“You’re a cunning old man,” said Joan.
“I am,” agreed the professor.
“But I’m not frightened of you, and I’m willing to wait.”
“Good,” said the professor.
“Because I never dreamt of getting married before Christmas anyway.”
CHAPTER XII
The Oak Room, with its Gothic timbered roof and hammer beams, was ready for feasting. The small tables which usually filled it had disappeared. Small tables do very well in their way. They suggest privacy, they enable a party to declare itself a party, they denote a family, they erect an impalpable but perceptible barrier, they are both inclusive and exclusive. But small round tables are not in the manner of an Elizabethan dinner. Instead of them a long refectory table had been set up, broad enough to support decoration and redoubtable dishes, long enough to accommodate all who wished to be present. Only two indeed of the visitors to “The Pelican” were not present: a vegetarian pour être belle and an atheist who did not believe in Queen Elizabeth.
Saturday dined with his guests. Between him and Professor Benbow (who, with Mrs. Mandeville, sat at the head of the table) was a large confectioner’s model of a pelican, a magnificent bird in sugar icing. Its beak was open and in the crystal basin of the pendulous lower-half goldfish swam, and water-weed hung prettily over the edge. Set with the ordered profusion of England’s Golden Age the table already gleamed with fruit, strawberries and cherries and plums and peaches, and sugar-plums and ginger; and jumbals and marchpane and suckets of one kind or another added variety to this happy display. These were not considered or noticed on the menu, which read simply:
Salad
Kickshawses
Stewed Pike
Roast Sucking-pig
Olive Pie
Roast Capons
Marrowbone Pie
“My difficulty,” Saturday explained to Jean Forbes, “was not what to put in but what to keep out. Apparently sixteen dishes used to be considered a good number for a family feast; sixteen substantial dishes, not counting sweets and salads and fruit and so on. On a really big occasion, when a nobleman was entertaining, there was an almost endless procession. Salads, roast meats, baked meats such as venison-pasty, cold meats and game, carbonadoes, then more game, little birds like snipe and plover first, then bustards and pheasants and peacocks; then a marrowbone pie, perhaps, and some tarts; and then more cold meat; fresh-water fish followed the salads and seafish—a sturgeon if you could get one—came in with the baked meats.”
“And how did they reduce?” asked Jean.
“I don’t know,” said Saturday, “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
“They perspired without shame,” said the professor from the top of the table. “A moist hand used to be a social asset. It was taken to mean a kindly humour and a loving nature.”
“The highlanders of Central Asia stuff themselves at times with an almost incredible quantity of food,” said Colonel Waterhouse. And Angela Scrabster declared that in the Orient leanness was a sign of poverty, corpulence the indication of social position.
“When I was a child,” remarked Lady Porlet, “I always over-ate myself unless I was watched.”
“I like eating,” said a lady of whom everybody thought well but whose name nobody could remember.
“How many things can you find in this salad?” asked Joan. “I’ve got almonds, lettuce, raisins, currants, lemon, cucumber—”
“Olives, cauliflowers, and—is it spinach?”
“It is,” said Saturday, “and oil and vinegar and sugar. That’s about all.”
“I’m dying to find out what kickshawses are,” said Mrs. Waterhouse. In a few minutes she exclaimed with some disappointment, “Why, they’re only omelettes!” And in another few minutes, with evident approval, “But the most delicious omelette I have ever tasted. Tell me what is in it, Mr. Keith.”
“Liver and bacon, spinach, a good lot of spice, and some ginger. The other is flavoured with walnuts and walnut buds.”
“‘A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat ’em the better they be!’”
said the professor. “I like your walnut omelette, Keith.”
“Do you really believe in beating women?” asked Tommy Mandeville.
“Of course,” said a blond young man with a loud voice who sat half-way down the table. But when everybody turned and stared at him, he blushed hotly and spoke no more.
“It’s a beautiful idea,” suggested Quentin, “but I think it should remain an idea. One shouldn’t descend to practical exposition.”
“Or consider details,” added Jean Forbes. “The thought of slippers or braces quite spoils it for me.”
