That evening Lady Metroland gave a party for Mrs. Melrose Ape. Adam found the telegram of invitation waiting for him on his return to Shepheard’s. (Lottie had already used the prepaid reply to do some betting with. Someone had given her a tip for the November Handicap and she wanted to “make her little flutter” before she forgot the name.) He also found an invitation to luncheon from Simon Balcairn.
The food at Shepheard’s tends to be mostly game pie—quite black inside and full of beaks and shot and inexplicable vertebrae—so Adam was quite pleased to lunch with Simon Balcairn, though he knew there must be some slightly sinister motive behind this sudden hospitality.
They lunched Chez Espinosa, the second most expensive restaurant in London; it was full of oilcloth and Lalique glass, and the sort of people who liked that sort of thing went there continually and said how awful it was.
“I hope you don’t mind coming to this awful restaurant,” said Balcairn. “The truth is that I get meals free if I mention them occasionally in my page. Not drinks, unfortunately. Who’s here, Alphonse?” he asked the maître d’hôtel.
Alphonse handed him the typewritten slip that was always kept for gossip writers.
“H’m, yes. Quite a good list this morning, Alphonse. I’ll do what I can about it.”
“Thank you, sir. A table for two? A cocktail?”
“No, I don’t think I want a cocktail. I really haven’t time. Will you have one, Adam? They aren’t very good here.”
“No, thanks,” said Adam.
“Sure?” said Balcairn, already making for their table.
When they were being helped to caviar he looked at the wine list.
“The lager is rather good,” he said. “What would you like to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having… I think some lager would be lovely.”
“Two small bottles of lager, please… Are you sure you really like that better than anything?”
“Yes, really, thank you.”
Simon Balcairn looked about him gloomily, occasionally adding a new name to his list. (It is so depressing to be in a profession in which literally all conversation is “shop.”)
Presently he said, with a deadly air of carelessness:
“Margot Metroland’s got a party tonight, hasn’t she? Are you going?”
“I think probably. I usually like Margot’s parties, don’t you?”
“Yes… Adam, I’ll tell you a very odd thing. She hasn’t sent me an invitation to this one.”
“I expect she will. I only got mine this morning.”
“… Yes… who’s that woman just come in in the fur coat? I know her so well by sight.”
“Isn’t it Lady Everyman?”
“Yes, of course.” Another name was added to the list. Balcairn paused in utmost gloom and ate some salad. “The thing is… she told Agatha Runcible she wasn’t going to ask me.”
“Why not?”
“Apparently she’s in a rage about something I said about something she said about Miles.”
“People do take things so seriously,” said Adam encouragingly.
“It means ruin for me,” said Lord Balcairn. “Isn’t that Pamela Popham?”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“I’m sure it is… I must look up the spelling in the stud book when I get back. I got into awful trouble about spelling the other day… Ruin… She’s asked Vanburgh.”
“Well, he’s some sort of cousin, isn’t he?”
“It’s so damned unfair. All my cousins are in lunatic asylums or else they live in the country and do indelicate things with wild animals… except my mamma, and that’s worse… They were furious at the office about Van getting that Downing Street ‘scoop.’ If I miss this party I may as well leave Fleet Street for good… I may as well put my head into a gas oven and have done with it… I’m sure if Margot knew how much it meant to me she wouldn’t mind my coming.”
Great tears stood in his eyes threatening to overflow.
“All this last week,” he said, “I’ve been reduced to making up my page from the Court Circular and Debrett… No one ever asks me anywhere now…”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Adam, “I know Margot pretty well. If you like I’ll ring her up and ask if I may bring you.”
“Will you? Will you, Adam? If only you really would. Let’s go and do it at once. We’ve no time for coffee or liqueurs. Quick, we can telephone from my office… yes, that black hat and my umbrella, no, I’ve lost the number… there, no, there, oh do hurry… Yes, a taxi…”
They were out in the street and into a taxi before Adam had time to say any more. Soon they were embedded in a traffic block in the Strand, and after a time they reached Balcairn’s office in Fleet Street.
They went up to a tiny room with “Social” written on the glass of the door. Its interior seemed not to justify its name. There was one chair, a typewriter, a telephone, some books of reference and a considerable litter of photographs. Balcairn’s immediate superior sat in the one chair.
