It was not long after Lord Thorley had got clear of the house--it turned
out on inquiry that he had driven down from London that morning, and
thus he went forth in his own motor-car--that Lady Grote’s guests began
to arrive, and for the next couple of hours she had to remain in the
loggia, receiving them. There was a buffet set out against the wall,
where they could get tea or hock-cup, and a variety of foods and fruits
to refresh them after the strain of the half-hour’s journey from town,
in the saloon carriage reserved for them on a couple of trains stopped
for them at Grote, so that they should not have the inconvenience of
travelling by the more leisurely services. There motor-cars had met
them, with omnibuses for their servants and luggage, so that the journey
even on this hot day could not be considered an intolerable ordeal, and
they arrived very smart and talkative and hungry.
Week after week, on Saturday afternoon, from the beginning of May till
the end of July, this crowd of those whose names were all for some
reason or another much on the lips of the world in which she lived,
descended on her like a flock of brilliantly plumaged birds, and made
the social history of the current season. There was very little process
of selection in her invitations, for with so numerous a party it really
mattered little if it contained utterly incongruous elements, for all
were fused by the agreeable fact that it was a _cachet_ and a
distinction to be here at all.
She made no rule of asking husbands and wives together, for with her
usual commonsense she argued that they generally saw enough, if not too
much, of each other already, and these parties were rather of the nature
of a slipping of the domestic chain. Besides, it was easily possible in
those free-and-easy days, which were characteristic of the first decade
and a half of the twentieth century, that a man admired somebody else
beside his wife, and a woman looked not without favour on a man who had
not the good fortune to be her husband. But never did she ask two men
who admired the same woman to any very special degree, nor two women who
happened to be setting their modish hats at the same man. She was much
too good-natured to take pleasure in awkward situations, and it was the
rarest thing in the world for her party not to split up into the most
amicable groups and couples, which could be shaken together again into
one shining piece of quicksilver by the arrival of mealtimes. No kind of
precedence in the way of rank was observed, for she rightly considered
that a stray duchess might easily bore or be bored by a stray duke, and
boredom was not among the objects of her parties.
For herself she proposed to be taken in to dinner to-night by Kuhlmann,
an immense tenor at the Covent Garden opera about whom all London raved.
He had soft, purring manners, and at heart was about as civilized as the
average wild-cat. There was no Frau Kuhlmann, as far as she was aware,
but people said that there ought to have been a great many. He had sung
the part of Walther last night at the opera, and Helen Grote, in spite
of Lady Massingberd’s firm assertion that she did not know one note from
another, had nearly fallen out of her box from sheer emotion in the
Preislied.... And Grote should take in Gracie Massingberd, to show that
his wife paid no attention to ridiculous things that people, she
believed, were saying, and Mr. Boyton should take in the Duchess of
Lindfield, because he adored duchesses, and she flattery, and Lord
Thorley should take in Mrs. Trayle, who had written the mystical play
that nobody understood, but everybody considered quite wonderful. Lord
Thorley had been nine times to see it in the hope of understanding it;
the seventh time he thought he had understood it, only to become aware
at the eighth that he had done nothing of the sort. But perhaps the
authoress could throw some light on it on behalf of so earnest an
inquirer.
Then there was Mrs. Lockwater, who was asked here because she was simply
the most beautiful creature ever seen, and so deserved her place. She
seldom opened her mouth, but was an admirable listener, with a bad
memory, so that it was perfectly safe to tell her anything. She would
obviously fall to the arm of the great portrait-painter, Geoffrey
Bellingham, who neither listened nor stopped talking in long, abstruse
sentences, from which he could not always extricate himself. When this
happened, he began again and put it all differently. These periods were
packed full of wit and wisdom, if you only could extract it; but the
style of his speech resembled that of refractory ore from which it was
difficult to win the gold. All this was obvious, and for the rest she
could easily see, between tea and dinner, who gravitated to whom.
It occasionally happened, though rarely, that some guest or other
showed no signs of gravitating to anybody, in which case this most
complete of hostesses singled him out, at whatever personal
inconvenience, for her own especial attention. To-day there seemed to be
no such present, and as the loggia filled up and emptied again, with
fresh arrivals and previous arrivals who strolled out together after
tea, some down to the river, some to the tennis-courts, there were no
signs of detached units. Most of her guests, as was natural in the
middle of the season among those who spend three months in an incessant
interchange of meetings with others, were already acquainted, many were
friends, and there were none who found themselves in any way on alien
territory.
