But I don’t think you’ll find him anxious to take on new staff at the moment.”
“I’ll tell them you sent me.”
“No, no, I never interfere. You must just approach them through the normal channels,”
“All right. I’ll come up and see you after I’ve fixed it up. Oh, and I’ll send you Griffenbach’s re-port on the onion and porridge diet if I can find it. There’s my sister, I’ve got to go and talk to her now, I’m afraid. See you before I sail.”
Barbara Sothill no longer regarded her brother with the hero-worship which had coloured the first twenty years of her life.
“Basil,” she said, “what on earth have you been doing? I was lunching at mother’s to-day and she was wild about you. She’s got one of her dinner parties and you promised to be in. She said you hadn’t been home all night and she didn’t know whether to get another man or not.”
“I was on a racket. We began at Lottie Crump’s. I rather forget what happened except that Allan got beaten up by some chaps.”
“And she’s just heard about the committee.”
“Oh, that. I meant to give up the constituency anyhow. It’s no catch being in the Commons now. I’m thinking of going to Azania.”
“Oh, were you—and what’ll you do there?”
“Well Rex Monomark wants me to represent the Excess but I think as a matter of fact I shall be better off if I keep a perfectly free hand. The only thing is I shall need some money. D’you think our mother will fork out five hundred pounds?”
“I’m sure she won’t.”
“Well, some one’ll have to. To tell you the truth I can’t very well stay on in England at the moment. Things have got into rather a crisis. I suppose you wouldn’t like to give me some money?”
“Oh, Basil, what’s the good? You know I can’t do it except by getting it from Freddy and he was furious last time.”
“I can’t think why. He’s got packets.”
“Yes, but you might try and be a little polite to him sometimes—just in public, I mean.”
“Oh, of course if he thinks that by lending me a few pounds he’s getting himself up for life as a good fellow.. “
In the days when Sir Christopher was Chief Whip, Lady Seal had entertained frequently and with rel-ish. Now, in her widowhood, with Barbara successfully married and her sons dispersed, she limited herself to four or five dinner parties every year. There was nothing elastic or informal about these occasions. Lady Metroland was a comparatively rich woman and it was her habit when she was tired to say casually to her butler at cocktail time, “I am not going out to-night. There will be about twenty to dinner,” and then to sit down to the telephone and invite her guests, saying to each, “Oh, but you must chuck them to-night. I’m all alone and feeling like death.” Not so Lady Seal, who despatched engraved cards of invitation a month in advance, supplied defections from a secondary, list one week later, fidgeted with place cards and a leather board as soon as the acceptances began to arrive, borrowed her sister’s chef and her daughter’s footmen, and on the morning of the party exhausted herself utterly by trotting all over her house in Lowndes Square arranging flowers. Then at half past five when she was satisfied that all was ready she would retire to bed and doze for two hours in her darkened room; her maid would call her with cachet Farine and clear China tea; a touch of ammonia in the bath; a touch of rouge on the cheeks; lavender water behind the ears; half an hour before the glass, fiddling with her jewel case while her hair was being done; final conference with the butler; then a happy smile in the drawing room for all who were less than twenty minutes late. The menu always included lobster cream, saddle of mutton and brown-bread ice and there were silver gilt dishes ranged down the table holding a special kind of bon-bon supplied to Lady Seal for twenty years by a little French shop whose name she would sometimes coyly disclose.
Basil arrived among the first guests. There was carpet on the steps; the doors opened with unusual promptness; the hall seemed full of chrysanthemums and footmen.
” Hullo, her ladyship got a party? I forgot all about it. I’d better change.”
“Frank couldn’t find your evening clothes, Mr. Basil. I don’t think you can have brought them back last time you went away. I don’t think her Ladyship is expecting you to dinner.”
“Any one asked for me?”
“There were two persons, sir.”
“Duns?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. I told them that we had no information about your whereabouts.”
“Quite right.”
“Mrs. Lyne rang up fifteen times, sir. She left no message.”
“If any one else wants me, tell them I’ve gone to Azania.”
“Sir?”
“Azania.”
“Abroad?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Basil…”
The Duke and Duchess of Stayle had arrived. The Duchess said, “So you are not dining with us to-night. You young men are all so busy nowadays.
