But all this was done so deftly and with such tact, and interrupted with such merry little screams of laughter; in the course of it Mrs. Clutterbuck was herself compelled to make so many confidences that the atmosphere was one of mutual information, and the guest was confident that she had contributed more than the hostess. When Mary Smith moved off to play general post with the guests, and, as her charming phrase went, "to make them to talk to one another," Mrs. Clutterbuck found how singularly less a woman of the world was Mrs. Smith's somewhat prudish aunt, Lady Steyning, long at Simla, some time our ambassadress at Washington, and now about to be at the head of the Embassy in Paris. As for Mrs. Carey, Mrs. Clutterbuck regarded her with loathing.
Downstairs Charlie Fitzgerald had been drinking port, and, keeping his right hand firmly fixed upon the neck of the decanter, he had poured out wine at intervals for Mr. Clutterbuck with a gesture which he falsely termed "passing the bottle." He had not his cousin's manner or science in the handling of a conversation, but the wine, though bad, was a bond between them; they drank it largely, especially Fitzgerald: it enabled him to recite with passion and Mr. Clutterbuck to receive with faith, anecdotes of yet another batch of secretaries, and of Mr. Fitzgerald's own adventures in his confidential relations with the discredited Isaacs and the aged but irascible Lord Burpham; a last engagement which he had apparently terminated from his fixed decision to undertake no such work in the future, but to live the life of a private gentleman, and possibly to enter the House of Commons.
It was impossible for Mr. Clutterbuck not to contrast again the spontaneity and ease of the world round him with the much more sterile associations of his middle and later manhood. Nor did anything please him more in that ease and spontaneity than the Irish good nature with which Charlie Fitzgerald poured at his feet his wealth of social experience, and especially his experience in that secretarial phase which Mr. Clutterbuck sincerely regretted that he should have entirely abandoned. He could not help thinking, as he looked at the handsome curly head and merry eyes, and as he heard the names of the great and good flash constantly from the lips before him, how perfect would that arrangement be which should permit some humbler but similar man to be to him what Charlie Fitzgerald seemed to have been to the eminent financier and the hot-tempered politician; a-second-and-a-younger-eye-and-brain.
As they came into the drawing-room together, they were already fast friends, and such was the effect of the atmosphere about him and the exhilarating evening he had passed, that Mrs. Smith found it quite impossible to make her Clutterbuck speak to any one save his new-found acquaintance: a disappointment to those ladies who had heard exaggerated accounts of his wealth, and were already interested in his crescent-shaped moustaches and the fan of grey hair which he displayed over his considerable forehead.
Mr. Clutterbuck noticed with some astonishment—if anything could astonish him now—the entry of further guests at a late hour. They came, as it seemed to him, without introduction and without ceremonial. And he wondered, as he followed the imperial carriage and gestures of Victoria Mosel among the rest, whether he also in some future year might be found drifting thus through open doors free from the weary necessities of etiquette. He doubted it.
They left at half-past eleven, and all the way home Mrs. Clutterbuck complained of fatigue. But her husband, upon his arrival, felt it necessary to continue the evening, and far into the early morning drank yet more port, and considered the change in his life.
CHAPTER V