Thereafter gratitude or vindictiveness urged them to reprisals, and for three more weeks Lady Poynter arranged “Pinto parties” on the principle that, if her friends would keep her in countenance on one day, she would do the same for them when their turn came. The formula was incorporated in the code of social honour, till a man would more readily have malingered on the eve of an attack than failed to succour a friend who was struck down by a Pinto invitation. Eric had resisted for some weeks: but Lady Poynter at last presented an ultimatum, which he saw no means of evading.
There was already a considerable nucleus when he reached the hotel a few minutes before the advertised time for dinner; and those who knew nothing of their host were industriously adding to the saga collected by those who did.
“Why does Margaret Poynter do these things?,” squeaked Deganway with a petulant glance round the company. “She’s too tiresome. What she can hope to get out of it—”
“I understand she’s trying to make him subsidize a Shakespeare theatre,” interrupted Carstairs. “Well, I mustn’t throw stones; my old mother wants to stick him with Herrig on a long lease. I think it’s a bit of a gamble, because no one knows anything about them. The Embassy shuts up like an oyster, if you mention their name; and the Brazilian colony don’t seem much the wiser.”
“Oh, I heard—Now, let me see, what did I hear?,” said Deganway, letting fall his eye-glass and frowning. “He got a contract for building a new railway and, because the contract said nothing about bridges, he stopped short, whenever he came to a river, and started again on the other side. Then they gave him a new contract to build the bridges and link up his system. That’s where he made his profit; but Brazil wasn’t healthy, when he’d finished, so he bolted with the boodle. So romantic! He didn’t bolt quick enough, though; she overtook him just as the gangway was being cast off.”
He laughed thinly; but Eric had heard enough from him and, turning away, he found himself face to face with Lady John Carstairs.
“Do all English people make fun of a woman before eating her food,” she said rather sharply, with a quelling gesture at her husband, as they shook hands.
“Only the better-bred,” Eric answered. “It’s one of the things you have to get used to. What’s Madame Pinto like? I don’t even know her by sight.”
“Oh, she’s quite harmless, but you can’t pick up everything in a day. I’ve been here six months and I can’t yet keep all my own husband’s relations distinct... Ah, here they are!”
She turned with a smile, as a stout, sallow woman in a pink dress advanced apologetically into the lounge with a tall, saturnine husband at her heels. Both looked round with dizzy shyness, breaking into shrill effusiveness, when they recognized a face and could fit it with an approximate name. Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos spoke fluent English with a strong accent; her husband limited himself to a bow, a handshake and a clipped “How do you do?,” as his wife’s friends brought up their own friends to be introduced. From time to time, pretending to count the numbers, he peered furtively at a type-written list, but, as Lady Poynter undertook the introductions and never remembered more than one name, his initial perplexity deepened to bewilderment.