Adam woke up feeling terribly ill. He rang his bell once or twice, but nobody came. Later he woke up again and rang the bell. The Italian waiter appeared, undulating slightly in the doorway. Adam ordered breakfast. Lottie came in and sat on his bed.
“Had a nice breakfast, dear?” she said.
“Not yet,” said Adam. “I’ve only just woken up.”
“That’s right,” said Lottie. “Nothing like a nice breakfast. There was a young lady for you on the ’phone, but I can’t remember what it was she said at the minute. We’ve all been upside down this morning. Such a fuss. Had the police in, we have, ever since I don’t know what time, drinking up my wine and asking questions and putting their noses where they’re not wanted. All because Flossie must needs go and swing on the chandelier. She never had any sense, Flossie. Well, she’s learned her lesson now, poor girl. Whoever heard of such a thing—swinging on a chandelier. Poor Judge What’s-his-name is in a terrible state about it. I said to him it’s not so much the price of the chandelier, I said. What money can make, money can mend, I said, and that’s the truth, isn’t it, dear? But what I mind, I said, is having a death in the house and all the fuss. It doesn’t do anyone any good having people killing theirselves in a house like Flossie did. Now what may you want, my Italian queen?” said Lottie as the waiter came in with a tray, the smell of kippers contending with nuit de Noël rather disagreeably.
“Gentleman’s breakfast,” said the waiter.
“And how many more breakfasts do you think he wants, I should like to know? He’s had his breakfast hours ago while you were powdering your nose downstairs, haven’t you, dear?”
“No,” said Adam, “as a matter of fact, no.”
“There, do you hear what the gentleman says? He doesn’t want two breakfasts. Don’t stand there wiggling your behind at me. Take it away quick or I’ll catch you such a smack… That’s just the way—once you get the police in everyone gets all upset. There’s that boy brings you two breakfasts and I dare say there’s some poor fellow along the passage somewhere who hasn’t had any breakfast at all. You can’t get anywhere without a nice breakfast. Half the young fellows as come here now don’t have anything except a cachet Faivre and some orange juice. It’s not right,” said Lottie, “and I’ve spoken to that boy about using scent twenty times if I’ve spoken once.”
The waiter’s head appeared, and with it another wave of nuit de Noël.
“If you please, madam, the inspectors want to speak to you downstairs, madam.”
“All right, my little bird of paradise, I’ll be there.”
Lottie trotted away and the waiter came sidling back bearing his tray of kippers and leering at Adam with a horrible intimacy.
“Turn on my bath, will you, please,” said Adam.
“Alas, there is a gentleman asleep in the bath. Shall I wake him?”
“No, it doesn’t matter.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The waiter stood about fingering the brass knobs at the end of the bed, smiling ingratiatingly. Then he produced from under his coat a gardenia, slightly browned at the edges. (He had found it in an evening coat he had just been brushing.)
Would the signor perhaps like a buttonhole?… Madame Crump was so severe… it was nice sometimes to be able to have a talk with the gentlemen…
“No,” said Adam. “Go away.” For he had a headache.
The waiter sighed deeply, and walked with pettish steps to the door; sighed again and took the gardenia to the gentleman in the bathroom.
Adam ate some breakfast. No kipper, he reflected, is ever as good as it smells; how this too earthly contact with flesh and bone spoiled the first happy exhilaration; if only one could live, as Jehovah was said to have done, on the savor of burned offerings. He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food, of the greasy horror of fried fish and the deeply moving smell that came from it; of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and the dullness of buns… He planned dinners of enchanting aromatic foods that should be carried under the nose, snuffed and thrown to the dogs… endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavor with flavor from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy… Oh for the wings of a dove, thought Adam, wandering a little from the point as he fell asleep again (everyone is liable to this ninetyish feeling in the early morning after a party).
Presently the telephone by Adam’s bed began ringing.
“Hullo, yes.”
“Lady to speak to you… Hullo, is that you, Adam?”
“Is that Nina?”
“How are you, my darling?”
