2
As it was too large a party to get comfortably into the dining-room, a big tent had been pitched on the lawn, and several long narrow tables joined together, and there they dined, an ill-assorted company.
At one end Dr. Sinclair was shouting to Lady Cust, “Well, I’d send him to that co-education place, but, unfortunately, they don’t ... er ... learn anything there. They make the fourth form read Tolstoy’s Resurrection, which is not ... er ... only the most ... er ... trashy of all the works of genius, but the only ... er ... lesson to be learned from it is the ... er ... inadvisability of ... er ... seducing a Russian peasant girl, and ... er ... unfortunately, an ... er ... er ... English schoolboy hasn’t many opportunities of doing that ... er ... er....”
He looked at her, slightly puzzled—her face was pink with suppressed laughter; but, as she was meant to laugh, why suppress it?
Elfrida Penn was terrifying “Crippin” Arbuthnot by searching questions as to whether the erotic adventures of his schooldays had been similar to those described in a recent novel about life at a public school.
Edward Lane was saying to Jollypot, “Yes, before my niece—Olive Jackson, you know—went to school, I said to her, ‘my advice to you is: keep your hands clean.’ I always....”
“Oh, Mr. Lane, that was beautiful!” cried Jollypot.
“Yes, I always say a lady can be known by the way she keeps her hands.”
Jollypot’s face fell.
But Dick and Hugh, at any rate, yelling at each other across the intervening forms of Concha and Rory, were in perfect harmony. “I say, Dick, do you remember old Bright, the butler at your father’s? And how angry he used to be when we asked him if he was any relation of John Bright?”
“Yes, rather; and do you remember how he used to say, ‘Port, claret, sherry, madeira, sir?’ always in that order.”
“Yes, and how he used to puff it down one’s neck? And the severe way your mother used to say, ‘Neither, thank you, Bright’!”
Then, from the other end, they would catch sight of the Doña glaring at them indignantly through her lorgnette, and Dick would turn hurriedly to Lady Cust.
As to Teresa, she was indulging in that form of intoxication that has been described before—that of æsthetically withdrawing herself from a large, chattering company. Once when she was doing it David had guessed, and had whispered to her, “The laird’s been deed these twa hoors, but I wisna for spoiling guid company,” in reference to a host who had inconspicuously died, sitting bolt upright at the head of his table, at about the third round of port.
A branch, or something, outside was casting a shadow on the tent’s canvas wall—as usual, it was in the form of Dante’s profile. She had seen it in patches of damp on ceilings, in burning coals, in the clouds, in shadows cast on the white walls of the bath-room.
Perhaps he had not really looked like that at all, and the famous fresco portrait had been originally merely a patch of damp, elaborated into the outline of a human profile by some wag of the fourteenth century, and called Dante; and perhaps the Dante he meant was not the poet at all, but some popular buffoon, Pantaloon or Harlequin, in the comedies at street corners—the Charlie Chaplin, in fact, of his age....
But for some time Colonel Dundas had been booming away in her right ear, and it was high time she should listen.
“... always a note-book on the links, and every shot recorded—it’s a golden rule. I’ve advised more than one Amateur Champion to follow it. You see my point, don’t you? The next time you play on the same links you whip out your note-book and say, ‘Let me see—Muirfield, sixth hole, Sept. 5, 1920: hit apparently good drive down centre of the course, found almost impossible approach shot owing to cross bunkers. N.B. Keep to the left at the sixth hole.’ You see my point, don’t you?”
Opposite to them, Guy was screaming excitedly to Elfrida Penn, who seemed to be sucking in his words through her thick lips: “Of course, there’s nothing so beautiful and significant, from the point of view of composition, as a lot of people sitting at a narrow table—it’s the making of the Christian religion. Aubrey Beardsley ought to have done a Cena: the Apostles, in curly white wigs like these little tight clustering roses—Dorothy Perkins, or whatever they’re called—and black masks, sitting down one side of a narrow refectory table with plates piled up with round fruits, the wall behind them fluted and garlanded in stucco, St. John, his periwigged head on Jesus’ shoulder, leering up at him, and Judas, sitting a little apart, a white Pierrot, one finger pressed against his button mouth, his eyes round with horror and glee....”
