father Rothschild closed the door silently and looked behind the
curtains.

‘Shall I lock the door?’ asked Lord Metroland.

‘No,’ said the Jesuit. ‘A lock does not prevent a spy from hearing; but
it does hinder us, inside, from catching the spy.’

‘Well, I should never have thought of that,’ said Mr Outrage in frank
admiration.



‘How pretty Nina Blount is,’ said Lady Throbbing, busy from the front
row with her lorgnette, ‘but don’t you think, a little changed; almost
as though . . .’

‘You notice everything, darling.’

‘When you get to our age, dear, there is so little left, but I do
believe Miss Blount must have had an _experience_ . . . she’s sitting
next to Miles. You know I heard from Edward to-night. He’s on his way
back. It will be a great blow for Miles because he’s been living in
Edward’s house all this time. To tell you the truth I’m a little glad
because from what I hear from Anne Opalthorpe, who lives opposite, the
things that go on . . . he’s got a friend staying there now. Such an odd
man—a dirt-track racer. But then it’s no use attempting to disguise the
fact, is there. . . . There’s Mrs Panrast . . . yes, dear, of course you
know her, she used to be Eleanor Balcairn . . . now _why_ does dear
Margot ask any one like that, do you think? . . . it is not as though
Margot was so innocent . . . and there’s Lord Monomark . . . yes, the
man who owns those _amusing_ papers . . . they say that he and Margot,
but _before_ her marriage, of course (her second marriage, I mean), but
you never know, do you, how things _crop_ up again? . . . I wonder where
Peter Pastmaster is? . . . he never stays to Margot’s parties . . . he
was at dinner, of course, and, my dear, _how_ he drank. . . . He can’t
be more than twenty-one. . . . Oh, so that is Mrs Ape. What a coarse
face . . . no dear, of course she can’t hear . . . she looks like a
_procureuse_ . . . but perhaps I shouldn’t say that _here_, should I?’



Adam came and sat next to Nina.

‘Hullo,’ they said to each other.

‘My dear, do look at Mary Mouse’s new young man,’ said Nina.

Adam looked and saw that Mary was sitting next to the Maharajah of
Pukkapore.

‘I call that a pretty pair,’ he said.

‘Oh, how bored I feel,’ said Nina.



Mr Benfleet was there talking to two poets. They said ‘. . . and I wrote
to tell William that I didn’t write the review, but it was true that
Tony did read me the review over the telephone when I was very sleepy
before he sent it in. I thought it was best to tell him the truth
because he would hear it from Tony anyway. Only I said I advised him not
to publish it just as I had advised William not to publish the book in
the first place. Well Tony rang up Michael and told him that I’d said
that William thought Michael had written the review because of the
reviews I had written of Michael’s book last November, though, as a
matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it. . . .’

‘Too bad,’ said Mr Benfleet. ‘Too bad.’

‘. . . but is that any reason, even if I had written it, why Michael
should tell Tony that I had stolen five pounds from William?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Benfleet. ‘Too bad.’

‘Of course, they’re _simply_ not _gentlemen_, either of them. That’s all
it is, only one’s shy of saying it nowadays.’

Mr Benfleet shook his head sadly and sympathetically.



Then Mrs Melrose Ape stood up to speak. A hush fell in the gilt ballroom
beginning at the back and spreading among the chairs until only Mrs
Blackwater’s voice was heard exquisitely articulating some details of
Lady Metroland’s past. Then she, too, was silent and Mrs Ape began her
oration about Hope.

‘Brothers and Sisters,’ she said in a hoarse, stirring voice. Then she
paused and allowed her eyes, renowned throughout three continents for
their magnetism, to travel among the gilded chairs. (It was one of her
favourite openings.) ‘_Just you look at yourselves_,’ she said.

Magically, self-doubt began to spread in the audience. Mrs Panrast
stirred uncomfortably; had that silly little girl been talking, she
wondered.

‘Darling,’ whispered Miss Runcible, ‘is my nose awful?’

Nina thought how once, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been in love.
Mr Benfleet thought should he have made it three per cent. on the tenth
thousand. The gate-crashers wondered whether it would not have been
better to have stayed at home. (Once in Kansas City Mrs Ape had got no
further than these opening words; there had been a tornado of emotion
and all the seats in the hall had been broken to splinters. It was there
that Humility had joined the Angels.) There were a thousand things in
Lady Throbbing’s past. . . . Every heart found something to bemoan.

‘She’s got ’em again,’ whispered Creative Endeavour. ‘Got ’em stiff.’

Lord Vanburgh slipped from the room to telephone through some racy
paragraphs about fashionable piety.

Mary Mouse shed two little tears and felt for the brown, bejewelled hand
of the Maharajah.

But suddenly on that silence vibrant with self-accusation broke the
organ voice of England, the hunting-cry of the _ancien régime_. Lady
Circumference gave a resounding snort of disapproval:

‘What a damned impudent woman,’ she said.

Adam and Nina and Miss Runcible began to giggle, and Margot Metroland
for the first time in her many parties was glad to realize that the
guest of the evening was going to be a failure. It had been an awkward
moment.



In the study Father Rothschild and Mr Outrage were plotting with
enthusiasm. Lord Metroland was smoking a cigar and wondering how soon he
could get away. He wanted to hear Mrs Ape and to have another look at
those Angels. There was one with red hair. . . . Besides all this
statesmanship and foreign policy had always bored him. In his years in
the Commons he had always liked a good scrap, and often thought a little
wistfully of those orgies of competitive dissimulation in which he had
risen to eminence. Even now, when some straightforward, easily
intelligible subject was under discussion, such as poor people’s wages
or public art, he enjoyed from time to time making a sonorous speech to
the Upper House. But this sort of thing was not at all in his line.

Suddenly Father Rothschild turned out the light.

‘There’s some one coming down the passage,’ he said.

‘Quick, get behind the curtains.’

‘Really, Rothschild . . .’ said Mr Outrage.

‘I say . . .’ said Lord Metroland.

‘_Quick_,’ said Father Rothschild.

The three statesmen hid themselves. Lord Metroland, still smoking, his
head thrown back and his cigar erect. They heard the door open. The
light was turned on. A match was struck. Then came the slight tinkle of
the telephone as someone lifted the receiver.

‘Central ten thousand,’ said a slightly muffled voice.

‘_Now_,’ said Father Rothschild, and stepped through the curtain.

The bearded stranger who had excited his suspicions was standing at the
table smoking one of Lord Metroland’s cigars and holding the telephone.

‘Oh, hullo,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know you were here. Just thought I’d use
the telephone. So sorry. Won’t disturb you. Jolly party, isn’t it?
Good-bye.’

‘Stay exactly where you are,’ said Father Rothschild, ‘and take off that
beard.’

‘Damned if I do,’ said the stranger crossly. ‘It’s no use talking to me
as though I were one of your choir boys . . . you old _bully_.’

‘Take off that beard,’ said Father Rothschild.

‘Take off that beard,’ said Lord Metroland and the Prime Minister,
emerging suddenly from behind the curtain.

This concurrence of Church and State, coming so unexpectedly after an
evening of prolonged embarrassment, was too much for Simon.

‘Oh, all right,’ he said, ‘if you _will_ make such a _thing_ about it
. . . it hurts too frightfully, if you knew . . . it ought to be soaked
in hot water . . . ooh . . . ow.’

He gave some tugs at the black curls, and bit by bit they came away.

‘_There_’, he said. ‘Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off
her wig. . . . I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about
it, if I were you.’

‘I seem to have over-estimated the gravity of the situation,’ said
Father Rothschild.

‘Who is it, after all this?’ said Mr Outrage. ‘Where are those
detectives? What does it all mean?’

‘That’ said Father Rothschild bitterly, ‘is _Mr Chatterbox_.’

‘Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person. . . .
_Chatterbox_, indeed . . . you make us hide behind a curtain and then
you tell us that some young man in a false beard is called Chatterbox.
Really, Rothschild . . .’

‘Lord Balcairn,’ said Lord Metroland, ‘will you kindly leave my house
immediately?’

‘_Is_ this young man called Chatterbox or is he not? . . . Upon my soul,
I believe you’re all crazy.’

‘Oh yes, I’m going,’ said Simon. ‘You didn’t think I was going to go
back to the party like this, did you?—or did you?’ Indeed, he looked
very odd with little patches of black hair still adhering to parts of
his chin and cheeks.

‘Lord Monomark is here this evening. I shall certainly inform him of
your behaviour . . .’

‘He writes for the papers,’ Father Rothschild tried to explain to the
Prime Minister.

‘Well, damn it, so do I, but I don’t wear a false beard and call myself
Chatterbox. . . . I simply do not understand what has happened. . . .
Where are those detectives? . . . Will no one explain? . . . _You treat
me like a child_,’ he said. It was all like one of those Cabinet
meetings, when they all talked about something he didn’t understand and
paid no attention to him.

Father Rothschild led him away, and attempted with almost humiliating
patience and tact to make clear to him some of the complexities of
modern journalism.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ the Prime Minister kept saying. ‘It’s
all humbug. You’re keeping something back. . . . _Chatterbox_, indeed.’

Simon Balcairn was given his hat and coat and shown to the door. The
crowd round the awning had dispersed. It was still raining. He walked
back to his little flat in Bourdon Street. The rain washed a few of the
remaining locks from his face; it dripped down his collar.

They were washing a car outside his front door; he crept between it and
his dustbin, fitted his latchkey in the lock and went upstairs. His flat
was like _Chez Espinosa_—all oilcloth and Lalique glass; there were
some enterprising photographs by David Lennox, a gramophone (on the
instalment system) and numberless cards of invitation on the
mantelpiece. His bath towel was where he had left it on his bed.

Simon went to the ice box in the kitchen and chipped off some ice. Then
he made himself a cocktail. Then he went to the telephone.

‘Central ten thousand . . .’ he said. ‘. . . give me Mrs Brace. Hullo,
this is Balcairn.’

‘Well . . . gotcher story?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve got my story, only this isn’t gossip, it’s news—front
page. You’ll have to fill up the Chatterbox page on Espinosa’s.’

‘Hell!’

‘Wait till you see the story. . . . Hullo, give me news, will you. . . .
This is Balcairn. Put on one of the boys to take this down, will you?
. . . ready? All right.’

At his glass-topped table, sipping his cocktail, Simon Balcairn dictated
his last story.

‘_Scenes of wild religious enthusiasm, comma, reminiscent of a negro
camp-meeting in Southern America, comma, broke out in the heart of
Mayfair yesterday evening at the party given for the famous American
Revivalist Mrs Ape by the Viscountess Metroland, formerly the Hon. Mrs
Beste-Chetwynd, at her historic mansion, Pastmaster House, stop. The
magnificent ballroom can never have enshrined a more brilliant assembly
. . ._’

It was his swan-song. Lie after monstrous lie bubbled up in his brain.

‘_. . . The Hon. Agatha Runcible joined Mrs Ape among the orchids and
led the singing, tears coursing down her face . . ._’

Excitement spread at the _Excess_ office. The machines were stopped. The
night staff of reporters, slightly tipsy, as always at that hour, stood
over the stenographer as he typed. The compositors snatched the sheets
of copy as they came. The sub-editors began ruthlessly cutting and
scrapping; they suppressed important political announcements, garbled
the evidence at a murder trial, reduced the dramatic criticism to one
caustic paragraph, to make room for Simon’s story.

It came through ‘hot and strong, as nice as mother makes it,’ as one of
them remarked.

‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’s on a good thing at last,’ said another.

‘What-ho,’ said a third appreciatively.

‘_. . . barely had Lady Everyman finished before the Countess of
Throbbing rose to confess her sins, and in a voice broken with emotion
disclosed the hitherto unverified details of the parentage of the
present Earl. . . ._’

‘Tell Mr Edwardes to look up photographs of all three of ’em,’ said the
assistant news editor.

‘_. . . The Marquess of Vanburgh shaken by sobs of contrition . . . .
Mrs Panrast, singing feverishly. . . . Lady Anchorage with downcast
eyes._’

‘_. . . The Archbishop of Canterbury, who up to now had remained unmoved
by the general emotion, then testified that at Eton in the ’eighties he
and Sir James Brown . . ._’

‘_. . . the Duchess of Stayle next threw down her emerald and diamond
tiara, crying “a Guilt Offering”, an example which was quickly followed
by the Countess of Circumference and Lady Brown, until a veritable rain
of precious stones fell on to the parquet flooring, heirlooms of
priceless value rolling among Tecla pearls and Chanel diamonds. A blank
cheque fluttered from the hands of the Maharajah of Pukkapore . . ._’

It made over two columns, and when Simon finally rang off, after
receiving the congratulations of his colleagues, he was for the first
time in his journalistic experience perfectly happy about his work. He
finished the watery dregs of the cocktail shaker and went into the
kitchen. He shut the door and the window and opened the door of the gas
oven. Inside it was very black and dirty and smelled of meat. He spread
a sheet of newspaper on the lowest tray and lay down, resting his head
on it. Then he noticed that by some mischance he had chosen Vanburgh’s
gossip-page in the _Morning Despatch_. He put in another sheet. (There
were crumbs on the floor.) Then he turned on the gas. It came
surprisingly with a loud roar; the wind of it stirred his hair and the
remaining particles of his beard. At first he held his breath. Then he
thought that was silly and gave a sniff. The sniff made him cough, and
coughing made him breathe, and breathing made him feel very ill; but
soon he fell into a coma and presently died.

So the last Earl of Balcairn went, as they say, to his fathers (who had
fallen in many lands and for many causes, as the eccentricities of
British Foreign Policy and their own wandering natures had directed
them; at Acre and Agincourt and Killiecrankie, in Egypt and America. One
had been picked white by fishes as the tides rolled him among the
tree-tops of a submarine forest; some had grown black and unfit for
consideration under tropical suns; while many of them lay in marble
tombs of extravagant design).



At Pastmaster House, Lady Metroland and Lord Monomark were talking about
him. Lord Monomark was roaring with boyish laughter.

‘That’s a great lad,’ he said. ‘Came in a false beard, did he? That’s
peppy. What’d you say his name was? I’ll raise him to-morrow first
thing.’

And he turned to give Simon’s name to an attendant secretary.

And when Lady Metroland began to expostulate, he shut her up rather
discourteously.

‘Shucks, Margot,’ he said. ‘You know better than to get on a high horse
with me.’




                            _Chapter Seven_


Then Adam became Mr Chatterbox. He and Nina were lunching at Espinosa’s
and quarrelling half-heartedly when a business-like, Eton-cropped woman
came across to their table, whom Adam recognized as the social editress
of the _Daily Excess_.

‘See here,’ she said, ‘weren’t you over at the office with Balcairn the
day he did himself in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, a pretty mess he’s let us in for. Sixty-two writs for libel up to
date and more coming in. And that’s not the worst. Left me to do his job
and mine. I was wondering if you could tell me the names of any of these
people and anything about them.’

Adam pointed out a few well-worn faces.

‘Yes, they ain’t no good. They’re on the black list. You see, Monomark
was in an awful way about Balcairn’s story of Lady Metroland’s party,
and he’s sent down a chit that none of the people who are bringing
actions against the paper can be mentioned again. Well, I ask you,
what’s one to do? It’s just bricks without straw. Why, we can’t even
mention the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. I suppose
you don’t know of any one who’d care to take on the job? They’d have to
be a pretty good mutt, if they would.’

‘What do they pay?’

‘Ten pounds a week and expenses. Know any one?’

‘I’d do it myself for that.’

‘_You?_’ The social editress looked at him sceptically. ‘Would you be
any good?’

‘I’ll try for a week or two.’

‘That’s about as long as any one sticks it. All right, come back to the
office with me when you’ve finished lunch. You can’t cause more trouble
than Balcairn, anyhow, and he looked the goods at first.’

‘Now we can get married,’ said Nina.



Meanwhile the libel actions against the authors, printers and publishers
of Simon Balcairn’s last story practically paralysed the judicial system
of the country. The old brigade, led by Mrs Blackwater, threw themselves
with relish into an orgy of litigation such as they had not seen since
the war (one of the younger counsel causing Lady Throbbing particular
delight. . . . ‘I do think, when you get to my age, dear, there is
something _sympathetique_ about a wig, don’t you? . . .’). The younger
generation for the most part allowed their cases to be settled out of
court and later gave a very delightful party on the proceeds in a
captive dirigible. Miss Runcible, less well advised, filled two albums
with Press cuttings portraying her various appearances at the Law
Courts, sometimes as plaintiff, sometimes as witness, sometimes (in a
hat borrowed from Miss Mouse) as part of the queue of ‘fashionably
dressed women waiting for admission’, once as an intruder being removed
by an usher from the Press gallery, and finally as prisoner being
sentenced to a fine of ten pounds or seven days’ imprisonment for
contempt of court.

The proceedings were considerably complicated by the behaviour of Mrs
Ape, who gave an interview in which she fully confirmed Simon Balcairn’s
story. She also caused her Press agent to wire a further account to all
parts of the world. She then left the country with her angels, having
received a sudden call to ginger up the religious life of Oberammergau.

At intervals letters arrived from Buenos Aires in which Chastity and
Divine Discontent spoke rather critically of Latin American
entertainment.

‘They didn’t know when they was well off,’ said Mrs Ape.

‘It don’t sound much different from us,’ said Creative Endeavour
wistfully.

‘They won’t be dead five minutes before _they_ see the difference,’ said
Mrs Ape.

Edward Throbbing and two secretaries returned to Hertford Street
somewhat inopportunely for Miles and his dirt-track racer, who were
obliged to move into Shepheard’s. Miles said that the thing he resented
about his brother’s return was not so much the inconvenience as the
expense. For some weeks Throbbing suffered from the successive
discoveries by his secretaries of curious and compromising things in all
parts of the house; his butler, too, seemed changed. He hiccoughed
heavily while serving dinner to two Secretaries of State, complained of
spiders in his bath and the sound of musical instruments, and finally
had ‘the horrors’, ran mildly amok in the pantry with the kitchen poker,
and had to be taken away in a van. Long after these immediate causes of
distress had been removed, the life of Throbbing’s secretaries was
periodically disturbed by ambiguous telephone calls and the visits of
menacing young men who wanted new suits or tickets to America, or a
fiver to go on with.

But all these events, though of wide general interest, are of necessity
a closed book to the readers of Mr Chatterbox’s page.

Lord Monomark’s black list had made a devastating change in the
personnel of the _Daily Excess_ gossip. In a single day Mr Chatterbox’s
readers found themselves plunged into a murky underworld of nonentities.
They were shown photographs of the misshapen daughters of backwoods
peers carrying buckets of meal to their fathers’ chickens; they learned
of the engagement of the younger sister of the Bishop of Chertsey and of
a dinner party given in Elm Park Gardens by the widow of a High
Commissioner to some of the friends she had made in their colony. There
were details of the blameless home life of women novelists, photographed
with their spaniels before rose-covered cottages; stories of
undergraduate ‘rags’ and regimental reunion dinners; anecdotes from
Harley Street and the Inns of Court; snaps and snippets about cocktail
parties given in basement flats by spotty announcers at the B.B.C., of
tea dances in Gloucester Terrace and jokes made at High Table by dons.

Urged on by the taunts of the social editress, Adam brought new
enterprise and humanity into this sorry column. He started a series of
‘Notable Invalids’, which was from the first, wildly successful. He
began chattily. ‘_At a dinner party the other evening my neighbour and I
began to compile a list of the most popular deaf peeresses. First, of
course, came old Lady ——. . ._’

Next day he followed it up with a page about deaf peers and statesmen;
then about the one-legged, blind and bald. Postcards of appreciation
poured in from all over the country.

‘_I have read your column for many years now_,’ wrote a correspondent
from Bude, ‘_but this is the first time I have really enjoyed it. I have
myself been deaf for a long time, and it is a great comfort to me to
know that my affliction is shared by so many famous men and women. Thank
you, Mr Chatterbox, and good luck to you._’

Another wrote: ‘_Ever since childhood I have been cursed with abnormally
large ears which have been a source of ridicule to me and a serious
handicap in my career (I am a chub fuddler). I should be so glad to know
whether any great people have suffered in the same way._’

Finally, he ransacked the lunatic asylums and mental houses of the
country, and for nearly a week ran an extremely popular series under the
heading ‘Titled Eccentrics’.

‘_It is not generally known that the Earl of ——, who lives in strict
retirement, has the unusual foible of wearing costume of the Napoleonic
Period. So great, indeed, is his detestation of modern dress that on one
occasion . . ._’

‘_Lord ——, whose public appearances are regrettably rare nowadays, is
a close student of comparative religions. There is an amusing story of
how, when lunching with the then Dean of Westminster, Lord —— startled
his host by proclaiming that so far from being of divine ordinance, the
Ten Commandments were, in point of fact, composed by himself and
delivered by him to Moses on Sinai. . . ._’

‘_Lady ——, whose imitations of animal sounds are so lifelike that she
can seldom be persuaded to converse in any other way, . . ._’

And so on.

Besides this, arguing that people did not really mind _whom_ they read
about provided that a kind of vicarious inquisitiveness into the lives
of others was satisfied, Adam began to invent people.

He invented a sculptor called Provna, the son of a Polish nobleman, who
lived in a top-floor studio in Grosvenor House. Most of his work (which
was all in private hands) was constructed in cork, vulcanite and steel.
The Metropolitan Museum at New York, Mr Chatterbox learned, had been
negotiating for some time to purchase a specimen, but so far had been
unable to outbid the collectors.

Such is the power of the Press, that soon after this a steady output of
early Provnas began to travel from Warsaw to Bond Street and from Bond
Street to California, while Mrs Hoop announced to her friends that
Provna was at the moment at work on a bust of Johnny, which she intended
to present to the nation (a statement which Adam was unable to record
owing to the presence of Mrs Hoop’s name on the black list, but which
duly appeared, under a photograph of Johnny, in the Marquess of
Vanburgh’s rival column).

Encouraged by his success, Adam began gradually to introduce to his
readers a brilliant and lovely company. He mentioned them casually at
first in lists of genuine people. There was a popular young attaché at
the Italian Embassy called Count Cincinnati. He was descended from the
famous Roman Consul, Cincinnatus, and bore a plough as his crest. Count
Cincinnati was held to be the best amateur ’cellist in London. Adam saw
him one evening dancing at the Café de la Paix. A few evenings later
Lord Vanburgh noticed him at Covent Garden, remarking that his
collection of the original designs for the Russian ballet was unequalled
in Europe. Two days later Adam sent him to Monte Carlo for a few days’
rest, and Vanburgh hinted that there was more in this visit than met the
eye, and mentioned the daughter of a well-known American hostess who was
staying there at her aunt’s villa.