“Oh, Nina…”
“My poor sweet, I feel like that, too. Listen, angel. You haven’t forgotten that you’re going to see my papa today, have you… or have you? I’ve just sent him a wire to say that you’re going to lunch with him. D’you know where he lives?”
“Well, no. I don’t think I will, if you don’t mind… I’ve got rather a pain.”
“My dear, if you knew what a pain I’ve got…”
“Yes, but that’s different, darling. Anyway, there’s no object in our both going.”
“But what am I to say?”
“Darling, don’t be tiresome. You know perfectly well. Just ask him for some money.”
“Will he like that?”
“Yes, darling, of course he will. Why will you go on? I’ve got to get up now. Good-bye. Take care of yourself… Ring me up when you get back and tell me what papa said. By the way, have you seen the paper this morning?—there’s something so funny about last night. Too bad of Van. Good-bye.”
While Adam was dressing, he realized that he did not know where he was to go. He rang up again. “By the way, Nina, where does your papa live?”
“Didn’t I tell you? It’s a house called Doubting, and it’s all falling down really. You go to Aylesbury by train and then take a taxi. They’re the most expensive taxis in the world, too… Have you got any money?”
Adam looked on the dressing table: “About seven shillings,” he said.
“My dear, that’s not enough. You’ll have to make poor papa pay for the taxi.”
“Yes, of course, he’s an angel.”
“I wish you’d come too, Nina.”
“Darling, I told you. I’ve got such a pain.”
Downstairs, as Lottie had said, everything was upside down. That is to say that there were policemen and reporters teeming in every corner of the hotel, each with a bottle of champagne and a glass. Lottie, Doge, Judge Skimp, the Inspector, four plainclothes men and the body were in Judge Skimp’s suite.
“What is not clear to me, sir,” said the Inspector, “is what prompted the young lady to swing on the chandelier. Not wishing to cause offense, sir, and begging your pardon, was she…?”
“Yes,” said Judge Skimp, “she was.”
“Exactly, ” said the Inspector. “A clear case of misadventure, eh, Mrs. Crump? There’ll have to be an inquest, of course, but I think probably I shall be able to arrange things so that there is no mention of your name in the case, sir… well, that’s very kind of you, Mrs. Crump, perhaps just one more glass.”
“Lottie,” said Adam, “can you lend me some money?”
“Money, dear? Of course. Doge, have you got any money?”
“I was asleep at the time myself, mum, and was not even made aware of the occurrence until I was called this morning. Being slightly deaf, the sound of the disaster…”
“Judge What’s-your-name, got any money?”
“I should take it as a great privilege if I could be of any assistance…”
“That’s right, give some to young Thingummy here. That all you want, deary? Don’t run away. We’re just thinking of having a little drink… No, not that wine, dear, it’s what we keep for the police. I’ve just ordered a better bottle if my young butterfly would bring it along.”
Adam had a glass of champagne, hoping it would make him feel a little better. It made him feel much worse.
Then he went to Marylebone. It was Armistice Day, and they were selling artificial poppies in the streets. As he reached the station it struck eleven and for two minutes all over the country everyone was quiet and serious. Then he went to Aylesbury, reading on the way Balcairn’s account of Archie Schwert’s party. He was pleased to see himself described as “the brilliant young novelist,” and wondered whether Nina’s papa read gossip paragraphs, and supposed not. The two women opposite him in the carriage obviously did.
“I no sooner opened the paper,” said one, “than I was on the ’phone at once to all the ladies of the committee, and we’d sent off a wire to our Member before one o’clock. We know how to make things hum at the Bois. I’ve got a copy of what we sent. Look. Members of the Committee of the Ladies’ Conservative Association at Chesham Bois wish to express their extreme displeasure at reports in this morning’s paper of midnight party at No. 10. They call upon Captain Crutwell—that’s our Member; such a nice stamp of man—strenuously to withhold support to Prime Minister. It cost nearly four shillings, but, as I said at the time, it was not a moment to spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Ithewaite?”
