misleading. With sultanesque caprice Adam would tell his readers of
inaccessible eating-houses which were now the centre of fashion; he
drove them to dance in temperance hotels in Bloomsbury. In a paragraph
headed ‘Montparnasse in Belgravia’, he announced that the buffet at
Sloane Square tube station had become the haunt of the most modern
artistic coterie (Mr Benfleet hurried there on his first free evening,
but saw no one but Mrs Hoop and Lord Vanburgh and a plebeian topper with
a celluloid collar).
As a last resort, on those hopeless afternoons when invention failed and
that black misanthropy settled on him which waits alike on gossip writer
and novelist, Adam sometimes found consolation in seizing upon some
gentle and self-effacing citizen and transfiguring him with a blaze of
notoriety.
He did this with a man called Ginger.
As part of his duties, which led him into many unusual places, Adam and
Nina went up to Manchester for the November Handicap. Here they had the
disheartening experience of seeing Indian Runner come in an easy winner
and the totalisator paying out thirty-five to one. It was during the
bottle-green bowler campaign, and Adam was searching in vain for any
sign of his influence when, suddenly, among the crowd, he saw the genial
red face of the drunk Major to whom he had entrusted his thousand pounds
at Lottie’s. It seemed odd that a man so bulky could be so elusive. Adam
was not sure whether the Major saw him, but in some mysterious way
Adam’s pursuit coincided with the Major’s complete disappearance. The
crowd became very dense, brandishing flasks and sandwiches. When Adam
reached the spot where the Major had stood he found two policemen
arresting a pickpocket.
‘’Ere, who are you pushing?’ asked the spectators.
‘Have you seen a drunk Major anywhere?’ asked Adam.
But no one could help him, and he returned disconsolately to Nina, whom
he found in conversation with a young man with a curly red moustache.
The young man said he was fed up with racing, and Adam said he was too;
so the young man said why didn’t they come back to London in his bus, so
Adam and Nina said they would. The bus turned out to be a very large,
brand-new racing car, and they got to London in time for dinner. Nina
explained that the young man used to play with her as a child, and that
he had been doing something military in Ceylon for the last five years.
The young man’s name was Eddy Littlejohn, but over dinner he said, look
here, would they call him Ginger; every one else did. So they began to
call him Ginger, and he said wouldn’t it be a good idea if they had
another bottle of fizz, and Nina and Adam said yes, it would, so they
had a magnum and got very friendly.
‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘it was awful luck meeting you two to-day. I
was getting awfully fed up with London. It’s so damn slow. I came back
meaning to have a good time, you know, paint the place red a bit, and
all that. Well, the other day I was reading the paper, and there was a
bit that said that the posh place to go to dance nowadays was the
Casanova Hotel in Bloomsbury. Well, it seemed a bit rum to me—place I’d
never heard of, you know—but, still, I’d been away for some time and
places change and all that, so I put on my bib and tucker and toddled
off, hoping for a bit of innocent amusement. Well, I mean to say, you
never saw such a place. There were only about three people dancing, so I
said, “Where’s the bar?” And they said, “Bar!” And I said, “You know,
for a drink.” And they said, well, they could probably make me some
coffee. And I said, “No, not coffee.” And then they said they hadn’t got
a licence for what they called alcohol. Well, I mean to say, if that’s
the best London can do, give me Colombo. I wonder who writes things like
that in the papers?’
‘As a matter of fact, _I_ do.’
‘I say no, do you? You must be frightfully brainy. Did you write all
that about the green bowlers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I mean to say, whoever heard of a green bowler, I mean. . . . I
tell you what, you know, I believe it was all a leg pull. You know, I
think that’s damn funny. Why, a whole lot of poor mutts may have gone
and bought green bowlers.’
After this they went on to the Café de la Paix, where they met Johnny
Hoop, who asked them all to the party in a few days’ time in the captive
balloon.
But Ginger was not to be had twice.
‘Oh, no you know,’ he said, ‘not in a captive balloon. You’re trying to
pull the old leg again. Whoever heard of a party in a captive balloon? I
mean to say, suppose one fell out, I mean?’
Adam telephoned his page through to the _Excess_, and soon after this a
coloured singer appeared, paddling his black suède shoes in a pool of
limelight, who excited Ginger’s disapproval. He didn’t mind niggers,
Ginger said; remarking justly that niggers were all very well in their
place, but, after all, one didn’t come all the way from Colombo to
London just to see niggers. So they left the Café de la Paix, and went
to Lottie’s, where Ginger became a little moody, saying that London
wasn’t home to him any more and that things were changed.
‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘all the time I’ve been out in Ceylon I’ve
always said to myself, “As soon as the governor kicks the bucket, and I
come in for the family doubloons and pieces of eight, I’m going to come
back to England and have a real old bust.” And now when it comes to the
point there doesn’t seem to be anything I much want to do.’
‘How about a little drink?’ said Lottie.
So Ginger had a drink, and then he and an American sang the Eton Boating
Song several times. At the end of the evening he admitted that there was
some life left in the jolly old capital of the Empire.
Next day Mr Chatterbox’s readers learned that: ‘_Captain “Ginger”
Littlejohn, as he is known to his intimates, was one of the well-known
sporting figures at the November Handicap who favoured the new
bottle-green bowler. Captain Littlejohn is one of the wealthiest and
best-known bachelors in Society, and I have lately heard his name spoken
of in connection with the marriage of the daughter of a famous ducal
house. He came all the way to yesterday’s races in his own motor
omnibus, which he drives himself . . ._’
For some days Ginger’s name figured largely on Adam’s page, to his
profound embarrassment. Several engagements were predicted for him, it
was rumoured that he had signed a contract with a film company, that he
had bought a small island in the Bristol Channel which he proposed to
turn into a country club, and that his forthcoming novel about Singalese
life contained many very thinly disguised portraits of London
celebrities.
But the green bowler joke had gone too far. Adam was sent for by Lord
Monomark.
‘Now see here, Symes,’ said the great man, ‘I like your page. It’s
peppy; it’s got plenty of new names in it and it’s got the intimate
touch I like. I read it every day and so does my daughter. Keep on that
way and you’ll be all right. But _what’s all this about bottle-green
bowlers_?’
‘Well, of course, sir, they’re only worn by a limited number of people
at present, but . . .’
‘Have you got one? Show me a green bowler.’
‘I don’t wear one myself, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, where d’you see ’em? I haven’t seen one yet. My daughter hasn’t
seen one. Who does wear ’em? Where do they buy ’em? That’s what I want
to know. Now see here, Symes, I don’t say that there ain’t any such
thing as a green bowler; there may be and again there mayn’t. But from
now on there are going to be no more bottle-green bowlers in my paper.
See. And another thing. This Count Cincinnati. I don’t say _he_ doesn’t
exist. He may do and he mayn’t. But the Italian Ambassador doesn’t know
anything about him and the Almanak de Gotha doesn’t. So as far as my
paper goes that’s good enough for him. And I don’t want any more about
Espinosa’s. They made out my bill wrong last night.
‘Got those three things clear? Tabulate them in the mind—1, 2, 3,
that’s the secret of memory. Tab-u-late. All right, then, run along now
and tell the Home Secretary he can come right in. You’ll find him
waiting in the passage—ugly little man with a pince-nez.’
_Chapter Eight_
Two nights later Adam and Nina took Ginger to the party in the captive
dirigible. It was not a really good evening. The long drive in Ginger’s
car to the degraded suburb where the airship was moored chilled and
depressed them, dissipating the gaiety which had flickered rather
spasmodically over Ginger’s dinner.
The airship seemed to fill the whole field, tethered a few feet from the
ground by innumerable cables over which they stumbled painfully on the
way to the steps. These had been covered by a socially minded caterer
with a strip of red carpet.
Inside, the saloons were narrow and hot, communicating to each other by
spiral staircases and metal alleys. There were protrusions at every
corner, and Miss Runcible had made herself a mass of bruises in the
first half hour. There was a band and a bar and all the same faces. It
was the first time that a party was given in an airship.
Adam went aloft to a kind of terrace. Acres of inflated silk blotted out
the sky, stirring just perceptibly in the breeze. The lights of other
cars arriving lit up the uneven grass. A few louts had collected round
the gates to jeer. There were two people making love to each other near
him on the terrace, reclining on cushions. There was also a young woman
he did not know, holding one of the stays and breathing heavily;
evidently she felt unwell. One of the lovers lit a cigar and Adam
observed that they were Mary Mouse and the Maharajah of Pukkapore.
Presently Nina joined him. ‘It seems such a waste,’ she said, thinking
of Mary and the Maharajah, ‘that two very rich people like that should
fall in love with each other.’