There was a Captain Angus Stuart-Kerr, too, whose rare appearances in
England were a delight to his friends; unlike most big-game hunters, he
was an expert and indefatigable dancer. Much to Adam’s disgust he found
Captain Stuart-Kerr taken up by an unknown gossip writer in a twopenny,
illustrated weekly, who saw him at a point-to-point meeting, and
remarked that he was well known as the hardest rider in the Hebrides.
Adam put a stop to that next day.

‘_Some people_,’ he wrote, ‘_are under the impression that Captain Angus
Stuart-Kerr, whom I mentioned on this page a short time ago, is a keen
rider. Perhaps they are confusing him with Alastair Kerr-Stuart, of
Inverauchty, a very distant cousin. Captain Stuart-Kerr never rides, and
for a very interesting reason. There is an old Gaelic rhyme repeated
among his clansmen which says in rough translation “the Laird rides well
on two legs”. Tradition has it that when the head of the house mounts a
horse the clan will be dispersed._’[C]

-----

[C] This story, slightly expanded, found its way later into a volume of
Highland Legends called _Tales from the Mist_, which has been approved
to be read in elementary schools. This shows the difference between what
is called a ‘living’ as opposed to a ‘dead’ folk tradition.

-----

But Adam’s most important creation was Mrs Andrew Quest. There was
always some difficulty about introducing English people into his column
as his readers had a way of verifying his references in Debrett (as he
knew to his cost, for one day, having referred to the engagement of the
third and youngest daughter of a Welsh baronet, he received six
postcards, eighteen telephone calls, a telegram and a personal visit of
protest to inform him that there are two equally beautiful sisters still
in the schoolroom. The social editress had been scathing about this).
However, he put Imogen Quest down one day, quietly and decisively, as
the most lovely and popular of the younger married set. And from the
first she exhibited signs of a marked personality. Adam wisely eschewed
any attempts at derivation, but his readers nodded to each other and
speedily supplied her with an exalted if irregular origin. Everything
else Adam showered upon her. She had slightly more than average height,
and was very dark and slim, with large Laurencin eyes and the negligent
grace of the trained athlete (she fenced with the sabre for half an hour
every morning before breakfast). Even Provna, who was notoriously
indifferent to conventional beauty, described her as ‘justifying the
century’.

Her clothes were incomparable, with just that suggestion of the
haphazard which raised them high above the mere _chic_ of the mannequin.

Her character was a lovely harmony of contending virtues—she was witty
and tender hearted; passionate and serene, sensual and temperate,
impulsive and discreet.

Her set, the most intimate and brilliant in Europe, achieved a superb
mean between those two poles of savagery Lady Circumference and Lady
Metroland.

Soon Imogen Quest became a byword for social inaccessibility—the final
goal for all climbers.

Adam went one day to a shop in Hanover Square to watch Nina buy some
hats and was seriously incommoded by the heaps of bandboxes disposed on
the chairs and dressing-tables ostentatiously addressed to Mrs Andrew
Quest. He could hear her name spoken reverently in cocktail clubs, and
casually let slip in such phrases as ‘My dear, I never see Peter now. He
spends all his time with Imogen Quest,’ or ‘As Imogen would say . . .’
or ‘I think the Quests have got one like that. I must ask them where it
came from.’ And this knowledge on the intangible Quest set, moving among
them in uncontrolled dignity of life, seemed to leaven and sweeten the
lives of Mr Chatterbox’s readers.

One day Imogen gave a party, the preparations for which occupied several
paragraphs. On the following day Adam found his table deep in letters of
complaint from gate-crashers who had found the house in Seamore Place
untenanted.

Finally a message came down that Lord Monomark was interested in Mrs
Quest; could Mr Chatterbox arrange a meeting. That day the Quests sailed
for Jamaica.

Adam also attempted in an unobtrusive way to exercise some influence
over the clothes of his readers. ‘_I noticed at the Café de la Paix
yesterday evening_,’ he wrote, ‘_that two of the smartest men in the
room were wearing black suède shoes with their evening clothes—one of
them, who shall be nameless, was a Very Important Person indeed. I hear
that this fashion, which comes, like so many others, from New York, is
likely to become popular over here this season._’ A few days later he
mentioned Captain Stuart-Kerr’s appearance at the Embassy ‘_wearing, of
course, the ultra-fashionable black suède shoes_’. In a week he was
gratified to notice that Johnny Hoop and Archie Schwert had both
followed Captain Stuart-Kerr’s lead, while in a fortnight the big
emporiums of ready-made clothes in Regent Street had transposed their
tickets in the windows and arranged rows of black suède shoes on a
silver step labelled ‘For evening wear’.

His attempt to introduce a bottle-green bowler hat, however, was not
successful; in fact, a ‘well-known St James’s Street hatter’, when
interviewed by an evening paper on the subject, said that he had never
seen or heard of such a thing, and though he would not refuse to
construct one if requested to by an old customer, he was of the opinion
that no old customer of his would require a hat of that kind (though
there was a sad case of an impoverished old beau who attempted to stain
a grey hat with green ink, as once in years gone by he had been used to
dye the carnation for his buttonhole).

As the days passed, Mr Chatterbox’s page became almost wholly
misleading. With sultanesque caprice Adam would tell his readers of
inaccessible eating-houses which were now the centre of fashion; he
drove them to dance in temperance hotels in Bloomsbury. In a paragraph
headed ‘Montparnasse in Belgravia’, he announced that the buffet at
Sloane Square tube station had become the haunt of the most modern
artistic coterie (Mr Benfleet hurried there on his first free evening,
but saw no one but Mrs Hoop and Lord Vanburgh and a plebeian topper with
a celluloid collar).

As a last resort, on those hopeless afternoons when invention failed and
that black misanthropy settled on him which waits alike on gossip writer
and novelist, Adam sometimes found consolation in seizing upon some
gentle and self-effacing citizen and transfiguring him with a blaze of
notoriety.

He did this with a man called Ginger.

As part of his duties, which led him into many unusual places, Adam and
Nina went up to Manchester for the November Handicap. Here they had the
disheartening experience of seeing Indian Runner come in an easy winner
and the totalisator paying out thirty-five to one. It was during the
bottle-green bowler campaign, and Adam was searching in vain for any
sign of his influence when, suddenly, among the crowd, he saw the genial
red face of the drunk Major to whom he had entrusted his thousand pounds
at Lottie’s. It seemed odd that a man so bulky could be so elusive. Adam
was not sure whether the Major saw him, but in some mysterious way
Adam’s pursuit coincided with the Major’s complete disappearance. The
crowd became very dense, brandishing flasks and sandwiches. When Adam
reached the spot where the Major had stood he found two policemen
arresting a pickpocket.

‘’Ere, who are you pushing?’ asked the spectators.

‘Have you seen a drunk Major anywhere?’ asked Adam.

But no one could help him, and he returned disconsolately to Nina, whom
he found in conversation with a young man with a curly red moustache.

The young man said he was fed up with racing, and Adam said he was too;
so the young man said why didn’t they come back to London in his bus, so
Adam and Nina said they would. The bus turned out to be a very large,
brand-new racing car, and they got to London in time for dinner. Nina
explained that the young man used to play with her as a child, and that
he had been doing something military in Ceylon for the last five years.
The young man’s name was Eddy Littlejohn, but over dinner he said, look
here, would they call him Ginger; every one else did. So they began to
call him Ginger, and he said wouldn’t it be a good idea if they had
another bottle of fizz, and Nina and Adam said yes, it would, so they
had a magnum and got very friendly.

‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘it was awful luck meeting you two to-day. I
was getting awfully fed up with London. It’s so damn slow. I came back
meaning to have a good time, you know, paint the place red a bit, and
all that. Well, the other day I was reading the paper, and there was a
bit that said that the posh place to go to dance nowadays was the
Casanova Hotel in Bloomsbury. Well, it seemed a bit rum to me—place I’d
never heard of, you know—but, still, I’d been away for some time and
places change and all that, so I put on my bib and tucker and toddled
off, hoping for a bit of innocent amusement. Well, I mean to say, you
never saw such a place. There were only about three people dancing, so I
said, “Where’s the bar?” And they said, “Bar!” And I said, “You know,
for a drink.” And they said, well, they could probably make me some
coffee. And I said, “No, not coffee.” And then they said they hadn’t got
a licence for what they called alcohol. Well, I mean to say, if that’s
the best London can do, give me Colombo. I wonder who writes things like
that in the papers?’

‘As a matter of fact, _I_ do.’

‘I say no, do you? You must be frightfully brainy. Did you write all
that about the green bowlers?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I mean to say, whoever heard of a green bowler, I mean. . . . I
tell you what, you know, I believe it was all a leg pull. You know, I
think that’s damn funny. Why, a whole lot of poor mutts may have gone
and bought green bowlers.’

After this they went on to the Café de la Paix, where they met Johnny
Hoop, who asked them all to the party in a few days’ time in the captive
balloon.

But Ginger was not to be had twice.

‘Oh, no you know,’ he said, ‘not in a captive balloon. You’re trying to
pull the old leg again. Whoever heard of a party in a captive balloon? I
mean to say, suppose one fell out, I mean?’

Adam telephoned his page through to the _Excess_, and soon after this a
coloured singer appeared, paddling his black suède shoes in a pool of
limelight, who excited Ginger’s disapproval. He didn’t mind niggers,
Ginger said; remarking justly that niggers were all very well in their
place, but, after all, one didn’t come all the way from Colombo to
London just to see niggers. So they left the Café de la Paix, and went
to Lottie’s, where Ginger became a little moody, saying that London
wasn’t home to him any more and that things were changed.

‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘all the time I’ve been out in Ceylon I’ve
always said to myself, “As soon as the governor kicks the bucket, and I
come in for the family doubloons and pieces of eight, I’m going to come
back to England and have a real old bust.” And now when it comes to the
point there doesn’t seem to be anything I much want to do.’

‘How about a little drink?’ said Lottie.

So Ginger had a drink, and then he and an American sang the Eton Boating
Song several times. At the end of the evening he admitted that there was
some life left in the jolly old capital of the Empire.

Next day Mr Chatterbox’s readers learned that: ‘_Captain “Ginger”
Littlejohn, as he is known to his intimates, was one of the well-known
sporting figures at the November Handicap who favoured the new
bottle-green bowler. Captain Littlejohn is one of the wealthiest and
best-known bachelors in Society, and I have lately heard his name spoken
of in connection with the marriage of the daughter of a famous ducal
house. He came all the way to yesterday’s races in his own motor
omnibus, which he drives himself . . ._’

For some days Ginger’s name figured largely on Adam’s page, to his
profound embarrassment. Several engagements were predicted for him, it
was rumoured that he had signed a contract with a film company, that he
had bought a small island in the Bristol Channel which he proposed to
turn into a country club, and that his forthcoming novel about Singalese
life contained many very thinly disguised portraits of London
celebrities.

But the green bowler joke had gone too far. Adam was sent for by Lord
Monomark.

‘Now see here, Symes,’ said the great man, ‘I like your page. It’s
peppy; it’s got plenty of new names in it and it’s got the intimate
touch I like. I read it every day and so does my daughter. Keep on that
way and you’ll be all right. But _what’s all this about bottle-green
bowlers_?’

‘Well, of course, sir, they’re only worn by a limited number of people
at present, but . . .’

‘Have you got one? Show me a green bowler.’

‘I don’t wear one myself, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, where d’you see ’em? I haven’t seen one yet. My daughter hasn’t
seen one. Who does wear ’em? Where do they buy ’em? That’s what I want
to know. Now see here, Symes, I don’t say that there ain’t any such
thing as a green bowler; there may be and again there mayn’t. But from
now on there are going to be no more bottle-green bowlers in my paper.
See. And another thing. This Count Cincinnati. I don’t say _he_ doesn’t
exist. He may do and he mayn’t. But the Italian Ambassador doesn’t know
anything about him and the Almanak de Gotha doesn’t. So as far as my
paper goes that’s good enough for him. And I don’t want any more about
Espinosa’s. They made out my bill wrong last night.

‘Got those three things clear? Tabulate them in the mind—1, 2, 3,
that’s the secret of memory. Tab-u-late. All right, then, run along now
and tell the Home Secretary he can come right in. You’ll find him
waiting in the passage—ugly little man with a pince-nez.’




                            _Chapter Eight_


Two nights later Adam and Nina took Ginger to the party in the captive
dirigible. It was not a really good evening. The long drive in Ginger’s
car to the degraded suburb where the airship was moored chilled and
depressed them, dissipating the gaiety which had flickered rather
spasmodically over Ginger’s dinner.

The airship seemed to fill the whole field, tethered a few feet from the
ground by innumerable cables over which they stumbled painfully on the
way to the steps. These had been covered by a socially minded caterer
with a strip of red carpet.

Inside, the saloons were narrow and hot, communicating to each other by
spiral staircases and metal alleys. There were protrusions at every
corner, and Miss Runcible had made herself a mass of bruises in the
first half hour. There was a band and a bar and all the same faces. It
was the first time that a party was given in an airship.

Adam went aloft to a kind of terrace. Acres of inflated silk blotted out
the sky, stirring just perceptibly in the breeze. The lights of other
cars arriving lit up the uneven grass. A few louts had collected round
the gates to jeer. There were two people making love to each other near
him on the terrace, reclining on cushions. There was also a young woman
he did not know, holding one of the stays and breathing heavily;
evidently she felt unwell. One of the lovers lit a cigar and Adam
observed that they were Mary Mouse and the Maharajah of Pukkapore.

Presently Nina joined him. ‘It seems such a waste,’ she said, thinking
of Mary and the Maharajah, ‘that two very rich people like that should
fall in love with each other.’

‘Nina,’ said Adam, ‘let’s get married soon, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, it’s a bore not being married.’

The young woman who felt ill passed by them, walking shakily, to try and
find her coat and her young man to take her home.

‘. . . I don’t know if it sounds absurd,’ said Adam, ‘but I do feel that
a marriage ought to _go on_—for quite a long time, I mean. D’you feel
that too, at all?’

‘Yes, it’s one of the things about a marriage!’

‘I’m glad you feel that. I didn’t quite know if you did. Otherwise it’s
all rather bogus, isn’t it?’

‘I think you ought to go and see papa again,’ said Nina. ‘It’s never any
good writing. Go and tell him that you’ve got a job and are terribly
rich and that we’re going to be married before Christmas!’

‘All right. I’ll do that.’

‘. . . D’you remember last month we arranged for you to go and see him
the first time? . . . just like this . . . it was at Archie Schwert’s
party . . .’

‘Oh, Nina, _what a lot of parties_.’

(. . . Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties,
Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one
had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood,
parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night
clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea parties at school where one
ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one
drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London
and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris—all that
succession and repetition of massed humanity. . . . Those vile bodies
. . .)

He leant his forehead, to cool it, on Nina’s arm and kissed her in the
hollow of her forearm.

‘I _know_, darling,’ she said, and put her hand on his hair.

Ginger came strutting jauntily by, his hands clasped under his
coat-tails.

‘Hullo, you two,’ he said. ‘Pretty good show this, what.’

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Ginger?’

‘_Rather._ I say, I’ve met an awful good chap called Miles. Regular
topper. You know, _pally_. That’s what I like about a really decent
party—you meet such topping fellows. I mean some chaps it takes
absolutely years to know but a chap like Miles I feel is a pal straight
away.’

Presently cars began to drive away again. Miss Runcible said that she
had heard of a divine night club near Leicester Square somewhere where
you could get a drink at any hour of the night. It was called the St
Christopher’s Social Club.

So they all went there in Ginger’s car.

On the way Ginger said, ‘That cove Miles, you know, he’s awfully _queer_
. . .’

St Christopher’s Social Club took some time to find.

It was a little door at the side of a shop, and the man who opened it
held his foot against it and peeped round.

They paid ten shillings each and signed false names in the visitor’s
book. Then they went downstairs to a very hot room full of cigarette
smoke; there were unsteady tables with bamboo legs round the walls and
there were some people in shirt sleeves dancing on a shiny linoleum
floor.

There was a woman in a yellow beaded frock playing a piano and another
in red playing the fiddle.

They ordered some whisky. The waiter said he was sorry, but he couldn’t
oblige, not that night he couldn’t. The police had just rung up to say
that they were going to make a raid any minute. If they liked they could
have some nice kippers.

Miss Runcible said that kippers were not very drunk-making and that the
whole club seemed bogus to her.

Ginger said well anyway they had better have some kippers now they were
there. Then he asked Nina to dance and she said no. Then he asked Miss
Runcible and she said no, too.

Then they ate kippers.

Presently one of the men in shirt sleeves (who had clearly had a lot to
drink before the St Christopher Social Club knew about the police) came
up to their table and said to Adam:

‘You don’t know me. I’m Gilmour. I don’t want to start a row in front of
ladies, but when I see a howling cad I like to tell him so.’

Adam said, ‘Why do you spit when you talk?’

Gilmour said, ‘That is a very unfortunate physical disability, and it
shows what a howling cad you are that you mention it.’

Then Ginger said, ‘Same to you, old boy, with nobs on.’

Then Gilmour said, ‘Hullo, Ginger, old scout.’

And Ginger said, ‘Why, it’s Bill. You mustn’t mind Bill. Awfully stout
chap. Met him on the boat.’

Gilmour said, ‘Any pal of Ginger’s is a pal of mine.’

So Adam and Gilmour shook hands.

Gilmour said, ‘This is a pretty low joint, anyhow. You chaps come round
to my place and have a drink.’

So they went to Gilmour’s place.

Gilmour’s place was a bed-sitting room in Ryder Street.

So they sat on the bed in Gilmour’s place and drank whisky while Gilmour
was sick next door.

And Ginger said, ‘There’s nowhere like London really you know.’



That same evening while Adam and Nina sat on the deck of the dirigible a
party of quite a different sort was being given at Anchorage House. This
last survivor of the noble town houses of London was, in its time, of
dominating and august dimensions, and even now, when it had become a
mere ‘picturesque bit’ lurking in a ravine between concrete skyscrapers,
its pillared façade, standing back from the street and obscured by
railings and some wisps of foliage, had grace and dignity and
other-worldliness enough to cause a flutter or two in Mrs Hoop’s heart
as she drove into the forecourt.

‘Can’t you just see the _ghosts_? she said to Lady Circumference on the
stairs. ‘Pit and Fox and Burke and Lady Hamilton and Beau Brummel and Dr
Johnson’ (a concurrence of celebrities, it may be remarked, at which
something memorable might surely have occurred). ‘Can’t you just _see_
them—in their buckled shoes?’

Lady Circumference raised her lorgnette and surveyed the stream of
guests debouching from the cloak-rooms like City workers from the
Underground. She saw Mr Outrage and Lord Metroland in consultation about
the Censorship Bill (a statesmanlike and much-needed measure which
empowered a committee of five atheists to destroy all books, pictures
and films they considered undesirable, without any nonsense about
defence or appeal). She saw both Archbishops, the Duke and Duchess of
Stayle, Lord Vanburgh and Lady Metroland, Lady Throbbing and Edward
Throbbing and Mrs Blackwater, Mrs Mouse and Lord Monomark and a superb
Levantine, and behind and about them a great concourse of pious and
honourable people (many of whom made the Anchorage House reception the
one outing of the year), their women-folk well gowned in rich and
durable stuffs, their men-folk ablaze with orders; people who had
represented their country in foreign places and sent their sons to die
for her in battle, people of decent and temperate life, uncultured,
unaffected, unembarrassed, unassuming, unambitious people, of
independent judgment and marked eccentricities, kind people who cared
for animals and the deserving poor, brave and rather unreasonable
people, that fine phalanx of the passing order, approaching as one day
at the Last Trump they hoped to meet their Maker, with decorous and
frank cordiality to shake Lady Anchorage by the hand at the top of her
staircase. Lady Circumference saw all this and sniffed the exhalation of
her own herd. But she saw no ghosts.

‘That’s all my eye,’ she said.

But Mrs Hoop ascended step by step in a confused but very glorious dream
of eighteenth-century elegance.



The Presence of Royalty was heavy as thunder in the drawing-room.

The Baroness Yoshiwara and the Prime Minister met once more.

‘I tried to see you twice this week,’ she said, ‘but always you were
busy. We are leaving London. Perhaps you heard? My husband has been
moved to Washington. It was his wish to go. . .’

‘No. I say, Baroness . . . I had no idea. That’s very bad news. We shall
all miss you terribly.’

‘I thought perhaps I would come to make my adieux. One day next week.’

‘Why, yes, of course, that would be delightful. You must both come to
dine. I’ll get my secretary to fix something up to-morrow.’

‘It has been nice being in London . . . you were kind.’

‘Not a bit. I don’t know what London would be without our guests from
abroad.’

‘Oh, twenty damns to your great pig-face,’ said the Baroness suddenly
and turned away.

Mr Outrage watched her bewildered. Finally he said, ‘For East is East
and West is West and never the twain shall meet’ (which was a poor
conclusion for a former Foreign Secretary).

Edward Throbbing stood talking to the eldest daughter of the Duchess of
Stayle. She was some inches taller than him and inclined slightly so
that, in the general murmur of conversation, she should not miss any of
his colonial experience. She wore a frock such as only Duchesses can
obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and
puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which
her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel. Neither
powder, rouge nor lipstick had played any part in her toilet and her
colourless hair was worn long and bound across her forehead in a broad
fillet. Long pearl drops hung from her ears and she wore a tight little
collar of pearls round her throat. It was generally understood that now
Edward Throbbing was back these two would become engaged to be married.

Lady Ursula was acquiescent if unenthusiastic. When she thought about
marriage at all, which was rarely (for her chief interests were a girls’
club in Canning Town and a younger brother at school), she thought what
a pity it was that one had to be so ill to have children. Her married
friends spoke of this almost with relish and her mother with awe.

An innate dilatoriness of character rather than any doubt of the
ultimate issue kept Edward from verbal proposal. He had decided to
arrange everything before Christmas and that was enough. He had no doubt
that a suitable occasion would soon be devised for him. It was clearly
suitable that he should marry before he was thirty. Now and then when he
was with Ursula he felt a slight quickening of possessive impulse
towards her fragility and distance; occasionally when he read some
rather lubricious novel or saw much love-making on the stage he would
translate the characters in his mind and put Lady Ursula, often
incongruously, in the place of the heroine. He had no doubt that he was
in love. Perhaps he would propose this very evening and get it over. It
was up to Lady Ursula to engineer an occasion. Meanwhile he kept the
conversation on to the subject of labour problems in Montreal, about
which his information was extensive and accurate.

‘He’s a nice, steady boy,’ said the Duchess, ‘and it’s a comfort,
nowadays, to see two young people so genuinely fond of each other. Of
course, nothing is actually arranged yet, but I was talking to Fanny
Throbbing yesterday, and apparently Edward has already spoken to her on
the subject. I think that everything will be settled before Christmas.
Of course, there’s not a great deal of money, but one’s learnt not to
expect that nowadays, and Mr Outrage speaks very highly of his ability.
Quite one of the coming men in the party.’