“Hullo,” she said. “So you’re back. Where you been?”
“Espinosa. Here’s the list.”
The social editress read it through. “Can’t have Kitty Blackwater,” she said. “Had her yesterday. Others’ll do. Write ’em down to a couple of paragraphs. Suppose you didn’t notice what they were wearing?”
“Yes,” said Balcairn eagerly. “All of them.”
“Well, you won’t have room to use it. We got to keep everything down for Lady M.’s party. I’ve cut out the D. of Devonshire altogether. By the way, the photograph you used yesterday wasn’t the present Countess of Everyman. It’s an old one of the Dowager. We had ’em both on the ’phone about it, going on something awful. That’s you again. Got your invite for tonight?”
“Not yet.”
“You better get it quick. I got to have a firsthand story before we go to press, see? By the way, know anything about this? Lady R.’s maid sent it in today.” She picked up a slip of paper: “ ‘Rumored engagement broken off between Adam Fenwick-Symes, only son of the late Professor Oliver Fenwick-Symes, and Nina Blount, of Doubting Hall, Aylesbury.’ Never heard of either. Ain’t even been announced, so far as I’m aware of.”
“You’d better ask him. This is Adam Symes.”
“Hullo, no offense meant, I’m sure… What about it?”
“It is neither announced nor broken off.”
“N.B.G. in fact, eh? Then that goes there.” She put the slip into the wastepaper basket. “That girl’s sent us a lot of bad stuff lately. Well, I’m off for a bit of lunch. I’ll be over at the Garden Club if anything urgent turns up. So long.”
The editress went out, banging the door labeled “Social,” and whistled as she went down the passage.
“You see how they treat me,” said Lord Balcairn. “They were all over me when I first arrived. I do so wish I were dead.”
“Don’t cry,” said Adam, “it’s too shy-making.”
“I can’t help it… oh, do come in.”
The door marked “Social” opened and a small boy came in.
“Lord Circumference’s butler downstairs with some engagements and a divorce.”
“Tell him to leave them.”
“Very good, my lord.”
“That’s the only person in this office who’s ever polite to me,” said Balcairn as the messenger disappeared. “I wish I had something to leave him in my will… Do ring up Margot. Then I shall at any rate know the worst… Come in.”
“Gentleman of the name of General Strapper downstairs. Wants to see you very particular.”
“What about?”
“Couldn’t say, my lord, but he’s got a whip. Seems very put out about something.”
“Tell him the social editor is having luncheon… Do ring up Margot.”
Adam said, “Margot, may I bring someone with me tonight?”
“Well, Adam, I really don’t think you can. I can’t imagine how everyone’s going to get in as it is. I’m terribly sorry, who is it?”
“Simon Balcairn. He’s particularly anxious to come.”
“I dare say he is. I’m rather against that young man. He’s written things about me in the papers.”
“Please, Margot.”
“Certainly not. I won’t have him inside my house. I’ve only asked Van on the strictest understanding that he doesn’t write anything about it. I don’t wish to have anything more to do with Simon Balcairn.”
“My dear, how rich you sound.”
“I feel my full income when that young man is mentioned. Good-bye. See you tonight.”
“You needn’t tell me,” said Balcairn. “I know what she’s said… it’s no good, is it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Done for…” said Balcairn. “… End of the tether…” He turned over some slips of paper listlessly. “Would it interest you to hear that Agatha and Archie are engaged?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I. One of our people has just sent it in. Half of what they send us is lies, and the other half libel… they sent us a long story about Miles and Pamela Popham having spent last night at Arundel… But we couldn’t use it even if it were true, which it obviously isn’t, knowing Miles. Thank you for doing what you could… good-bye.”
Downstairs in the outer office there was an altercation in progress. A large man of military appearance was shaking and stamping in front of a middle-aged woman. Adam recognized the social editress.
“Answer me, yes or no,” the big man was saying. “Are you or are you not responsible for this damnable lie about my daughter?”
(He had read in Simon Balcairn’s column that his daughter had been seen at a night club. To anyone better acquainted with Miss Strapper’s habits of life the paragraph was particularly reticent.)
“Yes or no,” cried the General, “or I’ll shake the life out of you.”