“As pictures of harps and prize cherubim spoil the idea of heaven.”
“Do you believe in heaven, Mr. Cotton?”
“Sometimes. But then I don’t go to church.”
“Belief in the invisible is the ruin of poetry,” declared Sigismund Telfer.
“Do you read much poetry?” asked Lady Porlet.
“I have written a book about it,” said Telfer coldly.
“How very strange. It all seems so unnecessary to me. It is either obvious or untrue. Is that what you said about it?”
“I always thought the pike was a common no-account sort of fish till now,” said van Buren. “But I guess this is cooked different to any I’ve tasted before.”
“You put it in a chafing dish with a bottle of Graves. Then you add cinnamon and some prunes, a bottle of cream, eggs, and finally ornament it with sliced oranges and lemons,” explained Saturday.
“You’re like a cook’s guide,” said Joan.
Saturday laughed at her little jest. He was feeling very pleased with himself and his dinner, and even in ordinary circumstances a joke made by one’s fiancée has an intimate quality that evokes a more general and more generous response than the specific reaction to absolute humour. It is indeed almost as good as a joke made by oneself.
But by this time humour of any kind was being applauded, and many remarks that would ordinarily pass unnoticed found in the genial atmosphere of the table a lustre and a light that never actually was. Things were said which implied fun or threw the shadow of wit, and those who heard, being in the same mood as the speakers, supplied the missing word themselves and laughed as much at their own perception as at the humour of the narrator. Even Sigismund Telfer recited a limerick—the roast pig was no more than a succulent memory and the olive pie was as empty as an Egyptian tomb—a limerick that ran:
“The celibate Bishop of Bute
Was a rationalist by repute,
And yet traces I find
Of a credulous mind
In his rabid refusal of fruit.”
And Angela Scrabster told a better one that produced a moment’s silence—like the calm in the hollow of a great wave—before laughter broke loudly over it.
It was notable that although many had exclaimed at the solid substance of the menu, few failed to go steadily through it. The professor and van Buren ate with enormous gusto, and here and there an unsuspected trencherman was revealed. Mr. Wesson was one of them, Quentin ate as an adventurer should who is confronted with an unknown trail, Tommy Mandeville frankly declared her enjoyment, and Mrs. Waterhouse attempted to cover her excesses by deprecating greed. The young man who had spoken in favour of wife-beating was apparently bent on growing big enough to achieve his ambition, and Lady Porlet very calmly asked for a second helping of sucking-pig. Perhaps the wine that was itself so robust nourished instead of obscuring a robuster appetite. The sherry was conventional except in so far as everybody agreed to call it sack; the malmsey and the sweet muscadine were both praised and the former was extensively drunk; but the mixture called bastard suffered from its name after the lady whose own name no one could remember said to Saturday, “Do tell me how you made your bastard, Mr. Keith.”
The marrowbone pie was a rich mixture of fruit and vegetables on a foundation of m
arrow. It was followed, slowly and now with a certain carelessness, by the marchpane and the suckets, those unsubstantial but attractive-to-look-at sweetmeats, and by the fruit whose freshness was like a reassurance of strength.
They drank to the memory of Queen Elizabeth, the anniversary of whose visit to “The Pelican” it was, and some pleasant jokes were made about the Earl of Leicester and the boot which he had so maladroitly left in the queen’s room; or perhaps—to preserve that element of doubt which is the grace of scandal—one should say the boot which had so malapertly been discovered in her room. The boot was brought out of its glass-case and set on the table beside the sugar-icing pelican.
“What became of the other one?” asked Mr. Wesson.
“It’s probably in the Metropolitan Museum in New York,” said Quentin.
“But this is the important one,” Jean Forbes insisted. “This is the one he told his chivalrous fib about. It’s as important as Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak.”
“This has been an excellent dinner,” said the professor at last. “A dinner that I am proud to have eaten, whatever may be its consequences. But I could not often eat such a one. Novelty is the fieriest stimulant of all.”
“There is a Spanish proverb,” said van Buren, “that ‘after three days men grow weary of a wench, a guest, and rainy weather.’”
