"If I were dead, would I be honoured if a great, steamy wet crowd came
after me with soppy chrysanthemums and prickly laurestinus? Ugh! I'd run
to the nethermost ends of Hades. Lord, how I'd run from them!"
The manservant gave us roast mutton, and Lady Lathkill and the Colonel
chestnuts in sauce. Then he poured the burgundy. It was good wine. The
pseudo-conversation was interrupted.
Lady Lathkill ate in silence, like an ermine in the snow, feeding on his
prey. Sometimes she looked round the table, her blue eyes peering
fixedly, completely uncommunicative. She was very watchful to see that
we were all properly attended to; "The currant jelly for Mr. Morier,"
she would murmur, as if it were her table. Lord Lathkill, next her, ate
in complete absence. Sometimes she murmured to him, and he murmured
back, but I never could hear what they said. The Colonel swallowed the
chestnuts in dejection, as if all were weary duty to him now. I put it
down to his liver.
It was an awful dinner-party. I never could hear a word anybody said,
except Carlotta. They all let their words die in their throats, as if
the larynx were the coffin of sound.
Carlotta tried to keep her end up, the cheerful hostess sort of thing.
But Lady Lathkill somehow, in silence and apparent humility, had stolen
the authority that goes with the hostess, and she hung on to it grimly,
like a white ermine sucking a rabbit. Carlotta kept glancing miserably
at me, to see what I thought. I didn't think anything. I just felt
frozen within the tomb. And I drank the good, good warm burgundy.
"Mr. Morier's glass!" murmured Lady Lathkill, and her blue eyes with
their black pin-points rested on mine a moment.
"Awfully nice to drink good burgundy!" said I pleasantly.
She bowed her head slightly, and murmured something inaudible.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Very glad you like it!" she repeated, with distaste at having to say it
again, out loud.
"Yes, I do. It's good."
Mrs. Hale, who had sat tall and erect and alert, like a black she-fox,
never making a sound, looked round at me to see what sort of specimen I
was. She was just a bit intrigued.
"Yes, thanks," came a musical murmur from Lord Lathkill. "I think I
_will_ take some more."
The man, who had hesitated, filled his glass.
"I'm awfully sorry I can't drink wine," said Carlotta, absently. "It has
the wrong effect on me."
"I should say it has the wrong effect on everybody," said the Colonel,
with an uneasy attempt to be there. "But some people like the effect,
and some don't."
I looked at him in wonder. Why was he chipping in? He looked as if he'd
liked the effect well enough, in his day.
"Oh, no!" retorted Carlotta coldly. "The effect on different people is
quite different."
She closed with finality, and a further frost fell on the table.
"Quite so," began the Colonel, trying, since he'd gone off the deep end,
to keep afloat.
But Carlotta turned abruptly to me.
"Why is it, do you think, that the effect is so different on different
people?"
"And on different occasions," said I, grinning through my burgundy. "Do
you know what they say? They say that alcohol, if it has an effect on
your psyche, takes you back to old states of consciousness, and old
reactions. But some people it doesn't stimulate at all, there is only a
nervous reaction of repulsion."
"There's certainly a nervous reaction of repulsion in me," said
Carlotta.
"As there is in all higher natures," murmured Lady Lathkill.
"Dogs hate whisky," said I.
"That's quite right," said the Colonel. "Scared of it!"
"I've often thought," said I, "about those old states of consciousness.
It's supposed to be an awful retrogression, reverting back to them.
Myself, my desire to go onwards takes me back a little."
"Where to?" said Carlotta.
"Oh, I don't know! To where you feel a bit warm, and like smashing the
glasses, don't you know?
J'avons bien bu et nous boirons!
Cassons les verres nous les payerons!
Compagnons! Voyez vous bien!
Voyez vous bien!
Voyez! voyez! voyez vous bien
Que les d'moiselles sont belles
Où nous allons!"
I had the effrontery to sing this verse of an old soldiers' song while
Lady Lathkill was finishing her celery and nut salad. I sang it quite
nicely, in a natty, well-balanced little voice, smiling all over my face
meanwhile. The servant, as he went round for Lady Lathkill's plate,
furtively fetched a look at me. _Look_! thought I. _You chicken that's
come untrussed_!
The partridges had gone, we had swallowed the _flan_, and were at
dessert. They had accepted my song in complete silence. Even Carlotta!
My _flan_ had gone down in one gulp, like an oyster.
"You're quite right!" said Lord Lathkill, amid the squashing of walnuts.
"I mean the state of mind of a Viking, shall we say, or of a Cataline
conspirator, might be frightfully good for us, if we could re-capture
it."
"A Viking!" said I, stupefied. And Carlotta gave a wild snirt of
laughter.
"Why not a Viking?" he asked in all innocence.
"A Viking!" I repeated, and swallowed my port. Then I looked round at my
black-browed neighbour.
"Why do you never say anything?" I asked.
"What should I say?" she replied, frightened at the thought.
I was finished. I gazed into my port as if expecting the ultimate
revelation.
Lady Lathkill rustled her finger-tips in the finger-bowl, and laid down
her napkin decisively. The Colonel, old buck, rose at once to draw back
her chair. _Place aux hommes_! I bowed to my neighbour, Mrs. Hale, a
most disconcerting bow, and she made a circuit to get by me.
"You won't be awfully long?" said Carlotta, looking at me with her slow,
hazel-green eyes, between mischief and wistfulness and utter depression.
Lady Lathkill steered heavily past me as if I didn't exist, perching
rather forward, with her crest of white hair, from her big hips. She
seemed abstracted, concentrated on something, as she went.