table smoking one of Lord Metroland’s cigars and holding the telephone.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know you were here. Just thought I’d use
the telephone. So sorry. Won’t disturb you. Jolly party, isn’t it?
Good-bye.’
‘Stay exactly where you are,’ said Father Rothschild, ‘and take off that
beard.’
‘Damned if I do,’ said the stranger crossly. ‘It’s no use talking to me
as though I were one of your choir boys . . . you old _bully_.’
‘Take off that beard,’ said Father Rothschild.
‘Take off that beard,’ said Lord Metroland and the Prime Minister,
emerging suddenly from behind the curtain.
This concurrence of Church and State, coming so unexpectedly after an
evening of prolonged embarrassment, was too much for Simon.
‘Oh, all right,’ he said, ‘if you _will_ make such a _thing_ about it
. . . it hurts too frightfully, if you knew . . . it ought to be soaked
in hot water . . . ooh . . . ow.’
He gave some tugs at the black curls, and bit by bit they came away.
‘_There_’, he said. ‘Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off
her wig. . . . I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about
it, if I were you.’
‘I seem to have over-estimated the gravity of the situation,’ said
Father Rothschild.
‘Who is it, after all this?’ said Mr Outrage. ‘Where are those
detectives? What does it all mean?’
‘That’ said Father Rothschild bitterly, ‘is _Mr Chatterbox_.’
‘Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person. . . .
_Chatterbox_, indeed . . . you make us hide behind a curtain and then
you tell us that some young man in a false beard is called Chatterbox.
Really, Rothschild . . .’
‘Lord Balcairn,’ said Lord Metroland, ‘will you kindly leave my house
immediately?’
‘_Is_ this young man called Chatterbox or is he not? . . . Upon my soul,
I believe you’re all crazy.’
‘Oh yes, I’m going,’ said Simon. ‘You didn’t think I was going to go
back to the party like this, did you?—or did you?’ Indeed, he looked
very odd with little patches of black hair still adhering to parts of
his chin and cheeks.
‘Lord Monomark is here this evening. I shall certainly inform him of
your behaviour . . .’
‘He writes for the papers,’ Father Rothschild tried to explain to the
Prime Minister.
‘Well, damn it, so do I, but I don’t wear a false beard and call myself
Chatterbox. . . . I simply do not understand what has happened. . . .
Where are those detectives? . . . Will no one explain? . . . _You treat
me like a child_,’ he said. It was all like one of those Cabinet
meetings, when they all talked about something he didn’t understand and
paid no attention to him.
Father Rothschild led him away, and attempted with almost humiliating
patience and tact to make clear to him some of the complexities of
modern journalism.
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ the Prime Minister kept saying. ‘It’s
all humbug. You’re keeping something back. . . . _Chatterbox_, indeed.’
Simon Balcairn was given his hat and coat and shown to the door. The
crowd round the awning had dispersed. It was still raining. He walked
back to his little flat in Bourdon Street. The rain washed a few of the
remaining locks from his face; it dripped down his collar.
They were washing a car outside his front door; he crept between it and
his dustbin, fitted his latchkey in the lock and went upstairs. His flat
was like _Chez Espinosa_—all oilcloth and Lalique glass; there were
some enterprising photographs by David Lennox, a gramophone (on the
instalment system) and numberless cards of invitation on the
mantelpiece. His bath towel was where he had left it on his bed.
Simon went to the ice box in the kitchen and chipped off some ice. Then
he made himself a cocktail. Then he went to the telephone.
‘Central ten thousand . . .’ he said. ‘. . . give me Mrs Brace. Hullo,
this is Balcairn.’
‘Well . . . gotcher story?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve got my story, only this isn’t gossip, it’s news—front
page. You’ll have to fill up the Chatterbox page on Espinosa’s.’
‘Hell!’
‘Wait till you see the story. . . . Hullo, give me news, will you. . . .
This is Balcairn. Put on one of the boys to take this down, will you?
. . . ready? All right.’
At his glass-topped table, sipping his cocktail, Simon Balcairn dictated
his last story.
‘_Scenes of wild religious enthusiasm, comma, reminiscent of a negro
camp-meeting in Southern America, comma, broke out in the heart of
Mayfair yesterday evening at the party given for the famous American
Revivalist Mrs Ape by the Viscountess Metroland, formerly the Hon. Mrs
Beste-Chetwynd, at her historic mansion, Pastmaster House, stop. The
magnificent ballroom can never have enshrined a more brilliant assembly
. . ._’
It was his swan-song. Lie after monstrous lie bubbled up in his brain.
