Gurnard was quite hidden from me by table ornaments; the Duc de Mersch glowed with light and talked voluminously, as if he had for years and years been starved of human society. He glowed all over, it seemed to me. He had a glorious beard, that let one see very little of his florid face and took the edge away from an almost nonexistent forehead and depressingly wrinkled eyelids. He spoke excellent English, rather slowly, as if he were forever replying to toasts to his health. It struck me that he seemed to treat Churchill in nuances as an inferior, whilst for the invisible Gurnard, he reserved an attitude of nervous self-assertion. He had apparently come to dilate on the Système Groënlandais, and he dilated. Some mistaken persons had insinuated that the Système was neither more nor less than a corporate exploitation of unhappy Eskimo. De Mersch emphatically declared that those mistaken people were mistaken, declared it with official finality. The Eskimo were not unhappy. I paid attention to my dinner, and let the discourse on the affairs of the Hyperborean Protectorate lapse into an unheeded murmur. I tried to be the simple amanuensis at the feast.
Suddenly, however, it struck me that de Mersch was talking at me; that he had by the merest shade raised his intonation. He was dilating upon the immense international value of the proposed Trans-Greenland Railway. Its importance to British trade was indisputable; even the opposition had no serious arguments to offer. It was the obvious duty of the British Government to give the financial guarantee. He would not insist upon the moral aspect of the work—it was unnecessary. Progress, improvement, civilisation, a little less evil in the world—more light! It was our duty not to count the cost of humanising a lower race. Besides, the thing would pay like another Suez Canal. Its terminus and the British coaling station would be on the west coast of the island. … I knew the man was talking at me—I wondered why.
Suddenly he turned his glowing countenance full upon me.
“I think I must have met a member of your family,” he said. The solution occurred to me. I was a journalist, he a person interested in a railway that he wished the Government to back in some way or another. His attempts to capture my suffrage no longer astonished me. I murmured:
“Indeed!”
“In Paris—Mrs. Etchingham Granger,” he said.
I said, “Oh, yes.”
Miss Churchill came to the rescue.
“The Duc de Mersch means our friend, your aunt,” she explained. I had an unpleasant sensation. Through fronds of asparagus fern I caught the eyes of Gurnard fixed upon me as though something had drawn his attention. I returned his glance, tried to make his face out. It had nothing distinctive in its half-hidden pallid oval; nothing that one could seize upon. But it gave the impression of never having seen the light of day, of never having had the sun upon it. But the conviction that I had aroused his attention disturbed me. What could the man know about me? I seemed to feel his glance bore through the irises of my eyes into the back of my skull. The feeling was almost physical; it was as if some incredibly concentrant reflector had been turned upon me. Then the eyelids dropped over the metallic rings beneath them. Miss Churchill continued to explain.
“She has started a sort of Salon des Causes Perdues in the Faubourg Saint Germain.” She was recording the vagaries of my aunt. The Duc laughed.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “what a menagerie—Carlists, and Orleanists, and Papal Blacks. I wonder she has not held a bazaar in favour of your White Rose League.”
“Ah, yes,” I echoed, “I have heard that she was mad about the divine right of kings.”
Miss Churchill rose, as ladies rise at the end of a dinner. I followed her out of the room, in obedience to some minute signal.
We were on the best of terms—we two. She mothered me, as she mothered everybody not beneath contempt or above a certain age. I liked her immensely—the masterful, absorbed, brown lady. As she walked up the stairs, she said, in half apology for withdrawing me.
“They’ve got things to talk about.”
“Why, yes,” I answered; “I suppose the railway matter has to be settled.” She looked at me fixedly.
“You—you mustn’t talk,” she warned.
“Oh,” I answered, “I’m not indiscreet—not essentially.”
The other three were somewhat tardy in making their drawing-room appearance. I had a sense of them, leaning their heads together over the edges of the table. In the interim a rather fierce political dowager convoyed two well-controlled, blond daughters into the room. There was a continual coming and going of such people in the house; they did with Miss Churchill social business of some kind, arranged electoral rarée-shows, and whatnot; troubled me very little. On this occasion the blond daughters were types of the sixties’ survivals—the type that unemotionally inspected albums. I was convoying them through a volume of views of Switzerland, the dowager was saying to Miss Churchill:
“You think, then, it will be enough if we have. …” When the door opened behind my back. I looked round negligently and hastily returned to the consideration of a shining photograph of the Dent du Midi. A very gracious figure of a girl was embracing the grim Miss Churchill, as a gracious girl should virginally salute a grim veteran.
“Ah, my dear Miss Churchill!” a fluting voice filled the large room, “we were very nearly going back to Paris without once coming to see you. We are only over for two days—for the Tenants’ Ball,
