A SUPPER-PARTY AT THE "QUEEN'S"
Brooks was shown into a private room at the Queen's Hotel, and he
certainly had no cause to complain of the warmth of his welcome. Lady
Sybil, in fact, made room for him by her side, and he fancied that there
was a gleam of reproach in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"Is Medchester really so large a place that one can get lost in it?" she
asked. "Lord Arranmore has been sending messengers in every direction
ever since we decided upon our little excursion.
"I telephoned to your office, sent a groom to your rooms and to the
club, and at last we had given you up," Lord Arranmore remarked.
"And I," Sybil murmured, "was in a shocking bad temper."
"It is very good of you all," Brooks remarked, cheerfully. "I left the
office rather early, and have been giving a sort of lecture to-night at
the Secular Hall. Then I went up to have a game of billiards with Mr.
Bullsom. Your telephone message found me there. You must remember that
even if Medchester is not a very large place I am a very unimportant
person."
"Dear me, what modesty," Lady Caroom remarked, laughing. "To us,
however, you happened to be very important. I hate a party of three."
Brooks helped himself to a quail, and remembered that he was hungry.
"This is very unusual dissipation, isn't it?" he asked. "I never
dreamed that you would be likely to come into our little theatre."
"It was Sybil's doings," Lady Caroom answered. "She declared that she
was dull, and that she had never seen A /Message from Mars./ I think
that all that serious talk the other evening gave her the blues."
"I am always dull in the winter when there is no hunting," Sybil
remarked. "This frost is abominable. I have not forgotten our talk
either. I feel positively wicked every time I sip champagne."
"Our young philanthropist will reassure you," Arranmore remarked, drily.
Lady Caroom sighed.
"I wonder how it is," she murmured, "that one's conscience and one's
digestion both grow weaker as one grows old. You and I, Arranmore, are
content to accept the good things of the earth as they come to us."
"With me," he answered, "it is the philosophy of approaching old age,
but you have no such excuse. With you it must be sheer callousness.
You are in an evil way, Lady Caroom. Do have another of these quails."
"You are very rude," she answered, "and extremely unsympathetic. But I
will have another quail."
"I do not Want to destroy your appetite, Mr. Brooks," Lady Sybil said,
"but this is--if not a farewell feast, something like it."
He looked at her with sudden interest.
"You are going away?" he exclaimed.
"Very soon," she assented. "We were so comfortable at Enton, and the
hunting has been so good, that we cut out one of our visits. Mamma
developed a convenient attack of influenza. But the next one is very
near now, and our host is almost tired of us."
Lord Arranmore was for a moment silent.
"You have made Enton," he said, "intolerable for a solitary man. When
you go I go."
"I wish you could say whither instead of when," Lady Caroom answered.
"How bored you would be at Redcliffe. It is really the most outlandish
place we go to."
"Why ever do we accept, mamma?" Sybil asked. "Last year I nearly cried
my eyes out, I was so dull. Not a man fit to talk to, or a horse fit to
ride. The girls bicycle, and Lord Redcliffe breeds cattle and talks
turnips."
"And they all drink port after dinner," Lady Caroom moaned; "but we have
to go, dear. We must live rent free somewhere during these months to
get through the season."
Sybil looked at Brooks with laughter in her eyes.
"Aren't we terrible people?" she whispered. "You are by way of being
literary, aren't you? You should write an article on the shifts of the
aristocracy. Mamma and I could supply you with all the material. The
real trouble, of course, is that I don't marry."
"Fancy glorying in your failure," Lady Caroom said, complacently.
"Three seasons, Arranmore, have I had to drag that girl round. I've
washed my hands of her now. She must look after herself. A girl who
refuses one of the richest young men in England because she didn't like
his collars is incorrigible."
"It was not his collars, mother," Sybil objected. "It was his neck. He
was always called 'the Giraffe.' He had no head and all neck--the most
fatuous person, too. I hate fools."
"That is where you lack education, dear," Lady Caroom answered. "A fool
is the most useful person--for a husband."
Sybil glanced towards Brooks with a little sigh, and, catching a glimpse
of his expression, burst out laughing.
"Mother, you must really not let your tongue run away with you. Mr.
Brooks is believing every word you say. You needn't," she murmured in a
discreet undertone. "Mother and I chaff one another terribly, but we're
really very nicely-behaved persons--for our station in life."
"Lady Caroom has such a delightfully easy way of romancing," Brooks
said.
Sybil nodded.
"It's quite true," she answered. "She ought to write the prospectuses
for gold mines and things."
Arranmore smiled across the table at Brooks.
"This," he said, "is what I have had to endure for the last six weeks.
Do you wonder that I am getting balder, or that I set all my people to
work tonight to try and find some one to suffer with me?"
"He'll be so dull when we've gone," Lady Caroom sighed.
"You've no idea how we've improved him," Sybil murmured. "He used to
read Owen Meredith after dinner, and go to sleep. By the bye, where are
you going when we leave Enton?"
Lord Arranmore hesitated.
"Well, I really am not sure," he said. "You have alarmed me. Don't
go."
Lady Caroom laughed.
"My dear man," she said, "we must! I daren't offend the Redcliffes.
He's my trustee, and he'll never let me overdraw a penny unless I'm
civil to him. If I were you I should go to the Riviera. We'll lend
you our cottage at Lugiano. It has been empty for a year."
"Come and be hostess," he said. "I promise you that I will not hesitate
then."