‘_. . . The Hon. Agatha Runcible joined Mrs Ape among the orchids and
led the singing, tears coursing down her face . . ._’
Excitement spread at the _Excess_ office. The machines were stopped. The
night staff of reporters, slightly tipsy, as always at that hour, stood
over the stenographer as he typed. The compositors snatched the sheets
of copy as they came. The sub-editors began ruthlessly cutting and
scrapping; they suppressed important political announcements, garbled
the evidence at a murder trial, reduced the dramatic criticism to one
caustic paragraph, to make room for Simon’s story.
It came through ‘hot and strong, as nice as mother makes it,’ as one of
them remarked.
‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’s on a good thing at last,’ said another.
‘What-ho,’ said a third appreciatively.
‘_. . . barely had Lady Everyman finished before the Countess of
Throbbing rose to confess her sins, and in a voice broken with emotion
disclosed the hitherto unverified details of the parentage of the
present Earl. . . ._’
‘Tell Mr Edwardes to look up photographs of all three of ’em,’ said the
assistant news editor.
‘_. . . The Marquess of Vanburgh shaken by sobs of contrition . . . .
Mrs Panrast, singing feverishly. . . . Lady Anchorage with downcast
eyes._’
‘_. . . The Archbishop of Canterbury, who up to now had remained unmoved
by the general emotion, then testified that at Eton in the ’eighties he
and Sir James Brown . . ._’
‘_. . . the Duchess of Stayle next threw down her emerald and diamond
tiara, crying “a Guilt Offering”, an example which was quickly followed
by the Countess of Circumference and Lady Brown, until a veritable rain
of precious stones fell on to the parquet flooring, heirlooms of
priceless value rolling among Tecla pearls and Chanel diamonds. A blank
cheque fluttered from the hands of the Maharajah of Pukkapore . . ._’
It made over two columns, and when Simon finally rang off, after
receiving the congratulations of his colleagues, he was for the first
time in his journalistic experience perfectly happy about his work. He
finished the watery dregs of the cocktail shaker and went into the
kitchen. He shut the door and the window and opened the door of the gas
oven. Inside it was very black and dirty and smelled of meat. He spread
a sheet of newspaper on the lowest tray and lay down, resting his head
on it. Then he noticed that by some mischance he had chosen Vanburgh’s
gossip-page in the _Morning Despatch_. He put in another sheet. (There
were crumbs on the floor.) Then he turned on the gas. It came
surprisingly with a loud roar; the wind of it stirred his hair and the
remaining particles of his beard. At first he held his breath. Then he
thought that was silly and gave a sniff. The sniff made him cough, and
coughing made him breathe, and breathing made him feel very ill; but
soon he fell into a coma and presently died.
So the last Earl of Balcairn went, as they say, to his fathers (who had
fallen in many lands and for many causes, as the eccentricities of
British Foreign Policy and their own wandering natures had directed
them; at Acre and Agincourt and Killiecrankie, in Egypt and America. One
had been picked white by fishes as the tides rolled him among the
tree-tops of a submarine forest; some had grown black and unfit for
consideration under tropical suns; while many of them lay in marble
tombs of extravagant design).
At Pastmaster House, Lady Metroland and Lord Monomark were talking about
him. Lord Monomark was roaring with boyish laughter.
‘That’s a great lad,’ he said. ‘Came in a false beard, did he? That’s
peppy. What’d you say his name was? I’ll raise him to-morrow first
thing.’
And he turned to give Simon’s name to an attendant secretary.
And when Lady Metroland began to expostulate, he shut her up rather
discourteously.
‘Shucks, Margot,’ he said. ‘You know better than to get on a high horse
with me.’
_Chapter Seven_
Then Adam became Mr Chatterbox. He and Nina were lunching at Espinosa’s
and quarrelling half-heartedly when a business-like, Eton-cropped woman
came across to their table, whom Adam recognized as the social editress
of the _Daily Excess_.
‘See here,’ she said, ‘weren’t you over at the office with Balcairn the
day he did himself in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, a pretty mess he’s let us in for. Sixty-two writs for libel up to
date and more coming in. And that’s not the worst. Left me to do his job
and mine. I was wondering if you could tell me the names of any of these
people and anything about them.’
Adam pointed out a few well-worn faces.