The French Ambassador, a tall, emaciated person, whom no one could ever
have suspected of being the first of European _gourmets_, had shown an
unmistakable preference for Lady Instow, whose _chef_ he had already
tried to seduce into his service; and Mr. Boyton, as by some inevitable
law that governs the movements of heavy bodies, had been already drawn
into a reverential orbit round the Duchess of Lindfield, who, according
to her custom, was swiftly denuding him of cigarettes. But to Mr. Boyton
a cigarette of his own smoked by a duchess was worth a hundred
cigarettes smoked by himself, and he came near to being vexed when Lady
Grote, observing this marauding process, told a footman to put a case of
cigarettes on a table close to her Grace. But he found some little
consolation in shutting up his own case and supplying himself from this,
for these were, at any rate, titled cigarettes. He also felt a quiet and
secret pleasure in being the only snob of the old school present: thus
he had a fair field to himself, and no one disputed his desire to talk
to a dull duchess. For the rest, he was a stout, middle-aged gentleman,
with hair of a suspiciously uniform honey-colour parted in the middle.
He had a wife, a fact which nobody here present probably knew, who kept
his house in Hampstead in a wholly admirable manner. She was the only
person in the world who loved him, and would have perished with terror
had there been any serious reason to suppose that she would be asked to
the tables at which her Arthur was so deservedly popular, for he had an
apt and amusing tongue ready to trim itself with sycophancy when exposed
to the high lights of such a firmament. His eminence consisted in the
fact that he was always there: he crawled, he climbed, he flew. But he
invariably got there. A hostess asked Mr. Boyton as a matter of course:
he was there to eat his dinner just as naturally as the footmen were
there to give it him. He sang for it, too, making himself invariably
agreeable to those who were worth the trouble. And as he saw no others,
he never proved a disappointment.
All, then, was going well in the assembling of this particular party.
Everything always did go well, but with a rather touching humility Lady
Grote never ceased to fear as Saturday afternoon became more populous,
that her guests were not going to enjoy themselves. That was her main
anxiety: she had no solid self-assurance that would permit her to think
that they must enjoy themselves, since they formed her party. A
tremendous under-tow of modesty lay below the surface of her nature: she
never rated herself at the figure at which the whole of her world rated
her. She was never dazzled by the brilliance that she shed. She could
not get over the notion that it was very nice of others to appear to
enjoy her hospitality.
With her admirable memory, long trained in the requirements needed by a
hostess, she knew that soon after six all her guests had arrived with
the exception of Robin and her husband. The boy had certainly said he
would come to-day, but had not said how or when he would get there: that
was rather like him. Perhaps he would swim down the river from
Cambridge, and arrive at the steps by the bottom of the wood with no
clothes of any description....
She mentioned this possibility to Geoffrey Bellingham, who was a late
arrival, and was sitting by her with a cup of tea, a glass of hock-cup,
a tea-cake and a peach on the table beside him. It did not seem that he
wished to consume any of those items of provender: he had but absently
taken them from trays that were handed him, and they now formed a sort
of phalanx of food ready to hand. Soon he added to them a glass of
brandy-and-soda, a cigar and a cigarette. The last of these, without
lighting it, he brandished as an instrument of gesticulation.
“But there is, in fact, my dear lady,” he said, “no apprehension justly
founded which could lead you seriously to contemplate so unusual an
occurrence as our dear Robin’s appearance here in that state which you
so delicately allude to as nudity. Even if it were so, what sight could
be more delectable to our over-civilized eyes than a young, unconscious
Greek god, an Aphrodite, in fact, though of the more muscular sex,
appearing suddenly from the wave in all the unashamedness of youthful
beauty among our sophisticated frocks and frills? You would, if your
maternal instincts prompted you, lend him a skirt, and I would
hesitatingly offer him a coat more than ample for his slimness. Then,
clad with a shoe of Lady Massingberd’s and a boot of our amiable
Boyton’s, is there any more alluring spectacle--in fact, we shall all be
delighted to see Robin, irrespective of his position as the son of our
dear hostess, whenever and however he arrives. But if, unless I am
mistaken, it is the Cam that glides by his studious walls, there is no
real chance of the aqueous phenomenon you have suggested, as he comes, I
understand, from the banks of a river which suffers a sea-change in the
Wash. Had Oxford the honour of claiming him as an _alumnus_, there would
have been the chance of his debouching, so to speak, at Grote, which, I
cannot believe I am mistaken in thinking, casts its spell over the
Thames. In fact, Robin, if he comes by river in any form, will have to
face a voyage down the North Sea, or German Ocean as the geography
books, probably Teutonic in origin, so impudently call it, before he can
win a footing on our beloved Thames. And even then he would have to swim
up from Gravesend or some ill-defined settlement that enriches the
estuary!”