She shook her head towards Sybil.
"How can I marry that down there?" she demanded. "No young men who are
really respectable go abroad at this time of the year. They are all
hunting or shooting. The Riviera is thronged with roues and invalids
and adventurers, and we don't want any of them. Dear me, what
sacrifices a grown-up daughter does entail. This coming season shall be
your last, Sybil. I won't drag on round again. I'm really getting
ashamed of it."
"Isn't she dreadful?" Sybil murmured to Brooks. "I hope you will come
to Enton before we leave."
"It is very kind of you, Lady Sybil," Brooks said, "but you must
remember that I am not like most of the men you meet. I have to work
hard, especially just now."
"And if I were you I would be thankful for it," she said, warmly. "From
our point of view, at any rate, there is nothing so becoming to a man as
the fact that he is a worker. Sport is an excellent thing, but I detest
young men who do nothing else but shoot and hunt and loaf about. It
seems to me to destroy character where work creates it. All the same, I
hope you will find an opportunity to come to Enton and say good-bye to
us."
Brooks was suddenly conscious that it would be no pleasant thing to say
good-bye to Lady Sybil. He had never known any one like her, so
perfectly frank and girlish, and yet with character enough underneath
in her rare moments of seriousness. More than ever he was struck with
the wonderful likeness between mother and daughter.
"I will come at any time I am asked," he answered, quietly, "but I am
sorry that you are going."
They had finished supper, and had drawn their chairs around the fire.
Arranmore was smoking a cigarette, and Brooks took one from his case.
The carriage was ordered in a quarter of an hour. Brooks found that he
and Sybil were a little apart from the others.
"Do you know, I am sorry too," she declared. "Of course it has been
much quieter at Enton than most of the houses we go to, and we only came
at first, I think, because many years ago my mother and Lord Arranmore
were great friends, and she fancied that he was shutting himself up
too much. But I have enjoyed it very much indeed."
He looked at her curiously. He was trying to appreciate what a life of
refined pleasure which she must live would really be like--how
satisfying--whether its limitations ever asserted themselves. Sybil was
a more than ordinarily pretty girl, but her face was as smooth as a
child's. The Joie de vivre seemed to be always in her eyes. Yet there
were times, as he knew, when she was capable of seriousness.
"I am glad," he said, "Lord Arranmore will miss you."
She laughed at him, her eyebrows raised, a challenge in her bright eyes.
"May I add that I also shall?" he whispered.
"You may," she answered. "In fact, I expected it. I am not sure that I
did not ask for it. And that reminds me. I want you to do me a favour,
if you will."
"Anything I can do for you," he answered, "you know will give me
pleasure."
She laughed softly.
"It is wonderful how you have improved," she murmured. "I want you to
go and see Lord Arranmore as often as you can. We are both very fond of
him really, mamma especially, and you know that he has a very strange
disposition. I am convinced that solitude is the very worst thing for
him. I saw him once after he had been alone for a month or two, and
really you would not have known him. He was as thin as a skeleton,
strange in his manner, and he had that sort of red light in his eyes
sometimes which always makes me think of mad people. He ought not to be
alone at all, but the usual sort of society only bores him. You will do
what you can, won't you?"
"I promise you that most heartily," Brooks declared. "But you must
remember, Lady Sybil, that after all it is entirely in his hands. He
has been most astonishingly kind to me, considering that I have no
manner of claim upon him. He has made me feel at home at Enton, too,
and been most thoughtful in every way. For, after all, you see I am
only his man of business. I have no friends much, and those whom I
have are Medchester people. You see I am scarcely in a position to
offer him my society. But all the same, I will take every opportunity I
can of going to Enton if he remains there."
She thanked him silently. Lady Caroom was on her feet, and Sybil and
she went out for their wraps. Lord Arranmore lit a fresh cigarette and
sent for his bill.
"By the bye, Brooks," he remarked, "one doesn't hear much of your man
Henslow."
"Mr. Bullsom and I were talking about it this evening," Brooks
answered. "We are getting a little anxious.
"You have had seven years of him. You ought to know what to expect."
"The war has blocked all legislation," Brooks said. "It has been the
usual excuse. Henslow was bound to wait. He would have done the
particular measures which we are anxious about more harm than good if he
had tried to force them upon the land. But now it is different. We are
writing to him. If nothing comes of it, Mr. Bullsom and I are going up
to see him."
Arranmore smiled.
"You are young to politics, Brooks," he remarked, "yet I should scarcely
have thought that you would have been imposed upon by such a man as
Henslow. He is an absolute fraud. I heard him speak once, and I read
two of his speeches. It was sufficient. The man is not in earnest. He
has some reason, I suppose, for wishing to write M.P. after his name,
but I am perfectly certain that he has not the slightest idea of
carrying out his pledges to you. You will have to take up politics,
Brooks."
He laughed--a little consciously.
"Some day," he said, "the opportunity may come. I will confess that
it is amongst my ambitions. But I have many years' work before me yet."
Lord Arranmore paid the bill, and they joined the women. As Brooks
stood bareheaded upon the pavement Arranmore turned towards him.
"We must have a farewell dinner," he said. "How would to-morrow suit
you--or Sunday?"
"I should like to walk over on Sunday, if I might," Brooks answered,
promptly.
"We shall expect you to lunch. Good-night."
The carriage drove off. Brooks walked thoughtfully through the silent
streets to his rooms.