Everyone rose to his feet to drink the toast, with the exception of the bankrupt himself, and his brother, who tried to conceal his disgust under an air of amused tolerance.
Alistair Stuart was conscious of his brother’s real feeling, and resented it all the more because he was half ashamed of his own part in the buffoonery. His tone became louder and more insolent as he gulped down glass after glass of spirits, and called upon one or other of his guests to keep up the entertainment.
Nobody dared call upon the Secretary of State. They all knew enough to feel that he was a stranger in the camp, if not a spy, and only the emphasized indifference of Stuart to his brother’s presence gave them courage to go on. The presence of this representative of all that they professed to loathe and despise, looking on with chill disapproval, dashed their spirits unexpectedly, and even to their own ears their customary jests took on a hollow sound.
Presently it came to the turn of a youth seated opposite to the Duke. He was of a pale and sickly countenance, the whiteness of his face being accentuated by the black locks which he allowed to grow down to his neck. His tie was a black sash with flowing ends like that worn by French Art students in the quarter of Batignolles. He did not appear to be much more than twenty, and answered to the name of Egerton Vane.
“Who is he?” Trent asked his neighbour.
“The lunatic with the scarf round his neck? That’s a minor poet. I don’t suppose you have ever come across his works. He publishes two volumes every year, at his own expense, of course, with about twenty poems in each. No one ever reads them, except the provincial reviewers. He has got an album filled with cuttings from papers like the Pembrokeshire News and the Berwick-on-Tweed Gazette. ‘A volume of verse from the graceful pen of Mr. Egerton Vane’—that’s the kind of incense he feeds on. Once he got a puff in a paper called the Librarian, and carried it about with him for months. He said to me with tears in his eyes: ‘This is recognition!’”
Everyone in the room seemed to have some literary or artistic vocation, except Mendes himself. The motive which brought the South American there remained unguessed by Trent, but it was clear that he extracted some amusement from his strange associates.
“That other young fool over there is his brother, Wickham Vane,” the millionaire continued, indicating a boy of eighteen or thereabouts, at the other end of the table.
“Does he write poetry, too?”
“No, he doesn’t do anything so material as write. He thinks beautifully about old tapestry.”