“Yes, especially the Creamery. That’s what I’ve christened the little God-forsaken village I discovered. So you know, if you ever want a cup of tea, we shall have five-o’clocks going on there also. Patronize the Creamery.”
“I will,” he said, with an instant resolution to take tea both in Mayfair and in Devonshire.
“That’s right. We’ll send a coach-and-four to meet you. At least, you’ll find it waiting at the station for passengers. Do you know whom I should like to meet most of all men living?”
“Wagner? The Pope? The Czar?”
“Don’t be absurd. The Rev. Septimus Wheercastle. A local guide-book says, ‘The Rev. Septimus Wheercastle speaks in very favorable terms of the Undercliff.’ Isn’t it delicious? Imagine a gentleman in a white tie patronizing an Undercliff! But, then, the clergy are always patronizing the Almighty, so why not His works?”
“Hush,” he said, indicating the proximity of the Bishop.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked, in an awed whisper. “What a privilege never to be mistaken for a waiter! I am so proud of the bishops in my family. We have a pair, with gaiters to match, both High Church atheists; they are the joys of my life, they and the dowager duchess, who wears kiss-curls and raves for blood. ‘Give me blood!’ she cries, as she denounces modern society, stabbing her potato with her fork à la Sarah Siddons.”
To Matthew Strang, who still had a vague reverence for duchesses, it was troubling to see them through the eyes of relatives for whom they were common clay. But this had always been his disappointment, the further he penetrated into the arcana of aristocracy and into the ranks of the distinguished—nobody ever seemed quite so imposing as his or her name in the paper. Taken in the mass, aristocracy of birth or brain was dazzling, overwhelming; but the individual was always amiably imperfect, with the exception, of course, of the one perfect being in the universe, Eleanor Wyndwood.
“You don’t think much of your family, Miss Regan,” he said, smiling.
“No, and they return the compliment. They don’t realize how near Doomsday is for us aristocrats. We must disappear. We have played our part.”