‘Well,’ said Lady Circumference, ‘you know your own business, but if you
ask me I shouldn’t care to see a daughter of mine marry into that
family. Bad hats every one of them. Look at the father and the sister,
and from all I hear the brother is rotten all through.’

‘I don’t say it’s a match I should have chosen myself. There’s certainly
a bad strain in the Malpractices . . . but you know how headstrong
children are nowadays, and they seem so fond of each other . . . and
there seem so few young men about. At least I never seem to see any.’

‘Young toads, the whole lot of them,’ said Lady Circumference.

‘And these _terrible_ parties which I’m told they give. I don’t know
what I should have done if Ursula had ever wanted to go to them . . .
the poor Chasms. . . .’

‘If I were Viola Chasm I’d give that girl a thunderin’ good hidin’.’



The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a
yawn. Royalty remarked on their absence and those happy mothers who had
even one docile daughter in tow swelled with pride and commiseration.

‘I’m told that they’re having another of their parties,’ said Mrs Mouse,
‘in an aeroplane this time.’

‘In an aeroplane? How very extraordinary.’

‘Of course, I never hear a word from Mary, but her maid told my maid
. . .’

‘What I always wonder, Kitty dear, is what they actually _do_ at these
parties of theirs, I mean, _do_ they . . . ?’

‘My dear, from all I hear, I think they do.’

‘Oh, to be young again, Kitty. When I think, my dear, of all the trouble
and exertion which we had to go through to be even moderately bad . . .
those passages in the early morning, and mama sleeping next door.’

‘And yet, my dear, I doubt very much whether they really _appreciate_ it
all as much as we should . . . young people take things so much for
granted. _Si la jeunesse savait._’

‘_Si la vieillesse pouvait_, Kitty.’



Later that evening Mr Outrage stood almost alone in the supper-room
drinking a glass of champagne. Another episode in his life was closed,
another of those tantalizing glimpses of felicity capriciously
withdrawn. Poor Mr Outrage, thought Mr Outrage; poor, poor old Outrage,
always just on the verge of revelation, of some sublime and
transfiguring experience; always frustrated. . . . Just Prime Minister,
nothing more, bullied by his colleagues, a source of income to low
caricaturists. Was Mr Outrage an immortal soul, thought Mr Outrage; had
he wings, was he free and unconfined, was he born for eternity? He
sipped his champagne, fingered his ribbon of the Order of Merit, and
resigned himself to the dust.

Presently he was joined by Lord Metroland and Father Rothschild.

‘Margot’s left—gone on to some party in an airship. I’ve been talking
to Lady Anchorage for nearly an hour about the younger generation.’

‘Every one seems to have been talking about the younger generation
to-night. The most boring subject I know.’

‘Well, after all, what does all this stand for if there’s going to be no
one to carry it on?’

‘All what?’ Mr Outrage looked round the supper-room, deserted save for
two footmen who leant against the walls looking as waxen as the clumps
of flowers sent up that morning from hothouses in the country. ‘What
does all what stand for?’

‘All this business of government.’

‘As far as I’m concerned it stands for a damned lot of hard work and
precious little in return. If those young people can find a way to get
on without it, good luck to them.’

‘I see what Metroland means,’ said Father Rothschild.

‘Blessed if I do. Anyway I’ve got no children myself, and I’m thankful
for it. I don’t understand them, and I don’t want to. They had a chance
after the war that no generation has ever had. There was a whole
civilization to be saved and remade—and all they seem to do is to play
the fool. Mind you, I’m all in favour of them having a fling. I dare say
that Victorian ideas _were_ a bit strait-laced. Saving your cloth,
Rothschild, it’s only human nature to run a bit loose when one’s young.
But there’s something wanton about these young people to-day. That
stepson of yours, Metroland, and that girl of poor old Chasm’s and young
Throbbing’s brother.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Father Rothschild gently, ‘that perhaps it is
all in some way historical? I don’t think people ever _want_ to lose
their faith either in religion or anything else. I know very few young
people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost
fatal hunger for permanence. I think all these divorces show that.
People aren’t content just to muddle along nowadays. . . . And this word
“bogus” they all use. . . . They won’t make the best of a bad job
nowadays. My private schoolmaster used to say, “If a thing’s worth doing
at all, it’s worth doing well.” My Church has taught that in different
words for several centuries. But these young people have got hold of
another end of the stick, and for all we know it may be the right one.
They say, “If a thing’s not worth doing well, it’s not worth doing at
all.” It makes everything very difficult for them.’

‘Good heavens, I should think it did. What a darned silly principle. I
mean to say if one didn’t do anything that wasn’t worth doing well—why,
what _would_ one do? I’ve always maintained that success in this world
depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth . . .
distribution of energy. . . . And, I suppose, most people would admit
that I was a pretty successful man.’

‘Yes, I suppose they would, Outrage,’ said Father Rothschild, looking at
him rather quizzically.

But that self-accusing voice in the Prime Minister’s heart was silent.
There was nothing like a little argument for settling the mind.
Everything became so simple as soon as it was put into words.

‘And anyway, what do you mean by “historical”?’

‘Well, it’s like this war that’s coming. . . .’

‘_What war?_’ said the Prime Minister sharply. ‘No one has said anything
to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I’ll be
damned,’ he said defiantly, ‘if they shall have a war without consulting
me. What’s a Cabinet for if there’s not more mutual confidence than
that? What do they want a war for, anyway?’

‘That’s the whole point. No one talks about it, and no one wants it. No
one talks about it _because_ no one wants it. They’re all afraid to
breathe a word about it.’

‘Well, hang it all, if no one wants it, who’s going to make them have
it?’

‘Wars don’t start nowadays because people want them. We long for peace,
and fill our newspapers with conferences about disarmament and
arbitration, but there is a radical instability in our whole
world-order, and soon we shall all be walking into the jaws of
destruction again, protesting our pacific intentions.’

‘Well, you seem to know all about it,’ said Mr Outrage, ‘and I think I
should have been told sooner. This will have to mean a coalition with
that old wind-bag Brown, I suppose.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Lord Metroland, ‘I don’t see how all that explains why my
stepson should drink like a fish and go about everywhere with a
negress.’

‘I think they’re connected, you know,’ said Father Rothschild. ‘But it’s
all very difficult.’

Then they separated.

Father Rothschild pulled on a pair of overall trousers in the forecourt
and, mounting his motor cycle, disappeared into the night, for he had
many people to see and much business to transact before he went to bed.

Lord Metroland left the house in some depression. Margot had taken the
car, but it was scarcely five minutes’ walk to Hill Street. He took a
vast cigar from his case, lit it and sank his chin in the astrakhan
collar of his coat, conforming almost exactly to the popular conception
of a highly enviable man. But his heart was heavy. What a lot of
nonsense Rothschild had talked. At least he hoped it was nonsense.

By ill-fortune he arrived on the doorstep to find Peter Pastmaster
fumbling with the lock, and they entered together. Lord Metroland
noticed a tall hat on the table by the door. ‘Young Trumpington’s, I
suppose,’ he thought. His stepson did not once look at him, but made
straight for the stairs, walking unsteadily, his hat on the back of his
head, his umbrella still in his hand.

‘Good-night, Peter,’ said Lord Metroland.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ said his stepson thickly, then, turning on the stairs,
he added, ‘I’m going abroad to-morrow for a few weeks. Will you tell my
mother?’

‘Have a good time,’ said Lord Metroland. ‘You’ll find it just as cold
everywhere, I’m afraid. Would you care to take the yacht? No one’s using
it.’

‘Oh, go to hell.’

Lord Metroland went into the study to finish his cigar. It would be
awkward if he met young Trumpington on the stairs. He sat down in a very
comfortable chair. . . . A radical instability, Rothschild had said,
radical instability. . . . He looked round his study and saw shelves of
books—the _Dictionary of National Biography_, the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ in an early and very bulky edition, _Who’s Who_, Debrett,
Burke, Whitaker, several volumes of Hansard, some Blue Books and
Atlases—a safe in the corner painted green with a brass handle, his
writing table, his secretary’s table, some very comfortable chairs and
some very business-like chairs, a tray with decanters and a plate of
sandwiches, his evening mail laid out on the table . . . radical
instability, indeed. How like poor old Outrage to let himself get taken
in by that charlatan of a Jesuit.

He heard the front door open and shut behind Alastair Trumpington.

Then he rose and went quickly upstairs, leaving his cigar smouldering in
the ash-tray, filling the study with fragrant smoke.

Quarter of a mile away the Duchess of Stayle went, as she always did, to
say good-night to her eldest daughter. She crossed the room and drew up
the window a few inches, for it was a cold and raw night. Then she went
over to the bed and smoothed the pillow.

‘Good-night, dear child,’ she said, ‘I thought you looked sweet
to-night.’

Lady Ursula wore a white cambric night-gown with a little yoke collar
and long sleeves. Her hair hung in two plaits.

‘Mama,’ she said. ‘Edward proposed to me to-night.’

‘_Darling._ What a funny girl you are. Why didn’t you tell me before?
You weren’t frightened, were you? You know that your father and I are
delighted at anything that makes our little girl happy.’

‘Well, I said I wouldn’t marry him . . . I’m sorry.’

‘But, my dear, it’s nothing to be sorry about. Leave it to your old
mother. I’ll put it all right for you in the morning.’

‘But, Mama, I don’t want to marry him. I didn’t know until it actually
came to the point. I’d always meant to marry him, as you know. But
somehow, when he actually asked me . . . I just couldn’t.’

‘There, dear child, you mustn’t worry any more. You know perfectly well,
don’t you, that your father and I would not let you do anything you
didn’t want. It’s a matter that only you can decide. After all, it’s
your life and your happiness at stake, not ours, isn’t it, Ursula . . .
but I _think_ you’d better marry Edward.’

‘But, Mama, I don’t want to . . . I couldn’t . . . it would kill me!’

‘Now, now, my pet mustn’t worry her head about it any more. You know
your father and I only want _your_ happiness, dear one. No one is going
to make my darling girl do anything she doesn’t want to. . . . Papa
shall see Edward in the morning and make everything all right . . . dear
Lady Anchorage was only saying to-night what a lovely bride you will
make.’

‘But, Mama . . .’

‘Not another word, dear child. It’s very late and you’ve got to look
your best for Edward to-morrow, haven’t you, love?’

The Duchess closed the door softly and went to her own room. Her husband
was in his dressing-room.

‘Andrew.’

‘What is it, dear? I’m saying my prayers.’

‘Edward proposed to Ursula to-night.’

‘Ah!’

‘Aren’t you glad?’

‘I told you, dear, I’m trying to say my prayers.’

‘It’s a real joy to see the dear children so happy.’




                             _Chapter Nine_


At luncheon time next day Adam rang up Nina.

‘Nina, darling, are you awake?’

‘Well, I wasn’t . . .’

‘Listen, do you really want me to go and see your papa to-day?’

‘Did we say you were going to?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘To say could we be married now I had a job.’

‘I remember . . . yes, go and see him, darling. It would be nice to be
married.’

‘But, listen, what about my page?’

‘What page, angel?’

‘My page in the _Excess_ . . . my job, you know.’

‘Oh . . . well, look . . . Ginger and I will write that for you.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a bore?’

‘I think it would be divine. I know just the sort of things you
say. . . . I expect Ginger does too by now, the poor angel . . . how he
did enjoy himself last night. . . . I’m going to sleep now . . . such a
pain . . . good-bye, my sweet.’

Adam had some luncheon. Agatha Runcible was at the next table with
Archie Schwert. She said they were all going to some motor races next
day. Would Adam and Nina come, too. Adam said yes. Then he went to
Aylesbury.

There were two women on the other side of the carriage, and they, too,
were talking about the Younger Generation.

‘. . . and it’s a very good position, too, for a boy of that age, and
I’ve told him and his father told him. “You ought to think yourself
lucky,” I’ve said, “to get a good position like that in these days,
particularly when it’s so hard to get a position at all of any kind _or_
sort.” And there’s Mrs Hemingway with her son next door who left school
eighteen months ago, and there he is kicking his heels about the house
all day and doing nothing, and taking a correspondence course in civil
engineering. “It’s a very good position,” I told him, “and, of course,
you can’t expect _work_ to be interesting, though no doubt after a time
you get used to it just as your father’s done, and would probably miss
it if you hadn’t it to do”—you know how Alfred gets on his holidays,
doesn’t know what to do with himself half the time, just looks at the
sea and says, “Well, this _is_ a change,” and then starts wondering how
things are at the office. Well, I told Bob that, but it’s no good, and
all he wants to do is to go into the motor business; well, as I said to
him, the motor business is all right for them that have influence, but
what could Bob hope to do throwing up a good job, too, and with nothing
to fall back on supposing things did go wrong. But, no, Bob is all for
motors, and, of course, you know it doesn’t really do having him living
at home. He and his father don’t get on. You can’t have two men in a
house together and both wanting the bath at the same time, and I suppose
it’s only natural that Bob should feel he ought to have his own way a
bit more now that he’s earning his own money. But, then, what is he to
do? He can’t go and live on his own with his present salary, and I
shouldn’t be any too pleased to see him doing it even if he could afford
it—you know what it is with young people, how easy it is to get into
mischief when they’re left to themselves. And there are a great many of
Bob’s friends now that I don’t really approve of, not to have in and out
of the house, you know the way they do come. He meets them at the hockey
club he goes to Saturdays. And they’re most of them earning more money
than he is, or, at any rate, they seem to have more to throw about, and
it isn’t good for a boy being about with those that have more money than
him. It only makes him discontented. And I did think at one time that
perhaps Bob was thinking of Betty Rylands, you know Mrs Rylands’ girl at
the Laurels, such nice people, and they used to play tennis together and
people remarked how much they were about, but now he never seems to pay
any attention to her, it’s all his hockey friends, and I said one
Saturday, “Wouldn’t you like to ask Betty over to tea?” and he said,
“Well, you can if you like,” and she came looking ever so sweet, and,
would you believe it, Bob went out and didn’t come in at all until
supper time. Well, you can’t expect any girl to put up with that, and
now she’s practically engaged to that young Anderson boy who’s in the
wireless business.’

‘Well, and there’s our Lily now. You know how she would go in for being
a manicurist. Her father didn’t like it, and for a long time he wouldn’t
have it at all. He said it was just an excuse for holding hands, but,
anyway, I said, “If that’s what the girl wants to do, and if she can
make good money doing it, I think you ought to be able to trust your own
daughter better than to stand in her way.” I’m a modern, you see. “We’re
not living in the Victorian Age,” I told him. Well, she’s in a very nice
job. Bond Street—and they treat her very fair, and we’ve no complaints
on that score, but now there’s this man she’s met there—he’s old enough
to be her father—well, middle-aged anyway—but very smart, you know,
neat little grey moustache, absolute gentleman, with a Morris Oxford
saloon. And he comes and takes her out for drives Sundays, and sometimes
he fetches her after work and takes her to the pictures, and always most
polite and well spoken to me and my husband, just as you’d expect,
seeing the sort of man he is, and he sent us all tickets for the theatre
the other night. Very affable, calls me “Ma”, if you please . . . and,
anyway, I _hope_ there’s no harm in it . . .’

‘Now our Bob . . .’

They got out at Berkhamsted, and a man got in who wore a bright brown
suit and spent his time doing sums, which never seemed to come right, in
a little note-book with a stylographic pen. ‘Has he given all to his
daughters?’ thought Adam.

He drove out to Doubting by a bus which took him as far as the village
of petrol pumps. From there he walked down the lane to the park gates.
To his surprise these stood open, and as he approached he narrowly
missed being run down by a large and ramshackle car which swept in at a
high speed; he caught a glimpse of two malignant female eyes which
glared contemptuously at him from the small window at the back. Still
more surprising was a large notice which hung on the central pier of the
gates and said: ‘=No Admittance Except on Business=.’ As Adam
walked up the drive two lorries thundered past him. Then a man appeared
with a red flag.

‘Hi! You can’t go that way. They’re shooting in front. Go round by the
stables, whoever you are.’

Wondering vaguely what kind of sport this could be, Adam followed the
side path indicated. He listened for sounds of firing, but hearing
nothing except distant shouting and what seemed to be a string band, he
concluded that the Colonel was having a poor day. It seemed odd, anyway,
to go shooting in front of one’s house with a string band, and
automatically Adam began making up a paragraph about it:

‘_Colonel Blount, father of the lovely Miss Nina Blount referred to
above, rarely comes to London nowadays. He devotes himself instead to
shooting on his estate in Buckinghamshire. The coverts, which are among
the most richly stocked in the county, lie immediately in front of the
house, and many amusing stories are related of visitors who have
inadvertently found themselves in the line of fire. . . . Colonel Blount
has the curious eccentricity of being unable to shoot his best except to
the accompaniment of violin and ’cello._ (_Mr “Ginger” Littlejohn has
the similar foible that he can only fish to the sound of the flageolet
. . .)_’

He had not gone very far in his detour before he was again stopped, this
time by a man dressed in a surplice, episcopal lawn sleeves and scarlet
hood and gown; he was smoking a cigar.

‘Here, what in hell do _you_ want?’ said the Bishop.

‘I came to see Colonel Blount.’

‘Well, you can’t, son. They’re just shooting him now.’

‘Good heavens. What for?’

‘Oh, nothing important. He’s just one of the Wesleyans, you know—we’re
trying to polish off the whole crowd this afternoon while the weather’s
good.’

Adam found himself speechless before this cold-blooded bigotry.

‘What d’you want to see the old geezer about, anyway?’

‘Well, it hardly seems any good now. I came to tell him that I’d got a
job on the _Excess_.’

‘The devil you have. Why didn’t you say so before? Always pleased to see
gentlemen of the Press. Have a weed?’ A large cigar-case appeared from
the recesses of the episcopal bosom. ‘I’m Bishop Philpotts, you know,’
he said, slipping a voluminously clothed arm through Adam’s. ‘I dare say
you’d like to come round to the front and see the fun. I should think
they’d be just singing their last hymn now. It’s been uphill work,’ he
confided as they walked round the side of the house, ‘and there’s been
some damned bad management. Why, yesterday, they kept Miss La Touche
waiting the whole afternoon, and then the light was so bad when they did
shoot her that they made a complete mess of her—we had the machine out
and ran over all the bits carefully last night after dinner—you never
saw such rotten little scraps—quite unrecognizable half of them. We
didn’t dare show them to her husband—he’d be sick to death about it—so
we just cut out a few shots to keep and threw away the rest. I say,
you’re not feeling queer, are you? You look all green suddenly. Find the
weed a bit strong?’

‘Was—was she a Wesleyan too?’

‘My dear boy, she’s playing lead . . . she’s Selina. Countess of
Huntingdon. . . . There, now you can see them at work.’

They had rounded the wing and were now in full view of the front of the
house, where all was activity and animation. A dozen or so men and women
in eighteenth-century costume were standing in a circle singing
strongly, while in their centre stood a small man in a long clerical
coat and a full white wig, conducting them. A string band was playing
not far off and round the singers clustered numerous men in shirt
sleeves bearing megaphones, cinematograph cameras, microphones, sheaves
of paper and arc lamps. Not far away, waiting their turn to be useful,
stood a coach and four, a detachment of soldiers and some scene shifters
with the transept of Exeter Cathedral in sections of canvas and
matchboarding.

‘The Colonel’s somewhere in that little crowd singing the hymn,’ said
the Bishop. ‘He was crazy to be allowed to come on as a super, and as
he’s letting us the house dirt cheap Isaacs said he might. I don’t
believe he’s ever been so happy in his life.’

As they approached the hymn stopped.

‘All right,’ said one of the men with megaphones. ‘You can beat it.
We’ll shoot the duel now. I shall want two supers to carry the body. The
rest of you are through for the afternoon.’

A man in a leather apron, worsted stockings and flaxen wig emerged from
the retreating worshippers.

‘Oh, please, Mr Isaacs,’ he said, ‘please may _I_ carry the body?’

‘All right, Colonel, if you want to. Run in and tell them in the
wardrobe to give you a smock and a pitchfork.’

‘Thank you so much,’ said Colonel Blount, trotting off towards his
house. Then he stopped. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be
better for me to carry a sword?’

‘No, pitchfork, and hurry up about it or I shan’t let you carry the body
at all; some one go and find Miss La Touche.’

The young lady whom Adam had seen in the motor car came down the steps
of the house in a feathered hat, riding habit and braided cape. She
carried a hunting crop in her hand. Her face was painted very yellow.

‘Do I or do I not have a horse in this scene, Mr Isaacs? I’ve been round
to Bertie and he says all the horses are needed for the coach.’

‘I’m sorry, Effie, you do _not_ and it’s no good taking on. We only got
four horses and you know that, and you saw what it was like when we
tried to move the coach with two. So you’ve just got to face it. You
comes across the fields on foot.’

‘Dirty Yid,’ said Effie La Touche.

‘The trouble about this film,’ said the Bishop, ‘is that we haven’t
enough capital. It’s heart-breaking. Here we have a first-rate company,
first-rate producer, first-rate scene, first-rate story and the whole
thing being hung up for want of a few hundred pounds. How can he expect
to get the best out of Miss La Touche if they won’t give her a horse? No
girl will stand for that sort of treatment. If I were Isaacs I’d scrap
the whole coach sooner. It’s no sense getting a star and not treating
her right. Isaacs is putting every one’s back up the way he goes on.
Wanted to do the whole of my cathedral scene with twenty-five supers.
But you’re here to give us a write up, aren’t you? I’ll call Isaacs
across and let him give you the dope. . . . _Isaacs!_’

‘Yuh?’

‘_Daily Excess_ here.’

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

‘I’ll be right over.’ He put on his coat, buttoned it tightly at the
waist and strode across the lawn, extending a hand of welcome. Adam
shook it and felt what seemed to be a handful of rings under his
fingers. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mister. Now just you ask me anything you
want about this film because I’m just here to answer. Have you got my
name? Have a card. That’s the name of the company in the corner. Not the
one that’s scratched out. The one written above. _The Wonderfilm Company
of Great Britain_. Now this film,’ he said, in what seemed a
well-practised little speech, ‘of which you have just witnessed a mere
fragment marks a stepping stone in the development of the British Film
Industry. It is the most important All-Talkie super-religious film to be
produced solely in this country by British artists and management and by
British capital. It has been directed throughout regardless of
difficulty and expense, and supervised by a staff of expert historians
and theologians. Nothing has been omitted that would contribute to the
meticulous accuracy of every detail. The life of that great social and
religious reformer John Wesley is for the first time portrayed to a
British public in all its humanity and tragedy. . . . Look here, I’ve
got all this written out. I’ll have them give you a copy before you go.
Come and see the duel. . . .

‘That’s Wesley and Whitefield just going to start. Of course, it’s not
them really. Two fencing instructors we got over from the gym. at
Aylesbury. That’s what I mean when I say we spare no expense to get the
details accurate. Ten bob each we’re paying them for the afternoon.’

