Then a loving-cup filled with punch began to go the round and they all drank from it in turn, rising to their feet as they did so, and saying, “Concha! Rory!”
When every one had had a sip, Rory, rather pale, got up to return thanks.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!... (pause) ... I do think it’s extraordinary kind of you to drink our health in this very nice way. We are most awfully grateful ... (pause) ... I’m afraid I’m not a Cicero or a Lloyd George, or anything like that ... (Laughter) ... old Crippin there will tell you speeches ain’t much in my line....” Then he had a sudden brilliant idea: “But there’s one thing I should like to ask you all to do. You see, I’m awfully grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Lane for giving me Concha, and my uncle has always been most awfully good to me, and I’d like to ask you all to drink their health ... and if my mother is anywhere about ... and others ... I know they’ll join in the toast, in nectar, or whatever they drink up there,” and he ended with an apologetic little laugh.
The company was very much touched; Edward Lane blew his nose violently, and muttered to Jollypot that young Dundas was evidently a very nice-feeling young fellow.
The atmosphere having become emotional, the ghosts walked.
Colonel Dundas had a vision of Rory’s mother—lovely Mab Brabazon—as he had first seen her, radiant and laughing at the Northern Meeting of twenty-nine years ago; but then, ever since, he had so often had that vision: at Church Parade, at polo in India, playing golf in Scotland, playing Bridge in any of his ten clubs—anywhere, everywhere, he might see Mab Brabazon. And little had Teresa guessed that as Carlyle read Fenimore Cooper, so he had read the French Revolution—“to distract his mind.”
Sir Roger and Lady Cust thought of Francis; more than one of Pepa. But Dick thought of his sallow puritanic sister Joannah, who had been so much older than himself that their interests had never clashed, and all his memories of her were of petting and spoiling—“Little Dickie doesn’t take spoiling, his temper is so sweet,” she used to say—his eyes began to smart. And Hugh Mallam, too, thought of poor old Joannah Lane, and he remembered how, in the days when his ambition had been to be a painter, he used to wonder whether, if offered the certainty of becoming as great a one as Sir Frederick Leighton, on condition of marrying Joannah, he would be able to bring himself to do it.
3
After dinner they went into the garden; some of them sitting on the lawn, some of them wandering about among the flowers.
The border was in the summer prime of lilies and peonies and anchusa and delphiniums; to its right was a great clump of lavender nearly ripe, and at the stage when it looks like veins of porphyry running through a rock of jade; a little to its left was a stiff row of hollyhocks.