So the matter dropped from my mind, except that I now and then gave a
thought to Antony's queer idea, how and why on earth he had come to
humble himself so--for that was the way the man would look at it. But I
could not discover a hint of his possible motive until some days later;
when, having asked Iris what he was about, for he hadn't come near me
since that night of his arrival (obviously because he had no present
use for me), she said he seemed to be dashing about the City seeing
people, and, she hoped, profitably: "For I never see him but he has a
pound or more registered on his taxi. But I daren't lecture him in case
he loses his dash, and economises by not going to the City at all. For
I think," she said with a hard look at me, "there's some good to come
out of Antony yet."
So that was it, then--Antony actually was taking something seriously
for once! He really had brought back money schemes, big schemes of
course, needing substantial backing, for like every other spendthrift
he could only think in millions--and that was why he had suddenly found
a use for Roger, the clever boy of the family!
But I dared not tell Iris my idea of Antony's purpose in making up
the quarrel, for she was already surprised and displeased enough by
what she thought my "harsh" attitude about him. "I never knew you to be
so wretchedly biased," she had been surprised into saying; and so she
wouldn't now give much credence to my psychologising of Antony--who was
cunning enough to have realised, maybe from something she had let drop,
that I was in no mood to be again used by him, and therefore did not
come near me.
It was only a few days after Iris had told me of his costly vagabondage
about the City that she informed me, ever so casually, that Roger was
going to give a "Nigel Poole" dinner-party on the Friday night. She
said it so casually that I thought I hadn't heard aright.
"A _what_ party?"
"Oh, come, Ronnie! you know very well that Roger has given a
dinner-party on this particular Friday of every year in honour of Sir
Nigel, the founder of the house of Poole--"
"I know all about old Nigel, and that's a deal too much," I broke in.
"But would you tell me where Roger has kept this annual dinner hidden,
for I've never heard of it in all the years I've known him?"
"That's because of the life you lead," she pointed out. "You are too
recluse, too celibate, too oblivious of the banal festivities of more
frivolous but more human people. And I might add--"
"You might add, my dear, what this dinner is about and what the deuce
Sir Nigel Poole, Bart., and bankrupt, has to do with it?"
"Ronnie, you mustn't be rude about my husband's family--you
know very well that they go to all the best Hunt Balls and that
all-their-people-are-Service-people. And as for the dinner, why! it's
about nothing in particular--what are dinners ever about except a
table? Poor old Nigel Poole is just a kind of plausible excuse to dress
ourselves up in his period and kick our heels up a bit. The only thing
that won't be eighteenth century will be the champagne, unless its
corked--and, of course, you, if you are going to pull a face like that
about it.
"This very moment," she said, "we will go to Clarkson's, where we will
fit you up with a very fine line in gents' eighteenth-century suitings.
And a wig, Ronnie, will lend an intriguing appearance to what I might
call--well, you know, a rather discouraging scarcity...."
As it turned out on the Friday night, it was a very pretty spectacle.
We were a square party of men and women about the long oak table,
five down each side with our host and hostess at each end; and not
one of us but was decked in the finery of _circa_ 1780, and with a
great deal more care and less anachronism than is usually remarkable
in such masquerades. We men silked, breeched, sheathed, ruffled, and
bewigged; and the women with their laces and powdered hair looking to
my mind vastly improved upon their reality. Even Iris, her tawny hair
whitened to the convention and extravagantly retreating from her ears
and forehead to a pinnacle (how in the world she arranged it so I could
never guess!), her little, exquisite features thus quite prominently
lovely, looked less wild and more worldly, as of this world and not
another; altogether of a more demure elegance--an expression which, as
Roger said in brazenly asking us to admire his lady's looks, became her
very prettily.
We were all, it must be understood, talking the speech of the period,
as far as each could remember its conceits and mannerisms. Of course
we all mixed things up a good deal--except Roger, who had insisted
on it from our entrance, and was much more adept at the foolery of
the verbiage. He was in the high good spirits that such make believe
generally put him in; and was always seen in his best light as a host,
as lavish of good humour as of wine, both, of course, flowing the more
readily as the hour increased. And now his consistent and amusing use
of his ancestor's way of speech added a great deal to the fun--in which
Iris was sharing no less than I. Indeed, she has often told me since
that she could have lived smoothly enough with Roger if all life were a
masquerade--for Roger, it seemed, was a man who would take to fineness
as a _beau geste_, where he would see you to the deuce in reality.
