The French Ambassador, a tall, emaciated person, whom no one could ever have suspected of being the first of European gourmets, had shown an unmistakable preference for Lady Instow, whose chef he had already tried to seduce into his service; and Mr. Boyton, as by some inevitable law that governs the movements of heavy bodies, had been already drawn into a reverential orbit round the Duchess of Lindfield, who, according to her custom, was swiftly denuding him of cigarettes. But to Mr. Boyton a cigarette of his own smoked by a duchess was worth a hundred cigarettes smoked by himself, and he came near to being vexed when Lady Grote, observing this marauding process, told a footman to put a case of cigarettes on a table close to her Grace. But he found some little consolation in shutting up his own case and supplying himself from this, for these were, at any rate, titled cigarettes. He also felt a quiet and secret pleasure in being the only snob of the old school present: thus he had a fair field to himself, and no one disputed his desire to talk to a dull duchess. For the rest, he was a stout, middle-aged gentleman, with hair of a suspiciously uniform honey-colour parted in the middle.
He had a wife, a fact which nobody here present probably knew, who kept his house in Hampstead in a wholly admirable manner. She was the only person in the world who loved him, and would have perished with terror had there been any serious reason to suppose that she would be asked to the tables at which her Arthur was so deservedly popular, for he had an apt and amusing tongue ready to trim itself with sycophancy when exposed to the high lights of such a firmament. His eminence consisted in the fact that he was always there: he crawled, he climbed, he flew. But he invariably got there. A hostess asked Mr. Boyton as a matter of course: he was there to eat his dinner just as naturally as the footmen were there to give it him. He sang for it, too, making himself invariably agreeable to those who were worth the trouble. And as he saw no others, he never proved a disappointment.
All, then, was going well in the assembling of this particular party. Everything always did go well, but with a rather touching humility Lady Grote never ceased to fear as Saturday afternoon became more populous, that her guests were not going to enjoy themselves. That was her main anxiety: she had no solid self-assurance that would permit her to think that they must enjoy themselves, since they formed her party. A tremendous under-tow of modesty lay below the surface of her nature: she never rated herself at the figure at which the whole of her world rated her. She was never dazzled by the brilliance that she shed. She could not get over the notion that it was very nice of others to appear to enjoy her hospitality.
With her admirable memory, long trained in the requirements needed by a hostess, she knew that soon after six all her guests had arrived with the exception of Robin and her husband. The boy had certainly said he would come to-day, but had not said how or when he would get there: that was rather like him. Perhaps he would swim down the river from Cambridge, and arrive at the steps by the bottom of the wood with no clothes of any description....
She mentioned this possibility to Geoffrey Bellingham, who was a late arrival, and was sitting by her with a cup of tea, a glass of hock-cup, a tea-cake and a peach on the table beside him. It did not seem that he wished to consume any of those items of provender: he had but absently taken them from trays that were handed him, and they now formed a sort of phalanx of food ready to hand. Soon he added to them a glass of brandy-and-soda, a cigar and a cigarette. The last of these, without lighting it, he brandished as an instrument of gesticulation.
“But there is, in fact, my dear lady,” he said, “no apprehension justly founded which could lead you seriously to contemplate so unusual an occurrence as our dear Robin’s appearance here in that state which you so delicately allude to as nudity. Even if it were so, what sight could be more delectable to our over-civilized eyes than a young, unconscious Greek god, an Aphrodite, in fact, though of the more muscular sex, appearing suddenly from the wave in all the unashamedness of youthful beauty among our sophisticated frocks and frills? You would, if your maternal instincts prompted you, lend him a skirt, and I would hesitatingly offer him a coat more than ample for his slimness. Then, clad with a shoe of Lady Massingberd’s and a boot of our amiable Boyton’s, is there any more alluring spectacle—in fact, we shall all be delighted to see Robin, irrespective of his position as the son of our dear hostess, whenever and however he arrives. But if, unless I am mistaken, it is the Cam that glides by his studious walls, there is no real chance of the aqueous phenomenon you have suggested, as he comes, I understand, from the banks of a river which suffers a sea-change in the Wash. Had Oxford the honour of claiming him as an alumnus, there would have been the chance of his debouching, so to speak, at Grote, which, I cannot believe I am mistaken in thinking, casts its spell over the Thames. In fact, Robin, if he comes by river in any form, will have to face a voyage down the North Sea, or German Ocean as the geography books, probably Teutonic in origin, so impudently call it, before he can win a footing on our beloved Thames. And even then he would have to swim up from Gravesend or some ill-defined settlement that enriches the estuary!”
His eyes suddenly fell on the peach, the tea-cake, the brandy-and-soda, the tea and the hock-cup.
“I had not been aware,” he said, “that so complete a paraphernalia of what would make the most sumptuous sort of dinner had been provided me. It is slightly embarrassing to be so beautifully equipped with what the Prayer-book calls the kindly fruits of the earth, without having had the slightest intention of claiming their benign aid to bridge over the chasm, as we may call it, which intervenes—in fact, the smallest possible selection from an apparently unlimited store would more than suffice for me. In short, a cup of tea and nothing more would be remarkably pleasant. I seem to have taken a cigar, too, a delicacy of desiccated foliage of which I am wholly unworthy. And so Robin is expected.”
That seemed to be the gist of it all, and Helen Grote took firm hold of this life-preserver that floated on the flood of Geoffrey Bellingham’s discourse.
“He said he would come this afternoon,” she said, clinging to that which kept her head above water. “But one never knows about Robin.”