“I do, indeed, Mrs. Orraway-Smith. It is clearly a case in which a mandate from the constituencies is required. I’ll talk to our chairwoman at Wendover.”
“Yes, do, Mrs. Ithewaite. It is in a case like this that the woman’s vote can count.”
“If it’s a choice between my moral judgment and the nationalization of banking, I prefer nationalization, if you see what I mean.”
“Exactly what I think. Such a terrible example to the lower classes, apart from everything.”
“That’s what I mean. There’s our Agnes, now. How can I stop her having young men in the kitchen when she knows that Sir James Brown has parties like that at all hours of the night…”
They were both wearing hats like nothing on earth, which bobbed and nodded as they spoke.
At Aylesbury Adam got into a Ford taxi and asked to be taken to a house called Doubting.
“Doubting ’All?”
“Well, I suppose so. Is it falling down?”
“Could do with a lick of paint,” said the driver, a spotty youth. “Name of Blount?”
“That’s it.”
“Long way from here Doubting ’All is. Cost you fifteen bob.”
“All right.”
“If you’re a commercial, I can tell you straight it ain’t no use going to ’im. Young feller asked me the way there this morning. Driving a Morris. Wanted to sell him a vacuum cleaner. Old boy ’ad answered an advertisement asking for a demonstration. When he got there the old boy wouldn’t even look at it. Can you beat that?”
“No, I’m not trying to sell him anything—at least not exactly.”
“Personal visit, perhaps.”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
Satisfied that his passenger was in earnest about the journey, the taxi driver put on some coats—for it was raining—got out of his seat and cranked up the engine. Presently they started.
They drove for a mile or two past bungalows and villas and timbered public houses to a village in which every house seemed to be a garage and filling station. Here they left the main road and Adam’s discomfort became acute.
At last they came to twin octagonal lodges and some heraldic gateposts and large wrought-iron gates, behind which could be seen a broad sweep of ill-kept drive.
“Doubting ’All,” said the driver.
He blew his horn once or twice, but no lodge keeper’s wife, aproned and apple-cheeked, appeared to bob them in. He got out and shook the gates reproachfully.
“Chained-and-locked,” he said. “Try another way.”
They drove on for another mile; on the side of the Hall the road was bordered by dripping trees and a dilapidated stone wall; presently they reached some cottages and a white gate. This they opened and turned into a rough track, separated from the park by low iron railings. There were sheep grazing on either side. One of them had strayed into the drive. It fled before them in a frenzied trot, stopping and looking round over its dirty tail and then plunging on again until its agitation brought it to the side of the path, where they overtook it and passed it.
The track led to some stables, then behind rows of hothouses , among potting sheds and heaps of drenched leaves, past nondescript outbuildings that had once been laundry and bakery and brewhouse and a huge kennel where once someone had kept a bear, until suddenly it turned by a clump of holly and elms and laurel bushes into an open space that had once been laid with gravel. A lofty Palladian facade stretched before them and in front of it an equestrian statue pointed a baton imperiously down the main drive.
“ ’Ere y’are,” said the driver.
Adam paid him and went up the steps to the front door.
He rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened. Presently he rang again. At this moment the door opened.
“Don’t ring twice,” said a very angry old man. “What do you want?”
“Is Mr. Blount in?”
“There’s no Mr. Blount here. This is Colonel Blount’s house.”
“I’m sorry… I think the Colonel is expecting me to luncheon.”
“Nonsense. I’m Colonel Blount,” and he shut the door.
The Ford had disappeared. It was still raining hard. Adam rang again.
“Yes,” said Colonel Blount, appearing instantly.
“I wonder if you’d let me telephone to the station for a taxi?”
“Not on the telephone… It’s raining. Why don’t you come in? It’s absurd to walk to the station in this. Have you come about the vacuum cleaner?”
“No.”
“Funny, I’ve been expecting a man all the morning to show me a vacuum cleaner. Come in, do. Won’t you stay to luncheon?”
