“Let’s all play billiards and make a Real House Party of it,” said David, “or shall we have a Country House Rag?”
“Oh, I do feel such a rip,” said Miles when he was at last persuaded to play. Sir Humphrey won. Parakeet lost thirty pounds, and opening his pocketbook, paid him in ten-pound notes.
“How he did cheat!” said Olivia on the way to bed.
“Did he, darling? Well, let’s jolly well not pay him,” said Miles.
“It never occurred to me to do such a thing. Why, I couldn’t afford to possibly.”
Peter tossed Sir Humphrey double or quits, and won.
“After all, I am host,” he explained.
“When I was your age,” said Sir Humphrey to Miles, “we used to sit up all night sometimes playing poker. Heavy money, too.”
“Oh, you wicked old thing!” said Miles.
Early on Monday morning the Minister of Transportation’s Daimler disappeared down the drive. “I rather think he expected to see mamma,” said Peter. “I told him what was the matter with her.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Paul.
“No, it didn’t go down awfully well. He said that he didn’t know what things were coming to and that even in the slums such things were not spoken about by children of my age. What a lot he ate! I did my best to make him feel at home, too, by talking about trains.”
“I thought he was a very sensible old man,” said Professor Silenus. “He was the only person who didn’t think it necessary to say something polite about the house. Besides, he told me about a new method of concrete construction they’re trying at one of the Government Superannuation Homes.”
Peter and Paul went back to their cylindrical study and began another spelling-lesson.
As the last of the guests departed Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde reappeared from her little bout of veronal, fresh and exquisite as a seventeenth-century lyric. The meadow of green glass seemed to burst into flower under her feet as she passed from the lift to the cocktail table.
“You poor angels!” she said. “Did you have the hell of a time with Maltravers? And all those people? I quite forget who asked to come this weekend. I gave up inviting people long ago,” she said, turning to Paul, “but it didn’t make a bit of difference.” She gazed into the opalescent depths of her absinthe frappé. “More and more I feel the need of a husband, but Peter is horribly fastidious.”
“Well, your men are so awful,” said Peter.
“I sometimes think of marrying old Maltravers,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, “just to get my own back, only ‘Margot Maltravers’ does sound a little too much, don’t you think? And if they give him a peerage, he’s bound to choose something quite awful. …”
In the whole of Paul’s life no one had ever been quite so sweet to him as was Margot Beste-Chetwynde during the next few days. Up and down the shining lift shafts, in and out of the rooms and along the labyrinthine corridors of the great house he moved in a golden mist. Each morning as he dressed a bird seemed to be singing in his heart, and as he lay down to sleep he would pillow his head against a hand about which still hung a delicate fragrance of Margot Beste-Chetwynde’s almost unprocurable scent.
“Paul, dear,” she said one day as hand in hand, after a rather fearful encounter with a swan, they reached the shelter of the lake house, “I can’t bear to think of you going back to that awful school. Do, please, write and tell Dr. Fagan that you won’t.”
The lake house was an eighteenth-century pavilion, built on a little mound above the water. They stood there for a full minute still hand in hand on the crumbling steps.
“I don’t quite see what else I could do,” said Paul.
“Darling, I could find you a job.”
“What sort of job, Margot?” Paul’s eyes followed the swan gliding serenely across the lake; he did not dare to look at her.
“Well, Paul, you might stay and protect me from swans, mightn’t you?” Margot paused and then, releasing her hand, took a cigarette-case from her pocket. Paul struck a match. “My dear, what an unsteady hand! I’m afraid you’re drinking too many of Peter’s cocktails. That child has a lot to learn yet about the use of vodka. But seriously, I’m sure I can find you a better job. It’s absurd your going back to Wales. I still manage a great deal of my father’s business, you know, or perhaps you didn’t. It was mostly in South America in—in places of entertainment, cabarets and hotels and theatres, you know, and things like that. I’m sure I could find you a job helping in that, if you think you’d like it.”
Paul thought of this gravely. “Oughtn’t I to know Spanish?” he said. It seemed quite a sensible question, but Margot threw away her cigarette with a little laugh and said: “It’s time to go and change. You are being difficult this evening, aren’t you?”
Paul thought about this conversation as he lay in his bath—a sunk bath of malachite—and all the time while he dressed and as he tied his tie he trembled from head to foot like one of the wire toys which street vendors dangle from trays.
At dinner Margot talked about matters of daily interest, about some jewels she was having reset, and how they had come back all wrong, and how all the wiring of her London house was being overhauled because of the fear of fire; and how the man she had left in charge of her villa at Cannes had made a fortune at the Casino and given her notice, and she was afraid she might have to go out there to arrange about it; and how the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings was demanding a guarantee that she would not demolish her castle in Ireland; and how her cook seemed to be going off his