His eyes suddenly fell on the peach, the tea-cake, the brandy-and-soda,
the tea and the hock-cup.
“I had not been aware,” he said, “that so complete a paraphernalia of
what would make the most sumptuous sort of dinner had been provided me.
It is slightly embarrassing to be so beautifully equipped with what the
Prayer-book calls the kindly fruits of the earth, without having had the
slightest intention of claiming their benign aid to bridge over the
chasm, as we may call it, which intervenes--in fact, the smallest
possible selection from an apparently unlimited store would more than
suffice for me. In short, a cup of tea and nothing more would be
remarkably pleasant. I seem to have taken a cigar, too, a delicacy of
desiccated foliage of which I am wholly unworthy. And so Robin is
expected.”
That seemed to be the gist of it all, and Helen Grote took firm hold of
this life-preserver that floated on the flood of Geoffrey Bellingham’s
discourse.
“He said he would come this afternoon,” she said, clinging to that which
kept her head above water. “But one never knows about Robin.”
She was instantly swept off again into the sea.
“Therein you outline the most glorious of all relationships, I need not
say--do not tell me that I need say--that I allude to that between
mothers and sons. Had I been so fortunate as to have a son, granting the
premiss that I had already gained the most essential of all conditions
for that--namely, that of husbandhood--there is nothing that would
delight me more than the existence of that supreme and entrancing
uncertainty of how a son is going to behave. The younger generation, my
dear lady, must inevitably be ahead of us in development, and,
therefore, in incomprehensibility. If you could understand your dear
Robin--may we say ‘our’ dear Robin?--it would imply that he was a
generation behind his time. Nothing fills me with more delighted wonder
and surfeits me with more entranced surmise than how the younger
generation are going to govern the world. The reins are already slipping
from our effete and rheumatic fingers--you will understand, of course,
that no fingers of those which I see so gracefully round me are alluded
to in any sort of implication, however remote--but, in point of fact,
mothers and fathers, and the elderly bachelors and the even more elderly
maids, are now, at this present moment, sitting round in a dusk and
_Dämmerung_, and bright eyes, dimly seen, but sparkling with purpose,
gleam from the corners of our crumbling habitations, and watch for the
opportunity which must surely come, and come soon, of, in fact,
scragging us.”
Lady Grote gave a little shiver, quite involuntary, quite sincere.
“You are horrible,” she said. “Do you mean that Robin is going to cut my
throat? But you are more than fascinating. You are a Pied Piper; is he
not, Mr. Kuhlmann?”
Kuhlmann, who was sitting on the other side of her, made a little
purring noise in his throat like a contented cat.
“Also,” said he, “I do not understand a word of what Mr. Bellingham
says. But I like the noise he makes. _Ach_, one word I did understand,
and he says you are in the _Dämmerung_. There is a dusk closing in on
England. So?”
Mr. Bellingham remembered, with a sense of relief, the fact that
Kuhlmann had not arrived till after his remarks about the sea so
impudently called the German Ocean.
“A dusk closing in on England?” he said. “I must surely have expressed
myself with more than my accustomed infelicity, if I have left that
impression. The dusk, Mr. Kuhlmann, is but the dusk of certain expiring
ashes, such as my own, which will rekindle in a nobler fire to light the
ways of our world’s obscure transit through infinite space, than has
ever yet been seen. The words that should convey to you how eagerly I
make fuel of myself for that incomparable Phœnix immeasurably fail me.
But if, in the ways of a stuttering tongue and a speech to which the
babbling of a brook--any brook you please--is of the nature of speech
more coherent than is given to me, I am capable of conveying the
impression that is so irradicably fixed on my mind that no other picture
is aught but colourless beside it, I would endeavour to make this at
least plain.” Bellingham was now in full splendid blast. He outlined
and emphasized his point with strokes of his unlit cigar, using it like
a brush against the canvas of the air, and his voice boomed out
impressively.
