“But you’re not the last,” Lord Lippington got in.
“What a relief! But I said to Tom: ‘Never mind; they’ll forgive us—for old acquaintance’ sake.’”
“Yes, indeed,” said Lady Lippington almost as cordially; and there was a slight pause, broken by the footman, who announced, almost with a smile of satisfaction, the last comers.
“Lord Doleford, and Lady Barbara Pavisay, m’lady.”
“So here you are, Peter!” cried Lady Lippington, kissing Barbara, as it were, by the way, but directing all her welcome with both hands, to the young man who came in with her, looking modestly pleased to see everybody, and as modestly expectant that everybody would be pleased to see him.
“Here I am!” he replied; and there he was. Apparently there wasn’t much more to be said about it, but one might feel a good deal. What was most obviously to be felt was just the feeling of family. It at once took possession of the occasion, almost of the room; it was big and happy, and simple and serious; and it was nice to see other things in Lady Lippington quenched in it, and everything in Lord Lippington expand and sun itself. The Tanners and ourselves, incidents and accidents, were duly introduced; but the fact of the evening, of which nobody, when all was conceded to politeness, could question the importance, was that Captain Lord Doleford, a cousin of the house, had returned on leave from India after an absence of three years.
He sat next to me at dinner.
Of course the pleasant enthusiasm of it wasn’t allowed to remain among us long, especially as there was so much that Lady Tanner wanted to ask Lord Lippington if he remembered—picnics and race meetings—but it lasted till the end of the soup.
“And I see,” said Lord Lippington to him by way of congratulation, “they’ve given you a fairing.”
“His beautiful medal!” exclaimed Lady Lippington. “What is it like, Peter? I’ve not seen any of the Victorian Order decorations.”
“Oh, it’s solid, I believe!” replied Lord Doleford; “I’ve been told I could raise ten bob on it—but not by a dealer.”
“What a shame, Peter!” cried our hostess; and Lady Tanner exclaimed: “Quite shocking!”
“It’s more becoming, really, to Barbara,” said Lord Doleford. “She has tried it on several times already—I think she has her eye on it.”
“Barbara mustn’t,” said Lord Lippington. “A lady went to some Royal function lately wearing her husband’s order—fancied it, I suppose—and the King wasn’t at all pleased. Had her attention called to it. The case, I assure you.”
“There you are, Barb!” said her brother; but Lady Barbara and Graham were already getting on very well together, and did not allow themselves to be interrupted.
“I understand perfectly why one should like to wear one’s brother’s medal,” I said to Lord Doleford. “It isn’t because it’s becoming—it’s because it’s his. Besides, it’s so seldom that you can wear them yourselves.”
“That is the most valuable point about them,” he said. “If they were worn every day they would have about as much importance as bacon for breakfast. But seeing them once in a blue moon, they have a better chance, somehow, of standing for something. If your brother had a medal, would you like to wear it?” he added casually, and not in the least because he wanted to know.
“No—not after what you’ve said,” I told him. “I’d rather feel that it was put away in a drawer, getting ready to mean something. He has got one, by the way—my brother. The D.S.O.”
“Really? That’s ten times better than the thing my cousin was talking about. But I thought he was an Amer ”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t!” I said warmly. “Don’t get it all out. In that connection, you see, I’m afraid I couldn’t bear it.”
“In that connection? Yes, I see. It is rather rough. But—he’s not a civilian, then?”
“Well, just now he is,” I explained, “and most of the time when he is at home.” And I unfolded what there was to unfold about South Africa and the Minnebiac Rifles.
“And please go on about the D.S.O.,” he said. “I’m horribly jealous—they give my thing, you know, to head-cooks and people; but never mind—go on.”
“I’m not so very anxious to tell you,” I informed him, “though I am his sister. I can see what you think of sisters.”
“Oh, I think they’re quite sound—sisters!”
“I don’t want you to uphold us,” I said. “Well, it was for a forced march, with just a company, to relieve Colonel Smiley at Pietsdorp.”