“No.”
“Then who is? Let me get hold of the cad who wrote it. Where is he?” roared the General.
“Upstairs,” the social editress managed to say.
“More trouble for Simon,” thought Adam.
Adam went to pick Nina up at her flat. They had arranged to go to a cinema together. She said, “You’re much later than you said. It’s so boring to be late for a talkie.”
He said, “Talkies are boring, anyhow.”
They treated each other quite differently after their night’s experiences. Adam was inclined to be egotistical and despondent; Nina was rather grown-up and disillusioned and distinctly cross. Adam began to say that as far as he could see he would have to live on at Shepheard’s now for the rest of his life, or at any rate for the rest of Lottie’s life, as it wouldn’t be fair to leave without paying the bill.
Then Nina said, “Do be amusing, Adam. I can’t bear you when you’re not amusing.”
Then Adam began to tell her about Simon Balcairn and Margot’s party. He described how he had seen Simon being horsewhipped in the middle of the office.
Nina said, “Yes, that’s amusing. Go on like that.”
The story of Simon’s whipping lasted them all the way to the cinema. They were very late for the film Nina wanted to see, and that set them back again. They didn’t speak for a long time. Then Nina said à propos of the film, “All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.”
Adam said, “You’ll enjoy it more next time.”
Nina said, “Next time,” and told him that he took too much for granted.
Adam said that was a phrase which only prostitutes used.
Then they started a real quarrel which lasted all through the film and all the way to Nina’s flat and all the time she was cutting up a lemon and making a cocktail, until Adam said that if she didn’t stop going on he would ravish her there and then on her own hearthrug.
Then Nina went on.
But by the time that Adam went to dress she had climbed down enough to admit that perhaps love was a thing one could grow to be fond of after a time, like smoking a pipe. Still she maintained that it made one feel very ill at first, and she doubted if it was worth it.
Then they began to argue at the top of the lift about whether acquired tastes were ever worth acquiring. Adam said it was imitation, and that it was natural to man to be imitative, so that acquired tastes were natural.
But the presence of the lift boy stopped that argument coming to a solution as the other had done.
“My, ain’t this classy,” said Divine Discontent.
“It’s all right,” said Chastity in a worldly voice. “Nothing to make a song and dance about.”
“Who’s making a song and dance? I just said it was classy—and it is classy, ain’t it?”
“I suppose everything’s classy to some people.”
“Now you two,” said Temperance, who had been put in charge of the angels for the evening, “don’t you start anything in here, not with your wings on. Mrs. Ape won’t stand for scrapping in wings, and you know it.”
“Who’s starting anything?”
“Well, you are then.”
“Oh, it’s no use talking to Chastity. She’s too high and mighty to be an angel now. Went out for a drive with Mrs. Panrast in a Rolls-Royce,” said Fortitude. “I saw her. I was so sorry it rained all the time, or it might have been quite enjoyable, mightn’t it, Chastity?”
“Well, you ought to be glad. Leaves the men for you, Fortitude. Only they don’t seem to want to take advantage, do they?”
Then they talked about men for some time. Divine Discontent thought the second footman had nice eyes.
“And he knows it,” said Temperance.
They were all having supper together in what was still called the schoolroom in Lady Metroland’s house. From the window they could see the guests arriving for the party. In spite of the rain quite a large crowd had collected on either side of the awning to criticize the cloaks with appreciative “oohs” and “ahs” or contemptuous sniffs. Cars and taxis drove up in close succession. Lady Circumference splashed up the street in galoshes, wearing a high fender of diamonds under a tartan umbrella. The Bright Young People came popping all together, out of someone’s electric brougham like a litter of pigs, and ran squealing up the steps. Some “gate-crashers” who had made the mistake of coming in Victorian fancy dress were detected and repulsed. They hurried home to change for a second assault. No one wanted to miss Mrs. Ape’s debut.
But the angels were rather uneasy. They had been dressed ever since seven o’clock in their white shifts, gold sashes and wings. It was now past ten, and the strain was beginning to tell, for it was impossible to sit back comfortably in wings.
“Oh, I wish they’d hurry up so we could get it over,” said Creative Endeavor. “Mrs. Ape said we could have some champagne afterwards if we sang nice.”