‘Nina,’ said Adam, ‘let’s get married soon, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, it’s a bore not being married.’
The young woman who felt ill passed by them, walking shakily, to try and
find her coat and her young man to take her home.
‘. . . I don’t know if it sounds absurd,’ said Adam, ‘but I do feel that
a marriage ought to _go on_—for quite a long time, I mean. D’you feel
that too, at all?’
‘Yes, it’s one of the things about a marriage!’
‘I’m glad you feel that. I didn’t quite know if you did. Otherwise it’s
all rather bogus, isn’t it?’
‘I think you ought to go and see papa again,’ said Nina. ‘It’s never any
good writing. Go and tell him that you’ve got a job and are terribly
rich and that we’re going to be married before Christmas!’
‘All right. I’ll do that.’
‘. . . D’you remember last month we arranged for you to go and see him
the first time? . . . just like this . . . it was at Archie Schwert’s
party . . .’
‘Oh, Nina, _what a lot of parties_.’
(. . . Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties,
Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one
had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood,
parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night
clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea parties at school where one
ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one
drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London
and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris—all that
succession and repetition of massed humanity. . . . Those vile bodies
. . .)
He leant his forehead, to cool it, on Nina’s arm and kissed her in the
hollow of her forearm.
‘I _know_, darling,’ she said, and put her hand on his hair.
Ginger came strutting jauntily by, his hands clasped under his
coat-tails.
‘Hullo, you two,’ he said. ‘Pretty good show this, what.’
‘Are you enjoying yourself, Ginger?’
‘_Rather._ I say, I’ve met an awful good chap called Miles. Regular
topper. You know, _pally_. That’s what I like about a really decent
party—you meet such topping fellows. I mean some chaps it takes
absolutely years to know but a chap like Miles I feel is a pal straight
away.’
Presently cars began to drive away again. Miss Runcible said that she
had heard of a divine night club near Leicester Square somewhere where
you could get a drink at any hour of the night. It was called the St
Christopher’s Social Club.
So they all went there in Ginger’s car.
On the way Ginger said, ‘That cove Miles, you know, he’s awfully _queer_
. . .’
St Christopher’s Social Club took some time to find.
It was a little door at the side of a shop, and the man who opened it
held his foot against it and peeped round.
They paid ten shillings each and signed false names in the visitor’s
book. Then they went downstairs to a very hot room full of cigarette
smoke; there were unsteady tables with bamboo legs round the walls and
there were some people in shirt sleeves dancing on a shiny linoleum
floor.
There was a woman in a yellow beaded frock playing a piano and another
in red playing the fiddle.
They ordered some whisky. The waiter said he was sorry, but he couldn’t
oblige, not that night he couldn’t. The police had just rung up to say
that they were going to make a raid any minute. If they liked they could
have some nice kippers.
Miss Runcible said that kippers were not very drunk-making and that the
whole club seemed bogus to her.
Ginger said well anyway they had better have some kippers now they were
there. Then he asked Nina to dance and she said no. Then he asked Miss
Runcible and she said no, too.
Then they ate kippers.
Presently one of the men in shirt sleeves (who had clearly had a lot to
drink before the St Christopher Social Club knew about the police) came
up to their table and said to Adam:
‘You don’t know me. I’m Gilmour. I don’t want to start a row in front of
ladies, but when I see a howling cad I like to tell him so.’
Adam said, ‘Why do you spit when you talk?’
Gilmour said, ‘That is a very unfortunate physical disability, and it
shows what a howling cad you are that you mention it.’
Then Ginger said, ‘Same to you, old boy, with nobs on.’
Then Gilmour said, ‘Hullo, Ginger, old scout.’
And Ginger said, ‘Why, it’s Bill. You mustn’t mind Bill. Awfully stout
chap. Met him on the boat.’
Gilmour said, ‘Any pal of Ginger’s is a pal of mine.’
So Adam and Gilmour shook hands.
Gilmour said, ‘This is a pretty low joint, anyhow. You chaps come round
to my place and have a drink.’
So they went to Gilmour’s place.
Gilmour’s place was a bed-sitting room in Ryder Street.
So they sat on the bed in Gilmour’s place and drank whisky while Gilmour
was sick next door.
And Ginger said, ‘There’s nowhere like London really you know.’