‘Yes, they ain’t no good. They’re on the black list. You see, Monomark
was in an awful way about Balcairn’s story of Lady Metroland’s party,
and he’s sent down a chit that none of the people who are bringing
actions against the paper can be mentioned again. Well, I ask you,
what’s one to do? It’s just bricks without straw. Why, we can’t even
mention the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. I suppose
you don’t know of any one who’d care to take on the job? They’d have to
be a pretty good mutt, if they would.’
‘What do they pay?’
‘Ten pounds a week and expenses. Know any one?’
‘I’d do it myself for that.’
‘_You?_’ The social editress looked at him sceptically. ‘Would you be
any good?’
‘I’ll try for a week or two.’
‘That’s about as long as any one sticks it. All right, come back to the
office with me when you’ve finished lunch. You can’t cause more trouble
than Balcairn, anyhow, and he looked the goods at first.’
‘Now we can get married,’ said Nina.
Meanwhile the libel actions against the authors, printers and publishers
of Simon Balcairn’s last story practically paralysed the judicial system
of the country. The old brigade, led by Mrs Blackwater, threw themselves
with relish into an orgy of litigation such as they had not seen since
the war (one of the younger counsel causing Lady Throbbing particular
delight. . . . ‘I do think, when you get to my age, dear, there is
something _sympathetique_ about a wig, don’t you? . . .’). The younger
generation for the most part allowed their cases to be settled out of
court and later gave a very delightful party on the proceeds in a
captive dirigible. Miss Runcible, less well advised, filled two albums
with Press cuttings portraying her various appearances at the Law
Courts, sometimes as plaintiff, sometimes as witness, sometimes (in a
hat borrowed from Miss Mouse) as part of the queue of ‘fashionably
dressed women waiting for admission’, once as an intruder being removed
by an usher from the Press gallery, and finally as prisoner being
sentenced to a fine of ten pounds or seven days’ imprisonment for
contempt of court.
The proceedings were considerably complicated by the behaviour of Mrs
Ape, who gave an interview in which she fully confirmed Simon Balcairn’s
story. She also caused her Press agent to wire a further account to all
parts of the world. She then left the country with her angels, having
received a sudden call to ginger up the religious life of Oberammergau.
At intervals letters arrived from Buenos Aires in which Chastity and
Divine Discontent spoke rather critically of Latin American
entertainment.
‘They didn’t know when they was well off,’ said Mrs Ape.
‘It don’t sound much different from us,’ said Creative Endeavour
wistfully.
‘They won’t be dead five minutes before _they_ see the difference,’ said
Mrs Ape.
Edward Throbbing and two secretaries returned to Hertford Street
somewhat inopportunely for Miles and his dirt-track racer, who were
obliged to move into Shepheard’s. Miles said that the thing he resented
about his brother’s return was not so much the inconvenience as the
expense. For some weeks Throbbing suffered from the successive
discoveries by his secretaries of curious and compromising things in all
parts of the house; his butler, too, seemed changed. He hiccoughed
heavily while serving dinner to two Secretaries of State, complained of
spiders in his bath and the sound of musical instruments, and finally
had ‘the horrors’, ran mildly amok in the pantry with the kitchen poker,
and had to be taken away in a van. Long after these immediate causes of
distress had been removed, the life of Throbbing’s secretaries was
periodically disturbed by ambiguous telephone calls and the visits of
menacing young men who wanted new suits or tickets to America, or a
fiver to go on with.
But all these events, though of wide general interest, are of necessity
a closed book to the readers of Mr Chatterbox’s page.
Lord Monomark’s black list had made a devastating change in the
personnel of the _Daily Excess_ gossip. In a single day Mr Chatterbox’s
readers found themselves plunged into a murky underworld of nonentities.
They were shown photographs of the misshapen daughters of backwoods
peers carrying buckets of meal to their fathers’ chickens; they learned
of the engagement of the younger sister of the Bishop of Chertsey and of
a dinner party given in Elm Park Gardens by the widow of a High
Commissioner to some of the friends she had made in their colony. There
were details of the blameless home life of women novelists, photographed
with their spaniels before rose-covered cottages; stories of
undergraduate ‘rags’ and regimental reunion dinners; anecdotes from
Harley Street and the Inns of Court; snaps and snippets about cocktail
parties given in basement flats by spotty announcers at the B.B.C., of
tea dances in Gloucester Terrace and jokes made at High Table by dons.