“I don’t mind betting she’s doing herself pretty well, down there.”
“Chastity!”
“Oh, all right.”
Then the footman with the nice eyes came to clear the table. He gave them a friendly wink as he shut the door. “Pretty creatures,” he thought. “Blooming shame that they’re so religious… wasting the best years of their lives.”
(There had been a grave debate in the servants’ hall about the exact status of angels. Even Mr. Blenkinsop, the butler, had been uncertain. “Angels are certainly not guests,” he had said, “and I don’t think they are deputations. Nor they ain’t governesses either, nor clergy not strictly speaking; they’re not entertainers, because entertainers dine nowadays, the more’s the pity.”
“I believe they’re decorators,” said Mrs. Blouse, “or else charitable workers.”
“Charitable workers are governesses, Mrs. Blouse. There is nothing to be gained by multiplying social distinctions indefinitely. Decorators are either guests or workmen.”
After further discussion the conclusion was reached that angels were nurses, and that became the official ruling of the household. But the second footman was of the opinion that they were just “young persons,” pure and simple, “and very nice too,” for nurses cannot, except in very rare cases, be winked at, and clearly angels could.)
“What we want to know, Chastity,” said Creative Endeavor, “is how you come to take up with Mrs. Panrast at all.”
“Yes,” said the Angels, “yes. It’s not like you, Chastity, to go riding in a motor car with a woman.” They fluttered their feathers in a menacing way. “Let’s third-degree her,” said Humility with rather nasty relish.
(There was a system of impromptu jurisdiction among the Angels which began with innuendo, went on to cross-examination, pinches and slaps and ended, as a rule, in tears and kisses.)
Faced by this circle of spiteful and haloed faces, Chastity began to lose her air of superiority.
“Why shouldn’t I ride with a friend,” she asked plaintively, “without all you girls pitching on me like this?”
“Friend?” said Creative Endeavor. “You never saw her before today,” and she gave her a nasty pinch just above the elbow.
“Ooooh!” said Chastity. “Ooh, please… beast.”
Then they all pinched her all over, but precisely and judiciously, so as not to disturb her wings or halo, for this was no orgy (sometimes in their bedroom, they gave way, but not here, in Lady Metroland’s schoolroom, before an important first night).
“Ooh,” said Chastity. “Ooh, ow, ooh, ow. Please, beasts, swine, cads… please… ooh… well, if you must know, I thought she was a man.”
“Thought she was a man, Chastity? That doesn’t sound right to me.”
“Well, she looks like a man and—and she goes on like a man. I saw her sitting at a table in a teashop. She hadn’t got a hat on, and I couldn’t see her skirt… ooh… how can I tell you if you keep pinching… and she smiled and so, well, I went and had some tea with her, and she said would I go out with her in her motor car, and I said yes and, ooh, I wish I hadn’t now.”
“What did she say in the motor car, Chastity?”
“Oh, what.” “Do tell us.” “We’ll never pinch you again if you tell us.” “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Chastity, do tell me.” “You’d better tell us.”
“No, I can’t, really—I don’t remember, I tell you.”
“Give her another little nip, girls.”
“Ooh, ooh, ooh, stop. I’ll tell you.”
Their heads were close together and they were so deeply engrossed in the story that they did not hear Mrs. Ape’s entry.
“Smut again,” said a terrible voice. “Girls, I’m sick ashamed of you.”
Mrs. Ape looked magnificent in a gown of heavy gold brocade embroidered with texts.
“I’m sick ashamed of you,” repeated Mrs. Ape, “and you’ve made Chastity cry again, just before the big act. If you must bully someone, why choose Chastity? You all know by this time that crying always gives her a red nose. How do I look, I should like to know, standing up in front of a lot of angels with red noses? You don’t ever think of nothing but your own pleasures, do you? Sluts.” This last word was spoken with a depth of expression that set the angels trembling. “There’ll be no champagne for anyone tonight, see. And if you don’t sing perfectly, I’ll give the whole lot of you a good hiding, see. Now, come on, now, and for the love of the Lamb, Chastity, do something to your nose. They’ll think it’s a temperance meeting to see you like that.”