That same evening while Adam and Nina sat on the deck of the dirigible a
party of quite a different sort was being given at Anchorage House. This
last survivor of the noble town houses of London was, in its time, of
dominating and august dimensions, and even now, when it had become a
mere ‘picturesque bit’ lurking in a ravine between concrete skyscrapers,
its pillared façade, standing back from the street and obscured by
railings and some wisps of foliage, had grace and dignity and
other-worldliness enough to cause a flutter or two in Mrs Hoop’s heart
as she drove into the forecourt.
‘Can’t you just see the _ghosts_? she said to Lady Circumference on the
stairs. ‘Pit and Fox and Burke and Lady Hamilton and Beau Brummel and Dr
Johnson’ (a concurrence of celebrities, it may be remarked, at which
something memorable might surely have occurred). ‘Can’t you just _see_
them—in their buckled shoes?’
Lady Circumference raised her lorgnette and surveyed the stream of
guests debouching from the cloak-rooms like City workers from the
Underground. She saw Mr Outrage and Lord Metroland in consultation about
the Censorship Bill (a statesmanlike and much-needed measure which
empowered a committee of five atheists to destroy all books, pictures
and films they considered undesirable, without any nonsense about
defence or appeal). She saw both Archbishops, the Duke and Duchess of
Stayle, Lord Vanburgh and Lady Metroland, Lady Throbbing and Edward
Throbbing and Mrs Blackwater, Mrs Mouse and Lord Monomark and a superb
Levantine, and behind and about them a great concourse of pious and
honourable people (many of whom made the Anchorage House reception the
one outing of the year), their women-folk well gowned in rich and
durable stuffs, their men-folk ablaze with orders; people who had
represented their country in foreign places and sent their sons to die
for her in battle, people of decent and temperate life, uncultured,
unaffected, unembarrassed, unassuming, unambitious people, of
independent judgment and marked eccentricities, kind people who cared
for animals and the deserving poor, brave and rather unreasonable
people, that fine phalanx of the passing order, approaching as one day
at the Last Trump they hoped to meet their Maker, with decorous and
frank cordiality to shake Lady Anchorage by the hand at the top of her
staircase. Lady Circumference saw all this and sniffed the exhalation of
her own herd. But she saw no ghosts.
‘That’s all my eye,’ she said.
But Mrs Hoop ascended step by step in a confused but very glorious dream
of eighteenth-century elegance.
The Presence of Royalty was heavy as thunder in the drawing-room.
The Baroness Yoshiwara and the Prime Minister met once more.
‘I tried to see you twice this week,’ she said, ‘but always you were
busy. We are leaving London. Perhaps you heard? My husband has been
moved to Washington. It was his wish to go. . .’
‘No. I say, Baroness . . . I had no idea. That’s very bad news. We shall
all miss you terribly.’
‘I thought perhaps I would come to make my adieux. One day next week.’
‘Why, yes, of course, that would be delightful. You must both come to
dine. I’ll get my secretary to fix something up to-morrow.’
‘It has been nice being in London . . . you were kind.’
‘Not a bit. I don’t know what London would be without our guests from
abroad.’
‘Oh, twenty damns to your great pig-face,’ said the Baroness suddenly
and turned away.
Mr Outrage watched her bewildered. Finally he said, ‘For East is East
and West is West and never the twain shall meet’ (which was a poor
conclusion for a former Foreign Secretary).
Edward Throbbing stood talking to the eldest daughter of the Duchess of
Stayle. She was some inches taller than him and inclined slightly so
that, in the general murmur of conversation, she should not miss any of
his colonial experience. She wore a frock such as only Duchesses can
obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and
puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which
her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel. Neither
powder, rouge nor lipstick had played any part in her toilet and her
colourless hair was worn long and bound across her forehead in a broad
fillet. Long pearl drops hung from her ears and she wore a tight little
collar of pearls round her throat. It was generally understood that now
Edward Throbbing was back these two would become engaged to be married.
Lady Ursula was acquiescent if unenthusiastic. When she thought about
marriage at all, which was rarely (for her chief interests were a girls’
club in Canning Town and a younger brother at school), she thought what
a pity it was that one had to be so ill to have children. Her married
friends spoke of this almost with relish and her mother with awe.