“From a race of heroic fathers and mothers has come forth, with
explosion as of gorse-seed, an infinitely more heroic offspring. The
steadfast eyes of boys and girls to-day, I assure you, frighten me. They
are steadfast on their pleasure, if you will, or on each other, or on
those extraordinary games they play, in which you have to hit a small
india-rubber ball, or so I take it to be, as few times as possible,
putting it, at uncertain intervals, into a species of small jam-pot sunk
in little lawns, in order to win this very serious game. Golf, I think,
is the name of the sport which I am feeling for. Or, again, they fix
those same steadfast eyes, unwittingly perhaps, but in obedience to the
life force, as poor Shaw put it, on the mist that assuredly now more
than ever veils the future from us. The destiny of the world! Where does
that lie but in the solar plexus of boys and girls? How commonplace to
the verge of conspicuousness that sounds! But in the history of the
world did ever the future lie--like, like this plucked peach, all pink
with the sun that has ripened it, more fatefully, more conclusively, in
the hands of the young? There it lies, as it were, a bomb built of fire
and explosiveness, tame for the moment as this plucked peach, which it
really would be a crime not to eat, and, as I am without criminal
instincts, I forthwith proceed to plunge the spoon in it, thus and
thus--and, in fact, may the future be as soft and as sweet.
“The fuse is attached; I image it for you, in fact, with what seems to
be, and in fact is, if for the moment you will allow me to translate
such imagery into the actual terms of what we may call, in the analogy
of cutlery implying steel, argentery, implying silver, with this spoon,
and push it into the peach which so beautifully awaits me. But the
peach, irrespective of this consuming and already delighted mouth, must
stand for us as the bomb which the Robins and the swimmers of fresh
rivers hold in their hands, and will deal with, as the _Dämmerung_ of
the older generation closes round it, and the clouds brighten with the
dawning of a day that is, to the licence allowed to the self-made seer,
the herald of the more serene than ever was yet day.”
Lord Thorley had made an inconspicuous entry during this monologue, and,
after a rather incomprehensible greeting on the part of Mr. Bellingham,
who hailed him as “our dear lantern,” joined the circle. This salutation
was soon explained, for with a wealth of delicate and elusive imagery,
Mr. Bellingham made it moderately clear that Lord Thorley’s intellect
was the light that would illuminate the future for them. “No
will-of-the-wisp, my dear friend,” he handsomely concluded, “but the
beam of the steadfast lighthouse on menacing and broken seas. Tell us,
then, ever so lightly indicate to us, that which for the incomparable
brightness of your revolving reflectors that cast pencils of
imperishable light--in fact, my dear Thorley, what do you make of the
future as in the hands of the rising generation?”
Lord Thorley weighed his pince-nez a moment in his open hand.
“Really, there seems an epidemic of inquiry about that matter,” said he.
“Only just now Lady Grote and I were discussing it.”
“I curse myself, I pour dust on my head, for not, in fact, coming by an
earlier train,” said Mr. Bellingham.
“We disagreed,” began Lord Thorley.
“And I missed the chance of observing the exquisite thrust and riposte
of those incomparable gladiators. Another round, I beseech you for
another round, or at least the report of the contest.”
“Well, Helen was all for our being in a melting-pot, and in her
richly-mixed metaphor wondered what kind of soup would come out of it. I
cannot see that we are in a melting-pot at all, or in the soup, either.
Every generation, so I ventured to suggest, has always fancied it lived
in critical times: memoirs prove that. But the crisis passes, and except
for the memoirs subsequent generations would never imagine there had
been one.”
“But, in fact,” said Bellingham, “sometimes surely, as at the end of the
eighteenth century, it was not only in memoirs subsequently proved
guilty of wild exaggeration that France--in short, I allude to the
French Revolution.”
“I am disposed even to dispute that. The French Revolution was not
really a great event: it was only the last chapter of a process that had
been going on for fifty years. And, again, as we were talking of the
young generation, it is important to remember that it was not the young
who had their hands on the levers. I don’t think the young, with the
exception perhaps of poets, ever do anything much. Ibsen, is it not,
tells us in one of his practically unreadable plays that the young are
knocking at the door? That is as far as they get. They knock at the door
and run away like mischievous street boys. They do not, as a matter of
fact, come in till they have ceased to be young.”
“Our dear lantern, in fact,” remarked Mr. Bellingham, “shows us a calm
sea and children playing on the sand. But I doubt whether it is not the
peacefulness of your own effulgence, my dear Thorley, that makes the
object on which it plays partake of the same serene quality.”
