“You ought to go into the House, Kenneth!” said Joyce. “Your eloquence would overwhelm Lloyd George himself. And I will say there’s a lot of sense in your head, in spite of your devastating beauty, and supercilious conceit.”
She spoke in the usual vein of irony with which she set her wit against Kenneth’s, yet with an underlying admiration which he perceived and liked.
His face crimsoned a little, and he laughed affectedly.
“For that tribute, dear lady, my heart’s thanks! But don’t tempt me to sully my bright soul with the dirt of politics. Diplomacy, yes, the higher Machiavellism, but, please, not politics! It’s impossible to keep clean within the precincts of Westminster.”
Two of Joyce’s girl friends called, followed by the Reverend Peter Fynde and an Italian countess who spoke detestable English and made enormous eyes to Kenneth Murless—enormous black eyes in a dead white face. Bertram noticed that her hands were dirty, though they glistened with wonderful rings. She called Joyce “Carissima.”—It was an opportunity for him to slip away and see old Christy again.
X
Luke Christy answered the rap of a little brass knocker on a door up three flights of stairs.
“Hullo, Major! I had an idea you’d come. You can’t keep away from my sinister influence.”
He saluted in an ungainly fashion, like a drunken Tommy, and then gripped Bertram’s hand in his long, bony fingers. He was a tall, thin, loosely-built man, with a clean-shaven face singularly ugly because of its long, lean jaw and bulging forehead. “An ugly mug,” as Bertram had often insulted it, but with a bright light within, shining out of dark, humorous, brooding eyes.
He was in his shirt sleeves, unpacking some hand-bags amidst a litter of dirty shirts, collars, socks, pyjamas, newspapers, and paper-backed books, and other salvage from a long journey.