An innate dilatoriness of character rather than any doubt of the
ultimate issue kept Edward from verbal proposal. He had decided to
arrange everything before Christmas and that was enough. He had no doubt
that a suitable occasion would soon be devised for him. It was clearly
suitable that he should marry before he was thirty. Now and then when he
was with Ursula he felt a slight quickening of possessive impulse
towards her fragility and distance; occasionally when he read some
rather lubricious novel or saw much love-making on the stage he would
translate the characters in his mind and put Lady Ursula, often
incongruously, in the place of the heroine. He had no doubt that he was
in love. Perhaps he would propose this very evening and get it over. It
was up to Lady Ursula to engineer an occasion. Meanwhile he kept the
conversation on to the subject of labour problems in Montreal, about
which his information was extensive and accurate.
‘He’s a nice, steady boy,’ said the Duchess, ‘and it’s a comfort,
nowadays, to see two young people so genuinely fond of each other. Of
course, nothing is actually arranged yet, but I was talking to Fanny
Throbbing yesterday, and apparently Edward has already spoken to her on
the subject. I think that everything will be settled before Christmas.
Of course, there’s not a great deal of money, but one’s learnt not to
expect that nowadays, and Mr Outrage speaks very highly of his ability.
Quite one of the coming men in the party.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Circumference, ‘you know your own business, but if you
ask me I shouldn’t care to see a daughter of mine marry into that
family. Bad hats every one of them. Look at the father and the sister,
and from all I hear the brother is rotten all through.’
‘I don’t say it’s a match I should have chosen myself. There’s certainly
a bad strain in the Malpractices . . . but you know how headstrong
children are nowadays, and they seem so fond of each other . . . and
there seem so few young men about. At least I never seem to see any.’
‘Young toads, the whole lot of them,’ said Lady Circumference.
‘And these _terrible_ parties which I’m told they give. I don’t know
what I should have done if Ursula had ever wanted to go to them . . .
the poor Chasms. . . .’
‘If I were Viola Chasm I’d give that girl a thunderin’ good hidin’.’
The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a
yawn. Royalty remarked on their absence and those happy mothers who had
even one docile daughter in tow swelled with pride and commiseration.
‘I’m told that they’re having another of their parties,’ said Mrs Mouse,
‘in an aeroplane this time.’
‘In an aeroplane? How very extraordinary.’
‘Of course, I never hear a word from Mary, but her maid told my maid
. . .’
‘What I always wonder, Kitty dear, is what they actually _do_ at these
parties of theirs, I mean, _do_ they . . . ?’
‘My dear, from all I hear, I think they do.’
‘Oh, to be young again, Kitty. When I think, my dear, of all the trouble
and exertion which we had to go through to be even moderately bad . . .
those passages in the early morning, and mama sleeping next door.’
‘And yet, my dear, I doubt very much whether they really _appreciate_ it
all as much as we should . . . young people take things so much for
granted. _Si la jeunesse savait._’
‘_Si la vieillesse pouvait_, Kitty.’
Later that evening Mr Outrage stood almost alone in the supper-room
drinking a glass of champagne. Another episode in his life was closed,
another of those tantalizing glimpses of felicity capriciously
withdrawn. Poor Mr Outrage, thought Mr Outrage; poor, poor old Outrage,
always just on the verge of revelation, of some sublime and
transfiguring experience; always frustrated. . . . Just Prime Minister,
nothing more, bullied by his colleagues, a source of income to low
caricaturists. Was Mr Outrage an immortal soul, thought Mr Outrage; had
he wings, was he free and unconfined, was he born for eternity? He
sipped his champagne, fingered his ribbon of the Order of Merit, and
resigned himself to the dust.
Presently he was joined by Lord Metroland and Father Rothschild.
‘Margot’s left—gone on to some party in an airship. I’ve been talking
to Lady Anchorage for nearly an hour about the younger generation.’
‘Every one seems to have been talking about the younger generation
to-night. The most boring subject I know.’
‘Well, after all, what does all this stand for if there’s going to be no
one to carry it on?’
‘All what?’ Mr Outrage looked round the supper-room, deserted save for
two footmen who leant against the walls looking as waxen as the clumps
of flowers sent up that morning from hothouses in the country. ‘What
does all what stand for?’
‘All this business of government.’
‘As far as I’m concerned it stands for a damned lot of hard work and
precious little in return. If those young people can find a way to get
on without it, good luck to them.’
‘I see what Metroland means,’ said Father Rothschild.