So the matter dropped from my mind, except that I now and then gave a thought to Antony's queer idea, how and why on earth he had come to humble himself so—for that was the way the man would look at it. But I could not discover a hint of his possible motive until some days later; when, having asked Iris what he was about, for he hadn't come near me since that night of his arrival (obviously because he had no present use for me), she said he seemed to be dashing about the City seeing people, and, she hoped, profitably: "For I never see him but he has a pound or more registered on his taxi. But I daren't lecture him in case he loses his dash, and economises by not going to the City at all. For I think," she said with a hard look at me, "there's some good to come out of Antony yet."
So that was it, then—Antony actually was taking something seriously for once! He really had brought back money schemes, big schemes of course, needing substantial backing, for like every other spendthrift he could only think in millions—and that was why he had suddenly found a use for Roger, the clever boy of the family!
But I dared not tell Iris my idea of Antony's purpose in making up the quarrel, for she was already surprised and displeased enough by what she thought my "harsh" attitude about him. "I never knew you to be so wretchedly biased," she had been surprised into saying; and so she wouldn't now give much credence to my psychologising of Antony—who was cunning enough to have realised, maybe from something she had let drop, that I was in no mood to be again used by him, and therefore did not come near me.
It was only a few days after Iris had told me of his costly vagabondage about the City that she informed me, ever so casually, that Roger was going to give a "Nigel Poole" dinner-party on the Friday night. She said it so casually that I thought I hadn't heard aright.
"A what party?"
"Oh, come, Ronnie! you know very well that Roger has given a dinner-party on this particular Friday of every year in honour of Sir Nigel, the founder of the house of Poole—"
"I know all about old Nigel, and that's a deal too much," I broke in. "But would you tell me where Roger has kept this annual dinner hidden, for I've never heard of it in all the years I've known him?"
"That's because of the life you lead," she pointed out. "You are too recluse, too celibate, too oblivious of the banal festivities of more frivolous but more human people. And I might add—"
"You might add, my dear, what this dinner is about and what the deuce Sir Nigel Poole, Bart., and bankrupt, has to do with it?"
"Ronnie, you mustn't be rude about my husband's family—you know very well that they go to all the best Hunt Balls and that all-their-people-are-Service-people. And as for the dinner, why! it's about nothing in particular—what are dinners ever about except a table? Poor old Nigel Poole is just a kind of plausible excuse to dress ourselves up in his period and kick our heels up a bit. The only thing that won't be eighteenth century will be the champagne, unless its corked—and, of course, you, if you are going to pull a face like that about it.
"This very moment," she said, "we will go to Clarkson's, where we will fit you up with a very fine line in gents' eighteenth-century suitings. And a wig, Ronnie, will lend an intriguing appearance to what I might call—well, you know, a rather discouraging scarcity...."
As it turned out on the Friday night, it was a very pretty spectacle. We were a square party of men and women about the long oak table, five down each side with our host and hostess at each end; and not one of us but was decked in the finery of circa 1780, and with a great deal more care and less anachronism than is usually remarkable in such masquerades. We men silked, breeched, sheathed, ruffled, and bewigged; and the women with their laces and powdered hair looking to my mind vastly improved upon their reality. Even Iris, her tawny hair whitened to the convention and extravagantly retreating from her ears and forehead to a pinnacle (how in the world she arranged it so I could never guess!), her little, exquisite features thus quite prominently lovely, looked less wild and more worldly, as of this world and not another; altogether of a more demure elegance—an expression which, as Roger said in brazenly asking us to admire his lady's looks, became her very prettily.
We were all, it must be understood, talking the speech of the period, as far as each could remember its conceits and mannerisms. Of course we all mixed things up a good deal—except Roger, who had insisted on it from our entrance, and was much more adept at the foolery of the verbiage. He was in the high good spirits that such make believe generally put him in; and was always seen in his best light as a host, as lavish of good humour as of wine, both, of course, flowing the more readily as the hour increased. And now his consistent and amusing use of his ancestor's way of speech added a great deal to the fun—in which Iris was sharing no less than I. Indeed, she has often told me since that she could have lived smoothly enough with Roger if all life were a masquerade—for Roger, it seemed, was a man who would take to fineness as a beau geste, where he would see you to the deuce in reality.