“You agree with Helen.”
“If I err, I err then in the most delightful company in the world.
Indeed, one might prefer to stray from the high road and the direct path
with so entrancing a guide, though, of course, I cannot consent to
underrate the enthralling prospect of marching breast-forward, my dear
Thorley, with you. You see me in a quandary. Whichever course I adopt, I
must be widowed of the most amiable of companions. To your secret eyes,
then, there is no _Dämmerung_ approaching, no brightness of youth ready
to pounce on us from the dimness.”
“I cannot see it,” said Lord Thorley; “the political horizon, I am bound
to say, seems to me very serene. I see no fresh bogies there, they are
all the well-worn properties. A European war, a revolution in Ireland--I
need not enumerate the old familiar faces. And, as regards the young, I
see nothing more than I have always seen. Some clever boy from Oxford
writes a book that makes a nine days’ wonder. Some clever group of
artists evolves a new scheme of pictorial representation, and loads the
walls of our exhibitions with crude and violent diagrams of a wholly
puerile nature. Some excitable young women break shop windows and commit
similar outrages in order to show us how fit they are to receive the
franchise. But I must confess that I am unable to see any significance
in such pranks. There are always, I am glad to say, clever young men and
obstreperous young women keeping the world young. In a sense, of course,
the future belongs to the young, because they will be alive when we are
all dead. But when that not very regrettable day occurs, they will be no
longer young. Emphatically, in my opinion, it is the middle-aged who
matter.”
“A comfortable, a well-wadded and delightful doctrine,” exclaimed Mr.
Bellingham. “But yet it seems to me that as with plastic clay the young
are shaping the features of the future, each in his smock with slender
finger-tips bedaubed with what we may call the materials of days yet
unborn. We are being picked up, we older men--this at least to me is the
secret lesson of which I am but learning the alphabet, and which in a
sort of impotent babble I haltingly strive to express. In fact, in my
own case I feel that the young just scoop me up like the lump of clay,
and set me with pressing thumb and forefinger into the great image that
grows beneath their hands. A very curious observer might possibly detect
in that image a tuft of my already depleted hair, and say, ‘Surely this
is a remnant, a capillary adjunct sadly grey and thin, of what once was
Bellingham. Now with other past modes he is but a morsel of a rib or
some other less honourable and expressive a portion of the entire
anatomy.’”
He and Lord Thorley, an oddly contrasting pair, had strolled away from
the loggia (leaving Mr. Bellingham’s provisions, all but the peach,
unconsumed) across the lawn in front of the house. Bellingham’s sonorous
voice fitted well with his thick-set form, his massive and powerful
face; from that strong efficiency of body you might have conjectured a
man of action, who dealt in practical matters and wielded a world that
he had organized. Yet this was the artist, the dweller in visions, the
discerner of nothing more material than the inward personality of his
sitters, while the loose, languid man, who seemed to all bodily
appearance to have but the slightest connection with the tangible
things of the world, was the man of action who shaped the destinies of a
nation. A stranger merely informed of the collective identities of the
two must surely have given to each the name-label of the other, and yet
the stranger who did so would have shown himself a person of imperfect
perception. For Bellingham’s work was instinct with virile
comprehension; he had the firmest of grasps upon the material world,
while Lord Thorley, as he had always confessed, brought nothing of the
brutal actuality of first-hand material considerations into his deft
political weavings. He handled these with the delicate insight of a
scholar brooding over obscure texts, the finesse and subtle observation
of the philosopher in his study. Therein lay both his strength and
weakness, for while the obscure seldom evaded his penetrative power, he
was apt to overlook the obvious. It was by a great flaring torch,
dripping with the pitch of humanity, and casting strong shadows and
raising high lights, that Bellingham looked at the world he knew so
well, and loved with all the veins and arteries that bucketed gallons of
human blood through his body; it was almost with a grotesque
appreciation of his kinship with it that he beheld it. But Lord Thorley,
holding up his dry white light in his dry white hand, noted, like a
doctor by a bedside, the less appreciable maladies of his patient.
