By the end of the evening my dislike of him was no less, but it was diluted with a certain envious admiration.
IV
Social amenities make a petty thing of life, and from the loftiness of a time when our souls are supposed to be enlarged by war I look back to find an infinite littleness in the artificial round we trod during my idle early days in London. My uncle, who was ashamed of betraying enthusiasm, took mischievous delight in employing a low scale of values, and at five-and-twenty I fancied that to be cynical was to be mature. I trace a curious inability to distinguish the essentials of existence, and had anyone used such a phrase at that time I am sure I should have demanded rhetorically, "What are the essentials?"
Thus, Lady Dainton's first ball for Sonia was of little enough moment for men associated τοὑ εὑ ζἡν ἑνεχα, [Greek: tou eu zên enecha], and, in my eyes, the greatest of its many surprises was that I induced Bertrand to accompany me and stay out of his bed till after four. There was no merit in my own attendance. Sonia invited me verbally, her mother by means of a card eight inches by six; a week before the night panic descended on the family; they requisitioned their friends' lists, and I received three more cards with three sets of compliments, while on the day itself I was told by telephone that if I knew of one or two additional men I was to bring them punctually. So Bertrand, whose study of the great movement of men had never led him within the Empire Hotel, found himself incontinently deprived of his second cigar and packed into a cab on the stroke of ten-fifteen.
From the moment of our arrival I could prophesy success. Lady Dainton, I know, secured anticipatory and retaliatory invitations for Sonia; Lady Ullswater, who helped her to receive, reckoned up numbers and all they represented in her obscure finances; Ashwell wandered through the long rooms with an air of modest proprietorship, telling marchionesses of the balls he had left and duchesses of the balls he was going to. All the men obtained food, several of the girls obtained partners; and Dainton, who appeared five several persevering times in the supper-room, had the gratification of meeting at least one appreciative guest who observed, in the intervals of filling a capacious cigarette-case, "Dunno the merchant who's runnin' the show, but he does you pretty well, what?"
At ten-thirty the ball's fate lay still on the knees of the gods, but by eleven the rush had set in. I could see Sonia's face brightening, her eyes lighting up like the eyes of a political agent as he shepherds his stalwarts to the poll. Tall and short, dark and fair, stout and lean, they surged forward in an endless black and white stream, as desirable a set of young men as the combined talents of Ashwell and Lady Ullswater could bring together.
"She's launched!" said Bertrand, after an hour of the scene, and we walked upstairs in search of a cigar. By the buffet we found Dainton standing alone and drinking a surreptitious glass of champagne.
"Who does he remind you of?" my uncle asked me as we gained the lounge, and when I hesitated—"Don't you remember your Du Maurier?"
And then, of course, there leapt before my eyes the picture of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns's husband at one of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns's parties: a jaded but unprotesting figure, leaning against the wall and dully blinking at his lady's social captures; heavy-eyed, drooping-jawed, with bulging shirt-front and necktie askew. One hand stifles a yawn, the other guardedly conceals the watch at which he is glancing with furtive resignation. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, meanwhile, is rising from triumph to social triumph; he is paying the bill—and wondering wherein lies the fascination of it all.