It was a brilliant scene into which the disconsolate angels trooped two minutes later. Margot Metroland shook hands with each of them as they came to the foot of the staircase, appraising them, one by one, with an expert eye.
“You don’t look happy, my dear,” she found time to say to Chastity, as she led them across the ballroom to their platform, banked in orchids at the far end. “If you feel you want a change, let me know later, and I can get you a job in South America. I mean it.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Chastity, “but I could never leave Mrs. Ape.”
“Well, think it over, child. You’re far too pretty a girl to waste your time singing hymns. Tell that other girl, the redheaded one, that I can probably find a place for her, too.”
“What, Humility? Don’t you have nothing to do with her. She’s a fiend.”
“Well, some men like rough stuff, but I don’t want anyone who makes trouble with the other girls.”
“She makes trouble all right. Look at that bruise.”
“My dear!”
Margot Metroland and Mrs. Ape led the angels up the steps between the orchids and stood them at the back of the platform facing the room. Chastity stood next to Creative Endeavor.
“Please, Chastity, I’m sorry if we hurt you,” said Creative Endeavor. “I didn’t pinch hard, did I?”
“Yes,” said Chastity. “Like hell you did.”
A slightly sticky hand tried to take hers, but she clenched her fist. She would go to South America and work for Lady Metroland… and she wouldn’t say anything about it to Humility either. She glared straight in front of her, saw Mrs. Panrast and dropped her eyes.
The ballroom was filled with little gilt chairs and the chairs with people. Lord Vanburgh, conveniently seated near the door, through which he could slip away to the telephone, was taking them all in. They were almost all, in some way or another, notable. The motives for Margot Metroland’s second marriage* had been mixed, but entirely worldly; chief among them had been the desire to reestablish her somewhat shaken social position, and her party that night testified to her success, for while many people can entertain the Prime Minister and the Duchess of Stayle and Lady Circumference, and anybody can, and often against her will does, entertain Miles Malpractice and Agatha Runcible, it is only a very confident hostess who will invite both these sets together at the same time, differing as they do upon almost all questions of principle and deportment. Standing near Vanburgh, by the door, was a figure who seemed in himself to typify the change that had come over Pastmaster House when Margot Beste-Chetwynde became Lady Metroland; an unobtrusive man of rather less than average height, whose black beard, falling in tight burnished curls, nearly concealed the order of St. Michael and St. George which he wore round his neck; he wore a large signet ring on the little finger of his left hand outside his white glove; there was an orchid in his buttonhole. His eyes, youthful but grave, wandered among the crowd; occasionally he bowed with grace and decision. Several people were asking about him.
“See the beaver with the medal,” said Humility to Faith.
“Who is that very important young man?” asked Mrs. Blackwater of Lady Throbbing.
“I don’t know, dear. He bowed to you.”
“He bowed to you, dear.”
“How very nice… I wasn’t quite sure… He reminds me a little of dear Prince Anrep.”
“It’s so nice in these days, isn’t it, dearest, to see someone who really looks… don’t you think?”
“You mean the beard?”
“The beard among other things, darling.”
Father Rothschild was conspiring with Mr. Outrage and Lord Metroland. He stopped short in the middle of his sentence.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but there are spies everywhere. That man with the beard, do you know him?”
Lord Metroland thought vaguely he had something to do with the Foreign Office; Mr. Outrage seemed to remember having seen him before.
“Exactly,” said Father Rothschild. “I think it would be better if we continued our conversation in private. I have been watching him. He is bowing across the room to empty places and to people whose backs are turned to him.” The Great Men withdrew to Lord Metroland’s study. Father Rothschild closed the door silently and looked behind the curtains.
“Shall I lock the door?” asked Lord Metroland.
“No,” said the Jesuit. “A lock does not prevent a spy from hearing; but it does hinder us, inside, from catching the spy.”
“Well, I should never have thought of that,” said Mr. Outrage in frank admiration.
“How pretty Nina Blount is,” said Lady Throbbing, busy from the front row with her lorgnette, “but don’t you think, a little changed; almost as though…”
“You notice everything, darling.”
