“Fanny, how awful of me, if I’d only known …”
“I dare say there must have been another bottle you saw on the dressing-table, sweetest. Perhaps the maid put it there. You never know at the Lotti, do you?”
“Fanny, forgive me …”
“But, dearest, what is there to forgive? After all, you did see another bottle, didn’t you, Kitty darling?”
“Why, look, there’s Miles.”
“Miles?”
“Your son, darling. My nephew, you know.”
“Miles. Do you know, Kitty, I believe it is. He never comes to see me now, the naughty boy.”
“My dear, he looks terribly tapette.”
“Darling, I know. It is a great grief to me. Only I try not to think about it too much—he had so little chance with poor Throbbing what he was.”
“The sins of the fathers, Fanny …”
Somewhere not far from Maidstone Mr. Outrage became fully conscious. Opposite him in the carriage the two detectives slept, their bowler hats jammed forwards on their foreheads, their mouths open, their huge red hands lying limply in their laps. Rain beat on the windows; the carriage was intensely cold and smelt of stale tobacco. Inside there were advertisements of horrible picturesque ruins; outside in the rain were hoardings advertising patent medicines and dog biscuits. “Every Molassine dog cake wags a tail,” Mr. Outrage read, and the train repeated over and over again, “Right Honourable gent, Right Honourable gent, Right Honourable gentleman, Right Honourable gent …”
Adam got into the carriage with the Younger Set. They still looked a bit queer, but they cheered up wonderfully when they heard about Miss Runcible’s outrageous treatment at the hands of the Customs officers.
“Well,” they said, “Well! how too, too shaming, Agatha, darling,” they said. “How devastating, how un-policeman-like, how goat-like, how sick-making, how too, too awful.” And then they began talking about Archie Schwert’s party that night.
“Who’s Archie Schwert?” asked Adam.
“Oh, he’s someone new since you went away. The most bogus man. Miles discovered him, and since then he’s been climbing and climbing and climbing, my dear, till he hardly knows us. He’s rather sweet, really, only too terribly common, poor darling. He lives at the Ritz, and I think that’s rather grand, don’t you?”
“Is he giving his party there?”
“My dear, of course not. In Edward Throbbing’s house. He’s Miles’ brother, you know, only he’s frightfully dim and political, and doesn’t know anybody. He got ill and went to Kenya or somewhere and left his perfectly sheepish house in Hertford Street, so we’ve all gone to live there. You’d better come, too. The caretakers didn’t like it a bit at first, but we gave them drinks and things, and now they’re simply thrilled to the marrow about it and spend all their time cutting out ‘bits,’ my dear, from the papers about our goings on.
“One awful thing is we haven’t got a car. Miles broke it, Edward’s, I mean, and we simply can’t afford to get it mended, so I think we shall have to move soon. Everything’s getting rather broken up, too, and dirty, if you know what I mean. Because, you see, there aren’t any servants, only the butler and his wife, and they are always tight now. So demoralising. Mary Mouse has been a perfect angel, and sent us great hampers of caviar and things. … She’s paying for Archie’s party tonight, of course.”
“Do you know, I rather think I’m going to be sick again?”
“Oh, Miles!”
(Oh, Bright Young People!)
Packed all together in a second-class carriage, the angels were late in recovering their good humour.
“She’s taken Prudence off in her car again,” said Divine Discontent, who once, for one delirious fortnight, had been Mrs. Ape’s favourite girl. “Can’t see what she sees in her. What’s London like, Fortitude? I never been there but once.”
“Just exactly heaven. Shops and all.”
“What are the men like, Fortitude?”
“Say, don’t you never think of nothing but men, Chastity?”
“I should say I do. I was only asking.”
“Well, they ain’t much to look at, not after the shops. But they has their uses.”
“Say, did you hear that? You’re a cute one, Fortitude. Did you hear what Fortitude said? She said ‘they have their uses.’ ”
“What, shops?”
“No, silly, men.”
“Men. That’s a good one, I should say.”
Presently the train arrived at Victoria, and all these passengers were scattered all over London.
Adam left his bag at Shepheard’s Hotel, and drove straight to Henrietta Street to see his publishers. It was nearly closing time, so that most of the staff had packed up and gone home, but by good fortune Mr. Sam Benfleet, the junior director with whom Adam always did his business, was still in his room correcting proofs for one of his women novelists. He was a competent young man, with a restrained elegance of appearance (the stenographer always trembled slightly when she brought him his cup of tea).
“No, she can’t print that,” he kept saying, endorsing one after another of the printer’s protests. “No, damn it, she can’t print that. She’ll have us all in prison.” For it was one of his most exacting duties to “ginger up” the more reticent of the manuscripts submitted and “tone down” the more “outspoken” until he had reduced them all to the acceptable moral standard of his day.
He greeted Adam with the utmost cordiality.
“Well, well, Adam, how are you? This is nice. Sit down. Have a cigarette. What a day to arrive in London. Did you have a good crossing?”
“Not too good.”
“I say, I am sorry. Nothing so beastly as a beastly crossing, is there? Why don’t you come round to dinner at Wimpole Street tonight? I’ve got some rather nice Americans coming. Where are you staying?”
“At ‘Shepheard’s’—Lottie Crump’s.”
“Well, that’s always fun. I’ve been trying to get an autobiography out of Lottie for ten years. And that reminds me. You’re bringing us your manuscript, aren’t you? Old Rampole was asking about it only the other day. It’s a week overdue, you know. I hope you’ll like the preliminary notices we’ve sent out. We’ve fixed the day of publication for the second week in December,