They met friends on the terrace across the lawn, and the collective
spirit of the party began to develop. Above all things, it was “up to
date”; it dwelled, that is to say, with extraordinary vividness in the
actual present moment, and cared as little for the past as it recked of
the future. For most of them, a majority sufficient to form the
prevailing note, the rose was now full-blown; it was enough to inhale
the perfection of its fragrance without thought of the promise of its
budding, or of the seeds that already were maturing in the womb from
which the petals sprang. All appurtenances of extravagance and luxury
were contained in the scent of it; so, too, was the sense that took all
these things for granted. It was perfectly natural to those who
assembled for dinner that Vandycks and Holbeins lived on the brocaded
walls of the room, where they waited for the more tardy guests, that
silk Persian rugs made feet noiseless, that Empire mirrors reflected the
bare shoulders of beautiful women. That was how things “happened”; it
was part of the indulgent constitution of the world that you moved quite
naturally in so splendid a setting. It was natural also, a thing not to
be considered, that a band played in the loggia with a discretion that
did not mar conversation, that you ate off silver, that the masterpieces
of Reynolds and Romney floated swimmingly on the walls.
Indeed, it was hardly remarked that about the middle of dinner the loud
whirrings of an aeroplane sounded over the house, in a pause of the
band, and that presently Lord Grote, who, from his seat at the end of
the table, looked out on to the lawn, made the announcement than an
aeroplane had landed there, and wondered, to the point of leaving his
quail uneaten, who it could be, going out to ascertain. Naturally
enough, it was Robin, who, instead of swimming from Cambridge, had been
a passenger in a flight from Hendon. He came in, handsome and debonair,
while the pilot was taken for refreshment somewhere else, since Robin
explained that he would not at all like to come into the middle of a
dinner-party. For himself he was frightfully hungry, and would like to
start square with soup. Yes, it was quite exciting and jolly, great luck
to have had the chance of going up. The pilot would start back again at
sunrise: that was his plan. Robin was not sure if he would not fly back
with him. He had hoped to arrive before dinner, when everyone was out on
the lawn, and the leather coat was too hot now that one was down on
earth again, and he really must take it off....
Below the leather coat was a thick woollen jersey, and Robin, in the
midst of tiaras and satins, ate his belated dinner with as little a
sense of embarrassment as he would have felt if he had been picking at a
cold duck with Damon. But Mr. Bellingham could not quite leave these
remarkable occurrences without comment.
“And you actually permitted yourself, my dear Robin,” he said, “to be
whirled away among the inconstant breezes without a word of protest? For
me I should have protested with all the violence of which my nature is
capable. They would have had to bind me hand and foot before I
embarked.”
Robin laughed.
“But I wanted to go; I paid for it. Why should I protest at getting what
I wanted?”
“True, true; there is the younger generation again. And what impression,
what etching of an image, was conveyed to your sensory nerves at the
moment when you began to leave that pellet of conglomerated matter,
which, for want of a better word, we call the world? Were there not
‘fallings-from you, vanishings,’ as the most didactic of all poets puts
it? In fact, my dear boy, didn’t it make you feel at all sick?”
But the sensation of Robin’s arrival, even in those days, when a flying
machine was not quite the common fowl it has become, was a matter to be
reckoned in minutes only; indeed, the scale of seconds was sufficient to
see its complete extinction. Nothing was surprising nowadays, though so
many things were new, and before Robin had fairly got out of his leather
coat, Lord Thorley was again immersed in the attempt to understand Mrs.
Trayle’s explanation of her mystical play, which really seemed to become
more and more involved with every step of her elucidation, and Mr.
Boyton was indulging his Duchess with that type of story that was so
immensely characteristic of him. It was not in itself actually shocking,
but could not fail to produce in the mind of the listener comments and
reflections that were. His stories had the effect of raising giggles
rather than laughter, and he told them with a babe-like innocence that
set off their little _saletés_ to perfection. Elsewhere Mr. Bellingham
was robustly discoursing to Mrs. Lockwater, who was fulfilling her
complete functions of being dumb and beautiful, and the French
Ambassador, with his ascetic face alight with enthusiasm, was being
dithyrambic to Lady Instow on the subject of a sauce of _escargots_.
The spirit of the gathering, distilled from all those various
personalities, poured out in ever-increasing volume. The main ingredient
in it was a sort of Athenian irresponsibility: nothing mattered but the
present hour, and the delight of “some new thing.” Wit, beauty,
intelligence, above all, an astonishing youthfulness of mind, gave their
grapes to compose the heady compound, that foamed and sparkled from one
end of the table to the other. Some, though those were the minority of
the guests, had some serious business in life, that professionally
occupied them, but most were utterly idle people, apart from their
feverishly busy pursuit of the pleasure of the extravagant minute. For
most of them only two ills existed in life, the one physical ill-health,
the other boredom; the one highest and all-embracing blessing which life
offered, was the sense of being amused, and being “in it,” and every
minute not employed in either avoiding the ills of life or securing its
blessings was a wasted opportunity let slip from careless or incompetent
fingers into the chill waters of past time.
