"I've said I'd give a ball," sighed Lady Dainton. "Really ... dreadful fatigue, don't you know?"
And Lady Ullswater sidled up, shaking her wonderful head of perennially chestnut hair.
"Not if you go the right way about it, dear Lady Dainton. Of course, it's rather presumptuous of me to advise you, but...."
And in front of me, through me and over my head at dinner, Sonia and Sally Farwell bandied impressive names. With both of them it was the first Season, and each seemed to aim at showing the other—and me—the important figure she had succeeded in cutting. Sir Roger, always shy and more than ever out of his element, postured as the bluff Tory Squire who hated London and all its works. John Ashwell, who was the son of a highly respected North-country solicitor before he took to peddling names of eligible bachelors, shook his head over the plebeian admixture of society, illustrated by an account of that day's luncheon with the dowager Duchess of Flint. Even poor Lady Marlyn, who was stone-deaf, caught the infection of play-acting and pretended to hear and appreciate the dialect stories of the American attaché on her right.
I sometimes think life would be simpler and more sincere if we had an official "Who's Who" with our incomes, their source, our professions or public positions, our parents and other relatives, not excluding those who lived abroad, with the reason for their retirement. My uncle himself, who told the story of his proffered knighthood a thought too freely, would have been called the son of a middle-class farmer—but for the fact that Ireland boasts no middle class. My own estate owed its existence to the old penal laws against Catholics: less polished generations used to say it was acquired by apostasy from God and theft of a brother's birthright. I do not dispute the charge and am gradually restoring the stolen property in exchange for adequate compensation under the latest Land Purchase Scheme. If the facts were recorded in a form accessible to the public, there would have been added piquancy attaching to my "Justice for Ireland" speeches a few months later. But the mystery, romance and make-believe of social intercourse would have departed. And our one public virtue would drop out of play, for we should no longer indulge the kindliness of respecting our neighbours' susceptibilities.
As it was I had the ill-luck to offend Sonia. Despite the weariness she inspired in me with what the republican O'Rane would have called "upper-ten-shop," it was unintentional. I have always kept up a curiously frank, rather cynical and entirely honour-among-thieves friendship with her: we know each other to the marrow, and, while in ignorance of any quality other than common egotism that should attract anyone of her temperament to anyone of mine, I have never ceased to admire her on purely physical grounds. I am still content to sit as I sat beside her that evening, gazing at the heavy coils of her brown hair, the red, moist lips, the brown, rather wistful eyes and the singularly beautiful arms and shoulders gleaming white through the transparency of her sleeves. I can understand any man falling in love with her; I can understand any man wanting to live his whole life with her—for a month.
Offence came by Tony Crabtree. Ascertaining that I knew him, she invited my opinion, and with the sense of stumbling unexpectedly on a too rare opportunity, I told her all that I knew and much that I thought.
"He's a great friend of ours," she cut in disconcertingly when I paused for breath.
"He's a bad man, Sonia," I repeated.