“My mother was Spanish,” said Jacquetta dreamily. (An air of drowsy good humour had succeeded the wit.) “She used to sing a little song:
“‘I love you, will always love you,
I have told you again and again,
And it seems to me that you listen
As one listens to the rain.’”
“Would you call that poetry, Mr. Telfer?” asked the professor.
“Of a kind,” said Telfer. “It is simple and evocative.”
“What would you give as a sample of real unquestionable poetry, then?”
“This:
“‘A white crane
Flying,
Flew across a black cloud.’
There is a poem perfect and complete.”
“It leaves plenty of room for the margin.”
“I like margins,” said Quentin.
“Did you say a crane, Mr. Telfer?” asked Lady Porlet.
“I did.”
“Would a stork do as well, or would that spoil the poem?”
Mrs. Mandeville rose tactfully, and the ladies left the room.
The circle having become smaller the wine passed more rapidly and the conversation grew better and better. Somebody introduced discussion of the bearded Aphrodite of Cyprus, the androgynous divinity who was the symbol of luxurious growth, and somebody else lamented the decay of faith as a death-blow to blasphemy. Saturday left them, as unobtrusively as he could, to find Joan.
“Where are you going?” asked the professor.
“I’ve got some work to do,” he said.
“A despicable excuse,” said the professor.
“And as open to suspicion as an explorer’s baby,” added Quentin, passing the wine.
CHAPTER XIII
Nelly Bly’s room was a garret under the roof. It had a steep pointed ceiling like a Noah’s ark and a little window that looked at the tree-tops. By leaning out and stretching your neck it was possible to see the farthest edge of the bowling-green and some fragments of the tennis-courts beyond. Nelly Bly leaned out and saw two people walking under the trees; Saturday and Joan, she thought, though she could not be quite sure at that distance and in the deceptive mixture of moonlight and shadow. She was not very interested anyhow.
I don’t suppose they’re talking about Russia, she thought, and smiled so benignly that it was a pity there was no one to see her.
She lit a cigarette and got into bed. In the moonlight that coolly flowed through the small window, the cigarette smoke drifted into quaint grey patterns. Smoky flowers grew suddenly out of straight stems and were swept away; little clouds did whirling dragon dances on the yellow banner of the moonlight; and an occasional noose of smoke drifted upwards to capture some strange creature under the roof.
And Nelly Bly still smiled. Her adventure was turning out better than she had expected. She felt a little sorry for Quentin. But if he was finding trouble it was because he had asked for trouble. And it would do him no harm. She had made a fool of him but that, in a way, was a compliment, for she would not have bothered to make so complete a fool of him had he not been sufficiently attractive to gild the process with adventitious enjoyment.
He’s very good-looking, she thought, and he would be really clever if he knew a little more. I like him. But fortunately I’ve got a lot of self-control, and I’m too interested in my job to kick my shoes over the moon. Otherwise I might be damaged goods by now. That’s the trouble of a disguise. The dyer’s hand is subdued to what it works in. And as a chambermaid I feel that I ought to be seduced from time to time. As myself I would be in no danger. Poor mother would be worried if she knew. And so would Quentin if he knew what mother knows. But I am the only one who knows. I think I am rather clever.
She lay and considered things. That is, a variety of things remembered, things said, done, written, wished for or previously dreamed about, presented a succession of images in her brain. Not an orderly succession like a cinema film, but a hotch-potch of events and thoughts that would be unintelligible to anyone else, but was perfectly clear to her because her memory held all the clues. The sub-titles were already written in her consciousness. Only selected incidents appeared on the film. And the story which she reviewed so haphazardly was something like this:
She saw a girl called Helen Blyesdale whose mother had a determined mouth, a habit of serving on committees, and decided opinions about the world in general. The mother was so old-fashioned that she believed her daughters should not work; that their vocation was simply to be her daughters until God, a biological instinct, or economic favouritism called them to become the wives of suitable young men. Two of her daughters were content to accept this view. But the third had red hair, had won an essay prize at school and three guineas in a Saturday Review literary competition, and had ideas of her own. Not exclusively her own, for they centred on journalism as a profession for young women who had won essay prizes at school and three guineas from the Saturday Review. She confided in her mother, and her mother was suitably scornful. But Helen, who had been born under the colours of rebellion, took her own way and went to London, where she had a friend of her own age and, what was more to the point, a sympathetic uncle who edited a weekly review.
