IN WHICH ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.
After that we became suddenly conscious of our bodily wants, and clamoured for supper.
It was long after midnight, and most of the hotel servants had gone to bed. But one waiter of political leanings, who had been an enthusiastic witness of the proceedings in the Close, stood by us nobly. He laid a table in the sitting-room. He materialised a cold turkey, a brown loaf, and some tomatoes; and he even achieved table-napkins. Gerald and Donkin on their part disappeared into the nether regions, and returned bearing mince-pies and cider. Some one else found champagne and opened it; and in a quarter of an hour we were left to ourselves by the benignant waiter round a comfortably loaded table, in a snug room with the fire burning and the curtains drawn.
It was an eccentric kind of meal, for every one was overflowing with a sort of reactionary hilarity; and everybody called everybody else "old man" or "my dear," and I was compelled to manipulate my food with my left hand owing to the fact that my wife insisted on clinging tightly to my right. The only times I got a really satisfactory mouthful were when she slipped out of the room to see how her daughter was sleeping.
As the meal progressed, I began to note the exceedingly domestic and intimate manner in which we were seated round the table, which was small and circular. Kitty and I sat together; then, on our right, came Dicky and Dilly, then Gerald and Donkin, each partially obscured from view by a bottle of cider about the size of an Indian club; and Dolly and Robin completed the circle.
The party comported themselves variously. Kitty and I said little. We were utterly tired and dumbly thankful, and had no desire to contribute greatly to the conversation; but we turned and looked at one another in a contented sort of way at times. Dicky and Dilly were still sufficiently newly married to be more or less independent of other people's society, and they kept up a continuous undercurrent of lover-like confidences and playful nothings all the time. Gerald, upon whom solid food seemed to have the effect that undiluted alcohol has upon ordinary folk, was stentoriously engaged with Mr Donkin in what a student of Paley's Evidences would have described as "A Contest of Opposite Improbabilities" concerning his election experiences.
Lastly, I turned to Dolly and Robin. Dolly's splendid vitality has stood her in good stead during the last twenty-four hours, and this, combined with the present flood-tide of joyous relief, made it hard to believe that she had spent a day and a night of labour and anxiety. She was much more silent than usual, but her face was flushed and happy, and somehow I was reminded of the time when I had watched her greeting the dawn on the morning after Dilly's wedding. Robin, with the look of a man who has a hard day's work behind him, a full meal inside him, and a sound night's sleep before him—and what three greater blessings could a man ask for himself?—sat beside her, smiling largely and restfully on the company around him.
Suddenly Dicky made an announcement.
"There is one more bottle," he said. "Come on, let's buzz it!"
He opened the champagne in a highly professional manner and filled up our glasses. Gerald and Donkin declined, but helped themselves to fresh jorums of cider.
Then there was a little pause, and we all felt that some one ought to make a speech or propose a toast.
"Shall we drink some healths?" proposed Dilly.
There was a chorus of assent.
"We will each propose one," I said, "right round the table in turn. Ladies first! Yours, Kitty? I suppose it will be Philly—eh?"
Kitty nodded.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I announced, "you are asked to drink to the speedy recovery of Miss Phillis Inglethwaite. This toast is proposed by her mother, and seconded by her father."
The toast was drunk with all sincerity, but soberly, as befitted.
"Now, Dilly," I said, when we were ready again.
Dilly whispered something to her husband, which was received by that gentleman with a modest and deprecatory cough, coupled with an urgent request that his wife would chuck it.
"He won't announce my toast for me," explained Dilly, turning to us—"he's too shy, poor dear!—so I'll do it myself. Ladies and gentlemen, the toast is—Dicky!"
Dicky's health was drunk with cheers and laughter, and Dilly completed its subject's confusion by kissing him.
"Now, Dolly!" said every one.
"Not yet!" said Dolly. "Gerald and Moke are the next pair. Gerald must act lady, and think of a toast."
Master Gerald, hastily bolting a solid mass of mince-pie—one could almost follow the course of its descent—cheerfully complied.
"All right," he said; "I think I'll drink the health of old Moke himself. He's not much to look at, but he's a good sort. I shan't kiss him, though, Dilly. And," he added, "I think he had better drink mine too. He looks thirsty. Come on, sonny—no heeltaps!"
He elaborately linked arms with the now comatose Donkin, and each thereupon absorbed, without drawing breath, about a pint of cider apiece. After that, with a passing admonition to his friend not to burst, my brother-in-law returned to his repast.
So far, the toasts had all been of a most conventional and inevitable character. Now, automatically but a little tactlessly, we all turned to see what Dolly and Robin were going to do. From the standpoint of the last two toasts they were certainly in a rather delicate position.
"Come on, you two!" commanded Gerald. "Do something! Make a spring!"
Robin took up his glass of champagne and turned rather inquiringly to Dolly.
Without a word she linked her arm in his, and they drank together.
"Oh, come, I say, that's not fair! Whose health were you drinking, Robin, old man?" inquired the tactless Dicky.
