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.’