‘But did Wesley and Whitefield fight a duel?’

‘Well, it’s not actually recorded, but it’s known that they quarrelled
and there was only one way of settling quarrels in those days. They’re
both in love with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, you see. She comes to
stop them, but arrives too late. Whitefield has escaped in the coach and
Wesley is lying wounded. That’s a scene that’ll go over big. Then she
takes him back to her home and nurses him back to health. I tell you,
this is going to make film history. D’you know what the Wesleyan
population of the British Isles is? Well nor do I, but I’ve been told
and _you’ld be surprised_. Well every one of those is going to come and
see this film and there’s going to be discussions about it in all the
chapels. We’re recording extracts from Wesley’s sermons and we’re
singing all his own hymns. I’m glad your paper’s interested. You can
tell them from me that we’re on a big thing. . . . There’s one thing
though,’ said Mr Isaacs, suddenly becoming confidential, ‘which I
shouldn’t tell many people. But I think you’ll understand because you’ve
seen some of our work here and the sort of scale it’s on, and you can
imagine that expenses are pretty heavy. Why, I’m paying Miss La Touche
alone over ten pounds a week. And the truth is—I don’t mind telling
you—we’re beginning to feel the wind a bit. It’s going to be a big
success _when_ and _if_ it’s finished. Now, suppose there was some
one—yourself, for instance, or one of your friends—who had a little
bit of loose capital he wanted to invest—a thousand pounds, say—well,
I wouldn’t mind selling him a half-share. It’s not a gamble, mind—it’s
a certain winner. If I cared to go into the open market with it, it
would be snapped up before you could say knife. But I don’t want to do
that and I’ll tell you why. This is a British company and I don’t want
to let any of those foreign speculators in on it, and once you let the
shares get into the open market you can’t tell who’s buying them, see.
Now why leave money idle bringing in four and a half or five per cent.
when you might be doubling it in six months?’

‘I’m afraid it’s no use coming to me for capital,’ said Adam. ‘Do you
think I could possibly see Colonel Blount?’

‘One of the things I hate in life,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘is seeing any one
lose an opportunity. Now listen, I’ll make you a fair offer. I can see
you’re interested in this film. Now I’ll sell you the whole thing—film
we’ve made up to date, artists’ contracts, copyright of scenario,
everything for five hundred quid. Then all you have to do is to finish
it off and your fortune’s made and I shall be cursing for not having
held on longer. How about it?’

‘It’s very good of you, but really I don’t think I can afford it at the
moment.’

‘Just as you like,’ said Mr Isaacs airily. ‘There’s many who _can_ who’d
jump at the offer, only I thought I’d let you in on it first because I
could see you were a smart kid. . . . Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let
you have it for four hundred. Can’t say fairer than that, can I? And
wouldn’t do it for any one but you.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Isaacs, but I didn’t come to buy your film. I
came to see Colonel Blount.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t have thought you were the sort of chap to let an
opportunity like that slip through your fingers. Now I’ll give you one
more chance and after that mind, the offer is closed. I’ll sell you it
for three-fifty. Take it or leave it. That’s my last word. Of course,
you’re not in any way obliged to buy,’ said Mr Isaacs rather haughtily,
‘but I assure you that you’ll regret it from the bottom of your heart if
you don’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adam, ‘I think it’s a wonderfully generous offer, but
the truth is I simply don’t want to buy a film at all.’

‘In that case,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘I shall return to my business.’

Not till sunset did the Wonderfilm Company of Great Britain rest. Adam
watched them from the lawn. He saw the two fencing instructors in long
black coats and white neck bands lunging and parrying manfully until one
of them fell; then the cameras stopped and his place was taken by the
leading actor (who had been obliged through the exigencies of the
wardrobe to lend his own coat). Whitefield took the place (and the wig)
of the victor and fled to the coach. Effie La Touche appeared from the
shrubbery still defiantly carrying her hunting crop. Close-ups followed
of Effie and Wesley and Effie and Wesley together. Then Colonel Blount
and another super appeared as yokels and carried the wounded preacher
back to the house. All this took a long time as the action was
frequently held up by minor mishaps and once when the whole scene had
been triumphantly enacted the chief cameraman found that he had
forgotten to put in a new roll of film (‘Can’t think how I come to make
a mistake like that, Mr Isaacs’). Finally the horses were taken out of
the coach and mounted by grenadiers and a few shots taken of them
plunging despairingly up the main drive.

‘Part of Butcher Cumberland’s army,’ explained Mr Isaacs. ‘It’s always
good to work in a little atmosphere like that. Gives more educational
value. Besides we hire the horses by the day so we might as well get all
we can out of them while they’re here. If we don’t use ’em in Wesley we
can fit ’em in somewhere else. A hundred foot or so of galloping horses
is always useful.’

When everything was over Adam managed to see Colonel Blount, but it was
not a satisfactory interview.

‘I’m afraid I’ve really got very little time to spare,’ he said. ‘To
tell you the truth, I’m at work on a scenario of my own. They tell me
you come from the _Excess_ and want to write about the film. It’s a
glorious film, isn’t it? Of course, you know, I have very little to do
with it really. I have let them the house and have acted one or two
small parts in the crowd. I don’t have to pay for them though.’

‘No, I should think not.’

‘My dear boy, all the others have to. I knocked a little off the rent of
the house, but I don’t actually _pay_. In fact, you might almost say I
was a professional already. You see, Mr Isaacs is the principal of the
National Academy of Cinematographic Art. He’s got a little office in
Edgware Road, just one room, you know, to interview candidates in. Well,
if he thinks that they’re promising enough—he doesn’t take any one,
mind, only a chosen few—he takes them on as pupils. As Mr Isaacs says,
the best kind of training is practical work, so he produces a film
straight away and pays the professionals out of the pupils’ fees. It’s
really a very simple and sensible plan. All the characters in “John
Wesley” are pupils, except Wesley himself and Whitefield and the Bishop
and, of course, Miss La Touche—she’s the wife of the man who looks
after the Edgware Road office when Mr Isaacs is away. Even the cameramen
are only learning. It makes everything so exciting, you know. This is
the third film Mr Isaacs has produced. The first went wrong, through Mr
Isaacs trusting one of the pupils to develop it. Of course, he made him
pay damages—that’s in the contract they all have to sign—but the film
was ruined, and Mr Isaacs said it was disheartening—he nearly gave up
the cinema altogether. But then a lot more pupils came along, so they
produced another, which was _very_ good indeed. Quite a revolution in
Film Art, Mr Isaacs said, but that was boycotted through professional
jealousy. None of the theatres would show it. But that’s been made all
right now. Mr Isaacs has got in with the ring, he says, and this is
going to establish Wonderfilms as the leading company in the country.
What’s more, he’s offered me a half share in it for five thousand
pounds. It’s wonderfully generous, when he might keep it all to himself,
but he says that he must have some one who understands _acting_ from the
practical side of the board of directors. Funnily enough, my bank
manager is very much against my going in for it. In fact, he’s putting
every obstacle in my way. . . . But I dare say Mr Isaacs would sooner
you didn’t put any of this into your paper.’

‘What I really came about was your daughter, Nina.’

‘Oh, she’s not taking any part in the film at all. To tell you the
truth, I very much doubt whether she has any real talent. It’s funny how
these things often skip a generation. My father, now, was a very bad
actor indeed—though he always used to take a leading part when we had
theatricals at Christmas. Upon my soul, he used to make himself look
quite ridiculous sometimes. I remember once he did a skit of Henry
Irving in _The Bells_. . . .’

‘I’m afraid you’ve forgotten me, sir, but I came here last month to see
you about Nina. Well, she wanted me to tell you that I’m Mr Chatterbox
now. . . .’

‘Chatterbox . . . no, my boy, I’m afraid I don’t remember you. My
memory’s not what it was. . . . There’s a Canon Chatterbox at Worcester
I used to know . . . he was up at New College with me . . . unusual
name.’

‘Mr Chatterbox on the _Daily Excess_.’

‘No, no, my dear boy, I assure you not. He was ordained just after I
went down and was chaplain somewhere abroad—Bermuda, I think. Then he
came home and went to Worcester. He was never on the _Daily Excess_ in
his life.’

‘No, no, sir, _I’m_ on the _Daily Excess_.’

‘Well, you ought to know your own staff, certainly. He _may_ have left
Worcester and taken to journalism. A great many parsons do nowadays. I
know. But I must say that he’s the last fellow I should have expected it
of. Awful stupid fellow. Besides, he must be at least seventy. . . .
Well, well . . . who would have thought it. Good-bye, my boy, I’ve
enjoyed our talk.’

‘Oh, sir,’ cried Adam, as Colonel Blount began to walk away. ‘You don’t
understand—I want to marry Nina.’

‘Well, it’s no good coming here,’ said the Colonel crossly. ‘I told you,
she’s somewhere in London. She’s got nothing to do with the film at all.
You’ll have to go and ask her about it. Anyway, I happen to know she’s
engaged already. There was a young ass of a chap down here about it the
other day . . . the Rector said he was off his head. Laughed the whole
time—bad sign that—still, Nina wants to marry him for some reason. So
I’m afraid you’re too late, my boy. I’m sorry . . . and, anyway, the
Rector’s behaved very badly about this film. Wouldn’t lend his car. I
suppose it’s because of the Wesleyanism. Narrow-minded, that. . . .
Well, good-bye. So nice of you to come. Remember me to Canon Chatterbox.
I must look him up next time I come to London and pull his leg about
it. . . . Writing for the papers, indeed, at his age.’

And Colonel Blount retired victorious.



Late that evening Adam and Nina sat in the gallery of the Café de la
Paix eating oysters.

‘Well we won’t bother any more about papa,’ she said. ‘We’ll just get
married at once.’

‘We shall be terribly poor.’

‘Well, we shan’t be any poorer than we are now. . . . I think it will be
divine. . . . Besides, we’ll be terribly economical. Miles says he’s
discovered a place near Tottenham Court Road where you can get oysters
for three and six a dozen.’

‘Wouldn’t they be rather ill-making?’

‘Well, Miles said the only odd thing about them is that they all taste a
little different. . . . I had lunch with Miles to-day. He rang up to
find where you were. He wanted to sell Edward Throbbing’s engagement to
the _Excess_. But Van offered him five guineas for it, so he gave it to
them.’

‘I’m sorry we missed that. The editor will be furious. By the way, how
did the gossip page go? Did you manage to fill it all right?’

‘My dear, I think I did rather well. You see Van and Miles didn’t know I
was in the trade, so they talked about Edward’s engagement a whole lot,
so I went and put it in . . . was that very caddish? . . . and I wrote a
lot about Edward and the girl he’s to marry. I used to know her when I
came out, and that took up half the page. So I just put in a few
imaginary ones like you do, so then it was finished.’

‘What did you say in the imaginary ones?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I said I saw Count Cincinnati going into Espinosa’s
in a green bowler . . . things like that.’

‘_You said that?_’

‘Yes, wasn’t it a good thing to say. . . . Angel, is anything wrong?’

‘Oh, God.’

Adam dashed to the telephone.

‘Central ten thousand . . . put me through to the night editor. . . .
Look here, I’ve got to make a correction in the Chatterbox page . . .
it’s urgent.’

‘Sorry, Symes. Last edition went to bed half an hour ago. Got everything
made up early to-night.’

So Adam went back to finish his oysters.

‘Bad tabulation there,’ said Lord Monomark next morning, when he saw the
paragraph.



So Miles Malpractice became Mr Chatterbox.



‘Now we can’t be married,’ said Nina.




                             _Chapter Ten_


Adam and Miss Runcible and Miles and Archie Schwert went up to the motor
races in Archie Schwert’s car. It was a long and cold drive. Miss
Runcible wore trousers and Miles touched up his eyelashes in the
dining-room of the hotel where they stopped for luncheon. So they were
asked to leave. At the next hotel they made Miss Runcible stay outside,
and brought her cold lamb and pickles in the car. Archie thought it
would be nice to have champagne, and worried the wine waiter about dates
(a subject which had always been repugnant to him). They spent a long
time over luncheon because it was warm there, and they drank Kümmel over
the fire until Miss Runcible came in very angrily to fetch them out.

Then Archie said he was too sleepy to drive any more, so Adam changed
places with him and lost the way, and they travelled miles in the wrong
direction down a limitless bye-pass road.

And then it began to be dark and the rain got worse. They stopped for
dinner at another hotel, where every one giggled at Miss Runcible’s
trousers in a dining-room hung with copper warming pans.

Presently they came to the town where the race was to be run. They drove
to the hotel where the dirt-track racer was staying. It was built in the
Gothic style of 1860, large, dark and called the Imperial.

They had wired him to book them rooms, but ‘Bless you,’ said the woman
at the counter marked ‘Reception’, ‘all our rooms have been booked for
the last six months. I couldn’t fit you in anywhere, not if you was the
Speed Kings themselves, I couldn’t. I don’t suppose you’ll find anything
in the town to-night. You might try at the Station Hotel. That’s your
only chance.’

At the Station Hotel they made Miss Runcible wait outside, but with no
better success.

‘I might put one of you on the sofa in the bar parlour, there’s only a
married couple in there at present and two little boys, or if you didn’t
mind sitting up all night, there’s always the palm lounge.’ As for a
bed, that was out of the question. They might try at the ‘Royal George’,
but she doubted very much whether they’d _like_ that even if there was
room, which she was pretty sure there was not.

Then Miss Runcible thought that she remembered that there were some
friends of her father who lived quite near, so she found out their
telephone number and rang them up, but they said no, they were sorry,
but they had a completely full house and practically no servants, and
that as far as they knew they had never heard of Lord Chasm. So that was
no good.

Then they went to several more hotels, sinking through the various
graduations of Old Established Family and Commercial, plain Commercial,
High Class Board Residence pension terms, Working Girls’ Hostel, plain
Pub. and Clean Beds: Gentlemen Only. All were full. At last, by the edge
of a canal, they came to the ‘Royal George’. The landlady stood at the
door and rounded off an argument with an elderly little man in a bowler
hat.

‘First ’e takes off ’is boots in the saloon bar,’ she said, enlisting
the sympathy of her new audience, ‘which is not the action of a
gentleman.’

‘They was wet,’ said the little man, ‘wet as ’ell.’

‘Well, and who wants your wet boots on the counter, I should like to
know. Then, if you please, he calls me a conspiring woman because I
tells him to stop and put them on before he goes ’ome.’

‘Want to go ’ome,’ said the little man. ‘’Ome to my wife and kids.
_Trying to keep a man from ’is wife._’

‘No one wants to keep you from your wife, you old silly. All I says is
for Gawd’s sake put on your boots before you go ’ome. What’ll your wife
think of you coming ’ome without boots.’

‘She won’t mind ’ow I come ’ome. Why, bless you, I ain’t been ’ome at
all for five years. It’s ’ard to be separated from a wife and kids by a
conspiring woman trying to make yer put on yer boots.’

‘My dear, she’s quite right, you know,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘You’d far
better put on your boots.’

‘There, ’ear what the lady says. Lady says you’ve to put on your boots.’

The little man took his boots from the landlady, looked at Miss Runcible
with a searching glance, and threw them into the canal. ‘_Lady_,’ he
said with feeling. ‘_Trousers_,’ and then he paddled off in his socks
into the darkness.

‘There ain’t no ’arm in ’im really,’ said the landlady, ‘only he do get
a bit wild when he’s ’ad the drink. Wasting good boots like that. . . .
I expect he’ll spend the night in the lock-up.’

‘Won’t he get back to his wife, poor sweet?’

‘Lor’ bless you, no. She lives in London.’

At this stage Archie Schwert, whose humanitarian interests were narrower
than Miss Runcible’s, lost interest in the discussion.

‘The thing we want to know is, can you let us have beds for the night?’

The landlady looked at him suspiciously.

‘Bed or beds?’

‘Beds.’

‘Might do.’ She looked from the car to Miss Runcible’s trousers and back
to the car again, weighing them against each other. ‘Cost you a quid
each,’ she said at last.

‘Can you find room for us all?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘which of you’s with the young lady?’

‘I’m afraid I’m all alone,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Isn’t it too shaming?’

‘Never you mind, dearie, luck’ll turn one day. Well, now, how can we all
fit in? There’s one room empty. I can sleep with our Sarah, and that
leaves a bed for the gentlemen—then if the young lady wouldn’t mind
coming in with me and Sarah . . .’

‘If you don’t think it rude, I think I’d sooner have the empty bed,’
said Miss Runcible, rather faintly. ‘You see,’ she added, with tact, ‘I
snore so terribly.’

‘Bless you, so does our Sarah. _We_ don’t mind . . . still, if you’d
_rather_ . . .’

‘Really, I think I should,’ said Miss Runcible.

‘Well then, I could put Mr Titchcock on the floor, couldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Miles, ‘just you put Mr Titchcock on the floor.’

‘And if the other gentleman don’t mind going on the landing. . . . Well,
we’ll manage somehow, see if we don’t.’

So they all drank some gin together in the back parlour and they woke Mr
Titchcock up and made him help with the luggage and they gave him some
gin, too, and he said it was all the same to him whether he slept on the
floor or in bed, and he was very pleased to be of any service to any one
and didn’t mind if he did have another drop just as a night-cap, as they
might say; and at last they all went to bed, very tired, but fairly
contented, and oh, how they were bitten by bugs all that night.

Adam had secured one of the bedrooms. He awoke early to find rain
beating on the window. He looked out and saw a grey sky, some kind of
factory and the canal from whose shallow waters rose little islands of
scrap-iron and bottles; a derelict perambulator lay partially submerged
under the opposite bank. In his room stood a chest of drawers full of
horrible fragments of stuff, a washhand stand with a highly coloured
basin, an empty jug and an old toothbrush. There was also a rotund
female bust covered in shiny red material, and chopped off short, as in
primitive martyrdoms, at neck, waist and elbows; a thing known as a
dressmaker’s ‘dummy’ (there had been one of these in Adam’s home which
they used to call ‘Jemima’—one day he stabbed ‘Jemima’ with a chisel
and scattered stuffing over the nursery floor and was punished. A more
enlightened age would have seen a complex in this action and worried
accordingly. Anyway he was made to sweep up all the stuffing himself).

Adam was very thirsty, but there was a light green moss in the bottom of
the water bottle that repelled him. He got into bed again and found some
one’s handkerchief (presumably Mr Titchcock’s) under the pillow.

He woke again a little later to find Miss Runcible dressed in pyjamas
and a fur coat sitting on his bed.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘there’s no looking-glass in my room and no bath
anywhere, and I trod on some one cold and soft asleep in the passage,
and I’ve been awake all night killing bugs with drops of face lotion,
and everything smells, and I feel so low I could die.’

‘For heaven’s sake let’s go away,’ said Adam.

So they woke Miles and Archie Schwert, and ten minutes later they all
stole out of the ‘Royal George’ carrying their suitcases.

‘I wonder, do you think we ought to leave some money?’ asked Adam, but
the others all said no.

‘Well, perhaps we ought to pay for the gin,’ said Miss Runcible.

So they left five shillings on the bar and drove away to the ‘Imperial’.

It was still very early, but every one seemed to be awake, running in
and out of the lifts carrying crash-helmets and overalls. Miles’ friend,
they were told, had been out before dawn, presumably at his garage. Adam
met some reporters whom he used to see about the _Excess_ office. They
told him that it was any one’s race, and that the place to see the fun
was Headlong Corner, where there had been three deaths the year before,
and it was worse this year, because they’d been putting down wet tar. It
was nothing more or less than a death trap, the reporters said. Then
they went away to interview some more drivers. All teams were confident
of victory, they said.

Meanwhile Miss Runcible discovered an empty bathroom and came down
half-an-hour later all painted up and wearing a skirt and feeling quite
herself again and ready for anything. So they went in to breakfast.

The dining-room was very full indeed. There were Speed Kings of all
nationalities, unimposing men mostly with small moustaches and
apprehensive eyes; they were reading the forecasts in the morning papers
and eating what might (and in some cases did) prove to be their last
meal on earth. There were a great number of journalists making the best
of an ‘out-of-town’ job; there were a troop of nondescript ‘fans’,
knowledgeable young men with bright jumpers tucked inside their belted
trousers, old public-school ties, check tweeds, loose mouths and
scarcely discernible Cockney accents; there were R.A.C. officials and
A.A. officials, and the representatives of oil firms and tyre
manufacturers. There was one disconsolate family who had come to the
town for the christening of a niece. (No one had warned them that there
was a motor race on; their hotel bill _was_ a shock.)

‘Very better-making,’ said Miss Runcible with approval as she ate her
haddock.

Scraps of highly technical conversation rose on all sides of them.

‘. . . Changed the whole engine over after they’d been scrutineered. Any
one else would have been disqualified . . .’

‘. . . just cruising round at fifty . . .’

‘. . . stung by a bee just as he was taking the corner, missed the tree
by inches and landed up in the Town Hall. There was a Riley coming up
behind, spun round twice, climbed the bank, turned right over and caught
fire . . .’

‘. . . local overheating at the valve-heads. It’s no sense putting a
supercharger in that engine at all . . .’

‘Headlong Corner’s jam. All you want to do is to brake right down to
forty or forty-five at the white cottage, then rev. up opposite the pub.
and get straight away in second on the near side of the road. A child
could do it. It’s the double bend just after the railway bridge where
you’ll get the funny stuff.’

‘. . . kept flagging him down from the pits. I tell you that bunch don’t
want him to win.’

‘. . . She wouldn’t tell me her name, but she said she’d meet me at the
same place to-night and gave me a sprig of white heather for the car. I
lost it, like a fool. She said she’d look out for it too . . .’

‘. . . Only offers a twenty pound bonus this year . . .’

‘. . . lapped at seventy-five . . .’

‘. . . Burst his gasket and blew out his cylinder heads . . .’

‘. . . Broke both arms and cracked his skull in two places . . .’

‘. . . Tailwag . . .’

‘. . . Speed-wobble . . .’

‘. . . Merc . . .’

‘. . . Mag . . .’

‘. . . crash . . .’

When they finished breakfast Miss Runcible and Adam and Archie Schwert
and Miles went to the garage to look for their Speed King. They found
him hard at work listening to his engine. A corner of the garage had
been roped off and the floor strewn with sand as though for a boxing
match.

Outside this ring clustered a group of predatory little boys with
autograph albums and leaking fountain-pens, and inside, surrounded by
attendants, stood the essential parts of a motor car. The engine was
running and the whole machine shook with fruitless exertion. Clouds of
dark smoke came from it, and a shattering roar which reverberated from
concrete floor and corrugated iron roof into every corner of the
building so that speech and thought became insupportable and all the
senses were numbed. At frequent intervals this high and heart-breaking
note was varied by sharp detonations, and it was these apparently which
were causing anxiety, for at each report Miles’ friend, who clearly
could not have been unduly sensitive to noise, gave a little wince and
looked significantly at his head mechanic.