“Old Smiley of the Second Lincolns! We knew him well—he took the regiment out from India. Poor old chap—they potted him afterwards, didn’t they? He was too fat, much too fat, the old boy. I remember, we heard about that Pietsdorp business; he wrote to one of our fellows. He was in an awfully tight place, and when the Canadians showed the enemy took them for the advance of an Army Corps at least, and cleared out.”
“Well, it was only Graham,” I said, “and eighty men.”
“You see,” Lord Doleford explained to me carefully, “the Boers were right enough in thinking it was the main body of troops from Volkstaadt, because they were the only ones they thought could possibly get there.”
“But they weren’t!” I said; and he laughed and said “No—sister!” and I naturally laughed also.
He was no better-looking than Graham, but in a much simpler way, a way that made you think first of his looks and how good they were, while with Graham you remembered afterwards that he was handsome—I mean it was not the thing that did strike you first. Lord Doleford’s features at once suggested a race and then a type and then an order, and a kind of direct correspondence of character—he was written beautifully plain. I don’t know why he made me think of a Crusader—it was certainly nothing that he said—unless it was that sign of purpose and intention, which would be, one felt, as simple and as high as modern circumstances permitted. I thought immediately that I would like to see him in a coat of mail. It would look as if it had been riveted for him by his own armourer. Any one, a Hairy Aino, would have admired him—and I was no Hairy Aino.
I looked at Graham, and longed to hear what he was saying. Lady Barbara was giving him all of her attention. In her face one could clearly see two apprehensions going on, one of Graham and the other of his conversation. She was considering him as if he were something quite new to her; and if most of the men of her acquaintance were like her brother, of course he was. I heard just a scrap.
“Why do you say ‘run’ for Parliament?” she asked.
“Because,” he said, “in our part of the world it’s thought the quickest way of getting there. If we stood, as you do,, we might, perhaps, be left standing.”
So they were only talking, after all, of national idioms. Lady Barbara’s profile was bent towards Graham, and I could see its likeness to her brother’s—where it came up and where it fell short. There was a good deal of falling short; but the design, one could see, had the original nobility. It had the same look, too, of being part of a simple, necessitated scheme, as indisputable as the Catechism, but the aim and purpose finished there, as if, being a woman, she did not need them further. I glanced back and saw that their presence made the life of Lord Doleford’s face—he was talking to Lady Lippington—as their absence made a kind of death in his sister’s. But she sat there, a very distinguished expensive product of nature, very much aware, I thought, of what ought to happen to her, as such a distinguished expensive product, and the reflection visited me, “How absurd it would be if Graham fell in love with Lady Barbara!” I got no further than that; it just seemed to me, at a glance, absurd, as if he should offer himself, as it were, in exchange for a Gainsborough out of the National Gallery—and where would he put it in Minnebiac! But with Graham you never could tell. It was not safe to assume that he would be put off any view because it was ridiculous.
“New Zealand mutton!” said Sir Thomas Tanner at his first mouthful of the joint. “And very good mutton, too.”
“Is it really!
” exclaimed Lady Lippington, with dismay. “How dread—I mean, well—of course, when we were in New Zealand we loved it, but ”
“And I daresay you paid the price of the best Scotch for it,” Sir Thomas conceded handsomely. “But you never could deceive me. That mutton left Auckland two months ago. It’s been properly thawed, and a better slice of mutton I should never ask to see on my plate. It’s all prejudice, you know, the notion that prevails over here about cold storage mutton—all prejudice.”
“Is it New Zealand mutton?” exclaimed Lady Tanner, throwing herself, so to speak, into the awful breach. “I should never have guessed! So you have imposed upon me, Lady Lippington. But, Tom—of course, how stupid of you!—they had it out of compliment to us!”
“The cook must have known you were coming,” said Lord Lippington with a laugh, in which Lady Lippington promptly joined.
“I hope,” she cried humorously, “that she will remember to send up something from Canada, too! Please recognise the apples, Mr. Trent, in the meantime.”
“If she discloses no form of chutney,” said Lord Doleford, “I shall be deeply hurt!” And Lady Lippington, looking round with an air of gratification, cried:
“What an Imperial little party we are! I don’t see how we can finish without the King’s health. Amherst—what do you say?”