Our host, in all his finery of black silks and white laces, was sitting
at the end of the table facing the window; and on the oak panelled wall
on his right, as it were dominating us all, was the only portrait in
the room, a full-length of the host of our fancy: Sir Nigel, the first
baronet, by Gainsborough--a very gallant but misguided gentleman, as
Roger said of him. Misguided indeed, if one can judge by what mention
of him can be found in the more obscure annals of his time (for Sir
Nigel's fame among his contemporaries was not such as to ensure its
perpetuity by even the least responsible historian); a rake who turned
his coat this way and that to suit his interests just a little too
outrageously even for that period, won and as discreditably lost a
fortune or two; who was adjudged a sot and bankrupt, and then half
confounded opinion by certain strategies of war which had nearly won
us back our American colonies but for highly-placed incompetence; and
in the end had surely won a higher prize than a paltry baronetcy but
for his incurable passion for double-dealing, in which, as the years
and the bottle took him, his wits seem to have lost much of their
dexterity. His figure stared down at us now, stout, flushed, and rather
blatant, and genial enough but for something dour about the cast of
his eyes; and with very little such damned nonsense as cultivation
about him, but a great deal of jaw.... He had come, I thought, by a
rare honour: such a one as is not often lavished on many worthier
shades--and, as I looked round at the glasses and the flushed faces of
the company, an honour done in no other way than that which Sir Nigel
himself would have chosen.
Much was said that amused us that night which, if repeated now outside
that setting, would naturally make but a very pale and artificial
show.... It was past eleven and we were still about the table, when I
saw Roger almost furtively raise a glass to the portrait and carry it
to his lips; but as he did so he caught my eye on him, and at once set
the glass down untouched.
"I stand rebuked, Ronnie. It would become us all to share this
toast--to Sir Nigel!" And with that he jumped up in his place and held
his glass up.
"_Caballeros!_" he gravely addressed us. "There is but one thing
to-night that would surprise our host on the wall and in our hearts,
but would add vastly to his pleasure at our entertainment--that the
ladies will toast him with us! But let it be as you sit, and in
silence--Silence, the only God Sir Nigel never worshipped!" We drank.
"Nay, Sir Roger, you do me a great injustice! I was perforce often
silent--and close on this very hour."
We all slewed round at the voice from the window.
"My God! The very man!" cried young Riverdale.
And it was--Sir Nigel as ever he lived, or rather, was painted! Heady
with wine though we may have been--the very man himself surely stood
there! The likeness was scrupulous, the resemblance of face alone, as
he stood surveying us from the open window with his hat carried as in
the portrait, was startling, ludicrous. The colour of the clothes,
the very feather in the hat, were as though taken from the oil of
the portrait; not one thing was amiss in the disguise, not even that
well-dined look of Sir Nigel's time!
A full half-minute must have passed in startled, amused silence, while
we all stared at the apparition, and he handsomely stared back at
us--we all except Iris who, I saw from the corner of my eye, had not
turned in her chair at the voice, but was looking straightly in front
of her, a little crooked smile about her mouth. The reason for the
"Nigel Poole" party, which she had suggested to Roger, was now well
out! And, still in that half-minute, I twisted my head to take stock of
our host standing at his end of the table--and, I don't quite know why,
was amazed to see that he was not looking at Antony but at his wife,
thoughtfully, ever so thoughtfully, just for a second....
Antony's smile was mainly to Roger, and after the first second he
was wonderfully answered. Roger let drop his empty glass so that
it shattered on the table, then strode across the room towards his
brother, both hands outstretched to meet him.
"Welcome to my house, Sir Nigel," said he, and the brothers very
handsomely took each the other's hands.
[I never thought to see two grown men enjoy tomfoolery so seriously as
did these two brothers from this moment on.]
"You do me a great honour," continued Roger as he led his brother
towards us, "but you also put me to a degree of shame--"
"Why, sir, I never yet shamed any man by my presence in his house!" And
the blustering cry, one knew, might as well have been Sir Nigel's as
Red Antony's.