Apart from the obvious imperfection of its sound, the car gave the
impression to an uninstructed observer of being singularly unfinished.
In fact, it was obviously still under construction. It had only three
wheels; the fourth being in the hands of a young man in overalls, who,
in the intervals of tossing back from his eyes a curtain of yellow hair,
was beating it with a hammer. It also had no seats, and another mechanic
was screwing down slabs of lead ballast in the place where one would
have expected to find them. It had no bonnet; that was in the hands of a
sign painter, who was drawing a black number 13 in a white circle. There
was a similar number on the back, and a mechanic was engaged in fixing
another number board over one of the headlights. There was a mechanic,
too, making a windscreen of wire gauze, and a mechanic lying flat doing
something to the back axle with a tin of grate polish and a rag. Two
more mechanics were helping Miles’ friend to listen to the bangs. ‘As if
we couldn’t have heard them from Berkeley Square,’ said Miss Runcible.

The truth is that motor cars offer a very happy illustration of the
metaphysical distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. Some cars, mere
vehicles with no purpose above bare locomotion, mechanical drudges such
as Lady Metroland’s Hispano Suiza, or Mrs Mouse’s Rolls Royce, or Lady
Circumference’s 1912 Daimler, or the ‘general reader’s’ Austin Seven,
these have definite ‘being’ just as much as their occupants. They are
bought all screwed up and numbered and painted, and there they stay
through various declensions of ownership, brightened now and then with a
lick of paint or temporarily rejuvenated by the addition of some minor
organ, but still maintaining their essential identity to the scrap heap.

Not so the _real_ cars, that become masters of men; those vital
creations of metal who exist solely for their own propulsion through
space, for whom their drivers, clinging precariously at the steering
wheel, are as important as his stenographer to a stockbroker. These are
in perpetual flux; a vortex of combining and disintegrating units; like
the confluence of traffic at some spot where many roads meet, streams of
mechanism come together, mingle and separate again.

Miles’ friend, even had it been possible in the uproar, seemed
indisposed to talk. He waved abstractedly and went on with his
listening. Presently he came across and shouted:

‘Sorry I can’t spare a moment, I’ll see you in the pits. I’ve got you
some brassards.’

‘My dear, what _can_ that be?’

He handed them each a strip of white linen, terminating in tape.

‘For your arms,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t get into the pits without them.’

‘My dear, what bliss! Fancy their having pits.’

Then they tied on their brassards. Miss Runcible’s said ‘SPARE DRIVER’;
Adam’s, ‘DEPOT STAFF’; Miles’ ‘SPARE MECHANIC’ and Archie’s, ‘OWNER’S
REPRESENTATIVE.’

Up till now the little boys round the rope had been sceptical of the
importance of Miss Runcible and her friends, but as soon as they saw
these badges of rank they pressed forward with their autograph books.
Archie signed them all with the utmost complaisance, and even drew a
slightly unsuitable picture in one of them. Then they drove away in
Archie’s car.

The race was not due to start until noon, but any indecision which they
may have felt about the employment of the next few hours was settled for
them by the local police, who were engaged in directing all traffic,
irrespective of its particular inclinations, on the road to the course.
No pains had been spared about this point of organization; several days
before, the Chief Constable had issued a little route map which was to
be memorized by all constables on point duty, and so well had they
learned their lesson that from early that morning until late in the
afternoon no vehicle approaching the town from any direction escaped
being drawn into that broad circuit marked by the arrows and dotted line
A-B which led to the temporary car park behind the Grand Stand. (Many
doctors, thus diverted, spent an enjoyable day without apparent
prejudice to their patients.)

The advance of the spectators had already assumed the form of a slow and
unbroken stream. Some came on foot from the railway station, carrying
sandwiches and camp stools; some on tandem bicycles; some in ‘runabouts’
or motor cycle side-car combinations, but most were in modestly priced
motor cars. Their clothes and demeanour proclaimed them as belonging to
the middle rank; a few brought portable wireless sets with them and
other evidence of gaiety, but the general air of the procession was one
of sobriety and purpose. This was no Derby day holiday-making; they had
not snatched a day from the office to squander it among gipsies and
roundabouts and thimble-and-pea men. They were there for the race. As
they crawled along in bottom gear in a fog of exhaust gas, they
discussed the technicalities of motor car design and the possibilities
of bloodshed, and studied their maps of the course to pick out the most
dangerous corners.

The detour planned by the Chief Constable was a long one, lined with
bungalows and converted railway carriages. Banners floated over it
between the telegraph posts, mostly advertising the _Morning Despatch_,
which was organizing the race and paying for the victor’s trophy—a
silver gilt figure of odious design, symbolizing Fame embracing Speed.
(This at the moment was under careful guard in the stewards’ room, for
the year before it had been stolen on the eve of the race by the
official time-keeper, who pawned it for a ridiculously small sum in
Manchester, and was subsequently deprived of his position and sent to
gaol.) Other advertisements proclaimed the superiorities of various
sorts of petrol and sparking plugs, while some said ‘£100 =for Loss
of Limb. Insure To-day=.’ There was also an elderly man walking
among the motor cars with a blue and white banner inscribed,
‘=Without Shedding of Blood is no Remission of Sin=’, while a
smartly dressed young man was doing a brisk trade in bogus tickets for
the Grand Stand.

Adam sat in the back of the car with Miles, who was clearly put out
about his friend’s lack of cordiality. ‘What I can’t make out,’ he said,
‘is why we came to this beastly place at all. I suppose I ought to be
thinking of something to write for the _Excess_. I _know_ this is just
going to be the most dreary day we’ve ever spent.’

Adam felt inclined to agree. Suddenly he became aware that some one was
trying to attract his attention.

‘There’s an awful man shouting “Hi” at you,’ said Miles. ‘My dear, _your
friends_.’

Adam turned and saw not three yards away, separated from him by a young
woman riding a push-bicycle in khaki shorts, her companion, who bore a
knapsack on his shoulders, and a small boy selling programmes, the
long-sought figure of the drunk Major. He looked sober enough this
morning, dressed in a bowler hat and Burberry, and he was waving
frantically to Adam from the dicky of a coupé car.

‘Hi!’ cried the drunk Major. ‘Hi! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ shouted Adam. ‘I want some money.’

‘Can’t hear—what do you want?’

‘Money.’

‘It’s no good—these infernal things make too much noise. What’s your
name? Lottie had forgotten.’

‘Adam Symes.’

‘Can’t hear.’

The line of traffic, creeping forward yard by yard, had at last reached
the point B on the Chief Constable’s map, where the dotted lines
diverged. A policeman stood at the crossing directing the cars right and
left, some to the parking place behind the Grand Stand, others to the
mound above the pits. Archie turned on to the left. The drunk Major’s
car accelerated and swept away to the right.

‘_I must know your name_,’ he cried. All the drivers seemed to choose
this moment to sound their horns; the woman cyclist at Adam’s elbow rang
her bell; the male cyclist tooted a little horn like a Paris taxi, and
the programme boy yelled in his ear, ‘Official programme—map of the
course—all the drivers.’

‘Adam Symes,’ he shouted desperately, but the Major threw up his hands
in despair and he disappeared in the crowd.

‘_The way you pick people up . . ._’ said Miles, startled into
admiration.

‘The pits’ turned out to be a line of booths, built of wood and
corrugated iron immediately opposite the Grand Stand. Many of the cars
had already arrived and stood at their ‘pits’, surrounded by a knot of
mechanics and spectators; they seemed to be already under repair. Busy
officials hurried up and down, making entries in their lists. Over their
heads a vast loud speaker was relaying the music of a military band.

The Grand Stand was still fairly empty, but the rest of the course was
already lined with people. It stretched up and down hill for a circle of
thirteen or fourteen miles, and those who were fortunate enough to own
cottages or public houses at the more dangerous corners had covered
their roofs with unstable wooden forms, and were selling tickets like
very expensive hot cakes. A grass-covered hill rose up sharply behind
the pits. On this had been erected a hoarding where a troop of Boy
Scouts were preparing to score the laps, passing the time contentedly
with ginger beer, toffee, and rough-and-tumble fights. Behind the
hoarding was a barbed wire fence, and behind that again a crowd of
spectators and several refreshment tents. A wooden bridge, advertising
the _Morning Despatch_, had been built on the road. At various points
officials might be seen attempting to understand each other over a field
telephone. Sometimes the band would stop and a voice would announce,
‘Will Mr So-and-So kindly report at once to the time-keeper’s office’;
then the band would go on.

Miss Runcible and her party found their way to the pit numbered 13 and
sat on the matchboard counter smoking and signing autograph books. An
official bore down on them.

‘No smoking in the pits, please.’

‘My dear, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know.’

There were six open churns behind Miss Runcible, four containing petrol
and two water. She threw her cigarette over her shoulder, and by a
beneficent attention of Providence which was quite rare in her career it
fell into the water. Had it fallen into the petrol it would probably
have been all up with Miss Runcible.

Presently No. 13 appeared. Miles’ friend and his mechanic wearing
overalls, crash-helmets, and goggles, jumped out, opened the bonnet and
began to reconstruct it again.

‘They didn’t ought to have a No. 13 at all,’ said the mechanic. ‘It
isn’t fair.’

Miss Runcible lit another cigarette.

‘No smoking in the pits, _please_,’ said the official.

‘My dear, how _awful_ of me. I quite forgot.’

(This time it fell in the mechanic’s luncheon basket and lay smouldering
quietly on a leg of chicken until it had burnt itself out.)

Miles’ friend began filling up his petrol tank with the help of a very
large funnel.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed to hand me anything direct, but
if Edwards holds up his left hand as we come past the pits, that means
we shall be stopping next lap for petrol. So what you’ve got to do is to
fill up a couple of cans and put them on the shelf with the funnel for
Edwards to take. If Edwards holds up his right hand . . .’ elaborate
instructions followed. ‘You’re in charge of the depôt,’ he said to
Archie. ‘D’you think you’ve got all the signals clear? The race may
depend on them, remember.’

‘What does it mean if I wave the blue flag?’

‘That you want me to stop.’

‘Why should I want you to stop?’

‘Well, you might see something wrong—leaking tank or anything like
that, or the officials might want the number plate cleaned.’

‘I think perhaps I won’t do anything much about the blue flag. It seems
rather too bogus for me.’

Miss Runcible lit another cigarette.

‘Will you kindly leave the pits if you wish to smoke?’ said the
official.

‘What a damned rude man,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Let’s go up to that
divine tent and get a drink.’

They climbed the hill past the Boy Scouts, found a gate in the wire
fence, and eventually reached the refreshment tent. Here an atmosphere
of greater geniality prevailed. A profusion of men in plus-fours were
having ‘quick ones’ before the start. There was no nonsense about not
smoking. There was a middle-aged woman sitting on the grass with a
bottle of stout and a baby.

‘Home from home,’ said Miss Runcible.

Suddenly the military band stopped and a voice said, ‘Five minutes to
twelve. All drivers and mechanics on the other side of the track,
please.’

There was a hush all over the course, and the refreshment tent began to
empty quickly.

‘Darling, we shall miss the start.’

‘Still, a drink _would_ be nice.’

So they went into the tent.

‘Four whiskies, please,’ said Archie Schwert.

‘You’ll miss the start,’ said the barmaid.

‘What a pig that man was,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Even if we weren’t
supposed to smoke, he might at least have asked us politely.’

‘My dear, it was only you.’

‘Well, I think that made it worse.’

‘Lor’, Miss,’ said the barmaid. ‘You surely ain’t going to miss the
start?’

‘It’s the one thing I want to see more than anything . . . my dear, I
believe they’re off already.’

The sudden roar of sixty high-power engines rose from below. ‘They
_have_ started . . . how too shaming.’ They went to the door of the
tent. Part of the road was visible over the heads of the spectators, and
they caught a glimpse of the cars running all jammed together like pigs
being driven through a gate; one by one they shook themselves free and
disappeared round the bend with a high shriek of acceleration.

‘They’ll be round again in quarter of an hour,’ said Archie. ‘Let’s have
another drink.’

‘Who was ahead?’ asked the barmaid anxiously.

‘I couldn’t see for certain,’ said Miss Runcible, ‘but I’m fairly sure
it was No. 13.’

‘_My!_’

The refreshment tent soon began to fill up again. The general opinion
seemed to be that it was going to be a close race between No. 13 and No.
28, a red Omega car, driven by Marino, the Italian ‘ace’.

‘Dirtiest driver I ever seen,’ said one man with relish.

‘Why, over at Belfast ’e was just tipping ’em all into the ditches, just
like winking.’

‘There’s one thing you _can_ be sure of. They won’t _both_ finish.’

‘It’s sheer murder the way that Marino drives—a fair treat to see ’im.’

‘He’s a one all right—a real artist and no mistake about it.’

Adam and Miss Runcible and Archie and Miles went back to their pit.

‘After all,’ said Miss Runcible, ‘the poor sweet may be wanting all
sorts of things and signalling away like mad, and no one there to pay
any attention to him—so discouraging.’

By this time the cars were fairly evenly spread out over the course.
They flashed by intermittently with dazzling speed and a shriek; one or
two drew into their pits and the drivers leapt out, trembling like
leaves, to tinker with the works. One had already come to grief—a large
German whose tyre had burst—punctured, some said, by a hireling of
Marino’s. It had left the road and shot up a tree like a cat chased by a
dog. Two little American cars had failed to start; their team worked
desperately at them amid derisive comments from the crowd. Suddenly two
cars appeared coming down the straight, running abreast within two feet
of each other.

‘It’s No. 13,’ cried Miss Runcible, really excited at last. ‘And there’s
that Italian devil just beside it. Come on, thirteen! Come on!’ she
cried, dancing in the pit and waving a flag she found at hand. ‘Come on.
Oh! Well done, thirteen.’

The cars were gone in a flash and succeeded by others.

‘Agatha, darling, you shouldn’t have waved the blue flag.’

‘My dear, how awful. Why not?’

‘Well, that means that he’s to stop next lap.’

‘Good God. Did I wave a blue flag?’

‘My dear, you know you did.’

‘_How_ shaming. What _am_ I to say to him?’

‘Let’s all go away before he comes back.’

‘D’you know, I think we’d better. He might be furious, mightn’t he?
Let’s go to the tent and have another drink—don’t you think, or don’t
you?’

So No. 13 pit was again deserted.



‘What did I say?’ said the mechanic. ‘The moment I heard we’d drawn this
blinkin’ number I knew we was in for trouble.’



The first person they saw when they reached the refreshment tent was the
drunk Major.

‘Your boy friend again,’ said Miles.

‘Well, there you are,’ said the Major. ‘D’you know I’ve been chasing you
all over London. What have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

‘I’ve been staying at Lottie’s.’

‘Well, she said she’d never heard of you. You see, I don’t mind
admitting I’d had a few too many that night, and to tell you the truth I
woke up with things all rather a blur. Well then I found a thousand
pounds in my pocket, and it all came back to me. There’d been a cove at
Lottie’s who gave me a thousand pounds to put on Indian Runner. Well, as
far as I knew, Indian Runner was no good. I didn’t want to lose your
money for you, but the devil of it was I didn’t know you from Adam.’ (‘I
think that’s a perfect joke,’ said Miss Runcible.) ‘And apparently
Lottie didn’t either. You’d have thought it was easy enough to trace the
sort of chap who deals out thousands of pounds to total strangers, but I
couldn’t find one fingerprint.’

‘Do you mean,’ said Adam, a sudden delirious hope rising in his heart,
‘that you’ve still got my thousand?’

‘Not so fast,’ said the Major. ‘I’m spinning this yarn. Well, on the day
of the race I didn’t know what to do. One half of me said, keep the
thousand. The chap’s bound to turn up some time, and it’s his business
to do his own punting—the other half said, put it on the favourite for
him and give him a run for his money.’

‘So you put it on the favourite?’ Adam’s heart felt like lead again.

‘No, I didn’t. In the end I said, well, the young chap must be
frightfully rich. If he likes to throwaway his money, it’s none of my
business, so I planked it all on Indian Runner for you.’

‘You mean . . .’

‘I mean I’ve got the nice little packet of thirty-five thou. waiting
until you condescend to call for it.’

‘Good heavens . . . look here, have a drink, won’t you?’

‘That’s a thing I never refuse.’

‘Archie, lend me some money until I get this fortune.’

‘How much?’

‘Enough to buy five bottles of champagne.’

‘Yes, if you can get them.’

The barmaid had a case of champagne at the back of the tent. (‘People
often feel queer through watching the cars go by so fast—ladies
especially,’ she explained.) So they took a bottle each and sat on the
side of the hill and drank to Adam’s prosperity.

‘Hullo, everybody,’ said the loud speaker. ‘Car No. 28, the Italian
Omega, driven by Captain Marino, has just completed the course in twelve
minutes one second, lapping at an average speed of 78·3 miles per hour.
This is the fastest time yet recorded.’

A burst of applause greeted this announcement, but Adam said, ‘I’ve
rather lost interest in this race.’

‘Look here, old boy,’ the Major said when they were well settled down,
‘I’m rather in a hole. Makes me feel an awful ass, saying so, but the
truth is I got my note-case pinched in the crowd. Of course, I’ve got
plenty of small change to see me back to the hotel and they’ll take a
cheque of mine there, naturally, but the fact is I was keen to make a
few bets with some chaps I hardly know. I wonder, old boy, could you
possibly lend me a fiver? I can give it to you at the same time as I
hand over the thirty-five thousand.’

‘Why, of course,’ said Adam. ‘Archie, lend me a fiver, can you?’

‘Awfully good of you,’ said the Major, tucking the notes into his hip
pocket. ‘Would it be all the same if you made it a tenner while we’re
about it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Archie, with a touch of coldness. ‘I’ve only just got
enough to get home with.’

‘That’s all right, old boy, _I_ understand. Not another word. . . .
Well, here’s to us all.’

‘I was on the course at the November Handicap,’ said Adam. ‘I thought I
saw you.’

‘It would have saved a lot of fuss if we’d met, wouldn’t it? Still,
all’s well that end’s well.’

‘What an _angelic_ man your Major is,’ said Miss Runcible.

When they had finished their champagne, the Major—now indisputably
drunk—rose to go.

‘Look here, old boy,’ he said. ‘I must be toddling along now. Got to see
some chaps. Thanks no end for the binge. So jolly having met you all
again. Bye-bye, little lady.’

‘When shall we meet again?’ said Adam.

‘Any time, old boy. Tickled to death to see you any time you care to
drop in. Always a pew and a drink for old friends. So long everybody.’

‘But couldn’t I come and see you soon? About the money, you know.’

‘Sooner the better, old boy. Though I don’t know what you mean about
money.’

‘My thirty-five thousand.’

‘Why, yes, to be sure. Fancy my forgetting that. I tell you what. You
roll along to-night to the Imperial and I’ll give it to you then. Jolly
glad to get it off my chest. Seven o’clock at the American bar—or a
little before.’

‘Let’s go back and look at the motor cars,’ said Archie.

They went down the hill feeling buoyant and detached (as one should if
one drinks a great deal before luncheon). When they reached the pits
they decided they were hungry. It seemed too far to climb up to the
dining tent, so they ate as much of the mechanic’s lunch as Miss
Runcible’s cigarette had spared. Then a mishap happened to No. 13. It
drew into the side uncertainly, with the mechanic holding the steering
wheel. A spanner, he told them, thrown from Marino’s car as they were
passing him under the railway bridge, had hit Miles’ friend on the
shoulder. The mechanic helped him get out, and supported him to the Red
Cross tent. ‘May as well scratch,’ he said. ‘He won’t be good for
anything more this afternoon. It’s asking for trouble having a No. 13.’
Miles went to help his friend, leaving Miss Runcible and Adam and Archie
staring rather stupidly at their motor car. Archie hiccoughed slightly
as he ate the mechanic’s apple.

Soon an official appeared.

‘What happened here?’ he said.

‘Driver’s just been murdered,’ said Archie. ‘Spanner under the railway
bridge. Marino.’

‘Well, are you going to scratch? Who’s spare driver?’

‘I don’t know. Do you, Adam? I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if they
hadn’t murdered the spare driver, too.’

‘I’m spare driver,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘It’s on my arm.’

‘She’s spare driver. Look, it’s on her arm.’

‘Well, do you want to scratch?’

‘Don’t you scratch, Agatha.’

‘No, I don’t want to scratch.’

‘All right. What’s your name?’

‘Agatha. I’m the spare driver. It’s on my arm.’

‘I can see it is—all right, start off as soon as you like.’

‘Agatha,’ repeated Miss Runcible firmly as she climbed into the car.
‘It’s on my arm.’

‘I say, Agatha,’ said Adam. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘It’s on my arm,’ said Miss Runcible severely.

‘I mean, are you quite certain it’s absolutely safe?’

‘Not _absolutely_ safe, Adam. Not if they throw spanners. But I’ll go
quite slowly at first until I’m used to it. Just you see. Coming too?’

‘I’ll stay and wave the flag,’ said Adam.

‘That’s right. Good-bye . . . goodness, how too stiff-scaring. . . .’

The car shot out into the middle of the road, missed a collision by a
foot, swung round and disappeared with a roar up the road.

‘I say, Archie, is it all right being tight in a car, if it’s on a race
course? They won’t run her in or anything?’

‘No, no, that’s all right. All tight on the race course.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘All of them?’

‘Absolutely every one—tight as houses.’

‘That’s all right then. Let’s go and have a drink.’

So they went up the hill again, through the Boy Scouts, to the
refreshment tent.

It was not long before Miss Runcible was in the news.

‘Hullo, everybody,’ said the loud speaker. ‘No 13, the English
Plunket-Bowse, driven by Miss Agatha, came into collision at Headlong
Corner with No. 28, the Italian Omega car, driven by Captain Marino. No
13 righted itself and continued on the course. No. 28 overturned and has
retired from the race.’

‘Well done, Agatha,’ said Archie.

A few minutes later:

‘Hullo, everybody. No. 13, the English Plunket-Bowse, driven by Miss
Agatha, has just completed the course in nine minutes forty-one seconds.
This constitutes a record for the course.’

Patriotic cheers broke out on all sides, and Miss Runcible’s health was
widely drunk in the refreshment tent.

A few minutes later:

‘Hullo, everybody; I have to contradict the announcement recently made
that No. 13, the English Plunket-Bowse, driven by Miss Agatha, had
established a record for the course. The stewards have now reported that
No. 13 left the road just after the level crossing and cut across
country for five miles, rejoining the track at the Red Lion corner. The
lap has therefore been disallowed by the judges.’

A few minutes later:

‘Hullo, everybody; No. 13, the English Plunket-Bowse car, driven by Miss
Agatha, has retired from the race. It disappeared from the course some
time ago, turning left instead of right at Church Corner, and was last
seen proceeding south on the bye-road, apparently out of control.’

