“It’s like a Chinese puzzle,” said Lady Prowche resentfully, staring at a
scribbled list of names that spread over two or three loose sheets of
notepaper on her writing-table. Most of the names had a pencil mark
running through them.
“What is like a Chinese puzzle?” asked Lena Luddleford briskly; she
rather prided herself on being able to grapple with the minor problems of
life.
“Getting people suitably sorted together. Sir Richard likes me to have a
house party about this time of year, and gives me a free hand as to whom
I should invite; all he asks is that it should be a peaceable party, with
no friction or unpleasantness.”
“That seems reasonable enough,” said Lena.
“Not only reasonable, my dear, but necessary. Sir Richard has his
literary work to think of; you can’t expect a man to concentrate on the
tribal disputes of Central Asian clansmen when he’s got social feuds
blazing under his own roof.”
“But why should they blaze? Why should there be feuds at all within the
compass of a house party?”
“Exactly; why should they blaze or why should they exist?” echoed Lady
Prowche; “the point is that they always do. We have been unlucky;
persistently unlucky, now that I come to look back on things. We have
always got people of violently opposed views under one roof, and the
result has been not merely unpleasantness but explosion.”
“Do you mean people who disagree on matters of political opinion and
religious views?” asked Lena.
“No, not that. The broader lines of political or religious difference
don’t matter. You can have Church of England and Unitarian and Buddhist
under the same roof without courting disaster; the only Buddhist I ever
had down here quarrelled with everybody, but that was on account of his
naturally squabblesome temperament; it had nothing to do with his
religion. And I’ve always found that people can differ profoundly about
politics and meet on perfectly good terms at breakfast. Now, Miss Larbor
Jones, who was staying here last year, worships Lloyd George as a sort of
wingless angel, while Mrs. Walters, who was down here at the same time,
privately considers him to be—an antelope, let us say.”
“An antelope?”
“Well, not an antelope exactly, but something with horns and hoofs and
tail.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Still, that didn’t prevent them from being the chummiest of mortals on
the tennis court and in the billiard-room. They did quarrel finally,
about a lead in a doubled hand of no-trumps, but that of course is a
thing that no account of judicious guest-grouping could prevent. Mrs.
Walters had got king, knave, ten, and seven of clubs—”
“You were saying that there were other lines of demarcation that caused
the bother,” interrupted Lena.
“Exactly. It is the minor differences and side-issues that give so much
trouble,” said Lady Prowche; “not to my dying day shall I forget last
year’s upheaval over the Suffragette question. Laura Henniseed left the
house in a state of speechless indignation, but before she had reached
that state she had used language that would not have been tolerated in
the Austrian Reichsrath. Intensive bear-gardening was Sir Richard’s
description of the whole affair, and I don’t think he exaggerated.”
“Of course the Suffragette question is a burning one, and lets loose the
most dreadful ill-feeling,” said Lena; “but one can generally find out
beforehand what people’s opinions—”
“My dear, the year before it was worse. It was Christian Science.
Selina Goobie is a sort of High Priestess of the Cult, and she put down
all opposition with a high hand. Then one evening, after dinner, Clovis
Sangrail put a wasp down her back, to see if her theory about the
non-existence of pain could be depended on in an emergency. The wasp was
small, but very efficient, and it had been soured in temper by being kept
in a paper cage all the afternoon. Wasps don’t stand confinement well,
at least this one didn’t. I don’t think I ever realised till that moment
what the word ‘invective’ could be made to mean. I sometimes wake in the
night and think I still hear Selina describing Clovis’s conduct and
general character. That was the year that Sir Richard was writing his
volume on ‘Domestic Life in Tartary.’ The critics all blamed it for a
lack of concentration.”
“He’s engaged on a very important work this year, isn’t he?” asked Lena.
“‘Land-tenure in Turkestan,’” said Lady Prowche; “he is just at work on
the final chapters and they require all the concentration he can give
them. That is why I am so very anxious not to have any unfortunate
disturbance this year. I have taken every precaution I can think of to
bring non-conflicting and harmonious elements together; the only two
people I am not quite easy about are the Atkinson man and Marcus Popham.