“I should love to.”
“Splendid. I get very little company nowadays. You must forgive me for opening the door to you myself. My butler is in bed today. He suffers terribly in his feet when it is wet.
Both my footmen were killed in the war… Put your hat and coat here. I hope you haven’t got wet… I’m sorry you didn’t bring the vacuum cleaner… but never mind. How are you?” he said, suddenly holding out his hand.
They shook hands and Colonel Blount led the way down a long corridor, lined with marble busts on yellow marble pedestals, to a large room full of furniture, with a fire burning in a fine rococo fireplace. There was a large leather-topped walnut writing table under a window opening on to a terrace. Colonel Blount picked up a telegram and read it.
“I’d quite forgotten,” he said in some confusion. “I’m afraid you’ll think me very discourteous, but it is, after all, impossible for me to ask you to luncheon. I have a guest coming on very intimate family business. You understand, don’t you?… To tell you the truth, it’s some young rascal who wants to marry my daughter. I must see him alone to discuss settlements.”
“Well, I want to marry your daughter, too,” said Adam.
“What an extraordinary coincidence. Are you sure you do?”
“Perhaps the telegram may be about me. What does it say?”
“ ‘Engaged to marry Adam Symes. Expect him luncheon. Nina.’ Are you Adam Symes?”
“Yes.”
“My dear boy, why didn’t you say so before, instead of going on about a vacuum cleaner? How are you?”
They shook hands again.
“If you don’t mind,” said Colonel Blount, “we will keep our business until after luncheon. I’m afraid everything is looking very bare at present. You must come down and see the gardens in the summer. We had some lovely hydrangeas last year. I don’t think I shall live here another winter. Too big for an old man. I was looking at some of the houses they’re putting up outside Aylesbury. Did you see them coming along? Nice little red houses. Bathroom and everything. Quite cheap, too, and near the cinematographs. I hope you are fond of the cinematograph too? The Rector and I go a great deal. I hope you’ll like the Rector. Common little man rather. But he’s got a motor car, useful that. How long are you staying?”
“I promised Nina I’d be back tonight.”
“That’s a pity. They change the film at the Electra Palace. We might have gone.”
An elderly woman servant came in to announce luncheon. “What is at the Electra Palace, do you know, Mrs. Florin?”
“Greta Garbo in Venetian Kisses, I think, sir.”
“I don’t really think I like Greta Garbo. I’ve tried to,” said Colonel Blount, “but I just don’t.”
They went in to luncheon in a huge dining room dark with family portraits.
“If you don’t mind,” said Colonel Blount, “I prefer not to talk at meals.”
He propped a morocco-bound volume of Punch before his plate against a vast silver urn, from which grew a small castor-oil plant.
“Give Mr. Symes a book,” he said.
Mrs. Florin put another volume of Punch beside Adam.
“If you come across anything really funny read it to me,” said Colonel Blount.
Then they had luncheon.
They were nearly an hour over luncheon. Course followed course in disconcerting abundance while Colonel Blount ate and ate, turning the leaves of his book and chuckling frequently. They ate hare soup and boiled turbot and stewed sweetbreads and black Bradenham ham with Madeira sauce and roast pheasant and a rum omelet and toasted cheese and fruit. First they drank sherry, then claret, then port. Then Colonel Blount shut his book with a broad sweep of his arm rather as the headmaster of Adam’s private school used to shut the Bible after evening prayers, folded his napkin carefully and stuffed it into a massive silver ring, muttered some words of grace and finally stood up, saying:
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a little nap,” and trotted out of the room.
“There’s a fire in the library, sir,” said Mrs. Florin. “I’ll bring you your coffee there. The Colonel doesn’t have coffee, he finds it interferes with his afternoon sleep. What time would you like your afternoon tea, sir?”
“I ought really to be getting back to London. How long will it be before the Colonel comes down, do you think?”
“Well, it all depends, sir. Not usually till about five or half past. Then he reads until dinner at seven and after dinner he gets the Rector to drive him in to the pictures. A sedentary life, as you might say.”