“By all means,” said Lord Lippington, “if you can produce musical honours.”
“We must sing them,” Lady Lippington returned; “I am sure we all would. I used to detest port,” she told Sir Thomas Tanner, “but having to drink it so constantly of late years when Lord Lippington proposed the Royal toast, I have almost come to like it. The true Imperial feeling will make one like anything, I believe.”
“Oh, my wife is quite a connoisseur!” jested Lord Lippington; and Sir Thomas Tanner assured him that since he left Government House it was impossible to get anything there that was fit to drink.
“I’m not hard to please, myself,” said he; “but when it comes to giving champagne at the Birthday Ball out of bottles with no labels on ’em! Well,” he said, scratching the portion of his neck just behind his ear and above his collar, “it does create a certain amount of bad feeling; and complaints are bound to arise. Bound to. When all’s said and done, the Colony pays that very considerable salary—which was never, I may say, sir, paid more ungrudgingly than when it was handed over to you—and people feel that it’s only getting a little bit of their own back. At least, I suppose that’s the way they feel,” added Sir Thomas, at a fearful eye-beam from his wife. “I never take anything on those occasions myself. Much too old a bird.”
“But in your time, dear Lady Lippington,” darted in Lady Tanner, “every one said how much too prodigal the entertaining was. One could feel absolute confidence in the wines; and the men used simply to rave about the cheroots. You did far more than you need!”
“That’s so. Must have been out of pocket by it, I often said,” her husband supported her.
Lady Lippington did not blench. It seemed to me almost as if she saw an opportunity of taking the advice of the ancients and rejecting nothing for her fire that could be thrown into it, as if the testimony came rather pat to the occasion.
“I’m so glad!” she said, bending forward quite appreciatively. “It used to give me such anxious hours, sometimes. But when one has the interests of the Empire really at heart ”
The rest was lost in an enforced decision about mushroom mousse.
“It’s a terrible topic, isn’t it, Imperialism?” said Lady Barbara to Graham.
“In itself?” he asked.
“No, perhaps not. But people have got so dreadfully tired of it.”
“I know,” said Graham. “As a subject it makes them yawn, one might say, before they open their mouths.”
“Does it really interest you?” she added; and he laughed and said, “I wouldn’t admit it for the world.”
“Why not?” she asked; and at that it seemed to me that, after all, Graham was fairly safe. Anybody that at such a point could ask “Why not?”—well
I was quite sure that her brother Peter would not. He would know, infallibly, whether one were joking. He would never have had the reputation, as Evelyn said he had, of being a lamb, a dear and precious lamb, without a sense of those things.
“I think,” I said to him, “you know our friend, Evelyn Dicey?”
“I met her,” he replied, “the day after I arrived.”
His tone implied—or was it again my imagination?—that it was rather soon.
“She seems to be a great friend of my mother’s,” he went on.
“We have known her for years,” I observed.
“My mother hasn’t. It was only the other day that she picked—I mean it’s quite a recent acquaintance.”
“Evelyn seems devoted to Lady Doleford,” I said.
“Yes,” he admitted, “she does seem to have wakened them up a bit.” But he spoke with gloom. “She’s very American,” he added.
“I think Americans like being very,” I said, “and I don’t believe they can help it.”
“Well, yes—I suppose they couldn’t be just rather,” said Lord Doleford, “but it might be nicer of them somehow.”
“You see it’s so radical,” I said. “But Evelyn is charming. She’s such fun!”
“Yes, she is charming. And she is fun.”
“You will find her so,” I assured him; and at that he gave me a look with a curious little tinge of resentment, which I hope, however, he saw at once that I did not deserve.
When the men came up after dinner Lord Doleford and Graham came in together, with the air of having talked all the way upstairs. They were afterwards separated with difficulty by Lady Lippington, who wished to converse herself with my brother upon a sofa. That was always the way with Graham. People who would not look at me twice However, it was only proper that Lord Doleford should go and sit down beside Lady Tanner; and besides, at that time it did not make the slightest difference where he sat.
