Lady Orange prided herself on her internationalism, and delighted to gather distinguished foreigners about her; members and attaches of minor embassies invariable graced her dinner parties. She often referred to her attainments as “bilingual,” and in effect she spoke French with a perfect Geneva accent. She thought it bon ton to appear bored at every social function except those which took place at her house in Belgrave Square, and now when a procession made up of bedizened unities marched in double file past her box she remarked languidly:
“I think they show a singular lack of imagination. One would have thought Chelsea artists would have invented something unique, picturesque for themselves.”
“They only thought of comfort, perhaps. But it is they who gave the impetus to the imagination of others. Not?”
The man who sat next to Lady Orange spoke with certain gestures of hands and arms that would have proclaimed him a foreigner ever apart from his appearance—the somewhat wide expanse of white waistcoat, the ultra-smart cut of his evening clothes, the diamond ring on his finger. He had large, mellow dark eyes, which he used with great effect when he spoke to women, and full lips half-concealed under a heavy black moustache. He had a soft, rich voice, and spoke English with that peculiar intonation which is neither Italian nor Slav, but has the somewhat unpleasant characteristics of both; and he had large, well-shaped, podgy hands all covered with a soft dark down that extended almost to his fingertips.
Lady Orange, who had pale, round eyes and arched eyebrows that lent to her face a perpetual look of surprise, gazed intelligently about her.
“Ah, oui!” she sighed vaguely. “Vous avez raison!”
She would have liked to continue the conversation in French, but General Naniescu was equally determined to speak English.
As Lady Orange was going to Bucharest shortly, and desired an introduction to august personages there, she thought it best to humour the general’s whim.
“How well you express yourself in our barbarous tongue, M. le Général!” she said kindly.
“Ah, madame,” the general replied, with an expressive shrug, “we in our country are at such disadvantage in the social life of great cities like London and Paris, that we must strive to win our way by mastering the intricacies of language, so as to enable us to converse freely with the intelligentsia of the West who honour us by their gracious acceptance.”
“You are a born courtier, Monsieur le Général,” Lady Orange rejoined with a gracious smile. “Is he not, ma chère?” And with the edge of her large feather fan she tapped the knees of an elderly lady who sat the other side of M. le Général.
“Oh, Mademoiselle Fairfax was not listening to my foolish remarks,” General Naniescu said, turning the battery of his mellow eyes on the somewhat frumpish old maid.
“No,” Miss Fairfax admitted drily. “Monsieur de Kervoisin here on my left was busy trying to convert me to the dullness of Marcel Proust. He is not succeeding.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Naniescu suavely, “you English ladies! You are so intellectual and so deliciously obstinate. So proud of your glorious literature that even the French modernists appear poor in your sight.”
“There, you see, ma chère,” Lady Orange put in with her habitual vagueness, “always the courtier.”
“How can one help being a courtier, dear lady, when for hours one is thrown in a veritable whirlpool of beauty, brilliance and wit? Look at this dazzling throng before us,” the general went on, with a fine sweep of his arm. “The eyes are nearly blinded with its magnificence. Is it not so, my dear Kervoisin?”
This last remark he made in French, for M. de Kervoisin spoke not a word of English. He was a small, spare man, with thin grey beard neatly trimmed into a point, and thin grey hair carefully arranged so as to conceal the beginnings of baldness. Around his deep-set grey eyes there was a network of wrinkles; they were shrewd, piercing eyes, with little, if any, softness in them. M. de Kervoisin, whose name proclaimed him a native of Brittany, was financial adviser to a multiplicity of small, newly created states, all of whom were under the tutelage of France. His manner was quiet and self-effacing when social or political questions were on the tapis, and he only appeared to warm up when literature or the arts were being discussed. He fancied himself as a Maecenas rather than a financier. Marcel Proust was his hobby for the moment, because above all things he prided himself on modernity, and on his desire to keep abreast of every literary and artistic movement that had risen in the one country that he deemed of intellectual importance, namely his own.
For the moment he felt vaguely irritated because Miss Fairfax—a seemingly unpretentious and socially unimportant elderly female—refused to admit that there was not a single modern English prose writer that could compare with Proust. To the general’s direct challenge he only replied drily.
“Very brilliant indeed, my good Naniescu; but you know, I have seen so much in my day that sights like these have no longer the power to stir me.”
“I am sorry for you,” Miss Fairfax retorted with old-maidish bluntness. “I have been about the world a good deal myself, but I find it always a pleasure to look at pretty people. Look at Rosemary Fowkes now,” she went on, addressing no one in particular, “did you ever in all your life see anything so beautiful?”
She made lively little gestures of greeting, and pointed to a couple on the dancing-floor below. Lady Orange turned her perpetually surprised gaze in that direction and General Naniescu uttered an exaggerated cry of admiration. Even M. de Kervoisin appeared interested.
“Who is the lady?” he asked.
“She is Rosemary Fowkes,” Miss Fairfax said, “one of the most distinguished—”
“Ah! I entreat you, mademoiselle, tell us no more,”
