opened, Cutflower. I would, as one who is responsible for his staff, be grateful. Thank you.'
Just then, the door which faced the staircase opened and a long rectangle of gold light fell across a section of the embattled masters. Their gowns flamed. Their faces shone like spectres. Turning almost simultaneously after a few minutes of dazzling blankness they shuffled into the surrounding shadow. Around the corner of the open door through which the light was pouring a large face peered out at them.
'Name?' it whispered thickly. An arm crept around the door and drew the nearest figure forwards and into the light by a fistful of wine-red linen. 'Name?' it whispered again.
'The name is Cutflower, 'la'! 'hissed the gentleman, 'but take your great joint of clod's fist off me, you stupid bastard.' Cutflower, whose gusts of temper were rare and short-lived, was really angry at being pulled forward by his gown and in having it clenched so clumsily into a web of creases. 'Let go! he repeated hotly. 'By hell, I'll have you whipped, la!'
The crude footman bent down and brought his lip to Cutflower's ear. 'I... will... kill... you... ' he whispered, but in such an abstracted way as to give Cutflower quite a turn. It was as though the fellow was passing on a scrap of inside information - casually (like a spy) but in confidence. Before Cutflower had recovered he found himself pushed forward, and he was suddenly alone in the long room. Alone, except for a line of servants along the right-hand wall, and away ahead of him, his host and hostess, very still, very upright in the glow of many candles.
Had Bellgrove worked out beforehand the order in which to have his staff announced, it is unlikely that he would have hit upon so happy an idea as that of choosing Cutflower from his pack, and leading off, as it were, with a card so lacking in the solid virtues.
But 'chance' had seen to it that of all the gowns it was Cutflower's that should have been within range of the groping hand. And Cutflower, the volatile and fatuous Cutflower, as he stepped lightly like a wagtail across the grey-green roods of carpet was, in spite of the shocking start he had been given, injecting the air, the cold expectant air, with something no other member of the staff possessed in the same way - a warmth or a gaiety of a kind, but not a human gaiety; rather, it was glass-like; a sparkling, twinkling quality.
It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he had never lived.
Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now there, in his private canoe, changing his course with a flick of his paddle when death's black whale, or the red squid of passion, lifted for a moment its body from the brine.
He was not more than a third of the way to his hosts, and the echo of the stentorian voice, which had flung his name across the room, was hardly dead, and yet (with his wagtail walk, his spruceness, his perky ductile features so ready to be amused and so ready to amuse as long as no one took life seriously) he had already broken the ice for the Prunesquallors. There was a certain charm in his fatuity, his perkiness. His toecaps shone like mirrors. His feet came down tap-tap-tap-tap in a way all their own.
The Professors craning their necks as they watched his progress breathed more freely. They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower's air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy.
And O, the charm of it! The artless charm of it! When Cutflower, with but a few feet to go, broke into a little dancing run, and putting forward both his hands cupped them over the limp white fingers which Irma had extended.
'O, la! La!' he had cried, his voice running all the way back down the salon. 'This 'is', my dear Miss Prunesquallor, this positively 'is'...' and turning to the Doctor, 'Isn't it?' he added as he clasped the outstretched hand, squaring his shoulders and shaking his head happily as he did so.
'Well, I hope it will 'become' so, my friend,' cried Prunesquallor. 'How good to see you! And bye the bye, Cutflower, you give me heart you do... by all that re-vivifies I thank you from its bottom. Don't disappear now, for the whole evening, will you?'
Irma leaned across her brother and drew her lips apart in a dead, wide and calculated smile.
It was meant to express many things, and among them the sense of how unconditionally she associated herself with her brother's sentiment. It also tried to imply that for all her qualities as a 'femme fatale', she was little more than a wide-eyed girl at heart and terribly vulnerable. But it was early in the evening and she knew she must make many mistakes before her smiles came out right.
Cutflower, whose eyes were still on the doctor, was fortunate enough to be unaware of Irma's blandishment. He was about to say something, when the loud and common voice from the other end of the room brayed forth, 'Professor Mulefire', and Cutflower turned his head gaily from his hosts and shielded his eyes in imitation of a look-out man scanning some distant horizon. With a quick, delighted smile and a twirl of his dapper body, he was away to the side tables, where with his elbows raised very high, he worked his ten fingers together into a knot, as he passed his eye along the wines and delicacies. Self-absorbed, he rocked to and fro on the sides of his shoes.
How different was Mulefire with his long clumsy irritable strides! And indeed how disparate were all who followed one another that evening with only the colour of their gowns in common.
Flannelcat, like a lost soul for whom the journey was a mile at least; the heavy, sloppy, untidy Fluke, who looked as though, for all his strength and for all the forward thrust of his loaf-like jaw, he might at any moment fold up at the knees and go to sleep on the carpet. Perch-Prism, horribly alert, his porcine features shining white in the glow of the candles, his button-black eyes darting to and fro as he moved crisply with short aggressive steps.
With this shape and that shape, with this walk and that walk, they emerged from the hall to the tocsin-bray of their names, until Bellgrove found himself alone in the semi-darkness.
As one after another of the professional guests had made their carpet-journey towards her, Irma had had a world of time in which to ruminate on the vulnerability of each to the charm she would so soon be unleashing. Some, of course, were quite impossible - but even as she dismissed them she began to brood with favour upon such phrases as 'rough diamond', 'heart of gold', 'still waters'....
While the sides of the room filled with those who had presented themselves and their conversation became louder and louder as their numbers increased, Inna, standing rigid by her brother, speculating upon the pros and cons of those she had received, was wakened out of a more than usually sanguine speculation by her brothers voice.
