“Oh!” was all that I found appropriate.
I felt that the action of my opera was hanging fire. Indeed, every one was beginning to feel it. The Hall door had been shut against the bane of the night-air. The stimulus of the fragrant night-stock had been excluded. Miss Tattersall pretended not to yawn. We all pretended that we did not feel a craving to yawn. The chatter rose and fell spasmodically in short devitalised bursts of polite effort.
I looked round for Brenda, but could not see her anywhere.
“Won’t you come back into the drawing-room?” Mrs. Jervaise was saying to the Sturtons.
“Oh! thank you, it’s hardly worth while, is it?” Mrs. Sturton answered effusively, but she loosened the shawl that muffled her throat as if she were preparing for a longer wait. “I’m so sorry,” she apologised for the seventh time. “So very unfortunate after such a really delightful evening.”
They kept up that kind of conversation for quite a long time, while we listened eagerly for the sound of the motor-horn.
And no motor-horn came; instead, after endlessly tedious minutes, John returned bearing himself like a portent of disaster.
The confounded fellow whispered again.
“What, not anywhere?” Jervaise asked irritably. “Sure he hasn’t gone to bed?”
John said something in that too discreet voice of his, and then Jervaise scowled and looked round at the ascending humanity of the staircase. His son Frank detached himself from the swarm, politely picked his way down into the Hall, and began to put John under a severe cross-examination.