Excitement, physical and mental, was what each of them was out for, with
the exception perhaps of Lord Thorley, who, in conditions of the
utmost-conceivable perturbation, would have maintained his detached
tranquillity. But for the rest, even for the mystical Mrs. Trayle, the
whirl of the moment, the striking of the clock were the things to be
waited and listened for. The ferment of the world, and in particular,
the ferment of the little world which is called the great world, was the
intoxication they all demanded. In Lady Grote’s house that ferment
invaded hole and corner; whatever was of contemporaneous interest was
focussed there, be it painting, or singing, or politics, or love.
Nothing was amiss, so long as it was alive, but it had to be alive with
the vitality of to-day. In a fashion, also, this house with its opulence
of extravagance and noble entertainment, signified all that was now
going on: the people collected here every Saturday were types as well as
individuals, each “stood for” something of which he was only a specimen.
Dinner broke up gradually: there was no formal exit of women that left
the men to circulate port and cigarettes and stories that up till that
moment could not be perfectly enjoyed. From the thirty guests there some
twenty drifted away, but the exit was not only of women, nor was it all
of the feminine portion of the diners who went out. Mrs. Trayle, for
instance, remained, so, too, did Lady Massingberd, sitting next her
host. Before long Lord Grote and she got up and wandered out into the
big starry night; the other couples left, and soon the dining-room was
empty, and bridge-tables and corners of conversation began to sort
themselves into groups in the loggia. Then somebody alluded to poker,
and a half dozen of people, Robin and Bellingham among them, collected
round a baize-topped table. Counters arranged themselves into heaps,
packs of cards appeared, and a table of half a dozen players found
themselves possessed of a hundred pounds each, in blue-coronetted
counters, which denoted five pounds, in yellow counters which denoted
one, and in silver counters that implied a shilling. Something vague was
said about limit, but anybody, apparently, who wanted a hundred pounds,
had it instantly supplied. It all happened, just happened....
This gratuitous distribution of capital naturally roused Mr. Bellingham
to abstruse reflection as he received his cards.
“And this, I take it,” said he, “is, in fact, hospitality _in excelsis_.
I have merely to sit down, and by the act of what we may call squatting,
my dear Robin, am given a whole century of the gold which---- Indeed, I
feel as if I had been granted a bounty from the Civil List, in aid of my
probably impecunious old age. I figure to myself what would happen if I
pocketed these extraordinary artistic symbols of a wealth which is not
actually mine. My dear lady, I will take one card, but the immodesty of
that which I am playing for beggars and denudes all sense of decency.
The full house, for instance, surely all evening, as long as we play
this entrancing and hazardous sport, must surely remain in our hostess’s
charming hands. If ever a house was full, it is hers. Yes, in fact, I
see that two pounds, and with all the timidity possible to so
middle-aged a creature, I venture to raise it another two.”
Robin was on Mr. Bellingham’s left, and came in with a further rise of
three pounds. No one else took any interest in the hand, and Mr.
Bellingham, as he saw Robin’s three pounds, and got dreadfully mixed
about what to do next, contrived to pour out an abstruse soliloquy.
“I see you and raise you--is that the consecrated phrase,” he said, “as
if it was not enough to see Robin, and as impossible to raise him. And
then you see me, do you, which can hardly, I may say, be worth doing, so
commonplace an object as I unfortunately am. Nevertheless, should you
insist on gazing at what is called my hand, you will find, as I show
you, that I have, in fact, usurped the full house which belongs as by
right to our hostess. In fact, I have three kings and not less than two
sevens. And that, I conjecture by your returning your cards face
downwards to the dustbin, I may say, of the rest of the pack, is in the
jargon of our game, good, and I annex, do I not, a pool that for its
attractive amplitude may fairly be called a lake.”
