At a sign from Mrs. Craske-Morton, Miss Wangle secured Mr. Samuel Ragbone and they started for the dining-room. The remainder of the guests paired off in accordance with Mrs. Craske-Morton's instructions, written and verbal, she left nothing to chance, and the procession was brought up by Mrs. Craske-Morton herself and Bowen. Patricia fell to the lot of Mr. Sefton.
As soon as the guests were seated a death-like stillness reigned. Bowen was looking round with interest as he unfolded his napkin into which had been deftly inserted a roll. Miss Sikkum, Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe and Mr. Bolton each lost their rolls, which were retrieved from underneath the table by Gustave and Alice.
Mr. Sefton, also unconscious of the secreted roll, opened his napkin with a debonair jerk to show that he was quite at his ease. The bread rose in the air. He made an unsuccessful clutch, touched but could not hold it, and watched with horror the errant roll hit Miss Wangle playfully on the side of the nose, just as she was beginning to tell Bowen about "the dear bishop."
Patricia bit her lip, Bowen bent solicitously over the angry Miss Wangle, whilst Mr. Bolton threatened to report Mr. Sefton to the Food Controller. Gustave created a diversion by arriving with the soup. His white cotton gloves, several sizes too large even for his hands, caused him great anxiety. Every spare moment during the evening he spent in clutching them at the wrists, just as they were on the point of slipping off. Nothing, however, could daunt his courage or mitigate his good-humour. For the first time in his life he was waiting upon a real lord, and from the circumstance he was extracting every ounce of satisfaction it possessed.
In serving Bowen his attitude was that of one self-convicted of unworthiness. Accustomed to the complaints and bickerings of a Bayswater boarding-house, Bowen's matter-of-fact motions of acceptance or refusal impressed him profoundly. So this was how lords behaved. Nothing so impressed him as the little incident of the champagne.
At Galvin House it was the custom for the guests to have their own drinks. Mr. Cordal, for instance, drank what the label on the bottle announced to be "Gumton's Superior Light Dinner Ale." Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe favoured Guinness's Stout, Miss Sikkum took hot water, whilst Miss Wangle satisfied herself with a claret bottle. There is refinement in claret, the dear bishop always drank it, with water: but as claret costs money Miss Wangle made a bottle last for months.
The thought of the usual heterogeneous collection of bottles on the occasion of Lord Peter's visit had filled Mrs. Craske-Morton with horror, and she had decided to "spring" wine, as Mr. Bolton put it. In other words, she supplied for the whole company four bottles of one-and-eightpenny claret, the bottles rendered beautifully old by applied dust and cobwebs. To this she had added a bottle of grocer's champagne for Bowen. Gustave had been elaborately instructed that this was for the principal guest and the principal guest only, and Mrs. Craske-Morton had managed to convey to him in some subtle way that if he poured so much as a drop of the precious fluid into any other person's glass, the consequences would be too terrifying even to contemplate.
Whilst Galvin House was murmuring softly over its soup, Gustave approached Bowen with the champagne bottle swathed in a white napkin, and looking suspiciously like an infant in long clothes. Holding the end of the bottle's robes with the left hand so that it should not tickle Bowen's ear, Gustave bent anxiously to his task.
Bowen, however, threw a bomb-shell at the earnest servitor. He motioned that he did not desire champagne. Gustave hesitated and looked enquiringly at his mistress. Here was an unlooked-for development.
"You'll take champagne?" enquired Mrs. Craske-Morton ingratiatingly.