“All right. Come on and have a go down the hill, then.”
The Bellairs’ came to dinner that evening. Molly was a little subdued, and with her usual flow of childish high spirits not quite so spontaneous as usual. She sat between Eddy and the Dean, and was rather quiet with both of them. The Dean took in Eileen, and on her other side was Nevill Bellairs, who, having deduced in the afternoon that she was partly Irish, very naturally mentioned the Home Rule Bill, which he had been spending last session largely in voting against. Being Irish, Mrs. Le Moine presumably felt strongly on this subject, which he introduced with the complacency of one who had been fighting in her cause. She listened to him with her half railing, inscrutable smile, until Eddy said across the table, “Mrs. Le Moine’s a Home Ruler, Nevill; look out,” and Nevill stopped abruptly in full flow and said, “You’re not!” and pretended not to mind, and to be only disconcerted for himself, but was really indignant with her for being such a thing, and a little with Eddy for not having warned him. It dried up his best conversation, as one couldn’t talk politics to a Home Ruler. He wondered was she a Papist, too. So he talked about hunting in Ireland, and found she knew nothing of hunting there or indeed anywhere. Then he tried London, but found that the London she knew was different from his, except externally, and you can’t talk for ever about streets and buildings, especially if you do not frequent the same eating-places. From different eating-places the world is viewed from different angles; few things are a more significant test of a person’s point of view.
Meanwhile the Dean was telling Jane about places of interest, such as Roman camps, in the neighbourhood. The Dean, like many deans, talked rather well. He thought Jane prettily attentive, and more educated than most young women, and that it was a pity she wore such an old-fashioned dress. He did not say so, but asked her if she had designed it from Carpaccio’s St. Ursula, and she said no, from an angel playing the timbrel by Jacopo Bellini in the Accademia. So after that they talked about Venice, and he said he must show her his photographs of it after dinner. “It must be a wonderful place for an artist,” he told her, and she agreed, and then they compared notes and found that he had stayed at the Hotel Europa, and had had a lovely view of the Giudecca and Santa Maria Maggiore from the windows (“most exquisite on a grey day”), and she had stayed in the flat of an artist friend, looking on to the Rio delle Beccarie, which is a rio of the poor. Like Eileen and Nevill, they had eaten in different places; but, unlike London, Venice is a coherent whole, not rings within rings, so they could talk, albeit with reservations and a few cross purposes. The Dean liked talking about pictures, and Torcello, and Ruskin, and St. Mark’s, and the other things one talks about when one has been to Venice. Perhaps too he even wanted a little to hear her talk about them, feeling interested in the impressions of an artist. Jane was rather disappointingly simple and practical on these subjects; artists, like other experts, are apt to leave rhapsodies to the layman, and tacitly assume admiration of the beauty that is dilated on by the unprofessional. They are baffling people; the Dean remembered that about poor Wilson Gavin.
While he thus held Jane’s attention, Eddy talked to Molly about skating, a subject in which both were keenly interested, Daphne sparred with Claude, and Arnold entertained Mrs. Oliver, whom he found a little difficile and rather the grande dame. Frankly, Mrs. Oliver did not like Arnold, and he saw through her courtesy as easily as through Daphne’s rudeness. She thought him conceited (which he was), irreverent (which he was also), worldly (which he was not), and a bad influence over Eddy (and whether he was that depended on what you meant by “bad”).
On the whole it was rather an uncomfortable dinner, as dinners go. There was a sense of misfit about it. There were just enough people at cross-purposes to give a feeling of strain, a feeling felt most strongly by Eddy, who had perceptions, and particularly wanted the evening to be a success. Even Molly and he had somehow come up against something, a rock below the cheerful, friendly stream of their intercourse, that pulled him up, though he didn’t understand what it was. There was a spiritual clash somewhere, between nearly every two of them. Between him and Molly it was all her doing; he had never felt friendlier; it was she who had put up a queer, vague wall. He could not see into her mind, so he didn’t bother about it much but went on being cheerful and friendly.
They were all happier after dinner, when playing the pianola in the hall and dancing to it.
But on the whole the evening was only a moderate success.
The Bellairs’ told their parents afterwards that they didn’t much care about the friends Eddy had staying.
“I believe they’re stuck up,” said Dick (the Guards), who hadn’t been at dinner, but had met them tobogganing. “That man Denison’s for ever trying to be clever. I can’t stand that; it’s such beastly bad form. Don’t think he succeeds, either, if you ask me. I can’t see it’s particularly clever to be always sneering at things one knows nothing about. Can’t think why Eddy likes him. He’s not a bit keen on the things Eddy’s keen on—hunting, or shooting, or games, or soldiering.”
“There are lots like him at Oxford,” said Claude. “I know the type. Balliol’s full of it. Awfully unwholesome, and a great bore to meet. They write things, and admire each other’s. I suppose it’s the same at Cambridge. Only I should have thought Eddy would have kept out of the way of it.”