"I meant no such reflection," Roger protested smoothly. "I am merely
shamed that you did not trust my hospitality some hours before, so that
you could have been of our company over dinner."
"I protest, Sir Roger, that you make me too welcome! But I assure you
we keep a very good table in the place I come from--" (And it was
obvious enough that Antony had dined as extremely well as the heartiest
of us.)
"And that, had I known of this honour, I would have asked one the
less--for you, Sir Nigel, will now make the thirteenth about the table."
(I'll bet Iris never thought of that, though!)
"Egad, I play in luck to-night, then! For I'd have you know, Sir, that
thirteen is a number much favoured in the place I've just left."
By now they had reached Roger's end of the table and stood there, the
objects of our very amused attention. And a fine pair of men they made,
those brothers!
"I'll present the company to you--" Roger was saying when Antony took
him quickly up.
"Nay, nay--let them be! I dare swear that none will be so abashed as
not to reveal themselves aptly enough!" And at that he sent a great
laugh rocking down the table, a magnificent laugh, an epic laugh,
explaining himself and us, waving and rocking among the multitude of
glasses--which, to my heated fancy, seemed to clink as at the hail of
one they knew to be their master.
Only Roger among us did not laugh, nor smile but abstractedly. He
showed only concern as to his last guest's entertainment; and was now
directing an amused servant to place a chair beside his own at the
table, when Antony turned from us to him with the amiable inquiry: "And
the fairest of all, that most brilliant ornament in a brilliant room--I
take to be your lady, Sir Roger?"
Roger waved a courtly hand towards Iris to present her. But she made
no sign as Antony bowed; the little smile had stayed rigid about her
mouth since his entrance, it was as though an ironic hand had lightly
caressed a shape upon it....
And Roger took a feather from Antony's impudence as the other was
bowing. "I am glad you realise," said he, "that our house has now no
other claim to distinction than in that lady."
And so my impossible had happened, the breach between the brothers
was at last filling in! At this first, on Roger's part as though, I
thought, with hesitation, almost perforce--but continued day by day to
be filled in so consistently that soon the breach became, as it were, a
mountain ridge: the brothers on the one side and the world on the other.
And, too, many another quarrel was tactfully smoothed for Antony that
night and from that night; for there were some of our table that
night whose first surprise at his entrance had held some repugnance
in it, men who thought him "really a bit too much," women who weren't
Wesleyans but would not have remarked him in an empty street. But Red
Antony had certainly won--what little of that kind of thing there is
to win--or to lose, for the matter of that. And if ever a man who was
worth his weight in food and drink, that was Antony that night, on
the top of his form from floor to ceiling, from midnight to daylight!
And Roger only less so--just a little colourless he seemed beside this
sudden brother of his. It was strange to think that I was the only one
among them all who had ever seen the brothers together before--and
that more than eighteen years before, in Roger's last term at school!
I tried to find from his face now something of what he thought, but
caught no more than an occasional sidewise smile at his brother.
I taxed Iris about her plot with only a laughing, "Well, it was a very
good idea, anyway."
"Oh, if I could only claim the credit for it!" she feigned to sigh. "It
was Antony's, you see."
The devil it was, I only thought! And as at last I went home found some
unrest from the discovery, I was too drunk to know exactly why; and for
all the fun of the night I went at last to bed quite bothered about the
whole thing--and awoke not less so. I ought to have been pleased, of
course: Antony had splendidly got his way and might now make good, and
Iris might get the benefit of the new friendship between the brothers.
But one never knew what those infernal brothers were at, they both had
such a damned sinister way of taking their pleasures! And I really
had rather a grievance about the thing, too, I felt entitled to be
hurt--for, after all, I'd been a pretty good friend to 'em both, and
in long-passed years had time over again tried to bring them together
and make them see the error of their ways--and here they suddenly come
together without as much as a "by your leave!"
I rang Iris up at about lunch time, and a tired voice from her bed told
me to go about my business and "come to dinner to-night, if you like.
Roger's asked Antony...." I didn't go simply because my constitution is
of this and not the eighteenth century. But I would have liked to, if
only to see what those two might be at, or if they were at anything at
all. And as for Iris--well, thought I (those late nights never really
agreed with me, you understand), a wiser than I has said that it's in
the nature of women and cats to scratch the hand that tries to free
them from a trap.