They are the two who will be down here longest together, and if they are
going to fall foul of one another about any burning question, well, there
will be more unpleasantness.”
“Can’t you find out anything about them? About their opinions, I mean.”
“Anything? My dear Lena, there’s scarcely anything that I haven’t found
out about them. They’re both of them moderate Liberal, Evangelical,
mildly opposed to female suffrage, they approve of the Falconer Report,
and the Stewards’ decision about Craganour. Thank goodness in this
country we don’t fly into violent passions about Wagner and Brahms and
things of that sort. There is only one thorny subject that I haven’t
been able to make sure about, the only stone that I have left unturned.
Are they unanimously anti-vivisectionist or do they both uphold the
necessity for scientific experiment? There has been a lot of
correspondence on the subject in our local newspapers of late, and the
vicar is certain to preach a sermon about it; vicars are dreadfully
provocative at times. Now, if you could only find out for me whether
these two men are divergently for or against—”
“I!” exclaimed Lena; “how am I to find out? I don’t know either of them
to speak to.”
“Still you might discover, in some roundabout way. Write to them, under
as assumed name of course, for subscriptions to one or other cause—or,
better still, send a stamped type-written reply postcard, with a request
for a declaration for or against vivisection; people who would hesitate
to commit themselves to a subscription will cheerfully write Yes or No on
a prepaid postcard. If you can’t manage it that way, try and meet them
at some one’s house and get into argument on the subject. I think Milly
occasionally has one or other of them at her at-homes; you might have the
luck to meet both of them there the same evening. Only it must be done
soon. My invitations ought to go out by Wednesday or Thursday at the
latest, and to-day is Friday.
“Milly’s at-homes are not very amusing, as a rule,” said Lena, “and one
never gets a chance of talking uninterruptedly to any one for a couple of
minutes at a time; Milly is one of those restless hostesses who always
seem to be trying to see how you look in different parts of the room, in
fresh grouping effects. Even if I got to speak to Popham or Atkinson I
couldn’t plunge into a topic like vivisection straight away. No, I think
the postcard scheme would be more hopeful and decidedly less tiresome.
How would it be best to word them?”
“Oh, something like this: ‘Are you in favour of experiments on living
animals for the purpose of scientific research—Yes or No?’ That is quite
simple and unmistakable. If they don’t answer it will at least be an
indication that they are indifferent about the subject, and that is all I
want to know.”
“All right,” said Lena, “I’ll get my brother-in-law to let me have them
addressed to his office, and he can telephone the result of the
plebiscite direct to you.”
“Thank you ever so much,” said Lady Prowche gratefully, “and be sure to
get the cards sent off as soon as possible.”
On the following Tuesday the voice of an office clerk, speaking through
the telephone, informed Lady Prowche that the postcard poll showed
unanimous hostility to experiments on living animals.
Lady Prowche thanked the office clerk, and in a louder and more fervent
voice she thanked Heaven. The two invitations, already sealed and
addressed, were immediately dispatched; in due course they were both
accepted. The house party of the halcyon hours, as the prospective
hostess called it, was auspiciously launched.
Lena Luddleford was not included among the guests, having previously
committed herself to another invitation. At the opening day of a cricket
festival, however, she ran across Lady Prowche, who had motored over from
the other side of the county. She wore the air of one who is not
interested in cricket and not particularly interested in life. She shook
hands limply with Lena, and remarked that it was a beastly day.
“The party, how has it gone off?” asked Lena quickly.
“Don’t speak of it!” was the tragical answer; “why do I always have such
rotten luck?”
“But what has happened?”
“It has been awful. Hyænas could not have behaved with greater savagery.
Sir Richard said so, and he has been in countries where hyænas live, so
he ought to know. They actually came to blows!”
“Blows?”
“Blows and curses. It really might have been a scene from one of
Hogarth’s pictures. I never felt so humiliated in my life. What the
servants must have thought!”
“But who were the offenders?”
“Oh, naturally the very two that we took all the trouble about.”
“I thought they agreed on every subject that one could violently disagree
about—religion, politics, vivisection, the Derby decision, the Falconer
Report; what else was there left to quarrel about?”
“My dear, we were fools not to have thought of it. One of them was
Pro-Greek and the other Pro-Bulgar.”