Sir William snorted audibly, but his son only laughed, and inquired who else was to be of the party.
‘Well, I don’t know the extent of the party, but the Bawtrys are going,’ replied Lady Dering.
‘The Bawtrys?’ exclaimed Sir William, surprised out of his resolve to take no part in a conversation he found distasteful.
‘Ermyntrude is getting on, isn’t she?’ said Hugh. ‘I thought Connie Bawtry was stoutly Old Guard?’
‘Ha!’ said Sir William. ‘Another of the hospital committee! Upon my soul, things have come to a pretty pass!’
‘Oh, is that the racket?’ said Hugh. ‘I rather wondered.’
‘That’s my racket,’ corrected his mother. ‘Not Connie Bawtry’s. At least, it is really, only she won’t own it.’
‘Then what the devil takes her to Palings?’ demanded Sir William.
‘God, apparently. It’s all right, dear; I’m not being profane. Connie’s been Changed. She’s got under God-Control, or something, and she says what the world needs is God-guided citizens, and if you learn Absolute Love you don’t mind about Ermyntrude’s accent, or Wally Carter’s habits.’
‘Gone Groupy, has she?’ said Hugh. ‘How rotten for Tom!’
‘Well, it is rather, because Connie’s started forgiving him for all sorts of things he never knew he’d done. We’re hoping that she’ll get over it quickly, because she’s president of the Women’s Conservative Association, besides running the Mothers, and the Village Club, and now that she’s a God-guided citizen she simply hasn’t a moment to attend to Good Works. I don’t know why it is, but when people get Changed they never seem to be as nice as they were before.’
‘Tomfoolery!’ said Sir William. ‘I thought she had more sense!’
‘It’s since Elizabeth got married, and went to India,’ explained his wife. ‘Poor dear, I expect she suddenly felt rather aimless, and that’s how it happened. Only I thought I’d better warn you both.’
‘Good God!’ said Sir William. ‘She won’t talk that stuff, will she?’
‘Oh yes, she’s bound to! As far as I can make out, you practically have to testify, if you’re God-controlled.’
‘At a dinner-party?’ said Sir William awfully.
‘Anywhere, dearest.’
‘But you don’t talk about God at dinner! Damme, it’s not decent!’
‘No, it does make it all seem rather cheap, doesn’t it?’ agreed Lady Dering. ‘However, they seem to think that a good thing, and after all, it’s nothing to do with us.’
‘I wish more than ever that you had not been misguided enough to accept that woman’s invitation!’
‘Oh, I don’t!’ said Hugh. ‘I’m definitely out to enjoy myself. What with a dizzy blonde, a Russian prince, and Connie Bawtry gone Groupy, I foresee a rare evening. Mary was rather dreading the Russian Prince when last I saw her, but she’s bound to appreciate a really farcical situation. I hope the Prince turns out to be up to standard. I suppose he’ll have arrived by now.’
The Prince had indeed arrived, and was at that moment bowing over his hostess’s plump hand. He was very dark, and of uncertain age, but extremely handsome, blessed with the slimmest of figures, very gleaming teeth, and the most elegant address. In fact, when he raised Ermyntrude’s hand to his lips, she could not refrain from casting a triumphant glance towards her husband and Mary.
‘Dear lady!’ murmured the Prince. ‘As radiant as ever! I am enchanted! And the little Vicky! But no! This is not the little Vicky!’
He had turned to Mary, with his well-manicured hand held out. She put hers into it, saying rather inadequately: ‘How do you do?’ He continued to hold her hand, but looked towards Ermyntrude with a question in his smiling, dark eyes.
‘No, this is my husband’s ward, Miss Cliffe,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘And here is my husband. Wally, this is Prince Varasashvili.’
‘Delighted!’ the Prince said, releasing Mary’s hand to clasp Wally’s. ‘Of you I have heard so much!’
Wally looked quite alarmed, but before he could demand to know who had been telling tales about him, Ermyntrude intervened with an offer to escort the Prince to his room.