Our host, in all his finery of black silks and white laces, was sitting at the end of the table facing the window; and on the oak panelled wall on his right, as it were dominating us all, was the only portrait in the room, a full-length of the host of our fancy: Sir Nigel, the first baronet, by Gainsborough—a very gallant but misguided gentleman, as Roger said of him. Misguided indeed, if one can judge by what mention of him can be found in the more obscure annals of his time (for Sir Nigel's fame among his contemporaries was not such as to ensure its perpetuity by even the least responsible historian); a rake who turned his coat this way and that to suit his interests just a little too outrageously even for that period, won and as discreditably lost a fortune or two; who was adjudged a sot and bankrupt, and then half confounded opinion by certain strategies of war which had nearly won us back our American colonies but for highly-placed incompetence; and in the end had surely won a higher prize than a paltry baronetcy but for his incurable passion for double-dealing, in which, as the years and the bottle took him, his wits seem to have lost much of their dexterity. His figure stared down at us now, stout, flushed, and rather blatant, and genial enough but for something dour about the cast of his eyes; and with very little such damned nonsense as cultivation about him, but a great deal of jaw.... He had come, I thought, by a rare honour: such a one as is not often lavished on many worthier shades—and, as I looked round at the glasses and the flushed faces of the company, an honour done in no other way than that which Sir Nigel himself would have chosen.
Much was said that amused us that night which, if repeated now outside that setting, would naturally make but a very pale and artificial show.... It was past eleven and we were still about the table, when I saw Roger almost furtively raise a glass to the portrait and carry it to his lips; but as he did so he caught my eye on him, and at once set the glass down untouched.
"I stand rebuked, Ronnie. It would become us all to share this toast—to Sir Nigel!" And with that he jumped up in his place and held his glass up.
"Caballeros!" he gravely addressed us. "There is but one thing to-night that would surprise our host on the wall and in our hearts, but would add vastly to his pleasure at our entertainment—that the ladies will toast him with us! But let it be as you sit, and in silence—Silence, the only God Sir Nigel never worshipped!" We drank.
"Nay, Sir Roger, you do me a great injustice! I was perforce often silent—and close on this very hour."
We all slewed round at the voice from the window.
"My God! The very man!" cried young Riverdale.
And it was—Sir Nigel as ever he lived, or rather, was painted! Heady with wine though we may have been—the very man himself surely stood there! The likeness was scrupulous, the resemblance of face alone, as he stood surveying us from the open window with his hat carried as in the portrait, was startling, ludicrous. The colour of the clothes, the very feather in the hat, were as though taken from the oil of the portrait; not one thing was amiss in the disguise, not even that well-dined look of Sir Nigel's time!
A full half-minute must have passed in startled, amused silence, while we all stared at the apparition, and he handsomely stared back at us—we all except Iris who, I saw from the corner of my eye, had not turned in her chair at the voice, but was looking straightly in front of her, a little crooked smile about her mouth. The reason for the "Nigel Poole" party, which she had suggested to Roger, was now well out! And, still in that half-minute, I twisted my head to take stock of our host standing at his end of the table—and, I don't quite know why, was amazed to see that he was not looking at Antony but at his wife, thoughtfully, ever so thoughtfully, just for a second....
Antony's smile was mainly to Roger, and after the first second he was wonderfully answered. Roger let drop his empty glass so that it shattered on the table, then strode across the room towards his brother, both hands outstretched to meet him.
"Welcome to my house, Sir Nigel," said he, and the brothers very handsomely took each the other's hands.
[I never thought to see two grown men enjoy tomfoolery so seriously as did these two brothers from this moment on.]
"You do me a great honour," continued Roger as he led his brother towards us, "but you also put me to a degree of shame—"
"Why, sir, I never yet shamed any man by my presence in his house!" And the blustering cry, one knew, might as well have been Sir Nigel's as Red Antony's.