"I was drinking to the future Mrs Fordyce—whoever she may be!" said Robin, obviously apologetic at being unable to think of anything more sparkling.
"Whose health were you drinking, Dolly?" yelled Gerald, with much enjoyment.
Then Dolly did a startling thing.
Robin's hand lay resting on the table beside her. Into it she deliberately slipped, her own; and then gazed—flushed and defiant, but proud and smiling—round a circle composed entirely of faces belonging to people suffering from the gapes.
I glanced at Robin. He looked perfectly dumfounded, but I saw his hand close automatically round Dolly's fingers, and I saw, too, her pink nails go white under the pressure.
But Dolly seemed to feel no pain. On the contrary, she continued to smile upon us. Then, bowing her head quickly, before any of us realised what she would be at, she lightly kissed the great hand which imprisoned her own. Then she looked up again, with glistening eyes.
"There!" she said. "Now you know!"
Our breath came back, and the spellbound silence was broken.
"Dolly!" said Kitty.
"My dear!" said Dilly.
"What—ho!" drawled Dicky.
But it was Gerald who rounded off the situation. He was standing on the table by this time.
"Three cheers for Dolly and Robin!" he roared.
We gave them, with full throats. (Fortunately we were a long way from Phillis's room.)
After that we all sat down again, feeling a little awkward, as people do when they have taken the lid off their private feelings for a moment. Finally Kitty led off with—
"But, Dolly, dear, why didn't you tell us? When was it?"
"I didn't tell you before," said Dolly composedly, "because it has only just happened—this moment."
"Only this moment? But——"
"Do you mean to say he hasn't asked you? Oh——"
"Are you asking him?"
The questions came simultaneously from all parts of the table; horribly inquisitive, some of them; but then the thing had been so frankly and deliberately done, that we knew Dolly wanted to explain everything to us there and then.
"I'll tell you," said Dolly, after silence had been restored by the fact that Gerald had shouted us all down and then stopped himself. "Robin told me—well—something, six months ago, the night after Dilly's wedding, at the dance——"
"That was why you locked the door, then," I said involuntarily.
Both Robin and Dolly turned upon me in real amazement. But I saw that this side-issue would interrupt the story.
"Never mind!" I said. "Go on! I'll explain afterwards."
"Well," continued Dolly, "he said to me—may I tell them, Robin?" She turned to the man beside her with a pretty air of deference. Robin, who up to this point had sat like a graven image, inclined his head, and Dolly proceeded—
"I have never told anybody about this—except Dilly, of course."
"I've got the letter still," said Dilly.
"Robin told me," Dolly went on, "that he wasn't going to ask me to marry him at present, because he had some childish idea—it is perfectly idiotic to think of; but—he thought he wasn't quite—well, good enough for me!"
"What rot!" said Dicky.
"Muck!" observed Gerald.
"But he said that he would ask me properly later on, as soon as he considered that he was good enough," continued Dolly. "And as he still seems to think," she concluded with more animation, "that he is not quite up to standard, it occurred to me to-night, as we were all here in a jolly little party, to notify him that he is. So I did. That's all. Robin, you are hurting my hand!"
Robin relaxed his grip at last, and remorsefully surveyed the bloodless fingers that lay in his palm. Then, with a rather shamefaced look all round the table, as much as to say—"I should like fine to restrain myself from doing this before you all, but I can't!"—he bent his head and kissed them in his turn.
And that was how Robin and Dolly plighted their troth at last—openly, without shame, and for all to see.
Robin and I lingered at the turning of a passage, lit only by our two flickering bedroom candles.
"Well, we can't complain of having had an uneventful day," I said.
"I'm sorry we didn't scrape other twenty-eight votes," said Robin characteristically.
"Never mind!" I said. "I shall be none the worse of a holiday for a year or two. If you will kindly take Dolly off our hands as quickly as possible"—he caught his breath at that—"Kitty and I and Phillis will go a trip round the world together. Then I'll come home and fight a by-election, perhaps."
"Meanwhile," said Robin, "you will be having no further need of a private secretary."
"I'm afraid not," I said. The fact had been tugging at my conscience for the last two hours. "And that raises another question. What are you two going to live on?"
"Champion wants me," said Robin. "He has offered me the post of Secretary to that Royal Commission of which he has been appointed Chairman. It is a fine opening."
"I should think it was!" I said with whole-hearted joy. "Good luck to you, Robin!"
"Thank you!" said Robin. "Still," he added, as he turned to go, "I wish I could have found you twenty-eight more votes."
"Between ourselves," I said, "I don't mind very much. I am not the right man for this constituency. It has outgrown me. I have not the knack of handling a big crowd. What I want is a fine old crusted unprogressive seat, where I shan't constantly be compelled to drop my departmental work and rush down to propitiate my supporters with untruthful harangues. I'm a square peg here. Now, if they had wanted a really fit and proper candidate for this Parliamentary Division, Robin, they ought to have approached you."
"Och!" said Robin carelessly, "they did—a month ago! Good night!"