“When you get to our age, dear, there is so little left, but I do believe Miss Blount must have had an experience… she’s sitting next to Miles. You know I heard from Edward tonight. He’s on his way back. It will be a great blow for Miles because he’s been living in Edward’s house all this time. To tell you the truth I’m a little glad because from what I hear from Anne Opalthorpe, who lives opposite, the things that go on… he’s got a friend staying there now. Such an odd man… a dirt-track racer. But then it’s no use attempting to disguise the fact, is there… There’s Mrs. Panrast… yes, dear, of course you know her, she used to be Eleanor Balcairn… now why does dear Margot ask anyone like that, do you think?… it is not as though Margot was so innocent… and there’s Lord Monomark… yes, the man who owns those amusing papers… they say that he and Margot, but before her marriage, of course (her second marriage, I mean), but you never know, do you, how things crop up again?… I wonder where Peter Pastmaster is?… he never stays to Margot’s parties… he was at dinner, of course, and, my dear, how he drank… He can’t be more than twenty-one… Oh, so that is Mrs. Ape. What a coarse face… no dear, of course she can’t hear… she looks like a procureuse… but perhaps I shouldn’t say that here, should I?”
Adam came and sat next to Nina.
“Hullo,” they said to each other.
“My dear, do look at Mary Mouse’s new young man,” said Nina.
Adam looked and saw that Mary was sitting next to the Maharajah of Pukkapore.
“I call that a pretty pair,” he said.
“Oh, how bored I feel,” said Nina.
Mr. Benfleet was there talking to two poets. They said “… and I wrote to tell William that I didn’t write the review, but it was true that Tony did read me the review over the telephone when I was very sleepy before he sent it in. I thought it was best to tell him the truth because he would hear it from Tony anyway. Only I said I advised him not to publish it just as I had advised William not to publish the book in the first place. Well Tony rang up Michael and told him that I’d said that William thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael’s book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it…”
“Too bad,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”
“… but is that any reason, even if I had written it, why Michael should tell Tony that I had stolen five pounds from William?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”
“Of course, they’re simply not gentlemen, either of them. That’s all it is, only one’s shy of saying it nowadays.”
Mr. Benfleet shook his head sadly and sympathetically.
Then Mrs. Melrose Ape stood up to speak. A hush fell in the gilt ballroom beginning at the back and spreading among the chairs until only Mrs. Blackwater’s voice was heard exquisitely articulating some details of Lady Metroland’s past. Then she, too, was silent and Mrs. Ape began her oration about Hope.
“Brothers and Sisters,” she said in a hoarse, stirring voice. Then she paused and allowed her eyes, renowned throughout three continents for their magnetism, to travel among the gilded chairs. (It was one of her favorite openings.) “Just you look at yourselves,” she said.
Magically, self-doubt began to spread in the audience. Mrs. Panrast stirred uncomfortably; had that silly little girl been talking, she wondered.
“Darling,” whispered Miss Runcible, “is my nose awful?”
Nina thought how once, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been in love. Mr. Benfleet thought should he have made it three percent on the tenth thousand. The gate-crashers wondered whether it would not have been better to have stayed at home. (Once in Kansas City Mrs. Ape had got no further than these opening words; there had been a tornado of emotion and all the seats in the hall had been broken to splinters. It was there that Humility had joined the Angels.) There were a thousand things in Lady Throbbing’s past… Every heart found something to bemoan.
“She’s got ’em again,” whispered Creative Endeavor. “Got ’em stiff.”
Lord Vanburgh slipped from the room to telephone through some racy paragraphs about fashionable piety.
Mary Mouse shed two little tears and felt for the brown, bejeweled hand of the Maharajah.
But suddenly on that silence vibrant with self-accusation broke the organ voice of England, the hunting cry of the ancien régime. Lady Circumference gave a resounding snort of disapproval:
“What a damned impudent woman,” she said.
Adam and Nina and Miss Runcible began to giggle, and Margot Metroland for the first time in her many parties was glad to realize that the guest of the evening was going to be a failure. It had been an awkward moment.
In the study Father Rothschild and Mr. Outrage were plotting with enthusiasm. Lord Metroland was smoking a cigar and wondering how soon he could get away. He wanted to hear Mrs. Ape and to have another look at those Angels. There was one with red hair… Besides, all this statesmanship and foreign policy had always bored him. In his years in the Commons he had always liked a good scrap, and often thought a little wistfully of those orgies of competitive dissimulation in which he had risen to eminence. Even now, when some straightforward, easily intelligible subject was under discussion, such as poor people’s wages or public art, he enjoyed from time to time making a sonorous speech to the Upper House. But this sort of thing was not at all in his line.