"I meant no such reflection," Roger protested smoothly. "I am merely shamed that you did not trust my hospitality some hours before, so that you could have been of our company over dinner."
"I protest, Sir Roger, that you make me too welcome! But I assure you we keep a very good table in the place I come from—" (And it was obvious enough that Antony had dined as extremely well as the heartiest of us.)
"And that, had I known of this honour, I would have asked one the less—for you, Sir Nigel, will now make the thirteenth about the table."
(I'll bet Iris never thought of that, though!)
"Egad, I play in luck to-night, then! For I'd have you know, Sir, that thirteen is a number much favoured in the place I've just left."
By now they had reached Roger's end of the table and stood there, the objects of our very amused attention. And a fine pair of men they made, those brothers!
"I'll present the company to you—" Roger was saying when Antony took him quickly up.
"Nay, nay—let them be! I dare swear that none will be so abashed as not to reveal themselves aptly enough!" And at that he sent a great laugh rocking down the table, a magnificent laugh, an epic laugh, explaining himself and us, waving and rocking among the multitude of glasses—which, to my heated fancy, seemed to clink as at the hail of one they knew to be their master.
Only Roger among us did not laugh, nor smile but abstractedly. He showed only concern as to his last guest's entertainment; and was now directing an amused servant to place a chair beside his own at the table, when Antony turned from us to him with the amiable inquiry: "And the fairest of all, that most brilliant ornament in a brilliant room—I take to be your lady, Sir Roger?"
Roger waved a courtly hand towards Iris to present her. But she made no sign as Antony bowed; the little smile had stayed rigid about her mouth since his entrance, it was as though an ironic hand had lightly caressed a shape upon it....
And Roger took a feather from Antony's impudence as the other was bowing. "I am glad you realise," said he, "that our house has now no other claim to distinction than in that lady."
And so my impossible had happened, the breach between the brothers was at last filling in! At this first, on Roger's part as though, I thought, with hesitation, almost perforce—but continued day by day to be filled in so consistently that soon the breach became, as it were, a mountain ridge: the brothers on the one side and the world on the other.
And, too, many another quarrel was tactfully smoothed for Antony that night and from that night; for there were some of our table that night whose first surprise at his entrance had held some repugnance in it, men who thought him "really a bit too much," women who weren't Wesleyans but would not have remarked him in an empty street. But Red Antony had certainly won—what little of that kind of thing there is to win—or to lose, for the matter of that. And if ever a man who was worth his weight in food and drink, that was Antony that night, on the top of his form from floor to ceiling, from midnight to daylight! And Roger only less so—just a little colourless he seemed beside this sudden brother of his. It was strange to think that I was the only one among them all who had ever seen the brothers together before—and that more than eighteen years before, in Roger's last term at school! I tried to find from his face now something of what he thought, but caught no more than an occasional sidewise smile at his brother.
I taxed Iris about her plot with only a laughing, "Well, it was a very good idea, anyway."
"Oh, if I could only claim the credit for it!" she feigned to sigh. "It was Antony's, you see."
The devil it was, I only thought! And as at last I went home found some unrest from the discovery, I was too drunk to know exactly why; and for all the fun of the night I went at last to bed quite bothered about the whole thing—and awoke not less so. I ought to have been pleased, of course: Antony had splendidly got his way and might now make good, and Iris might get the benefit of the new friendship between the brothers. But one never knew what those infernal brothers were at, they both had such a damned sinister way of taking their pleasures! And I really had rather a grievance about the thing, too, I felt entitled to be hurt—for, after all, I'd been a pretty good friend to 'em both, and in long-passed years had time over again tried to bring them together and make them see the error of their ways—and here they suddenly come together without as much as a "by your leave!"
I rang Iris up at about lunch time, and a tired voice from her bed told me to go about my business and "come to dinner to-night, if you like. Roger's asked Antony...." I didn't go simply because my constitution is of this and not the eighteenth century. But I would have liked to, if only to see what those two might be at, or if they were at anything at all. And as for Iris—well, thought I (those late nights never really agreed with me, you understand), a wiser than I has said that it's in the nature of women and cats to scratch the hand that tries to free them from a trap.