After that the conversation reverted to ordinary channels, and Pip was apprised of the week's programme. On the morrow, Wednesday, the House Eleven, under the Squire himself, would play the village, led by the Vicar—a time-honoured fixture. Thursday would be an off-day; on Friday they would meet the Grandwich Old Boys, who were on tour and would put up at "The George"; and on Saturday would come the tug-of-war, the match against the Gentlemen of the County, who were reputed to have whipped up a red-hot side.
Pip, who had arrived late for tea, met the ladies of the party in the drawing-room before dinner. They were of the usual diverse types. There was Kitty Davenport, slangy and mannish, who would not thank you for describing her as "a charming girl," but would be your firm friend if you called her "a good sort." There were the Misses Chell, fresh, unaffected, and healthily English. There were the two Calthrop girls, pretty, helpless, and clinging—a dangerous sort this, O young man!—together with an assortment of girls who were plain but lively, and girls who were dull but pretty, and a few less fortunate girls who were neither lively nor pretty. There was a solitary "flapper" of fifteen, who, untrammelled as yet by fear of Mrs. Grundy, was having the time of her life with the two callowest members of the Eleven.
And there was Elsie. Pip encountered her suddenly on the staircase. She was clad in the severely simple white frock that marks the débutante, and her lint-coloured hair was "up," as Pipette had said. It was two years since Pip had seen her, for she had been to a finishing-school in Paris. He shook her hand in a manner which left that member limp and bloodless for the rest of the evening, and accompanied her downstairs, to find on reaching the hall that some never-to-be-sufficiently-blessed fairy had arranged that he was to take her in to dinner.
The most confirmed believer in the decadence of the Anglo-Saxon race might have been converted by the sight of the company round Squire Chell's table that night. Young men and maidens, healthy, noisy, effervescent, ate and drank, babbled and laughed, flirted and squabbled with whole-hearted thoroughness from the soup to the savoury; and Pip, sitting silently ecstatic by Elsie, beheld the scene and suddenly realised that life was very good. What a splendid assemblage! The girls, of course, were girls, and as such beyond criticism. And the men? Maybe they were youthful and conventional,—each would probably have cut his own father dead in the street if he had met him wearing a made-up tie,—but Pip knew that they were for the most part clean-run, straight-going people like himself, good fellows, "white" men all. With one exception. And suddenly Pip realised that the exception was sitting on the other side of Elsie.
Cullyngham was smiling and talking. He always was smiling. He smiled when he made a century. He smiled when he made a blob. He smiled when a rising ball hit him on the knuckles. He was smiling now, and Elsie was smiling too; and Pip felt suddenly murderous.
They were talking of golf. Elsie, who had spent most of her life on the east coast of Scotland, was discussing matters that were Greek to poor cricketing Pip,—stymies, mashies, Kites, Falcons, and other fearful wild-fowl,—and Cullyngham was offering to play Elsie a match round the home course next day. A brief review in Pip's mind of the most expeditious forms of assassination was interrupted by a cheery hail across the table from Jacky Chell, a hearty but tactless youth of boisterous temperament.
"Quite like old times, seeing you and Cully together, Pip," he cried. "Played each other any billiard matches lately?"
Elsie scented a story.
"What billiard match?" she inquired, turning to Pip. "Did you two play much together at Cambridge?"
By this time Jacky Chell's stentorian laughter had reduced the table to silence, and all waited for Pip's answer, which when it finally came, was to the effect that Jacky Chell had better dry up. Cullyngham continued to smile, apparently without effort.