‘“And that,” he said, touching Glass B, “is thin and sour; it smells of leather. And that,” he said, touching Glass C, “is a mixture of the two, and very good it is.” Saying which, he drank it off and licked his lips.
‘“Gentlemen!” cried I, jumping up; “this is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. Without tasting a drop, the Prince has guessed exactly right. It’s Château Mauville, which I have mixed—a sudden inspiration which came to me one morning in my bath—with an inferior Spanish claret, tinged with that odd smack of the wine-skin, which I thought would fit in with the rather tea-rosy taste of the Mauville.”
‘You can imagine the excitement which this event produced in that coterie of viveurs. From that moment his success in London was assured. The story got about, in a distorted form of course, as these things will. I was obliged to give the correct version of it in the “Flywheel” a few days later.
‘It was I that introduced him to Lord X——, who had been complaining for years that there wasn’t a man in town fit to drink his Madeira. Trench by trench the citadel of public opinion was stormed and taken. How well I remember,’ &c., &c.
XVII
Prince Dwala succeeded by other qualities than those attributed to him. His wealth raised him to a high tableland, where others also dwelt; it was not his fine palate which raised him higher, nor was it his manners. His manners, in point of fact, were not perfect; his manner perhaps, but not his manners. The finest manners were not to be learnt in the school of Warbeck Wemyss, as he quickly perceived; that was only a preparation, a phase. Captain Howland-Bowser, who believed his own success to be due to that schooling, was mistaken; he underrated himself: his success was greatly due to his fine presence, but still more to the fact that his intelligence stood head and shoulders higher than that of most of those with whom he was thrown into contact; and he had confirmed his pre-eminence by his literary fame.
Prince Dwala’s popularity was chiefly due to the zeal, the zest, the frenzy, with which he threw himself into the distractions and pursuits of the best society. He missed nothing: he was everywhere; wakeful, watchful, interested. He was a dancing man, a dining man, a club man, a racing man, an automobilist, a first-nighter. His dark head, groomed to a millimetre, his big figure, tailored to perfection, formed a necessary feature of every gathering.
Nor did he hold himself aloof from the more serious pursuits of the wealthy: he was at every meeting, big or small, that had to do with missionary work, temperance, philanthropy; he visited the Geographical Society, the Antiquaries, the Christian Scientists, and the lady with the crystal globe in Hanover Square.
He was up early, walking through the slums, or having his correspondence read to him. Tired rings grew round the Huxtable’s eyes; the Prince was as fresh as paint. He was studying ‘the Human Question.’
We will not follow him through all the details of his social life: the limbo of frocks and lights, the lovely people, the unlovely, the endless flickering of vivid talk, the millions of ideas, all different in outline but uniform in impulse, like the ripples on the Atlantic swell. We come at once to the great day when he met Lady Wyse.