She led Adam into the library and put a silver coffeepot at his elbow.
“I’ll bring you tea at four,” she said.
Adam sat in front of the fire in a deep armchair. Outside the rain beat on the double windows. There were several magazines in the library—mostly cheap weeklies devoted to the cinema. There was a stuffed owl and a case of early British remains, bone pins and bits of pottery and a skull, which had been dug up in the park many years ago and catalogued by Nina’s governess. There was a cabinet containing the relics of Nina’s various collecting fevers—some butterflies and a beetle or two, some fossils and some birds’ eggs and a few postage stamps. There were some bookcases of superbly unreadable books, a gun, a butterfly net, an alpenstock in the corner. There were catalogues of agricultural machines and acetylene plants, lawn mowers, “sports requisites.” There was a fire screen worked with a coat of arms. The chimneypiece was hung with the embroidered saddlecloths of Colonel Blount’s regiment of Lancers. There was an engraving of all the members of the Royal Yacht Squadron, with a little plan in the corner, marked to show who was who. There were many other things of equal interest besides, but before Adam had noticed any more he was fast asleep.
Mrs. Florin woke him at four. The coffee had disappeared and its place was taken by a silver tray with a lace cloth on it. There was a silver teapot, and a silver kettle with a little spirit lamp underneath, and a silver cream jug and a covered silver dish full of muffins. There was also hot buttered toast and honey and gentleman’s relish and a chocolate cake, a cherry cake, a seed cake and a fruit cake and some tomato sandwiches and pepper and salt and currant bread and butter.
“Would you care for a lightly boiled egg, sir? The Colonel generally has one if he’s awake.”
“No, thank you,” said Adam. He felt a thousand times better for his rest. When Nina and he were married, he thought, they would often come down there for the day after a really serious party. For the first time he noticed an obese liver-and-white spaniel, which was waking up, too, on the hearthrug.
“Please not to give her muffins,” said Mrs. Florin, “it’s the one thing she’s not supposed to have, and the Colonel will give them to her. He loves that dog,” she added with a burst of confidence. “Takes her to the pictures with him of an evening. Not that she can appreciate them really like a human can.”
Adam gave her—the spaniel, not Mrs. Florin—a gentle prod with his foot and a lump of sugar. She licked his shoe with evident cordiality. Adam was not above feeling flattered by friendliness in dogs.
He had finished his tea and was filling his pipe when Colonel Blount came into the library.
“Who the devil are you?” said his host.
“Adam Symes,” said Adam.
“Never heard of you. How did you get in? Who gave you tea? What do you want?”
“You asked me to luncheon,” said Adam. “I came about being married to Nina.”
“My dear boy, of course. How absurd of me. I’ve such a bad memory for names. It comes of seeing so few people. How are you?”
They shook hands again.
“So you’re the young man who’s engaged to Nina,” said the Colonel, eyeing him for the first time in the way prospective sons-in-laws are supposed to be eyed. “Now what in the world do you want to get married for? I shouldn’t, you know, really I shouldn’t. Are you rich?”
“No, not at present, I’m afraid, that’s rather what I wanted to talk about.”
“How much money have you got?”
“Well, sir, actually at the moment I haven’t got any at all.”
“When did you last have any?”
“I had a thousand pounds last night, but I gave it all to a drunk Major.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Well, I hoped he’d put it on Indian Runner for the November Handicap.”
“Never heard of the horse. Didn’t he?”
“I don’t think he can have.”
“When will you next have some money?”
“When I’ve written some books.”
“How many books?”
“Twelve.”
“How much will you have then?”
“Probably fifty pounds advance on my thirteenth book.”
“And how long will it take you to write twelve books?”
“About a year.”
“How long would it take most people?”
“About twenty years. Of course, put like that I do see that it sounds rather hopeless… but, you see, Nina and I hoped that you, that is, that perhaps for the next year until I get my twelve books written, that you might help us…”
“How could I help you? I’ve never written a book in my life.”