The game proceeded on its engrossing course: occasionally another player
or two came in, and was supplied, or supplied himself, with as many
counters as he felt inclined to take; occasionally a player, having had
enough of it, counted up his gains or losses, and was duly entered by
Robin in what he called the Washing-book: in fact, the poker-table was a
sort of buffet of refreshing excitement, permanently open for anyone who
wished to partake. The band had moved into the ball-room, and played
dance-music for anyone who felt inclined to revolve, while for those who
preferred the fresh air and more intimate conversation, there was the
loggia, or the terrace that gleamed beneath the blaze of the full moon,
already beginning to decline to its setting. Down below shone the
silver riband of the river, and the woods on each side whispered, as in
sleep, with the breath of the night-wind. But the rather _banal_
simplicity of untutored nature, was but little to the minds of Lady
Grote’s guests, who, indeed, had not this afternoon so much gone into
the country as brought there a square or a street of Mayfair, and only a
stray couple left the house where there was so much going on in the way
of stimulating diversions.
In one corner of the loggia a game of bridge was in progress for those
who cared for the mingling of a little intelligence with mere hazard,
and in another, dimmed and darkened by the putting out of the local
electric lights, a spiritualistically-minded party, of which the
priestess was Mrs. Trayle, were seated round a table which under their
hands moved about in an inexplicable manner, and answered questions by
means of unaccountable rappings. Lord Thorley was the most earnest of
these students of the occult, for in the presence of psychical
phenomena, the dry white light of his critical mind was always
extinguished like a candle in a gale, and he became credulous at just
the point when most people begin to be sceptical.
Not long after midnight a rumour began to go about concerning supper in
the dining-room, and after the nerve-exhaustion produced by poker, and
the physical exhaustion produced by dancing, a good number of the party
repaired these ravages with rather solid refreshments, and stimulated
themselves with champagne cup. Thereafter there began leisurely
movements towards bed, with a good deal of conversation on the stairs
and outside doors, but half a dozen enthusiasts still remained unwearied
in their worship of the ambiguous goddess who settles what cards shall
favour her votaries, and it was not for a couple of hours later that a
final round of jack-pots was proposed. All evening Kuhlmann had scarcely
left Lady Grote’s side, and when accounts were adjusted at the end, it
was found that he had lost exactly five shillings, while she had won
precisely the same amount. She got up with a laugh.
“To think of all the agonies and raptures I have gone through,” she
said, “to earn that! You are even in worse case, Mr. Kuhlmann, for you
have lost.”
He rose too.
“But, then, I have had no agonies,” he said, “the evening has been one
of entire rapture.”
“Ah, it is nice of you to have enjoyed it.”
“If you think how I have spent it,” said he, “you will wonder at that no
longer.”
By a single movement of her eyes across to Robin, who was counting his
money just opposite, and back to Kuhlmann, she indicated exactly what
she meant to convey.
“Robin, my darling,” she said, “I haven’t had a word with you all
evening. You must take me out on the river to-morrow.”
“To-night, if you like,” said the boy.
“No, my dear, it’s too late,” she said. “It’s bed-time: else we shall
all be wrecks to-morrow.”
He finished his countings.
“I’ve won eleven pounds and a shilling,” he said, “and I don’t want to
go to bed. Let’s all go on the river for half an hour. I can get the
keys of the boathouse. Oh, do come, mother. We can get out a couple of
punts: all the cushions are down there. Come on: who is coming?”
“I confess myself an insatiable hedonist,” said Mr. Bellingham. “Let us
have a turn on the river, so long as it is distinctly understood that I
am not required to make any of those pokings and fumblings with a pole,
a rod, pole or perch, in fact, as the arithmetic books have it, which
would infallibly lead to my total immersion. In fact, Robin, will you
rod, pole or perch me?”
Once again Lady Grote exchanged an imperceptible glance with Kuhlmann,
and some five of them went down the long white steps, shining with dew,
below the terrace. Mr. Bellingham and Lady Instow, under Robin’s
conductorship, stepped into one punt, Lady Grote and Kuhlmann into
another. Under Kuhlmann’s very inexpert watermanship the others soon
distanced them.
They both laughed at his awkward attempts at propulsion, and presently
she said:
“We shall never catch them up, Mr. Kuhlmann. Let us wait where we are,
or rather where the stream takes us, till they come back. Come and sit
down.”
He laid the dripping punt-pole along the edge of the boat, that slewed
slowly round in the current, and with a soft hushing noise ran into a
belt of reeds and tall sedge.
“You are singing on Monday, in _Tristan_, are you not?” she asked.
For answer he purred the first notes of the great love-duet.