Suddenly Father Rothschild turned out the light.
“There’s someone coming down the passage,” he said. “Quick, get behind the curtains.”
“Really, Rothschild…” said Mr. Outrage.
“I say…” said Lord Metroland.
“Quick,” said Father Rothschild.
The three statesmen hid themselves. Lord Metroland, still smoking, his head thrown back and his cigar erect. They heard the door open. The light was turned on. A match was struck. Then came the slight tinkle of the telephone as someone lifted the receiver.
“Central ten thousand,” said a slightly muffled voice.
“Now,” said Father Rothschild, and stepped through the curtain.
The bearded stranger who had excited his suspicions was standing at the table smoking one of Lord Metroland’s cigars and holding the telephone.
“Oh, hullo,” he said, “I didn’t know you were here. Just thought I’d use the telephone. So sorry. Won’t disturb you. Jolly party, isn’t it? Good-bye.”
“Stay exactly where you are,” said Father Rothschild, “and take off that beard.”
“Damned if I do,” said the stranger crossly. “It’s no use talking to me as though I were one of your choir boys… you old bully.”
“Take off that beard,” said Father Rothschild.
“Take off that beard,” said Lord Metroland and the Prime Minister, emerging suddenly from behind the curtain.
This concurrence of Church and State, coming so unexpectedly after an evening of prolonged embarrassment, was too much for Simon.
“Oh, all right,” he said, “if you will make such a thing about it… it hurts too frightfully, if you knew… it ought to be soaked in hot water… ooh… ow.”
He gave some tugs at the black curls, and bit by bit they came away.
“There,” he said. “Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off her wig… I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about it, if I were you.”
“I seem to have overestimated the gravity of the situation,” said Father Rothschild.
“Who is it, after all this?” said Mr. Outrage. “Where are those detectives? What does it all mean?”
“That,” said Father Rothschild bitterly, “is Mr. Chatterbox.”
“Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person… Chatterbox, indeed… you make us hide behind a curtain and then you tell us that some young man in a false beard is called Chatterbox. Really, Rothschild…”
“Lord Balcairn,” said Lord Metroland, “will you kindly leave my house immediately?”
“Is this young man called Chatterbox or is he not?… Upon my soul, I believe you’re all crazy.”
“Oh yes, I’m going,” said Simon. “You didn’t think I was going to go back to the party like this, did you?—or did you?” Indeed, he looked very odd with little patches of black hair still adhering to parts of his chin and cheeks.
“Lord Monomark is here this evening. I shall certainly inform him of your behavior…”
“He writes for the papers,” Father Rothschild tried to explain to the Prime Minister.
“Well, damn it, so do I, but I don’t wear a false beard and call myself Chatterbox… I simply do not understand what has happened… Where are those detectives?… Will no one explain?… You treat me like a child,” he said. It was all like one of those Cabinet meetings, when they all talked about something he didn’t understand and paid no attention to him.
Father Rothschild led him away, and attempted with almost humiliating patience and tact to make clear to him some of the complexities of modern journalism.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” the Prime Minister kept saying. “It’s all humbug. You’re keeping something back… Chatterbox, indeed.”
Simon Balcairn was given his hat and coat and shown to the door. The crowd round the awning had dispersed. It was still raining. He walked back to his little flat in Bourdon Street. The rain washed a few of the remaining locks from his face; it dripped down his collar.
They were washing a car outside his front door; he crept between it and his dustbin, fitted his latchkey in the lock and went upstairs. His flat was like Chez Espinosa—all oilcloth and Lalique glass; there were some enterprising photographs by David Lennox, a gramophone (on the installment system) and numberless cards of invitation on the mantelpiece. His bath towel was where he had left it on his bed.
Simon went to the ice box in the kitchen and chipped off some ice. Then he made himself a cocktail. Then he went to the telephone.
“Central ten thousand…” he said “… Give me Mrs. Brace. Hullo, this is Balcairn.”
“Well… gotcher story?”