In eighteen months she was earning almost enough to keep herself. She had written and sold three short stories, she had recounted some social episodes, she had reviewed novels of no interest to anyone except their authors, and she had had two or three articles accepted for the women’s page of the Daily Day. Then the friend of her own age got married and Helen discovered that she was almost alone, among all her other friends, in never having been married or never having written a book. She decided that the second choice would probably have less permanent consequences, and began to think of a subject. She inclined to low life and regretted that she knew so little about it. Then one of her friends remarked, as friends will, how hard it was to find maids; and Helen resolved to become a maid and look for a novelist’s theme among the other dust. In due course she found herself at “The Pelican,” where there was obviously greater likelihood of getting something to write about than in a private household.
Under a promise of secrecy she had told the editor of the women’s page of the Daily Day what she meant to do, and that practical person had said: “You may find enough for an article or two if not a novel. Important people go to ‘The Pelican’ sometimes. People who have news value, I mean. You can write some gossip probably. I hear that Saturday Keith has a new volume of poems almost ready. Something about them might do for the silly season. People are always interested in a Rowing Blue.”
Encouraged, in a way, by this advice Helen had written her fi
rst article and seen it promptly appear in the Daily Day; she was young enough to be annoyed because it had been cut in a couple of places. She had also been slightly annoyed by Holly’s refusal to part with his cocktail formula, for a cocktail recipe is good news. But now larger game loomed on her horizon. A scrap of overheard conversation and some servant’s talk had apprised her vaguely of Mr. van Buren’s importance. She knew very little about it, but she had looked him up in Who’s Who and she had heard enough to be fairly sure, in conjunction with the information she found there, that his business was oil and to infer, optimistically, but as it happened correctly, his discovery of some new process. (Now and again such a romantic guess will prove correct.) She decided that it would be very advantageous to her—professionally, of course—to find out something about that process. She had never read City Notes or Financial News and still less ever imagined herself writing them. But here was something which would obviously affect stocks and shares and markets and “all that kind of thing,” she decided. Here was news, if she could get it. Here was a regular old-fashioned scoop. And naturally, being a woman, she had no thought of dishonesty in all this. She wasn’t going to steal anything. Her motives were above suspicion. She wanted to make a scoop.
The image of Helen, in Nelly Bly’s brain became obscured, at this point, by an image of Quentin. Quentin in a post office succeeded her first sight of Quentin in a corridor of “The Pelican.” Quentin had very gratifyingly betrayed his interest from the beginning. And he had given her a chance for one of those swift ridiculous retorts in which she took considerable pleasure. He had slighted Russian authors and she, to embarrass him, had immediately replied, “My first husband was a Cossack.” Out of that small seed grew the whole fictitious tree of her political adventures, though she could not reconstruct the exact stages of its growth. Quentin himself had done a lot to help it by his curiosity in her antecedents, which compelled her to invent something. And then the idea had occurred to her that she might make him useful, and her inclination to do so was strengthened by his regrettable behaviour in trying to take advantage of her humble station; behaviour which clearly demanded revenge. The plot had another advantage in that it gave her excuses for meeting Quentin and provoking him to further essays against her respectability. It was good fun.… Here was Helen, who might still have been Mrs. Blythesdale’s demure domestic daughter, become the centre of a little solar system of her own. She controlled planets—Quentin was a planet—and moved humorously through a universe of absorbing interest; a universe that she had in some part made for herself, adding Irkutsk to “The Pelican” and the Cheka to George and Veronica and Bill, her fellow-servants. She had even made herself, by cutting this alert, imaginative, inquisitive, scoop-hunting Nelly Bly out of the Helen Blythesdale that her ancestors and the waters of baptism had given to the world. Of her own volition she had reproduced by budding, and that was a biological feat of considerable interest.
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