“No, we thought you might give us some money.”
“You thought that, did you?”
“Yes, that’s what we thought…”
Colonel Blount looked at him gravely for some time. Then he said, “I think that an admirable idea. I don’t see any reason at all why I shouldn’t. How much do you want?”
“That’s really terribly good of you, sir… Well, you know, just enough to live on quietly for a bit. I hardly know…”
“Well, would a thousand pounds be any help?”
“Yes, it would indeed. We shall both be terribly grateful.”
“Not at all, my dear boy. Not at all. What did you say your name was?”
“Adam Symes.”
Colonel Blount went to the table and wrote out a check. “There you are,” he said. “Now don’t go giving that away to another drunk major.”
“Really, sir! I don’t know how to thank you. Nina…”
“Not another word. Now I expect that you will want to be off to London again. We’ll send Mrs. Florin across to the Rectory and make the Rector drive you to the station. Useful having a neighbor with a motor car. They charge five pence on the buses from here to Aylesbury. Robbers.”
It does not befall many young men to be given a thousand pounds by a complete stranger twice on successive evenings. Adam laughed aloud in the Rector’s car as they drove to the station. The Rector, who had been in the middle of writing a sermon and resented with daily increasing feeling Colonel Blount’s neighborly appropriation of his car and himself, kept his eyes fixed on the streaming windscreen, pretending not to notice. Adam laughed all the way to Aylesbury, sitting and holding his knees and shaking all over. The Rector could hardly bring himself to say good night when they parted in the station yard.
There was half an hour to wait for a train and the leaking roof and wet railway lines had a sobering effect on Adam. He bought an evening paper. On the front page was an exquisitely funny photograph of Miss Runcible in Hawaiian costume tumbling down the steps of No. 10 Downing Street. The Government had fallen that afternoon, he read, being defeated on a motion rising from the answer to a question about the treatment of Miss Runcible by Customs House officers. It was generally held in Parliamentary circles that the deciding factor in this reverse had been the revolt of the Liberals and the Nonconformist members at the revelations of the life that was led at No. 10 Downing Street, during Sir James Brown’s tenancy. The Evening Mail had a leading article, which drew a fine analogy between Public and Domestic Purity, between sobriety in the family and in the State.
There was another small paragraph which interested Adam.
Tragedy in West End Hotel
The death occurred early this morning at a private hotel in Dover Street of Miss Florence Ducane, described as being of independent means, following an accident in which Miss Ducane fell from a chandelier which she was attempting to mend. The inquest will be held tomorrow, which will be followed by the cremation at Golders Green. Miss Ducane, who was formerly connected with the stage, was well known in business circles.
Which only showed, thought Adam, how much better Lottie Crump knew the business of avoiding undesirable publicity than Sir James Brown.
When Adam reached London the rain had stopped, but there was a thin fog drifting in belts before a damp wind. The station was crowded with office workers hurrying with attaché cases and evening papers to catch their evening trains home, coughing and sneezing as they went. They still wore their poppies. Adam went to a telephonebox and rang up Nina. She had left a message for him that she was having cocktails at Margot Metroland’s house. He drove to Shepheard’s.
“Lottie,” he said, “I’ve got a thousand pounds.”
“Have you, now,” said Lottie indifferently. She lived on the assumption that everyone she knew always had several thousand pounds. It was to her as though he had said, “Lottie, I have a tall hat.”
“Can you lend me some money till tomorrow till I cash the check?”
“What a boy you are for borrowing. Just like your poor father. Here, you in the corner, lend Mr. What-d’you-call-him some money.”
A tall Guardsman shook his retreating forehead and twirled his mustache.
“No good coming to me, Lottie,” he said in a voice trained to command.
“Mean hound,” said Lottie. “Where’s that American?”
Judge Skimp, who, since his experiences that morning, had become profoundly Anglophile, produced two ten-pound notes. “I shall be only too proud and honored…” he said.
“Good old Judge Thingummy,” said Lottie. “That’s the way.”