‘My dear, that’s lucky for me,’ said Miles. ‘A really good story my
second day on the paper. This ought to do me good with the
_Excess_—_very_ rich-making,’ and he hurried off to the post office
tent—which was one of the amenities of the course—to despatch a long
account of Miss Runcible’s disaster.

Adam accompanied him and sent a wire to Nina: ‘_Drunk Major in
refreshment tent not bogus thirty-five thousand married to-morrow
everything perfect Agatha lost love Adam._’

‘That seems quite clear,’ he said.

They went to the hospital tent after this—another amenity of the
course—to see how Miles’ friend was getting on. He seemed in some pain
and showed anxiety about his car.

‘I think it’s very heartless of him,’ said Adam. ‘He ought to be worried
about Agatha. It only shows . . .’

‘Motor men _are_ heartless,’ said Miles, with a sigh.

Presently Captain Marino was borne in on a stretcher. He turned on his
side with a deep groan and spat at Miles’ friend as he went past him. He
also spat at the doctor who came to bandage him and bit one of the
V.A.D.’s.

They said Captain Marino was no gentleman in the hospital tent.

There was no chance of leaving the course before the end of the race,
Archie was told, and the race would not be over for at least two hours.
Round and round went the stream of cars. At intervals the Boy Scouts
posted a large red R against one or other of the numbers, as engine
trouble or collision or Headlong Corner took its toll. A long queue
stretched along the top of the hill from the door of the luncheon tent.
Then it began to rain.

There was nothing for it but to go back to the bar.

At dusk the last car completed its course. The silver gilt trophy was
presented to the winner. The loud speaker broadcast ‘God Save the King’,
and a cheerful ‘Good-bye, everybody.’ The tail of the queue outside the
dining tent were respectfully informed that no more luncheons could be
served. The barmaids in the refreshment tent said, ‘All glasses, ladies
and gentlemen, please.’ The motor ambulances began a final round of the
track to pick up survivors. Then Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert went
to look for their car.

Darkness fell during the drive back. It took an hour to reach the town.
Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert did not talk much. The effect of their
drinks had now entered on that secondary stage, vividly described in
temperance handbooks, when the momentary illusion of well-being and
exhilaration gives place to melancholy, indigestion and moral decay.
Adam tried to concentrate his thoughts upon his sudden wealth, but they
seemed unable to adhere to this high pinnacle, and as often as he
impelled them up, slithered back helplessly to his present physical
discomfort.

The sluggish procession in which they were moving led them eventually to
the centre of the town and the soberly illuminated front of the Imperial
Hotel. A torrential flow of wet and hungry motor enthusiasts swept and
eddied about the revolving doors.

‘I shall die if I don’t eat something soon,’ said Miles. ‘Let’s leave
Agatha until we’ve had a meal.’

But the manager of the ‘Imperial’ was unimpressed by numbers or
necessity and manfully upheld the integrity of British hotel-keeping.
Tea, he explained, was served daily in the Palm Court, with orchestra on
Thursdays and Sundays, between the hours of four and six. A _table
d’hôte_ dinner was served in the dining-room from seven-thirty until
nine o’clock. An _à la carte_ dinner was also served in the grill room
at the same time. It was now twenty minutes past six. If the gentlemen
cared to return in an hour and ten minutes he would do his best to
accommodate them, but he could not promise to reserve a table. Things
were busy that day. There had been motor races in the neighbourhood, he
explained.

The commissionaire was more helpful, and told them that there was a
tea-shop restaurant called the Café Royal a little way down the High
Street, next to the Cinema. He seemed, however, to have given the same
advice to all comers, for the Café Royal was crowded and overflowing.
Every one was being thoroughly cross, but only the most sarcastic and
overbearing were given tables, and only the gross and outrageous were
given food. Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert then tried two more
tea-shops, one kept by ‘ladies’ and called ‘The Honest Injun’, a
workmen’s dining-room and a fried-fish shop. Eventually they bought a
bag of mixed biscuits at a co-operative store, which they ate in the
Palm Court of the ‘Imperial’, maintaining a moody silence.

It was now after seven, and Adam remembered his appointment in the
American bar. There, too, inevitably, was a dense crowd. Some of the
‘Speed Kings’ themselves had appeared, pink from their baths, wearing
dinner-jackets and stiff white shirts, each in his circle of admirers.
Adam struggled to the bar.

‘Have you seen a drunk Major in here anywhere?’ he asked.

The barmaid sniffed. ‘I should think not, indeed,’ she said. ‘And I
shouldn’t serve him if he _did_ come in. I don’t have people of that
description in _my_ bar. _The very idea._’

‘Well, perhaps he’s not drunk now. But have you seen a stout, red-faced
man, with a single eyeglass and a turned-up moustache?’

‘Well, there _was_ some one like that not so long ago. Are you a friend
of his?’

‘I want to see him badly.’

‘Well, all I can say is I wish you’d try and look after him and don’t
bring him in here again. Going on something awful he was. Broke two
glasses and got very quarrelsome with the other gentlemen. He had three
or four pound notes in his hand. Kept waving them about and saying,
“D’you know what? I met a mutt to-day. I owe him thirty-five thousand
pounds and he lent me a fiver.” Well, that’s not the way to talk before
strangers, is it? He went out ten minutes ago. I was glad to see the
back of him, I can tell you.’

‘Did he say that—about having met a mutt?’

‘Didn’t stop saying it the whole time he was in here—most monotonous.’

But as Adam left the bar he saw the Major coming out of the gentlemen’s
lavatory. He was walking very deliberately, and stared at Adam with a
glazed and vacant eye.

‘Hi!’ cried Adam. ‘Hi!’

‘Cheerio,’ said the drunk Major distantly.

‘I say,’ said Adam. ‘What about my thirty-five thousand pounds?’

The drunk Major stopped and adjusted his monocle.

‘Thirty-five thousand and five pounds,’ he said. ‘What about them?’

‘Well, where are they?’

‘They’re safe enough. National and Provincial Union Bank of England,
Limited. A perfectly sound and upright company. I’d trust them with more
than that if I had it. I’d trust them with a million, old boy, honest I
would. One of those fine old companies, you know. They don’t make
companies like that now. I’d trust that bank with my wife and
kiddies. . . . You mustn’t think I’d put your money into anything that
wasn’t straight, old boy. You ought to know me well enough for
that. . . .’

‘No, of course not. It’s terribly kind of you to have looked after
it—you said you’d give me a cheque this evening. Don’t you remember?’

The drunk Major looked at him craftily. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That’s another
matter. I told _some one_ I’d give him a cheque. But how am I to know it
was you? . . . I’ve got to be careful, you know. Suppose you were just a
crook dressed up. I don’t say you are, mind, but supposing. Where’ld I
be then? You have to look at both sides of a case like this.’

‘Oh, God. . . . I’ve got two friends here who’ll swear to you I’m Adam
Symes. Will that do?’

‘Might be a gang. Besides _I_ don’t know that the name of the chap who
gave me the thousand _was_ Adam what-d’you-call-it at all. Only your
word for it. I’ll tell you what,’ said the Major, sitting down in a deep
armchair, ‘I’ll sleep on it. Just forty winks. I’ll let you know my
decision when I wake up. Don’t think me suspicious, old boy, but I’ve
got to be careful . . . other chap’s money, you know . . .’ And he fell
asleep.

Adam struggled through the crowd to the Palm Court, where he had left
Miles and Archie. News of No. 13 had just come through. The car had been
found piled up on the market cross of a large village about fifteen
miles away (doing irreparable damage to a monument already scheduled for
preservation by the Office of Works). But there was no sign of Miss
Runcible.

‘I suppose we ought to do something about it,’ said Miles. ‘This is the
most miserable day I ever spent. Did you get your fortune?’

‘The Major was too drunk to recognize me. He’s just gone to sleep.’

‘_Well._’

‘We must go to this beastly village and look for Agatha.’

‘I can’t leave my Major. He’ll probably wake up soon and give the
fortune to the first person he sees.’

‘Let’s just go and shake him until he gives us the fortune now,’ said
Miles.

But this was impracticable, for when they reached the chair where Adam
had left him, the drunk Major was gone.

The hall porter remembered him going out quite clearly. He had pressed a
pound into his hand, saving, ‘Met-a-mutt-to-day,’ and taken a taxi to
the station.

‘D’you know,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t believe that I’m ever going to get
that fortune.’

‘Well, I don’t see that you’ve very much to complain of,’ said Archie.
‘You’re no worse off than you were. _I’ve_ lost a fiver and five bottles
of champagne.’

‘That’s true,’ said Adam, a little consoled.



They got into the car and drove through the rain to the village where
the Plunket-Bowse had been found. There it stood, still smoking and
partially recognizable, surrounded by admiring villagers. A constable in
a waterproof cape was doing his best to preserve it intact from the
raids of souvenir hunters who were collecting the smaller fragments.

No one seemed to have witnessed the disaster. The younger members of the
community were all at the races, while the elders were engaged in their
afternoon naps. One thought he had heard a crash.

Inquiries at the railway station, however, disclosed that a young lady,
much dishevelled in appearance, and wearing some kind of band on her
arm, had appeared in the booking office early that afternoon and asked
where she was. On being told, she said, well, she wished she wasn’t,
because some one had left an enormous stone spanner in the middle of the
road. She admitted feeling rather odd. The station-master had asked her
if she would like to come in and sit down and offered to get her some
brandy. She said, ‘No, no more brandy,’ and bought a first-class ticket
to London. She had left on the 3.25 train.

‘So that’s all right,’ said Archie.

Then they left the village and presently found an hotel on the Great
North Road, where they dined and spent the night. They reached London by
luncheon time next day, and learned that Miss Runcible had been found
early that morning staring fixedly at a model engine in the central hall
at Euston Station. In answer to some gentle questions, she replied that
to the best of her knowledge she had no name, pointing to the brassard
on her arm, as if in confirmation of this fact. She had come in a motor
car, she explained, which would not stop. It was full of bugs which she
had tried to kill with drops of face lotion. One of them threw a
spanner. There had been a stone thing in the way. They shouldn’t put up
symbols like that in the middle of the road, should they, or should
they?

So they conveyed her to a nursing home in Wimpole Street and kept her
for some time in a darkened room.




                            _Chapter Eleven_


Adam rang up Nina.

‘Darling, I’ve been so happy about your telegram. Is it really true?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘The Major _is_ bogus?’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t got any money?’

‘No.’

‘We aren’t going to be married to-day?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

‘Well?’

‘I said, I see.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, that’s all, Adam.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry, too. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye, Nina.’

Later Nina rang up Adam.

‘Darling, is that you? I’ve got something rather awful to tell you.’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll be furious.’

‘Well?’

‘I’m engaged to be married.’

‘Who to?’

‘I hardly think I can tell you.’

‘Who?’

‘Adam, you won’t be beastly about it, will you?’

‘Who is it?’

‘Ginger.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Well, I am. That’s all there is to it.’

‘You’re going to marry Ginger?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’

‘Well?’

‘I said, I see.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, that’s all, Nina.’

‘When shall I see you?’

‘I don’t want ever to see you again.’

‘I see.’

‘Well?’

‘I said, I see.’

‘Well, good-bye.’

‘Good-bye. . . . I’m sorry, Adam.’




                            _Chapter Twelve_


Ten days later Adam bought some flowers at the corner of Wigmore Street
and went to call on Miss Runcible at her nursing home. He was shown
first into the matron’s room. She had numerous photographs in silver
frames and a very nasty fox terrier. She smoked a cigarette in a greedy
way, making slight sucking noises.

‘Just taking a moment off in my den,’ she explained. ‘Down, Spot, down.
But I can see you’re fond of dogs,’ she added, as Adam gave Spot a
half-hearted pat on the head. ‘So you want to see Miss Runcible? Well, I
ought to warn you first that she must have no kind of excitement
whatever. She’s had a severe shock. Are you a relation, may I ask?’

‘No, only a friend.’

‘A very _special_ friend, perhaps, eh?’ said the Matron archly. ‘Never
mind, I’ll spare your blushes. Just you run up and see her. But not more
than five minutes, mind, or you’ll have me on your tracks.’

There was a reek of ether on the stairs which reminded Adam of the times
when, waiting to take her to luncheon, he had sat on Nina’s bed while
she did her face. (She invariably made him turn his back until it was
over, having a keen sense of modesty about this one part of her toilet,
in curious contrast to some girls, who would die rather than be seen in
their underclothes, and yet openly flaunt unpainted faces in front of
anyone.)

It hurt Adam deeply to think much about Nina.

Outside Miss Runcible’s door hung a very interesting chart which showed
the fluctuations of her temperature and pulse and many other curious
details of her progress. He studied this with pleasure until a nurse,
carrying a tray of highly polished surgical instruments, gave him such a
look that he felt obliged to turn away.

Miss Runcible lay in a high, narrow bed in a darkened room.

A nurse was crocheting at her side when Adam entered. She rose, dropping
a few odds and ends from her lap, and said, ‘There’s someone come to see
you, dear. Now remember you aren’t to talk much,’ She took the flowers
from Adam’s hand, said, ‘Look, what lovelies. Aren’t you a lucky girl?’
and left the room with them. She returned a moment later carrying them
in a jug of water. ‘There, the thirsties,’ she said. ‘Don’t they love to
get back to the nice cool water?’

Then she went out again.

‘Darling,’ said a faint voice from the bed, ‘I can’t really see who it
is. Would it be awful to draw the curtains?’

Adam crossed the room and let in the light of the grey December
afternoon.

‘My dear, how blind-making. There are some cocktail things in the
wardrobe. Do make a big one. The nurses love them so. It’s such a nice
nursing home this, Adam, only all the nurses are starved, and there’s a
breath-taking young man next door who keeps putting his head in and
asking how I am. _He_ fell out of an _aeroplane_, which is rather grand,
don’t you think?’

‘How are you feeling, Agatha?’

‘Well, rather odd, to tell you the truth. . . . How’s Nina?’

‘She’s got engaged to be married—haven’t you heard?’

‘My dear, the nurses are interested in no one but Princess Elizabeth. Do
tell me.’

‘A young man called Ginger.’

‘_Well?_’

‘Don’t you remember him? He came on with us after the airship party.’

‘Not the one who was sick?’

‘No, the other.’

‘I don’t remember . . . does Nina call him Ginger?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘He asked her to.’

‘_Well?_’

‘She used to play with him when they were children. So she’s going to
marry him.’

‘My dear, isn’t that rather sad-making for you?’

‘I’m desperate about it. I’m thinking of committing suicide, like
Simon.’

‘Don’t do that, darling . . . did Simon commit suicide?’

‘My dear, you know he did. The night all those libel actions started.’

‘Oh, _that_ Simon. I thought you meant _Simon_.’

‘Who’s Simon?’

‘The young man who fell out of the aeroplane. The nurses call him Simple
Simon because it’s affected his brains . . . but, Adam I _am_ sorry
about Nina. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. As soon as I’m well again we’ll
make Mary Mouse give a lovely party to cheer you up.’

‘Haven’t you heard about Mary?’

‘No, what?’

‘She went off to Monte Carlo with the Maharajah of Pukkapore.’

‘_My dear_, aren’t the Mice furious?’

‘She’s just receiving religious instruction before her official
reception as a royal concubine. Then they’re going to India.’

‘How people are _disappearing_, Adam. Did you get that money from the
drunk Major?’

‘No, he disappeared too.’

‘D’you know, all that time when I was dotty I had the most awful dreams.
I thought we were all driving round and round in a motor race and none
of us could stop, and there was an enormous audience composed entirely
of gossip writers and gate-crashers and Archie Schwert and people like
that, all shouting to us at once to go faster, and car after car kept
crashing until I was left all alone driving and driving—and then I used
to crash and wake up.’

Then the door opened, and Miles came popping in.

‘Agatha, Adam, my dears. The _time_ I’ve had trying to get in. I can’t
tell you how bogus they were downstairs. First I said I was Lord Chasm,
and that wasn’t any good; and I said I was one of the doctors, and that
wasn’t any good; and I said I was your young man, and _that_ wasn’t any
good; and I said I was a gossip writer, and they let me up at once and
said I wasn’t to excite you, but would I put a piece in my paper about
their nursing home. _How_ are you, Aggie darling? I brought up some new
records.’

‘You are angelic. Do let’s try them. There’s a gramophone under the
bed.’

‘There’s a whole lot more people coming to see you to-day. I saw them
all at luncheon at Margot’s. Johnny Hoop and Van and Archie Schwert. I
wonder if they’ll all manage to get in.’

They got in.

So soon there was quite a party, and Simon appeared from next door in a
very gay dressing-gown, and they played the new records and Miss
Runcible moved her bandaged limbs under the bedclothes in negro rhythm.

Last of all, Nina came in looking quite lovely and very ill.

‘Nina, I hear you’re engaged.’

‘Yes, it’s very lucky. My papa has just put all his money into a cinema
film and lost it all.’

‘My dear, it doesn’t matter at all. My papa lost all his twice. It
doesn’t make a bit of difference. That’s just one of the things one has
to learn about losing all one’s money. . . . Is it true that you really
call him Ginger?’

‘Well, yes, only, Agatha, please don’t be unkind about it.’

And the gramophone was playing the song which the black man sang at the
Café de la Paix.

Then the nurse came in.

‘Well, you are noisy ones, and no mistake,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what
the matron would say if she were here.’

‘Have a chocolate, sister?’

‘_Ooh, chocs!_’

Adam made another cocktail.

Miles sat on Miss Runcible’s bed and took up the telephone and began
dictating some paragraphs about the nursing home.

‘What it is to have a friend in the Press,’ said the nurse.

Adam brought her a cocktail. ‘Shall I?’ she said. ‘I hope you haven’t
made it too strong. Suppose it goes to my head? What would the patients
think if their sister came in tiddly. Well, if you’re _sure_ it won’t
hurt me, thanks.’

‘_. . . Yesterday I visited the Hon. Agatha Runcible comma Lord Chasm’s
lovely daughter comma at the Wimpole Street nursing home where she is
recovering from the effects of the motor accident recently described in
this column stop Miss Runcible was entertaining quite a large party
which included . . ._’

Adam, handing round cocktails, came to Nina.

‘I thought we were never going to meet each other again.’

‘We were obviously bound to, weren’t we?’

‘Agatha’s looking better than I expected, isn’t she? What an amusing
nursing home.’

‘Nina, I must see you again. Come back to Lottie’s this evening and have
dinner with me.’

‘No.’

‘_Please._’

‘No. Ginger wouldn’t like it.’

‘Nina, you aren’t in love with him?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Are you in love with me?’

‘I don’t know . . . I was once.’

‘Nina, I’m absolutely miserable not seeing you. Do come and dine with me
to-night. What can be the harm in that?’

‘My dear, I know exactly what it will mean.’

‘Well, why not?’

‘You see, Ginger’s not like us really about that sort of thing. He’d be
furious.’

‘Well, what about me? Surely I have first claim?’

‘Darling, don’t _bully_. Besides, I used to play with Ginger as a child.
His hair was a very pretty colour then.’



‘_. . . Mr “Johnny” Hoop, whose memoirs are to be published next month,
told me that he intends to devote his time to painting in future, and is
going to Paris to study in the spring. He is to be taken into the studio
of . . ._’



‘For the last time, Nina . . .’

‘Well, I suppose I must.’

‘_Angel!_’

‘I believe you knew I was going to.’



‘_. . . Miss Nina Blount, whose engagement to Mr “Ginger” Littlejohn,
the well-known polo player. . . . Mr Schwert . . ._’



‘If only you were as rich as Ginger, Adam, or only half as rich. Or if
only you had any money at all.’

‘Well,’ said the Matron, appearing suddenly. ‘Whoever heard of cocktails
and a gramophone in a concussion case? Sister Briggs, pull down those
curtains at once. Out you go, the whole lot of you. Why, I’ve known
cases die with less.’

Indeed, Miss Runcible was already showing signs of strain. She was
sitting bolt upright in bed, smiling deliriously, and bowing her
bandaged head to imaginary visitors.

‘_Darling_,’ she said. ‘How _too_ divine . . . _how_ are you? . . . and
how are _you_? . . . how angelic of you all to come . . . only you must
be careful not to fall out at the corners . . . ooh, just missed it.
There goes that nasty Italian car . . . I wish I knew which thing was
which in this car . . . darling, do try and drive more straight, my
sweet, you were nearly into me then. . . . Faster . . .’

‘That’s all right, Miss Runcible, that’s all right. You mustn’t get
excited,’ said the Matron. ‘Sister Briggs, run for the ice-pack
quickly.’

‘All friends here,’ said Miss Runcible, smiling radiantly.
‘Faster. . . . Faster . . . it’ll stop all right when the time comes
. . .’

That evening Miss Runcible’s temperature went rocketing up the chart in
a way which aroused great interest throughout the nursing home. Sister
Briggs, over her evening cup of cocoa, said she would be sorry to lose
that case. Such a nice bright girl—but terribly excitable.

At Shepheard’s Hotel Lottie said to Adam:

‘That chap’s been in here again after you.’

‘What chap, Lottie?’

‘How do I know what chap? Same chap as before.’

‘You never told me about a chap.’

‘Didn’t I dear? Well, I meant to.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I don’t know—something about money. Dun, I expect. Says he is coming
back to-morrow.’

‘Well, tell him I’ve gone to Manchester.’

‘That’s right, dear. . . . What about a glass of wine?’



Later that evening Nina said: ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself
very much to-night.’

‘Sorry, am I being a bore?’

‘I think I shall go home.’

‘Yes.’

‘Adam, darling, what’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. . . . Nina, do you ever feel that things simply can’t go
on much longer?’

‘What d’you mean by things—us or everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘No—I wish I did.’

‘I dare say you’re right . . . what are you looking for?’

‘Clothes.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, Adam, what _do_ you want . . . you’re too impossible this evening.’

‘Don’t let’s talk any more, Nina, d’you mind?’

Later he said: ‘I’d give anything in the world for something different.’

‘Different from me or different from everything?’

‘Different from everything . . . only I’ve got nothing . . . what’s the
good of talking?’

‘Oh, Adam, my dearest . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’



When Adam came down next morning Lottie was having her morning glass of
champagne in the parlour.

‘So your little bird’s flown, has she? Sit down and have a glass of
wine. That dun’s been in again. I told him you was in Manchester.’

‘Splendid.’

‘Seemed rather shirty about it. Said he’d go and look for you.’

‘Better still.’

Then something happened which Adam had been dreading or days. Lottie
suddenly said:

‘And that reminds me. What about _my_ little bill?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Adam, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask for it. Have it made out
and sent up to me some time, will you?’

‘I’ve got it here. Bless you, what a lot you seem to have drunk.’

‘Yes, I do, don’t I? Are you sure some of this champagne wasn’t the
Judge’s?’

‘Well, it may have been,’ admitted Lottie. ‘We get a bit muddled with
the books now and then.’

