When I was ready I went down to the Long Gallery, where Lord and Lady Montdore were sitting in their usual chairs one each side of the chimneypiece, but not at all in their usual frame of mind. They were both, and especially Lady Montdore, in a twitter of nerves, and looked up quite startled when I came into the room, relaxing again when they saw that it was only me. I thought that from the point of view of a stranger, a backwoodsman from the American continent, they struck exactly the right note. Lord Montdore, in an informal green velvet smoking-jacket, was impressive with his white hair and carved, unchanging face, while Lady Montdore’s very dowdiness was an indication that she was too grand to bother about clothes, and this too would surely impress. She wore printed black-and-white crêpe-de-chine, her only jewels the enormous half-hoop rings which flashed from her strong old woman’s fingers, and sat as she always did, her knees well apart, her feet in their large buckled shoes firmly planted on the ground, her hands folded in her lap.
‘We lit this little fire,’ she said, ‘thinking that he may feel cold after the journey.’ It was unusual for her to refer to any arrangement in her house, people being expected to like what they found there, or else to lump it. ‘Do you think we shall hear the motor when it comes up the drive? We generally can if the wind is in the west.’
‘I expect I shall,’ I said, tactlessly. ‘I hear everything.’
‘Oh, we’re not stone deaf ourselves. Show Fanny what you have got for Cedric, Montdore.’
He held out a little book in green morocco, Gray’s poems.
‘If you look at the fly-leaf,’ he said, ‘you will see that it was given to my grandfather by the late Lord Palmerston the day that Cedric’s grandfather was born. They evidently happened to be dining together. We think that it should please him.’
I did so hope it would. I suddenly felt very sorry for these two old people, and longed for Cedric’s visit to be a success and cheer them up.
‘Canadians,’ he went on, ‘should know all about the poet Gray, because General Woolf, at the taking of Quebec –’
There were footsteps now in the red drawing-room, so we had not heard the motor after all. Lord and Lady Montdore got up and stood together in front of the fireplace as the butler opened the door and announced ‘Mr Cedric Hampton’.
A glitter of blue and gold crossed the parquet, and a human dragon-fly was kneeling on the fur rug in front of the Montdores, one long white hand extended towards each. He was a tall, thin young man, supple as a girl, dressed in rather a bright blue suit; his hair was the gold of a brass bed-knob, and his insect appearance came from the fact that the upper part of the face was concealed by blue goggles set in gold rims quite an inch thick.
He was flashing a smile of unearthly perfection; relaxed and happy he knelt there bestowing this smile upon each Montdore in turn.
‘Don’t speak,’ he said, ‘just for a moment. Just let me go on looking at you – wonderful, wonderful people!’
I could see at once that Lady Montdore was very highly gratified. She beamed with pleasure. Lord Montdore gave her a hasty glance to see how she was taking it, and when he saw that beaming was the note, he beamed too.
‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘to Hampton.’
‘The beauty,’ Cedric went on, floating jointlessly to his feet. ‘I can only say that I am drunk with it. England, so much more beautiful than I had imagined (I have never had very good accounts of England, somehow), this house, so romantic, such a repository of treasures, and above all, you – the two most beautiful people I have ever seen!’
He spoke with rather a curious accent, neither French nor Canadian, but peculiar to himself, in which every syllable received rather more emphasis than is given by the ordinary Englishman. Also he spoke, as it were, through his smile, which would fade a little, then flash out again, but which never altogether left his face.
‘Won’t you take off your spectacles?’ said Lady Montdore. I should like to see your eyes.’
‘Later, dear Lady Montdore, later. When my dreadful, paralysing shyness (a disease with me) has quite worn off. They give me confidence, you see, when I am dreadfully nervous, just as a mask would. In a mask one can face anything – I should like my life to be a perpetual bal masqué, Lady Montdore, don’t you agree? I long to know who the Man in the Iron Mask was, don’t you, Lord Montdore? Do you remember when Louis XVIII first saw the Duchesse d’Angoulême after the Restoration? Before saying anything else you know – wasn’t it all awful or anything – he asked if poor Louis XVI had ever told her who the Man in the Iron Mask was. I love Louis XVIII for that – so like One.’
Lady Montdore indicated me. ‘This is our cousin – and a distant relation of yours, Cedric – Fanny Wincham.’
He took my hand and looked long into my face, saying, ‘I am enchanted to meet you’ as if he really was. He turned again to the Montdores, and said, ‘I am so happy to be here.’
‘My dear boy, we are so happy to have you. You should have come before – we had no idea – we thought you were always in Nova Scotia, you see.’
Cedric was gazing at the big French