Adam hurried out into the hall as another bottle of champagne popped festively in the parlor.
“Doge, ring up the Daimler Hire Company and order a car in my name. Tell it to go round to Lady Metroland’s—Pastmaster House, Hill Street,” he said. Then he put on his hat and walked down Hay Hill, swinging an umbrella and laughing again, only more quietly, to himself.
At Lady Metroland’s he kept on his coat and waited in the hall.
“Will you please tell Miss Blount I’ve called for her? No, I won’t go up.”
He looked at the hats on the table. Clearly there was quite a party. Two or three silk hats of people who had dressed early, the rest soft and black like his own. Then he began to dance again, jigging to himself in simple high spirits.
In a minute Nina came down the broad Adam staircase.
“Darling, why didn’t you come up? It’s so rude. Margot is longing to see you.”
“I’m so sorry, Nina. I couldn’t face a party. I’m so excited.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“Everything. I’ll tell you in the car.”
“Car?”
“Yes, it’ll be here in a minute. We’re going down to the country for dinner. I can’t tell you how clever I’ve been.”
“But what have you done, darling? Do stop dancing about.”
“Can’t stop. You’ve no idea how clever I am.”
“Adam. Are you tight again?”
“Look out of the window and see if you can see a Daimler waiting.”
“Adam, what have you been doing? I will be told.”
“Look,” said Adam, producing the check. “Whatcher think of that?” he added in Cockney.
“My dear, a thousand pounds. Did papa give you that?”
“I earned it,” said Adam. “Oh, I earned it. You should have seen the luncheon I ate and the jokes I read. I’m going to be married tomorrow. Oh, Nina, would Margot hate it if I sang in her hall?”
“She’d simply loathe it, darling, and so should I. I’m going to take care of that check. You remember what happened the last time you were given a thousand pounds.”
“That’s what your papa said.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“I told him everything—and he gave me a thousand pounds.”
“… Poor Adam…” said Nina suddenly.
“Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know… I believe this is your car…”
“Nina, why did you say ‘Poor Adam’?”
“… Did I?… Oh, I don’t know… Oh, I do adore you so.”
“I’m going to be married tomorrow. Are you?”
“Yes, I expect so, dear.”
The chauffeur got rather bored while they tried to decide where they would dine. At every place he suggested they gave a little wail of dismay. “But that’s sure to be full of awful people we know,” they said. Maidenhead, Thame, Brighton, he suggested. Finally they decided to go to Arundel.
“It’ll be nearly nine before we get there,” the chauffeur said. “Now there’s a very nice hotel at Bray…”
But they went to Arundel.
“We’ll be married tomorrow,” said Adam in the car. “And we won’t ask anybody to the wedding at all. And we’ll go abroad at once, and just not come back till I’ve written all those books. Nina, isn’t it divine? Where shall we go?”
“Anywhere you like, only rather warm, don’t you think?”
“I don’t believe you really think we are going to be married, Nina, do you, or do you?”
“I don’t know… it’s only that I don’t believe that really divine things like that ever do happen… I don’t know why… Oh, I do like you so much tonight. If only you knew how sweet you looked skipping about in Margot’s hall all by yourself. I’d been watching you for hours before I came down.”
“I shall send the car back,” said Adam, as they drove through
Pulborough. “We can go home by train.”
“If there is a train.”
“There’s bound to be,” said Adam. But this raised a question in both their minds that had been unobtrusively agitating them throughout the journey. Neither said any more on the subject, but there was a distinct air of constraint in the Daimler from Pulborough onwards.
This question was settled when they reached the hotel at Arundel.
“We want dinner,” said Adam, “and a room for the night.”
“Darling, am I going to be seduced?”
“I’m afraid you are. Do you mind terribly?”
“Not as much as all that,” said Nina, and added in Cockney, “Charmed, I’m sure.”