‘Well, thank you so much, I’ll send you down a cheque for this.’

‘No, dear,’ said Lottie. ‘Suppose you write it down here. Here’s the
pen, here’s the ink, and here’s a blank cheque book.’

(Bills are delivered infrequently and irregularly at Lottie’s, but when
they come, there is no getting away from them.) Adam wrote out a cheque
for seventy-eight pounds sixteen shillings.

‘And twopence for the cheque,’ said Lottie.

_And twopence_, Adam added.

‘There’s a dear,’ said Lottie, blotting the cheque and locking it away
in a drawer. ‘Why, look who’s turned up. If it isn’t Mr Thingummy.’

It was Ginger.

‘Good morning, Mrs Crump,’ he said rather stiffly.

‘Come and sit down and have a glass of wine, dear. Why I knew you before
you were born.’

‘Hullo, Ginger,’ said Adam.

‘Look here, Symes,’ said Ginger, looking in an embarrassed manner at the
glass of champagne which had been put into his hand, ‘I want to speak to
you. Perhaps we can go somewhere where we shan’t be disturbed.’

‘Bless you, boys, I won’t disturb you,’ said Lottie. ‘Just you have a
nice talk. I’ve got lots to see to.’

She left the parlour, and soon her voice could be heard raised in anger
against the Italian waiter.

‘Well?’ said Adam.

‘Look here, Symes,’ said Ginger, ‘what I mean to say is, what I’m going
to say may sound damned unpleasant, you know, and all that, but look
here, you know, damn it, I mean _the better man won_—not that I mean
I’m the _better_ man. Wouldn’t say that for a minute. And, anyway,
Nina’s a damn sight too good for either of us. It’s just that I’ve been
lucky. Awful rough luck on you, I mean, and all that, but still, when
you come to think of it, after all, well, look here, damn it, I mean,
d’you see what I mean?’

‘Not quite,’ said Adam gently. ‘Now tell me again. Is it something about
Nina?’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Ginger in a rush. ‘Nina and I are engaged, and I’m
not going to have you butting in or there’ll be hell to pay.’ He paused,
rather taken aback at his own eloquence.

‘What makes you think I’m butting in?’

‘Well, hang it all, she dined with you last night, didn’t she, and
stayed out jolly late, too.’

‘How do you know how late she stayed out?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, you see I wanted to speak to her about
something rather important, so I rang her up once or twice and didn’t
get an answer until three o’clock.’

‘I suppose you rang her up about every ten minutes?’

‘Oh no, damn it, not as often as that,’ said Ginger. ‘No, no, not as
often as that. I know it sounds rather unsporting and all that, but you
see I wanted to speak to her, and, anyway, when I did get through, she
just said she had a pain and didn’t want to talk: _well, I mean to say_.
After all, I mean, one is a gentleman. It isn’t as though you were just
a sort of friend of the family, is it? I mean, you were more or less
engaged to her yourself, weren’t you, at one time? Well, what would you
have thought if I’d come butting in? You must look at it like that, from
my point of view, too, mustn’t you, I mean?’

‘Well, I think that’s rather what did happen.’

‘Oh no, look here, Symes, I mean, damn it; you mustn’t say things like
that. D’you know all the time I was out East I had Nina’s photograph
over my bed, honest I did. I expect you think that’s sentimental and all
that, but what I mean is I didn’t stop thinking of that girl once all
the time I was away. Mind you, there were lots of other frightfully
jolly girls out there, and I don’t say I didn’t sometimes get jolly
pally with them, you know, tennis and gymkhana and all that sort of
thing, I mean, and dancing in the evenings, but never anything serious,
you know. Nina was the only girl I really thought of, and I’d sort of
made up my mind when I came home to look her up, and if she’d have me
. . . see what I mean? So you see it’s awfully rough luck on me when
someone comes butting in. You must see that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Adam.

‘And there’s another thing, you know, sentiment and all that apart. I
mean Nina’s a girl who likes nice clothes and things, you know, comfort
and all that. Well, I mean to say, of course, her father’s a topping old
boy, absolutely one of the best, but he’s rather an ass about money, if
you know what I mean. What I mean, Nina’s going to be frightfully hard
up, and all that, and I mean you haven’t got an awful lot of money, have
you?’

‘I haven’t any at all.’

‘No, I mean, that’s what I mean. _Awfully rough on you._ No one thinks
the worse of you, respects you for it, I mean earning a living and all
that. Heaps of fellows haven’t any money nowadays. I could give you the
names of dozens of stout fellows, absolute toppers, who simply haven’t a
bean. No, all I mean is, when it comes to marrying, then that does make
a difference, doesn’t it?’

‘What you’ve been trying to say all this time is that you’re not sure of
Nina?’

‘Oh, rot, my dear fellow, absolute bilge. Damn it, I’d trust Nina
anywhere, of course I would. After all, damn it, what does being in love
mean if you can’t trust a person?’

(‘What, indeed?’ thought Adam), and he said, ‘Now, Ginger, tell the
truth. What’s Nina worth to you?’

‘Good Lord, why what an extraordinary thing to ask; everything in the
world of course. I’d go through fire and water for that girl.’

‘Well, I’ll sell her to you.’

‘No, why, look here, good God, damn it, I mean . . .’

‘I’ll sell my share in her for a hundred pounds.’

‘You pretend to be fond of Nina and you talk about her like that! Why,
hang it, it’s not decent. Besides, a hundred pounds is the deuce of a
lot. I mean, getting married is a damned expensive business, don’t you
know. And I’m just getting a couple of polo ponies over from Ireland.
That’s going to cost a hell of a lot, what with one thing and another.’

‘A hundred down, and I leave Nina to you, I think it’s cheap.’

‘Fifty.’

‘A hundred.’

‘Seventy-five.’

‘A hundred.’

‘I’m damned if I’ll pay more than seventy-five.’

‘I’ll take seventy-eight pounds sixteen and twopence. I can’t go lower
than that.’

‘All right, I’ll pay that. _You really will go away?_’

‘I’ll try, Ginger. Have a drink.’

‘No, thank you . . . this only shows what an escape Nina’s had—poor
little girl.’

‘Good-bye, Ginger.’

‘Good-bye, Symes.’

‘Young Thingummy going?’ said Lottie, appearing in the door. ‘I was just
thinking about a little drink.’

Adam went to the telephone-box. . . .’Hullo, is that Nina?’

‘Who’s speaking, please? I don’t think Miss Blount is in.’

‘Mr Fenwick-Symes.’

‘Oh, Adam. I was afraid it was Ginger. I woke up feeling I just couldn’t
bear him. He rang up last night just as I got in.’

‘I know. Nina, darling, something awful’s happened.’

‘What?’

‘Lottie presented me with her bill.’

‘Darling, what _did_ you do?’

‘Well, I did something rather extraordinary. . . . My dear, I sold
_you_.’

‘Darling . . . _who to_?’

‘Ginger. You fetched seventy-eight pounds sixteen and twopence.’

‘_Well?_’

‘And now I never am going to see you again.’

‘Oh, but Adam, I think this is beastly of you; I don’t want not to see
you again.’

‘I’m sorry. . . . Good-bye, Nina, darling.’

‘Good-bye, Adam, my sweet. But I think you’re rather a cad.’



Next day Lottie said to Adam, ‘You know that chap I said came here
asking for you?’

‘The dun?’

‘Well, he wasn’t a dun. I’ve just remembered. He’s a chap who used to
come here quite a lot until he had a fight with a Canadian. He was here
the night that silly Flossie killed herself on the chandelier.’

‘Not the drunk Major?’

‘He wasn’t drunk yesterday. Not so as you’d notice anyway. Red-faced
chap with an eyeglass. You ought to remember him, dear. He was the one
made that bet for you on the November Handicap.’

‘But I must get hold of him at once. What’s his name?’

‘Ah, that I couldn’t tell you. I _did_ know, but it’s slipped my memory.
He’s gone to Manchester to look for you. Pity your missing him!’

Then Adam rang up Nina. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything sudden
about Ginger. I may be able to buy you back. The drunk Major has turned
up again.’

‘But, darling, it’s too late. Ginger and I got married this morning. I’m
just packing for our honeymoon. We’re going in an aeroplane.’

‘Ginger wasn’t taking any chances, was he? Darling, don’t go.’

‘No, I must. Ginger says he knows a “tophole little spot not far from
Monte with a very decent nine-hole golf course”.’

‘_Well?_’

‘_Yes, I know_ . . . we shall only be away a few days. We’re coming back
to spend Christmas with papa. Perhaps we shall be able to arrange
something when we get back. I do hope so.’

‘Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye.’



Ginger looked out of the aeroplane: ‘I say, Nina,’ he shouted, ‘when you
were young did you ever have to learn a thing out of a poetry book
about: “_This scepter’d isle, this earth of majesty, this something or
other Eden_”? D’you know what I mean? “_this happy breed of men, this
little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea . . ._

     “_This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England_
     _This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings_
     _Feared by their breed and famous by their birth . . ._”

I forget how it goes on. Something about a stubborn Jew. But you know
the thing I mean?’

‘It comes in a play.’

‘No, a blue poetry book.’

‘I acted in it.’

‘Well, they may have put it into a play since. It was in a blue poetry
book when I learned it. Anyway, you know what I mean?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Well, I mean to say, don’t you feel somehow, up in the air like this
and looking down and seeing everything underneath. I mean, don’t you
have a sort of feeling rather like that, if you see what I mean?’

Nina looked down and saw inclined at an odd angle a horizon of
straggling red suburb; arterial roads dotted with little cars;
factories, some of them working, others empty and decaying; a disused
canal; some distant hills sown with bungalows; wireless masts and
overhead power cables; men and women were indiscernible except as tiny
spots; they were marrying and shopping and making money and having
children. The scene lurched and tilted again as the aeroplane struck a
current of air.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Nina.

‘Poor little girl,’ said Ginger. ‘That’s what the paper bags are for.’



There was rarely more than a quarter of a mile of the black road to be
seen at one time. It unrolled like a length of cinema film. At the edges
was confusion; a fog spinning past: ‘_Faster, faster_,’ they shouted
above the roar of the engine. The road rose suddenly and the white car
soared up the sharp ascent without slackening speed. At the summit of
the hill there was a corner. Two cars had crept up, one on each side,
and were closing in. ‘Faster,’ cried Miss Runcible, ‘Faster.’

‘Quietly, dear, quietly. You’re disturbing every one. You must lie quiet
or you’ll never get well. Everything’s quite all right. There’s nothing
to worry about. Nothing at all.’

They were trying to make her lie down. How could one drive properly
lying down?

Another frightful corner. The car leant over on two wheels, tugging
outwards; it was drawn across the road until it was within a few inches
of the bank. One ought to brake down at the corners, but one couldn’t
see them coming lying flat on one’s back like this. The back wheels
wouldn’t hold the road at this speed. Skidding all over the place.

‘_Faster. Faster._’

The stab of a hypodermic needle.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, dear . . . _nothing at all . . .
nothing_.’




                           _Chapter Thirteen_


The film had been finished, and every one had gone away; Wesley and
Whitefield, Bishop Philpotts and Miss La Touche, Mr Isaacs, and all his
pupils from the National Academy of Cinematographic Art. The park lay
deep in snow, a clean expanse of white, shadowless and unspotted save
for tiny broad arrows stamped by the hungry birds. The bellringers were
having their final practice, and the air was alive with pealing bells.

Inside the dining-room Florin and Mrs Florin and Ada, the
fifteen-year-old housemaid, were arranging branches of holly above the
frames of the family portraits. Florin held the basket, Mrs Florin held
the steps and Ada put the decorations in their places. Colonel Blount
was having his afternoon nap upstairs.

Florin had a secret. It was a white calico banner of great age lettered
in red ribbon with the words ‘=Welcome Home=’. He had always
known where it was, just where to put his hand on it, at the top of the
black trunk in the far attic behind the two hip baths and the ’cello
case.

‘The Colonel’s mother made it’, he explained, ‘when he first went away
to school, and it was always hung out in the hall whenever he and Mister
Eric came back for the holidays. It used to be the first thing he’d look
for when he came into the house—even when he was a grown man home on
leave. “Where’s my banner?” he’d say. We’ll have it up for Miss
Nina—Mrs Littlejohn, I should say.’

Ada said should they put some holly in Captain and Mrs Littlejohn’s
bedroom.

Mrs Florin said, whoever heard of holly in a bedroom, and she wasn’t
sure but that it was unlucky to take it upstairs.

Ada said, ‘Well, perhaps just a bit of mistletoe over the bed.’

Mrs Florin said Ada was too young to think about things like that, and
she ought to be ashamed of herself.

Florin said would Ada stop arguing and answering back and come into the
hall to put up the banner. One string went on the nose of the
rhinoceros, he explained, the other round the giraffe.

Presently Colonel Blount came down.

‘Should I light the fires in the big drawing-room?’ asked Mrs Florin.

‘Fires in the big drawing-room? No, why should you want to do that, Mrs
Florin?’

‘Because of Captain and Mrs Littlejohn—you haven’t forgotten, have you,
sir, that they’re coming to stay this afternoon?’

‘Captain and Mrs Fiddlesticks. Never heard of them. Who asked them to
stay I should like to know? _I_ didn’t. Don’t know who they are. Don’t
want them. . . . Besides, now I come to think of it, Miss Nina and her
husband said they were coming down. I can’t have the whole house turned
into an hotel. If these people come, Florin, whoever they are, you tell
them to go away. You understand? I won’t have them, and I think it’s
very presumptuous of whoever asked them. It is not their place to invite
guests here without consulting me.’

‘Should I be lighting the fires in the big drawing-room for Miss Nina
and her young gentleman, sir?’

‘Yes, yes, certainly . . . and a fire in their bedroom, of course. And,
Florin, I want you to come down to the cellar with me to look out some
port . . . I’ve got the keys here. . . . I have a feeling I’m going to
like Miss Nina’s husband,’ he confided on their way to the cellar. ‘I
hear very good reports of him—a decent, steady young fellow, and not at
all badly off. Miss Nina said in her letter that he used to come over
here as a little boy. D’you remember him, Florin? Blest if I do. . . .
What’s the name again?’

‘Littlejohn, sir.’

‘Yes. Littlejohn, to be sure. I had the name on the tip of my tongue
only a minute ago. _Littlejohn._ I must remember that.’

‘His father used to live over at Oakshott, sir. A very wealthy
gentleman. Shipowners, I think they were. Young Mr Littlejohn used to go
riding with Miss Nina, sir. Regular little monkey he was, sir,
red-headed . . . a terrible one for cats.’

‘Well, well, I dare say he’s grown out of that. Mind the step, Florin,
it’s all broken away. Hold the lamp higher, can’t you, man. Now, what
did we come for? Port, yes, port. Now, there’s some ’96 somewhere, only
a few bottles left. What does it say on this bin? I can’t read. Bring
the light over here.’

‘We drank up the last of the ’96, sir, when the film-acting gentlemen
was here.’

‘Did we, Florin, did we? We shouldn’t have done that, you know.’

‘Very particular about his wine, Mr Isaacs was. My instructions was to
give them whatever they wanted.’

‘Yes, but ’96 port. . . . Well, well. Take up two bottles of the ’04.
Now, what else do we want? Claret—yes, _claret_. Claret, claret,
claret, claret. Where do I keep the claret, Florin?’



Colonel Blount was just having tea—he had finished a brown boiled egg
and was spreading a crumpet with honey—when Florin opened the library
door and announced ‘Captain and Mrs Littlejohn, sir.’

And Adam and Nina came in.

Colonel Blount put down his crumpet and rose to greet them.

‘Well, Nina, it’s a long time since you came to see your old father. So
this is my son-in-law, eh? How do you do, my boy. Come and sit down,
both of you. Florin will bring some more cups directly. . . . Well,’ he
said, giving Adam a searching glance, ‘I can’t say I should have
recognized you. I used to know your father very well indeed at one time.
Used to be a neighbour of mine over at where-was-it. I expect you’ve
forgotten those days. You used to come over here to ride with Nina. You
can’t have been more than ten or eleven. . . . Funny, something gave me
an idea you had red hair . . .’

‘I expect you’d heard him called “Ginger”,’ said Nina, ‘and that made
you think of it.’

‘Something of the kind, I dare say . . . extraordinary thing to call him
“Ginger” when he’s got ordinary fair hair . . . anyway, I’m very glad to
see you, very glad. I’m afraid it’ll be a very quiet week-end. We don’t
see many people here now. Florin says he’s asked a Captain and Mrs
Something-or-other to come and stay, damn his impudence, but I said I
wouldn’t see them. Why should I entertain Florin’s friends? Servants
seem to think after they’ve been with you some time they can do anything
they like. There was poor old Lady Graybridge, now—they only found out
after her death that her man had been letting lodgings all the time in
the North Wing. She never could understand why none of the fruit ever
came into the dining-room—the butler and his boarders were eating it
all in the servants’ hall. And after she was ill, and couldn’t leave her
room, he laid out a golf links in the park . . . shocking state of
affairs. I don’t believe Florin would do a thing like that—still, you
never know. It’s the thin edge of the wedge asking people down for the
week-end.’



In the kitchen Florin said: ‘_That’s_ not the Mr Littlejohn I used to
know.’

Mrs Florin said, ‘It’s the young gentleman that came here to luncheon
last month.’

Ada said, ‘He’s very nice looking.’

Florin and Mrs Florin said, ‘You be quiet, Ada. Have you taken the hot
water up to their bedroom yet? Have you taken up their suitcases? Have
you unpacked them? Did you brush the Colonel’s evening suit? Do you
expect Mr Florin and Mrs Florin to do _all_ the work of the house? And
look at your apron again, you wretched girl, if it isn’t the second
you’ve dirtied to-day.’

Florin added, ‘Anyway, Miss Nina noticed the banner.’



In the library Colonel Blount said, ‘I’ve got a treat for you to-night,
anyway. The last two reels of my cinema film have just come back from
being developed. I thought we’d run through it to-night. We shall have
to go across to the Rectory, because the rector’s got electric light,
the lucky fellow. I told him to expect us. He didn’t seem very pleased
about it. Said he had to preach three sermons to-morrow, and be up at
six for early service. That’s not the Christmas spirit. Didn’t want to
bring the car round to fetch us either. It’s only a matter of a quarter
of a mile, no trouble to _him_, and how can we walk in the snow carrying
all the apparatus? I said to him, “If you practised a little more
Christianity yourself we might be more willing to subscribe to your
foreign missions and Boy Scouts and organ funds.” Had him there. Dammit,
I put the man in his job myself—if I haven’t a right to his car, who
has?’

When they went up to change for dinner Nina said to Adam, ‘I knew papa
would never recognize you.’

Adam said, ‘Look, some one’s put mistletoe over our bed.’

‘I think you gave the Florins rather a surprise.’

‘My dear, what will the Rector say? He drove me to the station the first
time I came. He thought I was mad.’

‘. . . Poor Ginger. I wonder, are we treating him terribly badly? . . .
It seemed a direct act of fate that he should have been called up to
join his regiment just at this moment.’

‘I left him a cheque to pay for you.’

‘Darling, you know it’s a bad one.’

‘No cheque is bad until it’s refused by the bank. To-morrow’s Christmas,
then Boxing Day, then Sunday. He can’t pay it in until Monday, and
anything may have happened by then. The drunk Major may have turned up.
If the worst comes to the worst I can always send you back to him.’

‘I expect it will end with that. . . . Darling, the honeymoon _was_ hell
. . . frightfully cold, and Ginger insisted on walking about on a
terrace after dinner to see the moon on the Mediterranean—he played
golf all day, and made friends with the other English people in the
hotel. I can’t tell you what it was like . . . too spirit-crushing, as
poor Agatha used to say.’

‘Did I tell you I went to Agatha’s funeral? There was practically no one
there except the Chasms and some aunts. I went with Van, rather tight,
and got stared at. I think they felt I was partly responsible for the
accident . . .’

‘What about Miles?’

‘He’s had to leave the country, didn’t you know?’

‘Darling, I only came back from my honeymoon to-day. I haven’t heard
anything. . . . You know there seems to be none of us left now except
you and me.’

‘And Ginger.’

‘Yes, and Ginger.’



The cinematograph exhibition that evening was not really a success.

The Rector arrived while they were finishing dinner, and was shown into
the dining-room shaking the snow from the shoulders of his overcoat.

‘Come in, Rector, come in. We shan’t be many minutes now. Take a glass
of port and sit down. You’ve met my daughter, haven’t you? And this is
my new son-in-law.’

‘I think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him before too.’

‘Nonsense, first time he’s been here since he was so high—long before
your time.’

The Rector sipped his port and kept eyeing Adam over the top of his
glass in a way which made Nina giggle. Then Adam giggled too, and the
Rector’s suspicions were confirmed. In this way relations were already
on an uneasy basis before they reached the Rectory. The Colonel,
however, was far too intent over the transport of his apparatus to
notice anything.

‘This is your first visit here?’ said the Rector as he drove through the
snow.

‘I lived near here as a boy, you know,’ said Adam.

‘Ah . . . but you were down here the other day, were you not? The
Colonel often forgets things. . . .’

‘No, no. I haven’t been here for fifteen years.’

‘I _see_,’ said the Rector with sinister emphasis, and murmured under
his breath, ‘Remarkable . . . very sad and remarkable.’

The Rector’s wife was disposed to make rather a party of it, and had
arranged some coffee and chocolate biscuits in the drawing-room, but the
Colonel soon put an end to any frivolity of this kind by plunging them
all in darkness.

He took out the bulbs of their electric lights and fitted in the plug of
his lantern. A bright beam shot across the drawing-room like a
searchlight, picking out the Rector, who was whispering in his wife’s
ear the news of his discovery.

‘. . . the same young man I told you of,’ he was saying. ‘Quite off his
head, poor boy. He didn’t even remember coming here before. One expects
that sort of thing in a man of the Colonel’s age, but for a young man
like that . . . a very bad look out for the next generation . . .’

The Colonel paused in his preparation.

‘I say, Rector, I’ve just thought of something. I wish old Florin were
here. He was in bed half the time they were taking the film. I know he’d
love to see it. Could you be a good chap and run up in the car and fetch
him?’

‘No, really, Colonel, I hardly think that’s necessary. I’ve just put the
car away.’

‘I won’t start before you come back, if that’s what you’re thinking of.
It’ll take me some time to get everything fixed up. We’ll wait for you.
I promise you that.’

‘My dear Colonel, it’s snowing heavily—practically a blizzard. Surely
it would be a mistaken kindness to drag an elderly man out of doors on a
night like this in order to see a film which, I have no doubt, will soon
be on view all over the country?’

‘All right, Rector, just as you think best. I only thought after all it
is Christmas . . . damn the thing; I got a nasty shock then.’

Adam and Nina and the Rector and his wife sat in the dark patiently.
After a time the Colonel unrolled a silvered screen.

