‘It is lovely,’ said Jane doubtfully. ‘I wonder what we shall do all day though.’
‘Do? Why, my dear young lady, by the time you’ve been out with the guns, or flogging the river all day, you’ll be too tired to do anything except perhaps to have a set or two of lawn tennis. After dinner we can always listen to Craig’s wireless. I’ve just asked the chauffeur to fix it up.’
‘I personally shall be busy taking photographs,’ said Albert. ‘I am shortly bringing out a small brochure on the minor arts of the nineteenth century, and although I had already collected much material for it, there are in this house some objects so unique that I shall have to make a most careful revision of my little work. I also feel it is my duty to the nation to compile a catalogue of what I find here. You write, General?’
‘I once wrote a series of articles for Country Life on stable bedding.’
‘But how macabre! Then you, I and Walter, all three, belong to the fellowship of the pen; but while you and I are in a way but tyros, I feeling frankly more at home with a paintbrush and you, most probably, with a fox’s brush, Walter here is one of our latter day immortals.’
And he began to recite in a loud voice one of his friend’s poems:
‘Fallow upon the great black waste
And all esurient. But when
Your pale green tears are falling
Falling and
Falling
Upon the Wapentake, there was never
So absolutely never
Such disparity.’
Walter blushed.
‘Please, Albert.’
‘My dear Walter, that is good. It is more than good – it has an enduring quality and I think will live. Do you not agree, General? You and I, Walter, will do a great deal of work here. I have found a room with a large green table in the centre very well lighted. It will be ideal for my purpose. Then I am hoping that Sally will perhaps give me a few sittings. Do you think that she might be persuaded?’
‘My dear, she’d adore to. Sally very much believes in having herself reproduced in all mediums. Come on. There’s the gong for lunch.’
By dinner-time that evening the whole party was assembled, Lord and Lady Prague having arrived in a motor car soon after seven o’clock.
Sally had spent much time and thought over the arrangement of the table, feeling that it was her duty to try and make the first evening a success, and as she sat down she thought, with some satisfaction, that she had mixed up the party rather well. It soon became apparent, however, that the party was not mixing. Her own task, seated between Lord Prague and Captain Chadlington, might well have daunted a far more experienced conversationalist, the former being stone deaf and moreover thoroughly engrossed in the pleasures of the table, while the latter appeared to possess a vocabulary of exactly three words – ‘I say!’ and ‘No!’ – which he used alternately. She fought a losing battle valiantly, remembering that the really important thing on these occasions is to avoid an oasis of silence. Walter declared afterwards that he distinctly heard her ask Lord Prague if he belonged to the London Group, and that, on receiving no answer, she then proceeded to recite Lycidas to him until the end of dinner.
Jane, whose partners were Admiral Wenceslaus and Mr Buggins, courted disaster by embarking on a funny story Albert had told her about a lunatic woman with a glass eye. She only remembered in the middle that the admiral was one-eyed and that Mrs Buggins languished in a lunatic asylum and had to change it quickly into a drunken man with one leg. The story lost much of its point and nobody laughed except Walter, who choked into his soup.
Albert sat next Lady Prague, a spinsterish woman of about forty with a fat face, thin body and the remains of a depressingly insular type of good looks. Her fuzzy brown hair was arranged in a dusty bun showing ears which were evidently intended to be hidden, but which insisted on poking their way out. Her skin was yellow with mauve powder; except for this her face was quite free from any trace of maquillage, and the eyebrows grew at will. Her nails were cut short and unvarnished.
Albert was seized with spasms of hatred for her even before she spoke, which she did almost immediately in a loud unpleasing voice, saying:
‘I didn’t quite hear your name when we were introduced.’
Albert looked at her frolicking eyebrows with distaste and said very distinctly:
‘Albert Memorial Gates.’
‘Oh! What?’
‘Albert Memorial Gates.’
‘Yes. Memorial, did you say?’
‘My name,’ said Albert with some asperity, ‘is Albert Memorial Gates. I took Memorial in addition to my baptismal Albert at my confirmation out of admiration for the Albert Memorial, a very great work of art which may be seen in a London suburb called Kensington.’
‘Oh,’ said Lady Prague crossly, ‘you might as well have called yourself Albert Hall.’
‘I entirely disagree with you.’
Lady Prague looked helplessly at her other neighbour, Admiral Wenceslaus, but he was talking across Jane to Mr Buggins and took no notice of her. She made the best of a bad job and turned again to Albert.
‘Did I hear Mr Buggins say that you are an artist?’
‘Artiste – peintre – yes.’
‘Oh, now do tell me, I’m so interested in art, what do you chiefly go in for?’
‘Go in where?’
‘I mean – water-colours or oils?’
‘My principal medium is what you would call oils. Gouache, tempera and prepared dung are mediums I never neglect, while my bead, straw and button pictures have aroused a great deal of criticism not by any means all unfavourable.’
‘It always seems to me a great pity to go in for oils unless you’re really good. Now Prague’s sister has a girl who draws quite nicely and she wanted to go to Paris, but I said to her parents, “Why let her learn oils? There are too many oil paintings in