“You are going on somewhere, I suppose,” said our hostess, with the slightest perceptible glance at the tiara, as Lady Tanner said good-night; and Lady Tanner, with just an instant’s hesitation, said: “Yes.”
“Where?” asked Sir Thomas; and the question did not seem impertinent, but his wife took no notice of it.
“And you?” asked Lady Lippington.
“Only to bed,” I replied, at which dear Lord Lippington laughed so heartily that I felt I had made quite a consummate jest.
CHAPTER IX
WE had long supposed—and wouldn’t you?—that we had seen the very last of Mrs. Jerome Jarvis. But, no; one day, in sweeping out her conscience, she found us there in a cobwebby corner. I am sure conscience must be turned out in London like rooms, periodically, if people are to live upon any terms with their obligations. The air is as full of distractions, of endless, delightful, hurrying interests as it is of “blacks”; and one could perfectly imagine Mrs. Jarvis finding things in a fearful state and dashing at the task. Or perhaps somebody reminded her of us—she knew Evelyn and Earl Watchett. At all events, we received from her during one week a perfect torrent of propositions, all friendly, all casual, and never extending more, by any chance, than twenty-four hours’ notice. Our own little plans had begun to multiply so fast that we could never do the things she suggested, without consideration of whether we wanted to or not; but at last she sent an invitation which found us free. Mrs. Jerome asked us to dine with her—no party—the following Wednesday, and go on to a dance at her sister’s —Mrs. Jack Yilke—in Gros. Street: “Do squeeze it in somehow,” she wrote. “I’ve been mis. at seeing nothing of you.”
“Oh, Graham,” I said, “we must go! Mrs. Jack Yilke is an M.F.H.”
“Didn’t we come across her somewhere?”
“Yes,” I said, “at Lady Doleford’s. She was the one that talked most of the time to the Duke—on the hearthrug.”
“At Lady Doleford’s?” said Graham, and appea
red to consider. “Nevertheless,” he continued, “another meal at Mrs. Jerome Jarvis’s is more food than I think we need accept for nothing, Sis.”
“I don’t think you ought to cherish that luncheon,” I told him; “it just didn’t happen to agree with us, and we ought to forget it.”
“Well, if you think going to dinner will help you to forget going to lunch ”
“It always does!” I exclaimed triumphantly, “in everyday life! How can a lunch survive a dinner? You know quite well.”
My brother consulted a pocket-diary, and his brow cleared.
“Wednesday,” he said, “is one of the possible days Watchett mentioned for the Decentralisation debate in the House. I couldn’t miss that, Sis. Suppose you go this time by your lonesome? There’s nothing in it for me—and life, you know, is short.”
“Yes, it is. And you spent three quarters of an hour of it yesterday looking at that old Venetian sideboard while I waited in the cab,” I reminded him. “And it’s” you Mrs. Jerome Jarvis wants, you know, Graham. She hasn’t been mis at seeing nothing of me.
“However,” I continued—seeing that I could persuade him if I really tried—“I might go alone. If she doesn’t like it she won’t mind telling me—that’s one comfort.”
“Well, if you could,” said Graham. “You see I would be no manner of use at a dance, would I—with my leg?”
He knew quite well that no argument could withstand a reference to his leg, though to do him justice he very seldom made one. I would always bow to his leg.
So I went to dinner with the Jerome Jarvises alone. I half-expected to find Andy, but he was not there. John and Patricia, of course, were in bed, and Mr. Jerome, to my disappointment, was attending a City dinner. I had been counting on observing this time the other side of Mrs. Jerome’s character. I was longing to see whether her eye would soften when it rested upon Mr. Jarvis. Graham, when he put me in the cab, had asked me to notice if it did.
Instead of Mr. Jarvis there were two young men, one of whom was very solemn and bowed with a look of gratification every time he replied to Mrs. Jarvis, who called him Guy. I thought, perhaps, he explained to some extent, the fascination she was supposed to have exerted over the great philosophers of the past—and I looked at him with much attention; but he was like Andy in having very little to say on his own account, so one could only guess.
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