Mrs. Cyril came forward and seized him by the hand. She overwhelmed him with apologies. Nothing would have persuaded her to take such a liberty except her gratitude for all he had done for Leonard; and as she murmured the word “Leonard” a touching moisture suffused her eyes.
The guests all stood around awkwardly, like provincial notables awaiting an introduction to royalty. Mrs. Cyril went through them one by one in their exact order of greatness, and shouted at the kind old Cabinet Minister again, to give Mr. Petre some impression of the way in which one had to talk to him.
Never was a man more deeply impressed than was Mr. Petre by the solemn deference he received. One after another each of those men and each of those women spiritually knelt before him, and there was manifest in their eyes and in their gestures all the spirit of religion. He who showed it least was young Terrard; yet even he showed it plentifully, and Marjorie Kayle exceeded.
“Evidently,” thought Mr. Petre, remembering the hotel, “I was right. I am somebody—or I was somebody.”
They sat at table, sneered at by six enormous portraits, in another room as large as the first, and having a view through its windows of a mews; and as they so sat the wine loosened their tongues and they talked of things and people, of which Mr. Petre knew some by repute, others not at all. He answered gently such questions as his hostess put to him (he sat upon her right); he assured her that he had had an excellent crossing (for she asked him what kind of crossing it had been); but he was careful not to risk any details, as he had not the slightest idea that he had crossed anything from anywhere. He assured her that he was familiar with London; he told her that he had not yet been to any other house—and all this while he was in terror lest some question more searching than the rest might challenge him and make him flounder past recovery.
The meal dragged on. They had come to coffee. The banker had looked at his watch, and found it was already twenty past two. At each succeeding phrase his hostess put to him Mr. Petre came nearer and nearer to breaking-point under the strain.
He was saved by a magic word. Some one at the end of the table had pronounced three syllables: “Touaregs.” At that sound the whole conversation was in a blaze. Here was something in which all held communion! Here was a subject which struck right at the heart of every man and woman in the room—except poor Mr. Petre, to whom every allusion and phrase and term was Greek and nonsense; of not one could he make anything; yet he was relieved to think that they were off on matters which imperiled him no more.
As the fowls of a farmyard strut aimlessly back and forth picking aimlessly at the ground after the convention of fowls, but very empty of interest in their lives, so had the people round Mrs. Cyril’s table spoken first of a play, then of a novel, then of a politician, then of a criminal; and then, still more languidly, of a coming eclipse. Their words were the more vapid and without stuff, the more like sawdust, because each man and woman had in his heart one object only dominating all, and that object was John K. Petre, high above the few lords of the free modern world: fifty million pounds incarnate, and come to dwell amongst us. There, before them, in the flesh.
As the fowls of a farmyard will change their whole beings, clucking and chattering prodigiously and scrambling together in a swarm, and the whole flock alive with appetite when a handful of grain is thrown down; so did the people round Mrs. Cyril’s table change inwardly and outwardly at once upon the appearance of Touaregs. Their souls and bodies became alive, their wings were flustered, their minds clashed and struggled.
Touaregs would go farther. No, they had touched top mark. They were steady. No, they were rocketing. It was astonishing how mulish the French Government was about the concession. Not so mulish as all that: they knew which side their bread was buttered. Marjorie Kayle said that Billy Wootton had squared the French Commissioner. The banker then told the company in general that they knew nothing about it, and Mrs. Cyril eagerly quoted what Charlie Byrne had told her, only that morning, of the new deposits; whereupon one of the ex-Lord Chancellors who had not yet given tongue said with great good sense that when a market ran away like that it didn’t matter what news came or didn’t come. And the other Lord Chancellor agreed with him. At which the kind old Cabinet Minister smiled, nodded, and said, “Just so!” because he had usually found it safe to use these words on things he couldn’t hear.