“Oh yes, I’ve got my story, only this isn’t gossip, it’s news—front page. You’ll have to fill up the Chatterbox page on Espinosa’s.”
“Hell!”
“Wait till you see the story… Hullo, give me news, will you… This is Balcairn. Put on one of the boys to take this down, will you?… ready? All right.”
At his glass-topped table, sipping his cocktail, Simon Balcairn dictated his last story.
“Scenes of wild religious enthusiasm, comma, reminiscent of a negro camp-meeting in Southern America, comma, broke out in the heart of Mayfair yesterday evening at the party given for the famous American Revivalist Mrs. Ape by the Viscountess Metroland, formerly the Hon. Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, at her historic mansion, Pastmaster House, stop. The magnificent ballroom can never have enshrined a more brilliant assembly…”
It was his swansong. Lie after monstrous lie bubbled up in his brain.
“… The Hon. Agatha Runcible joined Mrs. Ape among the orchids and led the singing, tears coursing down her face…”
Excitement spread at the Excess office. The machines were stopped. The night staff of reporters, slightly tipsy, as always at that hour, stood over the stenographer as he typed. The compositors snatched the sheets of copy as they came. The subeditors began ruthlessly cutting and scrapping; they suppressed important political announcements, garbled the evidence at a murder trial, reduced the dramatic criticism to one caustic paragraph, to make room for Simon’s story.
It came through “hot and strong, as nice as mother makes it,” as one of them remarked.
“Little Lord Fauntleroy’s on a good thing at last,” said another.
“What ho,” said a third appreciatively.
“… barely had Lady Everyman finished before the Countess of Throbbing rose to confess her sins, and in a voice broken with emotion disclosed the hitherto unverified details of the parentage of the present Earl…”
“Tell Mr. Edwardes to look up photographs of all three of ’em,” said the assistant news editor.
“… The Marquess of Vanburgh, shaken by sobs of contrition… Mrs. Panrast, singing feverishly… Lady Anchorage with downcast eyes…”
“… The Archbishop of Canterbury, who up to now had remained unmoved by the general emotion, then testified that at Eton in the eighties he and Sir James Brown…”
“… the Duchess of Stayle next threw down her emerald and diamond tiara, crying ‘a Guilt Offering,’ an example which was quickly followed by the Countess of Circumference and Lady Brown, until a veritable rain of precious stones fell on to the parquet flooring, heirlooms of priceless value rolling among Tecla pearls and Chanel diamonds. A blank check fluttered from the hands of the Maharajah of Pukkapore…”
It made over two columns, and when Simon finally rang off, after receiving the congratulations of his colleagues, he was for the first time in his journalistic experience perfectly happy about his work. He finished the watery dregs of the cocktail shaker and went into the kitchen. He shut the door and the window and opened the door of the gas oven. Inside it was very black and dirty and smelled of meat. He spread a sheet of newspaper on the lowest tray and lay down, resting his head on it. Then he noticed that by some mischance he had chosen Vanburgh’s gossip page in the Morning Despatch. He put in another sheet. (There were crumbs on the floor.) Then he turned on the gas. It came surprisingly with a loud roar; the wind of it stirred his hair and the remaining particles of his beard. At first he held his breath. Then he thought that was silly and gave a sniff. The sniff made him cough, and coughing made him breathe, and breathing made him feel very ill; but soon he fell into a coma and presently died.
So the last Earl of Balcairn went, as they say, to his fathers (who had fallen in many lands and for many causes, as the eccentricities of British Foreign Policy and their own wandering natures had directed them; at Acre and Agincourt and Killiecrankie, in Egypt and America. One had been picked white by fishes as the tides rolled him among the treetops of a submarine forest; some had grown black and unfit for consideration under tropical suns; while many of them lay in marble tombs of extravagant design).
At Pastmaster House, Lady Metroland and Lord Monomark were talking about him. Lord Monomark was roaring with boyish laughter.
“That’s a great lad,” he said. “Came in a false beard, did he? That’s peppy. What’d you say his name was? I’ll raise him tomorrow first thing.”
And he turned to give Simon’s name to an attendant secretary.
And when Lady Metroland began to expostulate, he shut her up rather discourteously.
“Shucks, Margot,” he said. “You know better than to get on a high horse with me.”