‘Just help me take all these things off the chimney-piece some one,’ he
said.

The Rector’s wife scuttered to the preservation of her ornaments.

‘Will it bear, do you think?’ asked the Colonel, mounting precariously
on the top of the piano, and exhibiting in his excitement an astonishing
fund of latent vitality. ‘Now hand up the screen to me, will you? That’s
splendid. You don’t mind a couple of screws in your wall, do you,
Rector? Quite small ones.’

Presently the screen was fixed and the lens directed so that it threw on
to it a small square of light.

The audience sat down expectantly.

‘_Now_,’ said the Colonel, and set the machine in motion.

There was a whirring sound, and suddenly there appeared on the screen
the spectacle of four uniformed horsemen galloping backwards down the
drive.

‘Hullo,’ said the Colonel. ‘Something wrong there . . . that’s funny. I
must have forgotten to rewind it.’

The horsemen disappeared, and there was a fresh whirring as the film was
transferred to another spool.

‘_Now_,’ said the Colonel, and sure enough there appeared in small and
clear letters the notice, ‘=The Wonderfilm Company of Great Britain
Presents=’. This legend, vibrating a good deal, but without other
variation, filled the screen for some time—(‘Of course, I shall cut the
captions a bit before it’s shown commercially,’ explained the
Colonel)—until its place was taken by ‘EFFIE LA TOUCHE IN’. This
announcement was displayed for practically no time at all; indeed, they
had scarcely had time to read it before it was whisked away obliquely.
(‘Damn,’ said the Colonel. ‘Skidded.’) There followed another long
pause, and then:

    ‘A   B R A N D   F R O M   T H E   B U R N I N G ,   A
     F I L M   B A S E D   O N   T H E   L I F E   O F   J O H N
     W E S L E Y .’

    (‘_There_,’ said the Colonel.)

    ‘E I G H T E E N T H   C E N T U R Y   E N G L A N D .’

There came in breathless succession four bewigged men in fancy costume,
sitting round a card table. There were glasses, heaps of money and
candles on the table. They were clearly gambling feverishly and drinking
a lot. (‘There’s a song there really,’ said the Colonel, ‘only I’m
afraid I haven’t got a talkie apparatus yet.’) Then a highwayman holding
up the coach which Adam had seen; then some beggars starving outside
Doubting Church; then some ladies in fancy costume dancing a minuet.
Sometimes the heads of the dancers would disappear above the top of the
pictures; sometimes they would sink waist deep as though in a quicksand;
once Mr Isaacs appeared at the side in shirt sleeves, waving them on.
(‘I’ll have him out,’ said the Colonel.)

‘E P W O R T H   R E C T O R Y ,   L I N C O L N S H I R E   ( E N G . )’

(‘That’s in case it’s taken up in the States,’ said the Colonel. ‘I
don’t believe there is a Lincolnshire over there, but it’s always
courteous to put that in case.’)

A corner of Doubting Hall appeared with clouds of smoke billowing from
the windows. A clergyman was seen handing out a succession of children
with feverish rapidity of action. (‘It’s on fire, you see,’ said the
Colonel. ‘We did that quite simply, by burning some stuff Isaacs had. It
did make a smell.’)

So the film went on eventfully for about half an hour. One of its
peculiarities was that whenever the story reached a point of dramatic
and significant action, the film seemed to get faster and faster.
Villagers trotted to church as though galvanized; lovers shot in and out
of windows; horses flashed past like motor cars; riots happened so
quickly that they were hardly noticed. On the other hand, any scene of
repose or inaction, a conversation in a garden between two clergymen,
Mrs Wesley at her prayers, Lady Huntingdon asleep, etc., seemed
prolonged almost unendurably. Even Colonel Blount suspected this
imperfection.

‘I think I might cut a bit there,’ he said, after Wesley had sat
uninterruptedly composing a pamphlet for four and a half minutes.

When the reel came to an end every one stirred luxuriously.

‘Well, that was very nice,’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘very nice and
instructive.’

‘I really must congratulate you, Colonel. A production of absorbing
interest. I had no idea Wesley’s life was so full of adventure. I see I
must read up my Lecky.’

‘Too divine, Papa.’

‘Thank you so much, sir, I enjoyed that immensely.’

‘But, bless you, that isn’t the end,’ said the Colonel. ‘There are four
more reels yet.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’ ‘But how delightful.’ ‘Splendid.’ ‘Oh.’

But the full story was never shown. Just at the beginning of the second
part—when Wesley in America was being rescued from Red Indians by Lady
Huntingdon disguised as a cowboy—there occurred one of the mishaps from
which the largest super-cinemas are not absolutely immune. There was a
sudden crackling sound, a long blue spark, and the light was
extinguished.

‘Oh, dear,’ said the Colonel, ‘I wonder what’s happened now. We were
just getting to such an exciting place.’ He bent all his energies on the
apparatus, recklessly burning his fingers, while his audience sat in
darkness. Presently the door opened and a housemaid appeared carrying a
candle.

‘If you please, mum,’ she said, ‘the light’s gone out all over the
house.’

The Rector hurried across to the door and tried the switch in the
passage. He clicked it up and down several times; he tapped it like a
barometer and shook it slightly.

‘It looks as though the wires were fused,’ he said.

‘Really, Rector, how very inconvenient,’ said the Colonel crossly. ‘I
can’t possibly show the film without electric current. Surely there must
be something you can do?’

‘I am afraid it will be a job for an electrician; it will be scarcely
possible to get one before Monday,’ said the Rector with scarcely
Christian calm. ‘In fact it is clear to me that my wife and myself and
my whole household will have to spend the entire Christmas week-end in
darkness.’

‘Well,’ said the Colonel. ‘I never expected this to happen. Of course, I
know it’s just as disappointing for you as it is for me. All the same
. . .’

The housemaid brought in some candles and a bicycle lamp.

‘There’s only these in the house, sir,’ she said, ‘and the shops don’t
open till Monday.’

‘I don’t think in the circumstances my hospitality can be of much more
use to you, can it, Colonel? Perhaps you would like me to ring up and
get a taxi out from Aylesbury.’

‘What’s that? _Taxi?_ Why, it’s ridiculous to get a taxi out from
Aylesbury to go a quarter of a mile!’

‘I’m sure Mrs Littlejohn wouldn’t like to walk all the way on a night
like this?’

‘Perhaps a taxi would be a good idea, Papa.’

‘Of course, if you’ld care to take shelter here . . . it may clear up a
little. But I think you’ld find it very wretched, sitting here in the
dark?’

‘No, no, of course, order a taxi,’ said the Colonel.

On the way back to the house he said, ‘I’d half made up my mind to lend
him some of our lamps for the week-end. I certainly shan’t now. Fancy
hiring a taxi seven miles to drive us a few hundred yards. On Christmas
Eve, too. No wonder they find it hard to fill their churches when that’s
their idea of Christian fellowship. Just when I’d brought my film all
that way to show them . . .’

Next morning Adam and Nina woke up under Ada’s sprig of mistletoe to
hear the bells ringing for Christmas across the snow. ‘Come all to
church, good people; good people come to church.’ They had each hung up
a stocking the evening before, and Adam had put a bottle of scent and a
scent spray into Nina’s, and she had put two ties and a new kind of
safety razor into his. Ada brought them their tea and wished them a
happy Christmas. Nina had remembered to get a present for each of the
Florins, but had forgotten Ada, so she gave her the bottle of scent.

‘Darling,’ said Adam, ‘it cost twenty-five shillings—on Archie
Schwert’s account at Asprey.’

Later they put some crumbs of their bread and butter on the windowsill
and a robin redbreast came to eat them. The whole day was like that.

Adam and Nina breakfasted alone in the dining-room. There was a row of
silver plates kept hot by spirit lamps which held an omelette and
devilled partridges and kedgeree and kidneys and sole and some rolls;
there was also a ham and a tongue and some brawn and a dish of pickled
herrings. Nina ate an apple and Adam ate some toast.

Colonel Blount came down at eleven wearing a grey tail coat. He wished
them a very good morning and they exchanged gifts. Adam gave him a box
of cigars; Nina gave him a large illustrated book about modern cinema
production; he gave Nina a seed pearl brooch which had belonged to her
mother, and he gave Adam a calendar with a coloured picture of a bulldog
smoking a clay pipe and a thought from Longfellow for each day in the
year.

At half-past eleven they all went to Matins.

‘It will be a lesson to him in true Christian forgiveness,’ said the
Colonel (but he ostentatiously read his Bible throughout the sermon).
After church they called in at two or three cottages. Florin had been
round the day before distributing parcels of grocery. They were all
pleased and interested to meet Miss Nina’s husband. Many of them
remembered him as a little boy, and remarked that he had grown out of
all recognition. They reminded him with relish of many embarrassing
episodes in Ginger’s childhood, chiefly acts of destruction and cruelty
to cats.



After luncheon they went down to see all the decorations in the
servants’ hall.

This was a yearly custom of some antiquity, and the Florins had prepared
for it by hanging paper streamers from the gas brackets. Ada was having
middle-day dinner with her parents who lived among the petrol pumps at
Doubting village, so the Florins ate their turkey and plum pudding
alone.

‘I’ve seen as many as twenty-five sitting down to Christmas dinner at
this table,’ said Florin. ‘Regular parties they used to have when the
Colonel and Mr Eric were boys. Theatricals and all the house turned
topsy-turvy, and every gentleman with his own valet.’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Florin.

‘Times is changed,’ said Florin, picking a tooth.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Florin.

Then the family came in from the dining-room.

The Colonel knocked on the door and said, ‘May we come in, Mrs Florin?’

‘That you may, sir, and welcome,’ said Mrs Florin.

Then Adam and Nina and the Colonel admired the decorations and handed
over their presents wrapped in tissue paper. Then the Colonel said, ‘I
think we should take a glass of wine together.’

Florin opened a bottle of sherry which he had brought up that morning
and poured out the glasses, handing one first to Nina, then to Mrs
Florin, then to the Colonel, then to Adam, and, finally, taking one for
himself.

‘My very best wishes to you, Mrs Florin,’ said the Colonel, raising his
glass, ‘and to you, Florin. The years go by, and we none of us get any
younger, but I hope and trust that there are many Christmases in store
for us yet. Mrs Florin certainly doesn’t look a day older than when she
first came here. My best wishes to you both for another year of health
and happiness.’

Mrs Florin said, ‘Best respects, sir, and thank you, sir, and the same
to you.’

Florin said, ‘And a great pleasure it is to see Miss Nina—Mrs
Littlejohn, I should say—with us once more at her old home, and her
husband too, and I’m sure Mrs Florin and me wish them every happiness
and prosperity in their married life together, and all I can say, if
they can be as happy together as me and Mrs Florin has been, well,
that’s the best I can wish them.’

Then the family went away, and the house settled down to its afternoon
nap.



After dinner that night Adam and the Colonel filled up their port
glasses and turned their chairs towards the fire. Nina had gone into the
drawing-room to smoke.

‘You know,’ said the Colonel, poking back a log with his foot, ‘I’m very
glad that Nina has married you, my boy. I’ve liked you from the moment I
saw you. She’s a headstrong girl—always was—but I knew that she’d make
a sensible choice in the end. I foresee a very agreeable life ahead of
you two young people.’

‘I hope so, sir.’

‘I’m sure of it, my boy. She’s very nearly made several mistakes. There
was an ass of a fellow here the other day wanting to marry her. A
journalist. Awful silly fellow. He told me my old friend Canon
Chatterbox was working on his paper. Well, I didn’t like to contradict
him—he ought to have known, after all—but I thought it was funny at
the time, and then, d’you know, after he’d gone I was going through some
old papers upstairs and I came on a cutting from the _Worcester Herald_
describing his funeral. He died in 1912. Well, he must have been a
muddle-headed sort of fellow to make a mistake like that, mustn’t he?
. . . Have some port?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Then there was another chap. Came here selling vacuum cleaners, if you
please, and asked me to give him a thousand pounds! Impudent young cub.
I soon sent him about his business. . . . But you’re different,
Littlejohn. Just the sort of son-in-law I’d have chosen for myself. Your
marriage has been a great happiness to me, my boy.’

At this moment Nina came in to say that there were carol singers outside
the drawing-room window.

‘Bring ’em in,’ said the Colonel. ‘Bring ’em in. They come every year.
And tell Florin to bring up the punch.’

Florin brought up the punch in a huge silver punch bowl and Nina brought
in the waits. They stood against the sideboard, caps in hand, blinking
in the gaslight, and very red about the nose and cheeks with the sudden
warmth.

    ‘_Oh, tidings of comfort and joy_,’ they sang, ‘_comfort and
    joy, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy_.’

They sang _Good King Wenceslas_, and _The First Noel_, and _Adeste
Fideles_, and _While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks_. Then Florin ladled
out the punch, seeing that the younger ones did not get the glasses
intended for their elders, but that each, according to his capacity, got
a little more, but not much more, than was good for him.

The Colonel tasted the punch and pronounced it excellent. He then asked
the carol singers their names and where they came from, and finally gave
their leader five shillings and sent them off into the snow.

‘It’s been just like this every year, as long as I can remember,’ said
the Colonel. ‘We always had a party at Christmas when we were boys . . .
acted some very amusing charades too . . . always a glass of sherry
after luncheon in the servants’ hall and carol singers in the
evening. . . . Tell me,’ he said, suddenly changing the subject, ‘did
you _really_ like what you saw of the film yesterday?’

‘It was the most divine film I ever saw, Papa.’

‘I enjoyed it enormously, sir, really I did.’

‘Did you? Did you? Well, I’m glad to hear that. I don’t believe the
Rector did—not properly. Of course, you only saw a bit of it, most
disappointing. I didn’t like to say so at the time, but I thought it
most negligent of him to have his electric light in that sort of
condition so that it wouldn’t last out for one evening. Most
inconsiderate to any one who wants to show a film. But it’s a glorious
film, isn’t it? You did think so?’

‘I never enjoyed a film so much, honestly.’

‘It makes a stepping stone in the development of the British film
industry,’ said the Colonel dreamily. ‘It is the most important
all-talkie super-religious film to be produced solely in this country by
British artists and management and by British capital. It has been
directed throughout regardless of difficulty and expense, and supervised
by a staff of expert historians and theologians. Nothing has been
omitted that would contribute to the meticulous accuracy of every
detail. The life of that great social and religious reformer John Wesley
is for the first time portrayed to a British public in all its humanity
and tragedy. . . . I’m glad you realized all that, my boy, because as a
matter of fact, I had a proposal to make to you about it. I’m getting an
old man and can’t do everything, and I feel my services should be better
spent in future as actor and producer, rather than on the commercial
side. One needs some one young to manage that. Now what I thought was,
that perhaps you would care to come in with me as business partner. I
bought the whole thing from Isaacs and, as you’re one of the family, I
shouldn’t mind selling you a half-share for, say, two thousand pounds. I
know that that isn’t much to you, and you’ld be humanly certain to
double your money in a few months. What do you say to it?’

‘_Well_ . . .’ said Adam.

But he was never called upon to answer, for just at that moment the door
of the dining-room opened and the Rector came in.

‘Hullo, Rector, come in. This is very neighbourly of you to come and
call at this time of night. A happy Christmas to you.’

‘Colonel Blount, I’ve got very terrible news. I had to come over and
tell you . . .’

‘I say, I am sorry. Nothing wrong at the Rectory, I hope?’

‘Worse, far worse. My wife and I were sitting over the fire after
dinner, and as we couldn’t read—not having any light—we put on the
wireless. They were having a very pretty carol service. Suddenly they
stopped in the middle and a special news bulletin was read. . . .
Colonel, the most terrible and unexpected thing—_War has been
declared_.’




                             _Happy Ending_


On a splintered tree stump in the biggest battlefield in the history of
the world, Adam sat down and read a letter from Nina. It had arrived
early the day before, but in the intensive fighting which followed he
had not had a spare minute in which to open it.

                                                 _Doubting Hall_,
                                                        _Aylesbury_.

    ‘_Dearest Adam,—I wonder how you are. It is difficult to know
    what is happening quite because the papers say such odd things.
    Van has got a divine job making up all the war news, and he
    invented a lovely story about you the other day, how you’d saved
    hundreds of people’s lives, and there’s what they call a popular
    agitation saying why haven’t you got the V.C., so probably you
    will have by now, isn’t it amusing?_

    ‘_Ginger and I are very well. Ginger has a job in an office in
    Whitehall and wears a very grand sort of uniform, and, my dear,
    I’m going to have a baby, isn’t it too awful? But Ginger has
    quite made up his mind it’s his, and is as pleased as anything,
    so that’s all right. He’s quite forgiven you about last
    Christmas, and says anyway you’re doing your bit now, and in war
    time one lets bygones be bygones._

    ‘_Doubting is a hospital, did you know? Papa shows his film to
    the wounded and they adore it. I saw Mr Benfleet, and he said
    how awful it was when one had given all one’s life in the cause
    of culture to see everything one’s stood for swept away, but
    he’s doing very well with his “Sword Unsheathed” series of war
    poets._

    ‘_There’s a new Government order that we have to sleep in gas
    masks because of the bombs, but no one does. They’ve put Archie
    in prison as an undesirable alien, Ginger saw to that, he’s
    terrific about spies. I’m sick such a lot because of this baby,
    but everyone says it’s patriotic to have babies in war time.
    Why?_

    ‘_Lots of love, my angel, take care of your dear self._

                                                               _N._’

He put it back in its envelope and buttoned it into his breast-pocket.
Then he took out a pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The scene all
round him was one of unrelieved desolation; a great expanse of mud in
which every visible object was burnt or broken. Sounds of firing
thundered from beyond the horizon, and somewhere above the grey clouds
there were aeroplanes. He had had no sleep for thirty-six hours. It was
growing dark.

Presently he became aware of a figure approaching, painfully picking his
way among the strands of barbed wire which strayed across the ground
like drifting cobweb; a soldier clearly. As he came nearer Adam saw that
he was levelling towards him a liquid fire-projector. Adam tightened his
fingers about his Huxdane-Halley bomb (for the dissemination of leprosy
germs), and in this posture of mutual suspicion they met. Through the
dusk Adam recognized the uniform of an English staff officer. He put the
bomb back in his pocket and saluted.

The newcomer lowered his liquid-fire projector and raised his gas mask.
‘You’re English, are you?’ he said. ‘Can’t see a thing. Broken my damned
monocle.’

‘Why,’ said Adam. ‘You’re the drunk Major.’

‘I’m not drunk, damn you, sir,’ said the drunk Major, ‘and, what’s more,
I’m a General. What the deuce are _you_ doing here?’

‘Well,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve lost my platoon.’

‘Lost your platoon. . . . I’ve lost my whole bloody division!’

‘Is the battle over, sir?’

‘I don’t know, can’t see a thing. It was going on all right last time I
heard of it. My car’s broken down somewhere over there. My driver went
out to try and find some one to help and got lost, and I went out to
look for him, and now I’ve lost the car too. Damn difficult country to
find one’s way about in. No landmarks. . . . Funny meeting you. I owe
you some money.’

‘Thirty-five thousand pounds.’

‘Thirty-five thousand and five. Looked for you everywhere before this
scrap started. I can give you the money now if you like.’

‘The pound’s not worth much nowadays, is it?’

‘About nothing. Still, I may as well give you a cheque. It’ll buy you a
couple of drinks and a newspaper. Talking of drinks, I’ve got a case of
bubbly in the car if we could only find it. Salvaged it out of an R.A.F.
mess that got bombed back at H.Q. Wish I could find that car.’

Eventually they did find it. A Daimler limousine sunk to the axles in
mud.

‘Get in and sit down,’ said the General hospitably. ‘I’ll turn the light
on in a second.’

Adam climbed in and found that it was not empty. In the corner, crumpled
up in a French military greatcoat, was a young woman fast asleep.

‘_Hullo_, I’d forgotten all about you,’ said the General. ‘I picked up
this little lady on the road. I can’t introduce you, because I don’t
know her name. Wake up, mademoiselle.’

The girl gave a little cry and opened two startled eyes.

‘That’s all right, little lady, nothing to be scared about—all friends
here. _Parlez anglais?_’

‘Sure,’ said the girl.

‘Well, what about a spot?’ said the General, peeling the tinfoil from
the top of a bottle. ‘You’ll find some glasses in the locker.’

The woebegone fragment of womanhood in the corner looked a little less
terrified when she saw the wine. She recognized it as the symbol of
international good will.

‘Now perhaps our fair visitor will tell us her name,’ said the General.

‘I dunno,’ she said.

‘Oh, come, little one, you mustn’t be shy.’

‘I dunno. I been called a lot of things. I was called Chastity once.
Then there was a lady at a party, and she sent me to Buenos Aires, and
then when the war came she brought me back again, and I was with the
soldiers training at Salisbury Plain. That was swell. They called me
bunny—I don’t know why. Then they sent me over here and I was with the
Canadians, what they called me wasn’t nice, and then they left me behind
when they retreated and I took up with some foreigners. They were nice
too, though they _were_ fighting against the English. Then _they_ ran
away, and the lorry I was in got stuck in the ditch, so I got in with
some other foreigners who were on the same side as the English, and they
were beasts, but I met an American doctor who had white hair, and he
called me Emily because he said I reminded him of his daughter back
home, so he took me to Paris and we had a lovely week till he took up
with another girl in a night club, so he left me behind in Paris when he
went back to the front, and I hadn’t no money and they made a fuss about
my passport, so they called me _numero mille soixante dix huit_, and
they sent me and a lot of other girls off to the East to be with the
soldiers there. At least they would have done only the ship got blown
up, so I was rescued and the French sent me up here in a train with some
different girls who were very unrefined. Then I was in a tin hut with
the girls, and then yesterday they had friends and I was alone, so I
went for a walk, and when I came back the hut was gone and the girls
were gone, and there didn’t seem any one anywhere until you came in your
car, and now I don’t rightly know where I am. _My_, isn’t war awful?’

The General opened another bottle of champagne.

‘Well, you’re as right as rain now, little lady,’ he said, ‘so let’s see
you smile and look happy. You mustn’t sit there scowling, you know—far
too pretty a little mouth for that. Let me take off that heavy coat.
Look, I’ll wrap it round your knees. There, now, isn’t that better?
. . . Fine, strong little legs, eh? . . .’

Adam did not embarrass them. The wine and the deep cushions and the
accumulated fatigue of two days’ fighting drew him away from them and,
oblivious to all the happy emotion pulsing near him, he sank into sleep.

The windows of the stranded motor car shone over the wasted expanse of
the battlefield. Then the General pulled down the blinds, shutting out
that sad scene.

‘Cosier now, eh?’ he said.

And Chastity in the prettiest way possible fingered the decorations on
his uniform and asked him all about them.

And presently, like a circling typhoon, the sounds of battle began to
return.

                                THE END




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