Urged on by the taunts of the social editress, Adam brought new
enterprise and humanity into this sorry column. He started a series of
‘Notable Invalids’, which was from the first, wildly successful. He
began chattily. ‘_At a dinner party the other evening my neighbour and I
began to compile a list of the most popular deaf peeresses. First, of
course, came old Lady ——. . ._’
Next day he followed it up with a page about deaf peers and statesmen;
then about the one-legged, blind and bald. Postcards of appreciation
poured in from all over the country.
‘_I have read your column for many years now_,’ wrote a correspondent
from Bude, ‘_but this is the first time I have really enjoyed it. I have
myself been deaf for a long time, and it is a great comfort to me to
know that my affliction is shared by so many famous men and women. Thank
you, Mr Chatterbox, and good luck to you._’
Another wrote: ‘_Ever since childhood I have been cursed with abnormally
large ears which have been a source of ridicule to me and a serious
handicap in my career (I am a chub fuddler). I should be so glad to know
whether any great people have suffered in the same way._’
Finally, he ransacked the lunatic asylums and mental houses of the
country, and for nearly a week ran an extremely popular series under the
heading ‘Titled Eccentrics’.
‘_It is not generally known that the Earl of ——, who lives in strict
retirement, has the unusual foible of wearing costume of the Napoleonic
Period. So great, indeed, is his detestation of modern dress that on one
occasion . . ._’
‘_Lord ——, whose public appearances are regrettably rare nowadays, is
a close student of comparative religions. There is an amusing story of
how, when lunching with the then Dean of Westminster, Lord —— startled
his host by proclaiming that so far from being of divine ordinance, the
Ten Commandments were, in point of fact, composed by himself and
delivered by him to Moses on Sinai. . . ._’
‘_Lady ——, whose imitations of animal sounds are so lifelike that she
can seldom be persuaded to converse in any other way, . . ._’
And so on.
Besides this, arguing that people did not really mind _whom_ they read
about provided that a kind of vicarious inquisitiveness into the lives
of others was satisfied, Adam began to invent people.
He invented a sculptor called Provna, the son of a Polish nobleman, who
lived in a top-floor studio in Grosvenor House. Most of his work (which
was all in private hands) was constructed in cork, vulcanite and steel.
The Metropolitan Museum at New York, Mr Chatterbox learned, had been
negotiating for some time to purchase a specimen, but so far had been
unable to outbid the collectors.
Such is the power of the Press, that soon after this a steady output of
early Provnas began to travel from Warsaw to Bond Street and from Bond
Street to California, while Mrs Hoop announced to her friends that
Provna was at the moment at work on a bust of Johnny, which she intended
to present to the nation (a statement which Adam was unable to record
owing to the presence of Mrs Hoop’s name on the black list, but which
duly appeared, under a photograph of Johnny, in the Marquess of
Vanburgh’s rival column).
Encouraged by his success, Adam began gradually to introduce to his
readers a brilliant and lovely company. He mentioned them casually at
first in lists of genuine people. There was a popular young attaché at
the Italian Embassy called Count Cincinnati. He was descended from the
famous Roman Consul, Cincinnatus, and bore a plough as his crest. Count
Cincinnati was held to be the best amateur ’cellist in London. Adam saw
him one evening dancing at the Café de la Paix. A few evenings later
Lord Vanburgh noticed him at Covent Garden, remarking that his
collection of the original designs for the Russian ballet was unequalled
in Europe. Two days later Adam sent him to Monte Carlo for a few days’
rest, and Vanburgh hinted that there was more in this visit than met the
eye, and mentioned the daughter of a well-known American hostess who was
staying there at her aunt’s villa.
There was a Captain Angus Stuart-Kerr, too, whose rare appearances in
England were a delight to his friends; unlike most big-game hunters, he
was an expert and indefatigable dancer. Much to Adam’s disgust he found
Captain Stuart-Kerr taken up by an unknown gossip writer in a twopenny,
illustrated weekly, who saw him at a point-to-point meeting, and
remarked that he was well known as the hardest rider in the Hebrides.
Adam put a stop to that next day.