Though perfectly well-meant, his remark had added considerably to Wally’s prejudice against him, and he had no sooner gone away upstairs in Ermyntrude’s wake, than Wally began to disparage his manners, tailoring, and general appearance. ‘A gigolo, that’s what he is,’ he told Mary. ‘Where does he get the money from to go about dressed up to the nines like that? Tell me that!’
Mary was quite unable to oblige him, but since she had not discovered from Ermyntrude that the Prince pursued any gainful occupation, she could not help feeling that there might be some truth in Wally’s guess. Having been brought up exclusively in England, she was charitably inclined to ascribe the Prince’s rather too smart attire to the fact of his being a foreigner. She thought that he looked out-of-place in the English countryside, and although willing to make every allowance for him, could not help hoping that his visit was not to be of long duration.
Ermyntrude, meanwhile, had led her guest upstairs to the best spare room, and had expressed an anxious hope that he would be comfortable there. As the apartment was extremely spacious, and furnished in the height of luxury, it seemed probable that he would be; but Ermyntrude, with purely British ideas about princes, could never see her Alexis without also perceiving an entirely apocryphal background of wealth, palaces, and royal purple.
He assured her that his comfort was a foregone conclusion, and she made haste to point out to him that a private bathroom led out of the apartment, and that if he wanted anything he had only to touch the bell.
He waved away the suggestion that he could want anything more than had been provided, and once more kissed her hand, saying, as he retained it in his clasp: ‘Now, at last, I see you in your own setting! You must let me tell you that it is charming. And you! so beautiful! so gracious!’
No one had ever talked to Ermyntrude in this way, not even the late Geoffrey Fanshawe, in the first flush of his infatuation for her. She had, in fact, been more used to listen to strictures upon her lack of breeding; and, being a very humble-minded woman, had always accepted her neighbours’ obvious valuation of her as the true one. It was, therefore, delightful to hear herself extolled, and by no less a person than a prince; and she made no attempt either to draw her hand away, or to discourage further flattery. She even blushed rather prettily under her rouge and her powder, and inquired artlessly whether Alexis thought that the setting became her.
‘You are so many-sided: everything becomes you! You would be beautiful in a garret,’ he replied earnestly. ‘Yet – I may say it? – always since I have first seen you, I have felt that something there is lacking in your life. I think you are not understood. You have never been understood. On the surface you are so gay that everyone says: “She has everything to make her happy, the beautiful Mrs Carter: a husband, a lovely daughter, much money, much beauty!” It is perhaps only I who have seen behind the sparkle in those eyes, something – how shall I express it? – of loneliness, of a soul that is not guessed at, even by those who stand nearest to you.’
This was most gratifying, and although Ermyntrude had not previously suspected that she was misunderstood, she began to realise that it was so, and reflected that one of the more attractive attributes of foreign gentlemen was their subtle perception. She gave a faint sigh, and bestowed upon the Prince a very speaking glance. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I seemed to know, right at the start, that you were what I call understanding.’
He pressed her hand. ‘There is a bond of sympathy between us. You too are aware of it, for you are not like the rest of your country-women.’
Ermyntrude believed firmly that England was the best country in the world, and the English immeasurably superior to any other race, but she a
ccepted this remark as a compliment, as indeed it was meant to be, and at once began to enumerate the characteristics that made her different from her compatriots. These were many, and varied from a hatred of tweeds and brogue shoes, to a sensitiveness of soul, which was hidden (as Alexis had so rightly supposed) under a cheerful demeanour, and a tolerance of foreigners rarely to be met with in other Englishwomen.
‘You are a true cosmopolitan,’ the Prince assured her.
Ermyntrude would have been perfectly happy to have continued this conversation indefinitely, but at that moment the Prince’s suitcases were borne into the room, so she rather regretfully withdrew.
