“I ’aven’t reelly decided if me boy shall go to Eton or to ’Arrow,” was the observation Captain Preston had overheard while inspecting cars at the motor exhibition one afternoon in late April, and the remark had made him metaphorically grind his teeth. For he detested the war profiteers as a race almost as deeply as he hated “conscientious” objectors. Indeed, since the war had ended he had regretted more than ever that the Huns had failed to land here.
The London season was now beginning, and the traffic congestion in the streets was admitted by all to be greater than at any period before the war. Enormous cars blocked the main thoroughfares, sometimes for hours at a time, yet everywhere was talk of poverty among people of education and of culture, who a few years previously had been in good circumstances. And among the many rich people in the West End few now entertained more lavishly than Aloysius Stapleton and the man who seemed to be his shadow—young Archie La Planta.
“Then you have decided that it shall be at the Albert Hall,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said as she thoughtfully blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, “and you want me to act as hostess? Well, I won’t.”
“You won’t? But why not?”
“It wouldn’t do, Louie,” she answered with decision, addressing Aloysius Stapleton, who, seated near her on a settee in the drawing-room in her house in Cavendish Square, had been discussing arrangements for a great bal masqué.
“I really can’t see why; can you, Archie?” and he looked across at La Planta.
“You wouldn’t,” Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson said dryly, before La Planta could reply. “I think men are the dullest things, I do really. Though our many ‘friends’ profess always to be so fond of us, and so pleased to see us, any number of the women hate me, if the truth were known.”
“They are simply jealous.”
“It’s the same thing. I know the things they have said about me, and that they say still. Or if they don’t say them they imply them, which is worse. No, I refuse to be your hostess; also I consider you ought to get somebody of more importance, some woman of established social standing, of high rank, if you want the ball to be a big success. There are plenty of people who do like me, of course, but at least they know nothing about me, who I am or where I come from, and though that may not count with the majority of men and women in our large circle of acquaintance, it counts a good deal with some—they become inquisitive after a time and start making inquiries in all sorts of directions. Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend Yootha Hagerston are making inquiries of that sort now. Do you know that they have gone so far as to instruct a personal inquiry agency to find out all about me?”
“I did hear something of the sort,” Stapleton said. “But why worry? There is nothing it can say against you.”