“Oh, how bored I feel,” said Nina.
Mr. Benfleet was there talking to two poets. They said “… and I wrote to tell William that I didn’t write the review, but it was true that Tony did read me the review over the telephone when I was very sleepy before he sent it in. I thought it was best to tell him the truth because he would hear it from Tony anyway. Only I said I advised him not to publish it just as I had advised William not to publish the book in the first place. Well Tony rang up Michael and told him that I’d said that William thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael’s book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it. …”
“Too bad,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”
“… but is that any reason, even if I had written it, why Michael should tell Tony that I had stolen five pounds from William?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”
“Of course, they’re simply not gentlemen, either of them. That’s all it is, only one’s shy of saying it nowadays.”
Mr. Benfleet shook his head sadly and sympathetically.
Then Mrs. Melrose Ape stood up to speak. A hush fell in the gilt ballroom beginning at the back and spreading among the chairs until only Mrs. Blackwater’s voice was heard exquisitely articulating some details of Lady Metroland’s past. Then she, too, was silent and Mrs. Ape began her oration about Hope.
“Brothers and Sisters,” she said in a hoarse, stirring voice. Then she paused and allowed her eyes, renowned throughout three continents for their magnetism, to travel among the gilded chairs. (It was one of her favourite openings.) “Just you look at yourselves,” she said.
Magically, self-doubt began to spread in the audience. Mrs. Panrast stirred uncomfortably; had that silly little girl been talking, she wondered.
“Darling,” whispered Miss Runcible, “is my nose awful?”
Nina thought how once, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been in love. Mr. Benfleet thought should he have made it three percent on the tenth thousand. The gatecrashers wondered whether it would not have been better to have stayed at home. (Once in Kansas City Mrs. Ape had got no further than these opening words; there had been a tornado of emotion and all the seats in the hall had been broken to splinters. It was there that Humility had joined the Angels.) There were a thousand things in Lady Throbbing’s past. … Every heart found something to bemoan.
“She’s got ’em again,” whispered Creative Endeavour. “Got ’em stiff.”
Lord Vanburgh slipped from the room to telephone through some racy paragraphs about fashionable piety.
Mary Mouse shed two little tears and felt for the brown, bejewelled hand of the Maharajah.
But suddenly on that silence vibrant with self-accusation broke the organ voice of England, the hunting-cry of the ancien régime. Lady Circumference gave a resounding snort of disapproval:
“What a damned impudent woman,” she said.
Adam and Nina and Miss Runcible began to giggle, and Margot Metroland for the first time in her many parties was glad to realize that the guest of the evening was going to be a failure. It had been an awkward moment.
In the study Father Rothschild and Mr. Outrage were plotting with enthusiasm. Lord Metroland was smoking a cigar and wondering how soon he could get away. He wanted to hear Mrs. Ape and to have another look at those Angels. There was one with red hair. … Besides all this statesmanship and foreign policy had always bored him. In his years in the Commons he had always liked a good scrap, and often thought a little wistfully of those orgies of competitive dissimulation in which he had risen to eminence. Even now, when some straightforward, easily intelligible subject was under discussion, such as poor people’s wages or public art, he enjoyed from time to time making a sonorous speech to the Upper House. But this sort of thing was not at all in his line.
Suddenly Father Rothschild turned out the light.
“There’s someone coming down the passage,” he said.
“Quick, get behind the curtains.”
“Really, Rothschild …” said Mr. Outrage.
“I say …” said Lord Metroland.
“Quick,” said Father Rothschild.
The three statesmen hid themselves. Lord Metroland, still smoking, his head thrown back and his cigar erect. They heard the door open. The light was turned on. A match was struck. Then came the slight tinkle of the telephone as someone lifted the receiver.
“Central ten thousand,” said a slightly muffled voice.
“Now,” said Father Rothschild, and stepped through the curtain.
The bearded stranger who had excited his suspicions was standing at the table smoking one of Lord Metroland’s cigars and holding the telephone.
“Oh, hullo,” he said, “I didn’t know you were here. Just thought I’d use the telephone. So sorry. Won’t disturb you. Jolly party, isn’t it? Goodbye.”
“Stay exactly where you are,” said Father Rothschild, “and take off that beard.”
“Damned if I do,” said the stranger crossly. “It’s no use talking to me as though I were one of your choir boys … you old bully.”
“Take off that beard,” said Father Rothschild.
“Take off that beard,” said Lord Metroland and the Prime Minister, emerging suddenly from behind the curtain.
This concurrence of Church and State, coming so unexpectedly after an evening of prolonged embarrassment, was too much for Simon.
“Oh, all right,” he said, “if you will make such a thing about it … it hurts too frightfully, if you knew … it ought to be soaked in hot water … ooh … ow.”
He gave some tugs at the black curls, and bit by bit they came away.
“There,” he said. “Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off her wig. … I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about it, if I were you.”
“I seem to have overestimated the gravity of the situation,” said Father Rothschild.
“Who is it, after all this?” said Mr. Outrage. “Where are those detectives? What does it all mean?”
“That” said Father Rothschild bitterly, “is Mr. Chatterbox.”
“Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person. …