“Yes, every year I was in India I read it through, from cover to cover,” boomed Colonel Dundas proudly. (Oh yes, of course, Dobbin and the History of the Punjab!) “It’s a wonderful style. He comes next to Shakespeare, in my estimation.” (Not Dobbin and the History of the Punjab, then!) “Yes, every year I read the whole of the French Revolution through from cover to cover—a very great book. And when, by mistake, John Stuart Mill burned the manuscript, what do you think Carlyle did?”
“I don’t know. What did he do?”
“He sat down and read through all the works of Fenimore Cooper—read ’em through from beginning to end,” and he stared at her in solemn triumph.
“Really?” she gasped, “I don’t quite understand. Fenimore Cooper—he wrote about Red Indians, didn’t he? Why did he read him?”
“Why? To distract his mind, of course. Extraordinary pluck!” and he glared at her angrily.
At this point Sir Roger, who had not been making much way with the Doña, leaned across the table, and said, “I say, Jimmy, Mrs. Lane and I have been talking about Gib.—did I ever tell you about the time I dined with your old Mess there? Owing to my being a connection of yours the Colonel asked me to choose a tune for the pipes;” then, turning to the Doña, he said in parenthesis, “I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard the bagpipes, but—don’t tell Colonel Dundas—we don’t think much of ’em this side of the border.” Then again to Colonel Dundas, “Well, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of a tune, and then suddenly the Deil amang the Tailors came into my head, so out I came with it, as pleased as Punch. Well, I thought the Colonel looked a bit grim, and I saw ’em all looking at each other, but the order was given to the piper, and he got going, and, by gad, it was a tune—nearly took the roof off the place! I thought I should be deaf for life—turned out to be the loudest tune they’d got;” then, again to the extremely bored Doña, “but it’s a glorious place, old Gib. I remember in the eighties....”
Lady Cust, watching from the other end of the table, was much amused by the engouement her husband had developed, since arriving at Plasencia, for the society of Jimmy Dundas; it was clearly a case of “better the bore I know....”
“Yes, these were great days,” Colonel Dundas was saying; “we’re the oldest regiment of the line, you know—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard; that’s what we call ourselves—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!” and he chuckled proudly.
And this from a pillar of the Scottish Episcopal Church!... Oh pale Galilean, hast thou conquered?
Then a loving-cup filled with punch began to go the round and they all drank from it in turn, rising to their feet as they did so, and saying, “Concha! Rory!”
When every one had had a sip, Rory, rather pale, got up to return thanks.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!... (pause) ... I do think it’s extraordinary kind of you to drink our health in this very nice way. We are most awfully grateful ... (pause) ... I’m afraid I’m not a Cicero or a Lloyd George, or anything like that ... (Laughter) ... old Crippin there will tell you speeches ain’t much in my line....” Then he had a sudden brilliant idea: “But there’s one thing I should like to ask you all to do. You see, I’m awfully grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Lane for giving me Concha, and my uncle has always been most awfully good to me, and I’d like to ask you all to drink their health ... and if my mother is anywhere about ... and others ... I know they’ll join in the toast, in nectar, or whatever they drink up there,” and he ended with an apologetic little laugh.
The company was very much touched; Edward Lane blew his nose violently, and muttered to Jollypot that young Dundas was evidently a very nice-feeling young fellow.
The atmosphere having become emotional, the ghosts walked.
Colonel Dundas had a vision of Rory’s mother—lovely Mab Brabazon—as he had first seen her, radiant and laughing at the Northern Meeting of twenty-nine years ago; but then, ever since, he had so often had that vision: at Church Parade, at polo in India, playing golf in Scotland, playing Bridge in any of his ten clubs—anywhere, everywhere, he might see Mab Brabazon. And little had Teresa guessed that as Carlyle read Fenimore Cooper, so he had read the French Revolution—“to distract his mind.”
Sir Roger and Lady Cust thought of Francis; more than one of Pepa. But Dick thought of his sallow puritanic sister Joannah, who had been so much older than himself that their interests had never clashed, and all his memories of her were of petting and spoiling—“Little Dickie doesn’t take spoiling, his temper is so sweet,” she used to say—his eyes began to smart. And Hugh Mallam, too, thought of poor old Joannah Lane, and he remembered how, in the days when his ambition had been to be a painter, he used to wonder whether, if offered the certainty of becoming as great a one as Sir Frederick Leighton, on condition of marrying Joannah, he would be able to bring himself to do it.