Everyone had finished dinner. They dined alone in a corner of the coffee room, while the other waiters laid the tables for breakfast, looking at them resentfully. It was the dreariest kind of English dinner. After dinner the lounge was awful; there were some golfers in dinner jackets playing bridge, and two old ladies. Adam and Nina went across the stable yard to the taproom and sat until closing time in a warm haze of tobacco smoke listening to the intermittent gossip of the townspeople. They sat hand-in-hand, unembarrassed; after the first minute no one noticed them. Just before closing time Adam stood a round of drinks. They said:
“Good health, sir. Best respects, madam,” and the barman said, “Come along, please. Finish your drinks, please,” in a peculiar singsong tone.
There was a clock chiming as they crossed the yard and a slightly drunk farmer trying to start up his car. Then they went up an oak staircase lined with blunderbusses and coaching prints to their room.
They had no luggage (the chambermaid remarked on this next day to the young man who worked at the wireless shop, saying that that was the worst of being in a main-road hotel. You got all sorts).
Adam undressed very quickly and got into bed; Nina more slowly arranging her clothes on the chair and fingering the ornaments on the chimneypiece with less than her usual self-possession. At last she put out the light.
“Do you know,” she said, trembling slightly as she got into bed, “this is the first time this has happened to me?”
“It’s great fun,” said Adam, “I promise you.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Nina seriously, “I wasn’t saying anything against it. I was only saying that it hadn’t happened before… Oh, Adam…”
“And you said that really divine things didn’t happen,” said Adam in the middle of the night.
“I don’t think that this is at all divine,” said Nina. “It’s given me a pain. And—my dear, that reminds me. I’ve something terribly important to say to you in the morning.”
“Not now, darling. Let’s go to sleep for a little, don’t you think?”
Before Nina was properly awake Adam dressed and went out into the rain to get a shave. He came back bringing two toothbrushes and a bright red celluloid comb. Nina sat up in bed and combed her hair. She put Adam’s coat over her back.
“My dear, you look exactly like La Vie Parisienne,” said Adam, turning round from brushing his teeth.
Then she threw off the coat and jumped out of bed, and he told her that she looked like a fashion drawing without the clothes. Nina was rather pleased about that, but she said that it was cold and that she still had a pain, only not so bad as it was. Then she dressed and they went downstairs.
Everyone else had had breakfast and the waiters were laying the tables for luncheon.
“By the way,” said Adam. “You said there was something you wanted to say.”
“Oh, yes, so there is. My dear, something quite awful.”
“Do tell me.”
“Well, it’s about that check papa gave you. I’m afraid it won’t help us as much as you thought.”
“But, darling, it’s a thousand pounds, isn’t it?”
“Just look at it, my sweet.” She took it out of her bag and handed it across the table.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Adam.
“Not the signature?”
“Why, good lord, the old idiot’s signed it ‘Charlie Chaplin.’ ”
“That’s what I mean, darling.”
“But can’t we get him to alter it? He must be dotty. I’ll go down and see him again today.”
“I shouldn’t do that, dear… don’t you see… Of course, he’s very old, and… I dare say you may have made things sound a little odd… don’t you think, dear, he must have thought you a little dotty?… I mean… perhaps… that check was a kind of joke.”
“Well I’m damned… this really is a bore. When everything seemed to be going so well, too. When did you notice the signature, Nina?”
“As soon as you showed it to me, at Margot’s. Only you looked so happy I didn’t like to say anything… You did look happy, you know, Adam, and so sweet. I think I really fell in love with you for the first time when I saw you dancing all alone in the hall.”
“Well I’m damned,” said Adam again. “The old devil.”
“Anyway, you’ve had some fun out of it, haven’t you… or haven’t you?”
“My dear, I never hated anything so much in my life… still, as long as you enjoyed it that’s something.”
“I say, Nina,” said Adam after some time, “we shan’t be able to get married after all.”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“It is a bore, isn’t it?”
Later he said, “I expect that parson thought I was dotty too.”
And later. “As a matter of fact, it’s rather a good joke, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s divine.”
In the train Nina said: “It’s awful to think that I shall probably never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by yourself.”