'But how embarrassing! Won't they feel it keenly, my dear - or will you put on rags, in an overflow of love and sympathy?'
'There will be no women.'
'No women!' cried her brother, genuinely startled.
'I must be alone,' his sister murmured, pushing her black glasses further up the bridge of her long, pointed nose... 'with 'them' - the males.'
'But what of the entertainment for your guests?'
'I shall be there,' said Irma.
'Yes, yes; and no doubt you will prove ravishing and ubiquitous; but, my love, my love, think again.'
'Alfred,' said Irma, standing up and lowering one of her iliac crests and raising its counterpart so high that her pelvis looked thoroughly dangerous – Alfred,' she said, 'how can you be so perverse? What use could women be? You haven't forgotten what we have in mind, have you? Have you?'
Her brother was beginning to admire her. Had she all this long while been hiding beneath her neuroticism, her vanity, her childishness, an iron will?
He rose and, cupping his hands over her hips, corrected their angle with the quick jerk of a bonesetter. Then, sitting back in his chair and fastidiously crossing his long, elegant, cranelike legs while going through the movements of washing his hands: 'Irma, my revelation, tell me but this...' he raised his eyes quizzically - 'who are these males - these stags - these rams - these tom cats - these cocks, stoats and ganders that you have in mind? And on what scale is this carousal to be?'
'You know very well, Alfred, that we have no choice. Among the gentry, who are there? I ask you, Alfred, who are there?'
'Who, indeed?' mused the Doctor, who could think of no one. The idea of a party in his house was so novel that the effort of trying to people it was beyond him. It was as though he were trying to assemble a cast for an unwritten drama.
'As for the size of the party, Alfred - are you listening? I have in mind a gathering of some forty men.'
'No! no!' shouted her brother, clutching at the arms of his chair, 'not in this room, surely? It would be worse than the white cats. It would be a dog fight.'
Was that a blush that stole across his sister's face?
'Alfred,' she said after a while, 'it is my last chance. In a year my glamour may be tarnished. Is it a time to think of your own personal comfort?'
'Listen to me,' Prunesquallor spoke very slowly. His high voice was strangely meditative. 'I will be as concise as I can. Only you must listen, Irma.'
She nodded.
'You will have more success if your party is not too large. At a large party the hostess has to flutter from guest to guest and can never enjoy a protracted conversation with anyone. What is more, the guests continually flutter towards the hostess in a manner calculated to show her how much they are enjoying themselves.
'But at a smaller party where everyone can easily be seen the introductions and general posturing can be speedily completed. You will then have time to size up the persons present and decide on those worth giving your attention to.'
'I see,' said Irma. 'I am going to have lanterns hanging in the garden, too, so that I can lure those whom I think fit out into the apple orchard.'
'Good heavens!' said Prunesquallor, half to himself. 'Well, I hope it won't be raining.'
'It won't,' said Irma.
He had never known her like this. There was something frightening in seeing a second side of a sister whom he had always assumed had only one. 'Well, some of them must be left out, then.'
'But who 'are' they? Who 'are' they?' he cried. 'I can't bear this frightful tension. What are these males that you seem to think of en bloc? This doglike horde who at, as it were, a whistle will be ready to stream across the quadrangle and through the hall, through this door and to take up a score of masculine postures? In the name of fundamental mercy, Irma, tell me who they are.'
'The Professors.'
As Irma uttered the words her hands grappled with one another behind her back. Her flat bosom heaved. Her sharp nose twitched and a terrible smile came over her face.
'They are gentlemen!' she cried in a loud voice. 'Gentlemen! And worthy of my love.'
'What! All forty of them.' Her brother was on his feet again. He was shocked. But at the same time he could see the logic of Irma's choice. Who else was there for a party with this hidden end in view? As for their being 'gentlemen' - perhaps they were. But only just. If their blood was bluish, so for the most part were their jaws and finger-nails. If their backgrounds bore scrutiny, the same could hardly be said for their foregrounds.
'What a vista opens out before us! How old are you, Irma?'
'You know very well, Alfred.'
'Not without thinking,' said the Doctor. 'But leave it. It's what you look like that matters. God knows you're clean! It's a good start. I am trying to put myself in your place. It takes an effort - ha ha! - I can't do it.'
'Alfred.'
'My love?'