‘_Some people_,’ he wrote, ‘_are under the impression that Captain Angus
Stuart-Kerr, whom I mentioned on this page a short time ago, is a keen
rider. Perhaps they are confusing him with Alastair Kerr-Stuart, of
Inverauchty, a very distant cousin. Captain Stuart-Kerr never rides, and
for a very interesting reason. There is an old Gaelic rhyme repeated
among his clansmen which says in rough translation “the Laird rides well
on two legs”. Tradition has it that when the head of the house mounts a
horse the clan will be dispersed._’[C]
-----
[C] This story, slightly expanded, found its way later into a volume of
Highland Legends called _Tales from the Mist_, which has been approved
to be read in elementary schools. This shows the difference between what
is called a ‘living’ as opposed to a ‘dead’ folk tradition.
-----
But Adam’s most important creation was Mrs Andrew Quest. There was
always some difficulty about introducing English people into his column
as his readers had a way of verifying his references in Debrett (as he
knew to his cost, for one day, having referred to the engagement of the
third and youngest daughter of a Welsh baronet, he received six
postcards, eighteen telephone calls, a telegram and a personal visit of
protest to inform him that there are two equally beautiful sisters still
in the schoolroom. The social editress had been scathing about this).
However, he put Imogen Quest down one day, quietly and decisively, as
the most lovely and popular of the younger married set. And from the
first she exhibited signs of a marked personality. Adam wisely eschewed
any attempts at derivation, but his readers nodded to each other and
speedily supplied her with an exalted if irregular origin. Everything
else Adam showered upon her. She had slightly more than average height,
and was very dark and slim, with large Laurencin eyes and the negligent
grace of the trained athlete (she fenced with the sabre for half an hour
every morning before breakfast). Even Provna, who was notoriously
indifferent to conventional beauty, described her as ‘justifying the
century’.
Her clothes were incomparable, with just that suggestion of the
haphazard which raised them high above the mere _chic_ of the mannequin.
Her character was a lovely harmony of contending virtues—she was witty
and tender hearted; passionate and serene, sensual and temperate,
impulsive and discreet.
Her set, the most intimate and brilliant in Europe, achieved a superb
mean between those two poles of savagery Lady Circumference and Lady
Metroland.
Soon Imogen Quest became a byword for social inaccessibility—the final
goal for all climbers.
Adam went one day to a shop in Hanover Square to watch Nina buy some
hats and was seriously incommoded by the heaps of bandboxes disposed on
the chairs and dressing-tables ostentatiously addressed to Mrs Andrew
Quest. He could hear her name spoken reverently in cocktail clubs, and
casually let slip in such phrases as ‘My dear, I never see Peter now. He
spends all his time with Imogen Quest,’ or ‘As Imogen would say . . .’
or ‘I think the Quests have got one like that. I must ask them where it
came from.’ And this knowledge on the intangible Quest set, moving among
them in uncontrolled dignity of life, seemed to leaven and sweeten the
lives of Mr Chatterbox’s readers.
One day Imogen gave a party, the preparations for which occupied several
paragraphs. On the following day Adam found his table deep in letters of
complaint from gate-crashers who had found the house in Seamore Place
untenanted.
Finally a message came down that Lord Monomark was interested in Mrs
Quest; could Mr Chatterbox arrange a meeting. That day the Quests sailed
for Jamaica.
Adam also attempted in an unobtrusive way to exercise some influence
over the clothes of his readers. ‘_I noticed at the Café de la Paix
yesterday evening_,’ he wrote, ‘_that two of the smartest men in the
room were wearing black suède shoes with their evening clothes—one of
them, who shall be nameless, was a Very Important Person indeed. I hear
that this fashion, which comes, like so many others, from New York, is
likely to become popular over here this season._’ A few days later he
mentioned Captain Stuart-Kerr’s appearance at the Embassy ‘_wearing, of
course, the ultra-fashionable black suède shoes_’. In a week he was
gratified to notice that Johnny Hoop and Archie Schwert had both
followed Captain Stuart-Kerr’s lead, while in a fortnight the big
emporiums of ready-made clothes in Regent Street had transposed their
tickets in the windows and arranged rows of black suède shoes on a
silver step labelled ‘For evening wear’.
His attempt to introduce a bottle-green bowler hat, however, was not
successful; in fact, a ‘well-known St James’s Street hatter’, when
interviewed by an evening paper on the subject, said that he had never
seen or heard of such a thing, and though he would not refuse to
construct one if requested to by an old customer, he was of the opinion
that no old customer of his would require a hat of that kind (though
there was a sad case of an impoverished old beau who attempted to stain
a grey hat with green ink, as once in years gone by he had been used to
dye the carnation for his buttonhole).