She rejoined Wally and Mary in a somewhat exalted mood. Her gait was queenly enough to attract Wally’s attention, and he immediately demanded to be told why she was sailing about like a dying swan. She relaxed sufficiently to inform him pithily that if he wanted to be vulgar he could take his vulgarity to those that liked it; for in spite of having grace, beauty, and a lonely soul, she was also a woman of spirit, and saw no reason for putting up with rudeness from Wally, or from anyone else. But this was only a temporary emergence from the cloud of abstraction in which she had wrapped herself, and she sank into an armchair, with really very creditable grace for a woman of her size, and became so aloof from her surroundings that she failed to notice that the dog, Prince, was lying curled up under her husband’s chair. Her discovery of his unwanted presence coincided rather unfortunately with the human-Prince’s entry into the room, when the spaniel, who was of a friendly disposition, at once rushed forward to accord the stranger an effusive welcome.
Ermyntrude’s air of pensiveness fell from her as soon as she saw the spaniel jumping up at her guest, and she exclaimed with strong indignation: ‘If you haven’t let that Prince come into the house, Wally! I told you the stable was the place for him!’
‘There, I knew what it would be!’ said Wally, not without satisfaction. He observed a slightly startled look upon the other Prince’s face, and added: ‘It’s all right, she doesn’t mean you. Down, Prince. Good old dog, lie down then!’
‘Ah!’ the Prince said, showing his gleaming teeth in a smile of perfect comprehension. ‘There are two of us then, and this fine fellow is a prince also! It is very amusing! But you will not banish him on my account, I beg! I am very fond of dogs, I assure you.’
‘He oughtn’t to be in the drawing-room at all,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘He smells.’
‘Ah, poor fellow!’ said the Prince, sitting down, and stroking the spaniel. ‘Look, Trudinka, what sad eyes he makes at you! But you are a lucky prince, and I shall not pity you, for you are more lucky than I am, do you see, with a fine home of your own, which no Bolsheviki will burn to the ground.’
‘Is that what was done to your house?’ asked Ermyntrude, shocked.
He made a gesture with his hands. ‘Fortune of war, Trudinka. I am lucky that I have not also lost my life.’
‘How dreadful for you!’ said Mary, feeling that some remark was expected of her. ‘I didn’t know the Bolsheviks were as bad in Georgia.’
‘Did you lose everything?’ said Ermyntrude.
‘Everything!’ replied the Prince.
So comprehensive a statement, with the picture it conjured up of unspeakable privation, smote his audience into silence. Mary felt that it was prosaic to reflect that the Prince had exempted, in the largeness of his mind, his signet ring, and his gold cigarette-case, and perhaps some other trifles of the same nature.
Ermyntrude, easing the constraint of the moment, began to wonder, audibly, where Vicky could be. The Prince responded, with the effect of shaking off the dark thoughts his own words had evoked in his brain.
Vicky came in some little time after the tea-table had been spread before Ermyntrude. Mary had little patience with poses, but had too much humour not to appreciate the manner of this entrance.
The Sports Girl had vanished. Vicky was sinuous in a tea-gown that swathed her limbs in folds of chiffon, and trailed behind her over the floor. She came in with her hand resting lightly on the neck of the Borzoi, and paused for a moment, looking round with tragic vagueness. The Borzoi, lacking histrionic talent, escaped from the imperceptible restraint of her hand to investigate the Prince.
Ermyntrude found nothing to laugh at in the tea-gown, or the exotic air that hung about her daughter. Mentally she applauded a good entrance, and thought that Vicky looked lovely. She called her attention to the Prince, who had sprung to his feet.
Wally, in whom the sight of his stepdaughter outplaying his guest had engendered emotions that threatened to overcome him, very soon finished his tea, and withdrew, taking the dog – Prince – with him. Mary stayed on, a rather silent but interested spectator of the comedy being enacted before her. She had early written the Prince down as a fortune-hunter, and had wondered a little that he should waste his time on the married Ermyntrude. She now began to suspect that his designs were set on Vicky, for he devoted himself to her with the utmost gallantry, including Ermyntrude in the conversation merely to corroborate his various estimates of Vicky’s unplumbed soul.
After a time, Mary grew tired of listening to absurdities, and went away. She did not see the Prince again until dinner-time, but went to Vicky’s room, to remonstrate with her, as soon as she herself had changed her dress.
