While Miss Runcible finished her story (which began to sound each time she told it more and more like the most lubricious kind of anti-Turkish propaganda) the ex-King of Ruritania told Adam about a Major he had known, who had come from Prussia to reorganize the Ruritanian Army. He had disappeared south, taking with him all the mess plate of the Royal Guard, and the Lord Chamberlain’s wife, and a valuable pair of candlesticks from the Chapel Royal.
By the time Miss Runcible had finished, Lottie was in a high state of indignation.
“The very idea of it,” she said. “The dirty hounds. And I used to know your poor father, too, before you were born or thought of. I’ll talk to the Prime Minister about this,” she said, taking up the telephone. “Give me Outrage,” she said to the exchange boy. “He’s up in number twelve with a Japanese.”
“Outrage isn’t Prime Minister, Lottie.”
“Of course he is. Didn’t Doge say so. … Hullo, is that Outrage? This is Lottie. A fine chap you are, I don’t think. Tearing the clothes off the back of a poor innocent girl.”
Lottie prattled on.
Mr. Outrage had finished dinner, and, as a matter of fact, the phrasing of this accusation was not wholly inappropriate to his mood. It was some minutes before he began to realize that all this talk was only about Miss Runcible. By that time Lottie’s flow of invective had come to an end, but she finished finely.
“Outrage your name, and Outrage your nature,” she said, banging down the receiver. “And that’s what I think of him. Now how about a little drink?”
But her party was breaking up. The Major was gone. Judge Skimp was sleeping, his fine white hair in an ashtray. Adam and Miss Runcible were talking about where they would dine. Soon only the King remained. He gave her his arm with a grace he had acquired many years ago; far away in his sunny little palace, under a great chandelier which scattered with stars of light like stones from a broken necklace, a crimson carpet woven with a pattern of crowned ciphers.
So Lottie and the King went in to dinner together.
Upstairs in No. 12, which is a suite of notable grandeur, Mr. Outrage was sliding back down the path of self-confidence he had so laboriously climbed. He really would have brought matters to a crisis if it had not been for that telephone, he told himself, but now the Baroness was saying she was sure he was busy, must be wanting her to go: would he order her car.
It was so difficult. For a European the implications of an invitation to dinner tête-à-tête in a private room at Shepheard’s were definitely clear. Her acceptance on the first night of his return to England had thrown him into a flutter of expectation. But all through dinner she had been so self-possessed, so supremely social. Yet, surely, just before the telephone rang, surely then, when they left the table and moved to the fire, there had been something in the atmosphere. But you never know with Orientals. He clutched his knees and said in a voice which sounded very extraordinary to him, must she go, it was lovely after a fortnight, and then, desperately, he had thought of her in Paris such a lot. (Oh, for words, words! That massed treasury of speech that was his to squander at will, to send bowling and spinning in golden pieces over the floor of the House of Commons; that glorious largesse of vocables he cast far and wide, in ringing handfuls about his constituency!)
The little Baroness Yoshiwara, her golden hands clasped in the lap of her golden Paquin frock, sat where she had been sent, more puzzled than Mr. Outrage, waiting for orders. What did the clever Englishman want? If he was busy with his telephone, why did he not send her away; tell her another time to come: if he wanted to be loved, why did he not tell her to come over to him? Why did he not pick her out of her red plush chair and sit her on his knee? Was she, perhaps, looking ugly tonight? She had thought not. It was so hard to know what these Occidentals wanted.
Then the telephone rang again.
“Will you hold on a minute? Father Rothschild wants to speak to you,” said a voice. “… Is that you, Outrage? Will you be good enough to come round and see me as soon as you can? There are several things which I must discuss with you.”
“Really, Rothschild … I don’t see why I should. I have a guest.”
“The baroness had better return immediately. The waiter who brought you your coffee has a brother at the Japanese Embassy.”
“Good God, has he? But why don’t you go and worry Brown? He’s P.M., you know, not me.”
“You will be in office tomorrow. … As soon as possible, please, at my usual address.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Why, of course.”
IV
At Archie Schwert’s party the fifteenth Marquess of Vanburgh, Earl Vanburgh de Brendon, Baron Brendon, Lord of the Five Isles and Hereditary Grand Falconer to the Kingdom of Connaught, said to the eighth Earl of Balcairn, Viscount Erdinge, Baron Cairn of Balcairn, Red Knight of Lancaster, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and Chenonceaux Herald to the Duchy of Aquitaine, “Hullo,” he said. “Isn’t this a repulsive party? What are you going to say about it?” for they were both of them, as it happened, gossip writers for the daily papers.
“I’ve just telephoned my story through,” said Lord Balcairn. “And now I’m going, thank God.”
“I can’t think of what to say,” said Lord Vanburgh. “My editress said yesterday she was tired of seeing the same names over and over again—and here they are again,
