The party, or some of it, reassembled in pyjamas to welcome him. Parakeet walked round birdlike and gay, pointing his thin white nose and making rude little jokes at everyone in turn in a shrill, emasculate voice. At four the house was again at rest.
Only one of the guests appeared to be at all ill at ease: Sir Humphrey Maltravers, the Minister of Transportation. He arrived early in the day with a very large car and two very small suitcases, and from the first showed himself as a discordant element in the gay little party by noticing the absence of their hostess.
“Margot? No, I haven’t seen her at all. I don’t believe she’s terribly well,” said one of them, “or perhaps she’s lost somewhere in the house. Peter will know.”
Paul found him seated alone in the garden after luncheon, smoking a large cigar, his big red hands folded before him, a soft hat tilted over his eyes, his big red face both defiant and disconsolate. He bore a preternatural resemblance to his caricatures in the evening papers, Paul thought.
“Hullo, young man!” he said. “Where’s everybody?”
“I think Peter’s taking them on a tour round the house. It’s much more elaborate than it looks from outside. Would you care to join them?”
“No, thank you, not for me. I came here for a rest. These young people tire me. I have enough of the House during the week.” Paul laughed politely. “It’s the devil of a session. You keen on politics at all?”
“Hardly at all,” Paul said.
“Sensible fellow! I can’t think why I keep on at it. It’s a dog’s life, and there’s no money in it, either. If I’d stayed at the Bar I’d have been a rich man by now.
“Rest, rest and riches,” he said—“it’s only after forty one begins to value things of that kind. And half one’s life, perhaps, is lived after forty. Solemn thought that. Bear it in mind, young man, and it will save you from most of the worst mistakes. If everyone at twenty realized that half his life was to be lived after forty …
“Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s cooking and Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s garden,” said Sir Humphrey meditatively. “What could be desired more except our fair hostess herself? Have you known her long?”
“Only a few weeks,” Paul said.
“There’s no one like her,” said Sir Humphrey. He drew a deep breath of smoke. Beyond the yew hedges the panatrope could be faintly heard. “What did she want to build this house for?” he asked. “It all comes of this set she’s got into. It’s not doing her any good. Damned awkward position to be in—a rich woman without a husband! Bound to get herself talked about. What Margot ought to do is to marry—someone who would stabilize her position, someone,” said Sir Humphrey, “with a position in public life.”
And then, without any apparent connection of thought, he began talking about himself. “ ‘Aim high’ has been my motto,” said Sir Humphrey, “all through my life. You probably won’t get what you want, but you may get something; aim low, and you get nothing at all. It’s like throwing a stone at a cat. When I was a kid that used to be great sport in our yard; I daresay you were throwing cricket-balls when you were that age, but it’s the same thing. If you throw straight at it, you fall short; aim above, and with luck you score. Every kid knows that. I’ll tell you the story of my life.”
Why was it, Paul wondered, that everyone he met seemed to specialize in this form of autobiography? He supposed he must have a sympathetic air. Sir Humphrey told of his early life: of a family of nine living in two rooms, of a father who drank and a mother who had fits, of a sister who went on the streets, of a brother who went to prison, of another brother who was born a deaf-mute. He told of scholarships and polytechnics, of rebuffs and encouragements, of a University career of brilliant success and unexampled privations.
“I used to do proofreading for the Holywell Press,” he said; “then I learned shorthand and took down the University sermons for the local papers.”
As he spoke the clipped yews seemed to grow grey with the soot of the slums, and the panatrope in the distance took on the gay regularity of a barrel-organ heard up a tenement-staircase.
“We were a pretty hot lot at Scone in my time,” he said, naming several high officers of state with easy familiarity, “but none of them had so far to go as I had.”
Paul listened patiently, as was his habit. Sir Humphrey’s words flowed easily, because, as a matter of fact, he was rehearsing a series of articles he had dictated the evening before for publication in a Sunday newspaper. He told Paul about his first briefs and his first general election, the historic Liberal campaign of 1906, and of the strenuous days just before the formation of the Coalition.
“I’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” said Sir Humphrey. “I’ve gone further than most people. I suppose that, if I keep on, I may one day lead the party. But all this winter I’ve been feeling that I’ve got as far as I shall ever get. I’ve got to the time when I should like to go into the other House and give up work and perhaps keep a racehorse or two”—and his eyes took on the faraway look of a popular actress describing the cottage of her dreams—“and a yacht and a villa at Monte. The others can do that when they like, and they know it. It’s not till you get to my age that you really feel the disadvantage of having been born poor.”
On Sunday evening Sir Humphrey suggested a “hand of cards.” The idea was received without enthusiasm.
“Wouldn’t that be rather fast?” said Miles. “It is Sunday. I think cards are divine, particularly the kings. Such naughty old faces! But if I start playing for money I
