CHAPTER ONE

“ALL the same,” admitted Miss Cockrill, “this Juanita was a remarkable gel.” She paused impressively, looking at them over her coffee cup with elderly, sharp brown eyes. “She lived on a table.”

“On a table?”

“She carried a table from somewhere to somewhere and lived on it for the rest of her life.”

“How long was the rest of her life?” said the youngest cousin: Miss Cockrill was Cousin Hat to most of those present.

“She started when she was seventeen. She died when she was about fifty.”

“Presumably from lack of exercise?” suggested her hostess.

There was a lively discussion of the occupational hazards consequent upon living on a table, on the part of the younger cousins frankly indelicate, for the gentlemen had not yet come into the drawing-room. “But how big was the table, Cousin Hat?”

“A large, round, tea-table sort of a table. The top is in a glass shrine in the Cathedral of San Juan, still with some crumbs on it from Juanita’s last meal. It is very highly thought of.”

“It sounds crumby to me,” said the youngest cousin.

Cousin Hat was not amused. “We should not make mock of other people’s devotions. Besides, the table’s the least part of it. She has a much greater claim to respect on the island than that.” She put down the coffee cup and looked round her once again. “She lived and died a virgin,” she said reverently.

There was a slight hush. Cousin Hat was confidently believed to have lived a virgin, having, according to the younger members anyway, had little alternative; and, at the age of fifty-eight might be supposed likely to die in that condition. “Is there anything extraordinary,” said the hostess at last, “in a girl’s remaining a virgin?”

“Especially on a table,” said the youngest cousin.

“There is if she lives in San Juan,” said Cousin Hat.

Mr Cecil, standing in the doorway, was quite beside himself with excitement. He had, as he did in all matters of gender, delicately compromised, taking one glass of wine with the gentlemen and leaving them to their second while he joined the ladies—thus maintaining his own position somewhere between the two (if the men stayed on for a third, the adjustment was perfect). For a moment he had been mystified, for Miss Cockrill’s pronunciation of the Spanish ‘J’ was resolutely British, but mention of the table confirmed his first impression. “I do believe you’re talking about my San Hoowarne,” exclaimed Mr Cecil, giving the aspirate all he had. “My San Hoowame el Pirata! And my Hoowarnita!”

“Do you know San Jewan?” said Miss Cockrill, undismayed.

“But me? But, my dear—one is Cecil: Mr Cecil, you know, of Christophe et Cie.” He threw back an ormolu forelock with a famous long white hand. “The Hoowarnese Hipline!” It was self-explanatory.

“Mr Cecil is our great couturier,” said the hostess hurriedly.

“Oh, I see,” said Cousin Hat. She glanced down with undisturbed complacency at her own confection of non-dating black georgette. “I’m afraid I don’t go in very much for hiplines.”

“But you must have heard of …? Duckies!——” implored Mr Cecil, appealing to the ladies, as one who wonders who among all those about him will rid him of this turbulent priest, “Do something!”

The younger guests, delighted, rose in a body and paraded the drawing-room. “Knees bent, you do see?—and bottoms tucked in; skirts slit so that they can just walk—since walk you must, you inconsiderate things!” cried Mr Cecil, playfully self-deprecatory. “There should be frills, of course, but one had to simplify; so we used flat tucks, from the tail down, just symbolical, as it were, of frills.…” He paused, exhausted by the wonder of it all. “You really never heard of the Hoowarnese Hip——”

“Or Jewanese Jip——”

“—or J-line?” said the youngest cousin, sitting down with difficulty upon the symbolical frills.

Mr Cecil affected to be vastly amused; but inwardly he was disturbed. Had it come to this, that young persons could be witty at the expense of his Hipline? And if so, might it not be that the time had arrived for a New Idea? Grave portendings: for the young woman who for many years had had Mr Cecil’s new ideas, had parted brass rags at last and gone off in a huff. He would have to go back to San Juan this summer and prospect all on his own. Those touching policemen, perhaps, with their calf-length cloaks? “Do I seem to see you, duckies, in cloaks and flat hats?”

Miss Cockrill for her part disclaimed. But she too would be going to the island in September: they would doubtless meet there …?

The fun of it, said Mr Cecil civilly.

With a niece of hers; well, a cousin, really. The cousin had ‘discovered’ this Juanita and was making a cult of her. “And a good thing too. All unmarried women should have a Cause.”

“You’re unmarried, Cousin Hat,” said the youngest cousin, “and you haven’t got a Cause.”

“Your Cousin Winsome is my cause,” said Cousin Hat. She sighed. “Such a tiresome gel. Really,” she said, looking round at the rest with irascible affection, “the most tiresome of the lot.”

The cousins broke into a chorus of acquiescence. ‘She makes us call her Winsome.…’ ‘When her name’s plain Winifred.…’ ‘She calls her car Busy Bee.…’ ‘And talks about her Bootsis Library Book.…’ ‘And she wears beige lace blouses …’ ‘And mauve beads, she always has …’ ‘Not that it matters any more, now; she’s thirty-eight.…’

“An orphan,” said Miss Cockrill, explaining to a Cecil already half dead with boredom but socially defenceless from the impact on his sensitive nerves of mauve beads with beige lace. “Had her since she was eighteen. Three or four hundred of her own, that’s all, and not the brains of a hare. What could one do? I’d promised her mother—and so I took her on; and which to be the more sorry for, I’ve never yet decided: her or me.”

“You’ve done all you could to keep her happy, Harriet.”

“I’ve done all I could not to keep her at all,” said Cousin Hat. “There isn’t a bachelor in Kent I haven’t told fibs to about her money; but if a gel will wear lace jabots before her time …”

“Jabots?” faltered Mr Cecil.

“A sloper,” said Miss Cockrill. She shrugged her own meagre shoulders. “Well, she can’t help that, poor thing. But why add lace?”

“Oh, but she can help it. I mean … Well, nobody slopes these days. There are—arrangements,” said Mr Cecil, colouring, for it was not his favourite subject. He found strength to add, however, that they kept a quite madly good corsetière actually on the premises of Christophe et Cie. If Miss Cockrill would persuade the niece, or was it cousin …?

“Too late,” said Miss Cockrill, in a voice of doom. And besides, none of it mattered any more: for on the island of San Juan el Pirata, Winsome Foley had found her Cause.