I think that he uttered the last clause in an indiscriminate sort of way to all of us, perhaps conscious that his audience was not, so to speak, altogether with him. But it was a little unfortunate that the people immediately facing him happened to be Lady Annabel and Mrs. Kendal. It was so extraordinarily evident to the rest of us that they did not at all feel that they ought to have been there, on the occasion of Mrs. Harter’s rather singular achievement.
Leeds, however, alternates between a childlike touchiness and an egotistical obtuseness, and this time he was obtuse.
He went on talking to Mrs. Harter about Cairo, and the people there whom he had known, and whom he took it for granted that she had known also. Later on, I learned that the weakness of Mr. Leeds was to have known everybody. He is a young-looking man for his years, and people are always astonished, in a gratifying way, when he claims acquaintance with the celebrities of forty years ago.
He is exactly the kind of man to whom one would expect Mrs. Harter’s type to make a strong appeal, and he addressed his conversation almost exclusively to her.
When Mrs. Leeds said, “How are we all goin’?” there was the usual pause, followed by the usual demonstrations.
“Will you come in the Mercedes with me, Lady Annabel, and Sir Miles? Hector,” said Mrs. Leeds to her husband, “will you take Lady Flower in the two-seater?”
She did not make her suggestions with any assurance, and Lady Annabel, while acquiescing graciously as to the place allotted to her, seemed faintly amused. She said afterward that these things require a great deal of experience—which indeed is quite true—and that personally she had always instructed the A. D. C.s beforehand, and left nothing to chance.
“I can seat three people,” said General Kendal. “Not more. The springs, you know—and the hill up to Berry Down is a stiff pull.”
“You’d better let me sit in front with you, Puppa,” Mrs. Kendal said firmly. “Then I can keep my eyes open. If one hasn’t been driving very long,” she explained to the rest of us, “one is liable to get fussed. I always say to my husband, at critical moments, ‘Don’t get fussed, dear. Whatever you do, keep your head, and don’t allow yourself to get fussed.’”
“But this won’t do at all—we must separate relations!” cried Leeds. “We can’t all go about in family groups, like the Ark, or whatever it was. Might as well stay at home as do that.”