Here Lady Craigdalloch leant over the rail of the Peeresses’ Gallery and by a series of signals gave the Monteaths to understand that she was ready to go and would meet them outside.
When, after losing their way once or twice, they at last reached the Prince’s Chamber, they found her waiting there for them. A tall commanding woman with white hair and an Edwardian aspect, she had, in the days when big pale faces and Grecian features were admired to the exclusion of everything else, been considered a beauty. She had still considerable remains of looks and the unmistakable manner of one who has been courted in youth and flattered in middle-age.
‘Dear Sally,’ she said, embracing her niece rather voluminously, ‘I knew you would like to hear your uncle’s speech. It went off very well, didn’t it? Always such an anxiety to the dear thing. How well you are looking, Sally. Where did you get so wonderfully sunburnt?’
‘At Elizabeth Arden’s, Aunt Madge.’
Lady Craigdalloch inwardly supposed that this must be one of Walter’s Bright Young but Undesirable friends that she was always hearing so much about from Sally’s mother. The creature probably has a villa in the South of France – so much the better, those sort of people are not wanted in England, where they merely annoy their elders and breed Socialism. In any case, she never understood this craving of the younger generation for a hideous brick-coloured complexion. If she had guessed for a moment that Sally stained hers every morning with stuff out of a bottle she would have thought her niece frankly mad.
‘Craig will join us in a moment. He wishes us to begin tea without him.’ She led the way down long, draughty, Gothic corridors to the tea-room, which, in contrast to other portions of the House, presented a scene of tempestuous gaiety. Several of the peers seated at the rather intime little tables were considerably under seventy, and one or two had relations and female friends with them whom they were entertaining with jokes and witticisms of the most abandoned description. Two bishops and some of their girl friends were fairly rollicking over a pot of tea, while the old man with crutches was being jocularly accused by the Lord Chancellor of having wiped his beard on the table-cloth, an allegation which he could hardly refute, having been caught by that dignitary in the very act. Altogether there was a spirit of goodwill and friendly banter which seemed more or less lacking elsewhere in the building.
While Walter and Sally were eating the fascinating mixed biscuits and strong tea which the nation, through the medium of Richard Coeur de Maison Lyons, provides at a slight profit for the sustenance of its administrators and their guests, Lady Craigdalloch explained in what their duties at Dalloch Castle would consist.
‘You will find everything running very smoothly, I think. The servants have all been there for years and you’ll have no trouble at all with them. You will, of course, give any orders for the comfort of the guests, such as, for instance, how many picnic luncheons will be required for the guns, and so on. Then, if you would meet new arrivals in the hall and show them their rooms, that sort of thing makes people feel so much more at home than if they arrive and find no host or hostess.’
‘When would you like us to go up there?’ asked Sally.
‘Let me think. The first guests, of course, arrive on the tenth. Could you go up about the eighth? You’ll find General Murgatroyd. He’s there now, dear thing, fishing.’
‘Is it a big party for the twelfth?’
‘I think I can tell you exactly who will be there. Lord and Lady Prague – he is a great friend of your papa, Sally; very deaf, poor dear, but an extremely good shot. He married her en secondes noces some years ago. She was Florence Graiday. She will be a great help to you, I think, a wonderfully charming woman and so artistic. They will probably stay quite a month. They always do every year. Then a delightful young couple, the Chadlingtons. Brenda Chadlington is the daughter of a very old friend of mine. She is a most beautiful creature. The other two guns are Admiral Wenceslaus, a dear thing with only one eye; and Mr Buggins, who is, of course, secretary of the Nelson Club, a very cultured man. His wife, poor woman, is shut up, has been quite mad for years.’
‘Is General Murgatroyd married?’ asked Sally rather nervously. She felt that all these women might prove to be very alarming.
‘No, dear, he is not. That is to say, he was married but unfortunately, he was obliged to divorce his wife. None of us was surprised. She was a girl from the Baker Street Bazaar, you know. She got a hold over him somehow and made him marry her. But it all happened years ago – thirty years at least, I suppose. Here comes your Uncle Craig.’
Sally kissed her uncle, who seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
‘We heard your speech, Uncle Craig,’ she lied, ‘from the Strangers’ Gallery. It was most interesting.’
‘Glad you think so, my dear. One has one’s duty, you know; born into a certain position and so forth. It’s no use pretending that one enjoys coming here, or that it will be very pleasant going off to New South Rhodesia just when the moor has never been better. Still, as my poor father used to say, one’s not only put here for enjoyment. All the same,’ he added, brightening somewhat, ‘Gillibrough tells me I may get the chance of shooting a lion or two and possibly some hartebeest in Rhodesia. Well, Walter, what d’you think of this place? Never been here before, eh? Finest legislative assembly in the world,