Vicky was engaged in rolling her fair locks into sophisticated curls upon the top of her head. She smiled happily at Mary, and said with disarming frankness: ‘I say, isn’t this grown-up, and rather repulsive? I feel frightfully femme fatale.’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t pose so much!’ said Mary. ‘Really, you’re making a complete ass of yourself. You can’t look like a femme fatale at nineteen.’
‘With eye-black, I can,’ replied Vicky optimistically.
‘Well, don’t. And if it’s for the Prince’s benefit, I think he’s phoney.’
‘Oh yes, so do I!’ Vicky assented.
‘Then why on earth bother to put on this sickening act?’
‘It isn’t a bother; I like it. I wish I were on the stage.’
‘You’re certainly wasted here. Why has the Prince come here, do you suppose?’
‘Well, I think because Mummy’s so rich.’
‘Yes, but he knew she was married.’
‘But she could divorce Wally, couldn’t she? I think it’s all frightfully subtle of Alexis, only Ermyntrude’s very respectable, so perhaps he’ll murder Wally in the end.’
‘Oh, don’t talk rot!’ said Mary impatiently.
‘Well, I do think he might, quite easily,’ said Vicky, applying eye-black with a lavish hand. ‘Oh, darling, don’t I look grand and dangerous? I think Russians are sinister, particularly Alexis.’
‘I don’t see anything sinister about Alexis. And you look awful.’
‘Ugly-awful, or fast-awful? I don’t trust his smile. Like velvet, with something at the back of his eyes which makes me shiver a little.’
‘Don’t waste that stuff on me: I’m the worst audience you’ll ever have.’
‘I was rehearsing,’ said Vicky, quite unabashed. ‘Do you suppose secret agents have fun?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, except that I’ve made myself look like Sonia the Spy, and Robert Steel is dropping in after dinner.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘Well, nothing really, except that I told him to, because it’ll make a situation, and I think Robert and Alexis and Wally are the loveliest sort of triangle. Bottled passions, and things.’
‘Vicky!’ Mary sounded shocked.
Vicky was busy reddening her lips, and said with difficulty: ‘Robert might murder Alexis. And anyway Mummy will know Solid Worth, and perhaps give up being thrilled by Alexis. Either way, it’ll do.’
‘Look here, Vicky, that isn’
t funny!’ said Mary severely. ‘You ought not to talk about your mother like that.’
‘Oh, darling, I do think you’re sweet!’
This response annoyed Mary so much that she walked out of the room, and went down to the drawing-room. Here she found the Prince in the smartest of dinner-jackets, and his piqué shirtfront embellished by pearl studs. He cast aside the newspaper he had been reading, and at once laid himself out to be agreeable. As though he was aware that the impression he had so far made on Mary was not good, he took pains to engage her liking, and succeeded fairly well. Yet the very fact of his adapting his conversation and manners to her taste had the effect of arousing a certain antagonism in her heart. She could not perceive any reason for his wanting her to like him.
Dinner passed without incident, but Wally did not keep the Prince long over his port, and led him presently into the drawing-room, his own face wearing an expression of sleepy resignation.
The question of what to do now began to trouble Ermyntrude, for although she would have enjoyed an evening spent tête-à-tête with the Prince, a party spent without the diversions of cards or dancing seemed to her not only dull, but a grave reflection upon the hostess.
Vicky, holding a cigarette-holder quite a foot long between her fingers, glided across the floor to turn on the radio. Ermyntrude was only saved from begging her to find something a bit more lively by the Prince’s recognising the music of Rimsky-Korsakoff, and hailing it with a kind of wistful delight.
At this moment, Vicky’s invited guest was announced, a strong, square-looking man with crisp hair slightly grizzled at the temples, and rather hard grey eyes that looked directly out from under craggy brows.
Ermyntrude got up, looking surprised, but not displeased, and exclaimed: ‘Well, I never! Who’d have thought of seeing you, Bob? Well, I do call this nice!’
Robert Steel took her hand in a firm clasp, reddening, and explaining somewhat self-consciously that Vicky had invited him. His gaze took in that damsel, as he spoke, and he blinked.