'Oh, never mind,' said Bundle. 'I should hate it if she'd come and given me mumps.'
'A very distressing complaint,' agreed George. 'But I do not think that infection could be carried that way. Indeed, I am sure that Mrs. Macatta would have run no risk of that kind. She is a most highly principled woman, with a very real sense of her responsibilities to the community. In these days of national stress, we must all take into account –'
On the brink of embarking on a speech, George pulled himself up short.
'But it must be for another time,' he said. 'Fortunately there is no hurry in your case. But the Countess, alas, is only a visitor to our shores.'
'She's a Hungarian, isn't she?' said Bundle, who was curious about the Countess.
'Yes. You have heard, no doubt, of the Young Hungarian party. The Countess is a leader in that party. A woman of great wealth, left a widow at an early age, she has devoted her money and her talents to the public service. She has especially devoted herself to the problem of infant mortality – a terrible one under present conditions in Hungary . I – Ah! here is Herr Eberhard.'
The German inventor was younger than Bundle had imagined him. He was probably not more than thirty- three or four. He was boorish and ill at ease, and yet his personality was not an unpleasing one. His blue eyes were more shy than furtive, and his more unpleasant mannerisms, such as the one that Bill had described of gnawing his fingernails, arose, she thought, more from nervousness than from any other cause. He was thin and weedy in appearance and looked anaemic and delicate.
He conversed rather awkwardly with Bundle in stilted English and they both welcomed the interruption of the joyous Mr. O'Rourke. Presently Bill bustled in – there is no other word for it. In the same such way does a favoured Newfoundland make his entrance, and at once came over to Bundle. He was looking perplexed and harassed.
'Hullo, Bundle. Heard you'd got here. Been kept with my nose to the grindstone all the blessed afternoon or I'd have seen you before.'
'Cares of State heavy tonight?' suggested O'Rourke sympathetically.
Bill groaned.
'I don't know what your fellow's like,' he complained. 'Looks a good-natured, tubby little chap. But Codders is absolutely impossible. Drive, drive, drive, from morning to night. Everything you do is wrong, and everything you haven't done you ought to have done.'
'Quite like a quotation from the prayer book,' remarked Jimmy, who had just strolled up.
Bill glanced at them reproachfully.
'Nobody knows,' he said pathetically, 'what I have to put up with.'
'Entertaining the Countess, eh?' suggested Jimmy. 'Poor Bill, that must have been a sad strain to a woman hater like yourself.'
'What's this?' asked Bundle.
'After tea,' said Jimmy with a grin, 'the Countess asked Bill to show her round the interesting old place.'
'Well, I couldn't refuse, could I?' said Bill, his countenance assuming a brick-red tint.
Bundle felt faintly uneasy. She knew, only too well, the susceptibility of Mr. William Eversleigh to female charms. In the hands of a woman like the Countess, Bill would be as wax. She wondered once more whether Jimmy Thesiger had been wise to take Bill into their confidence.
'The Countess,' said Bill, 'is a very charming woman. And no end intelligent. You should have seen her going round the house. All sorts of questions she asked.'
'What kind of questions?' asked Bundle suddenly.
Bill was vague.
'Oh! I don't know. About the history of it. And old furniture. And – oh! all sorts of things.'
At that moment the Countess swept into the room. She seemed a shade breathless. She was looking magnificent in a close-fitting black velvet gown. Bundle noticed how Bill gravitated at once into her immediate neighbourhood. The serious, spectacled young man joined him.
'Bill and Pongo have both got it badly,' observed Jimmy Thesiger with a laugh.
Bundle was by no means so sure that it was a laughing matter.
Chapter 17
AFTER DINNER
George was not a believer in modern innovations. The Abbey was innocent of anything so up to date as central heating. Consequently, when the ladies entered the drawing-room after dinner, the temperature of the room was woefully inadequate to the needs of modern evening clothes. The fire that burnt in the well-furnished steel grate became as a magnet.
The three women huddled round it.
'Brrrrrrrrrr!' said the Countess, a fine, exotic foreign sound.
'The days are drawing in,' said Lady Coote, and drew a flowered atrocity of a scarf closer about her ample shoulders.
'Why on earth doesn't George have the house properly heated?' said Bundle.
'You English, you never heat your houses,' said the Countess.
She took out her long cigarette holder and began to smoke.
'That grate is old-fashioned,' said Lady Coote. 'The heat goes up the chimney instead of into the room.'
'Oh!' said the Countess.
There was a pause. The Countess was so plainly bored by her company that conversation became difficult.
'It's funny,' said Lady Coote, breaking the silence, 'that Mrs. Macatta's children should have mumps. At least, I don't mean exactly funny –'
'What,' said the Countess, 'are mumps?'
Bundle and Lady Coote started simultaneously to explain. Finally, between them, they managed it.
'I suppose Hungarian children have it?' asked Lady Coote.
'Eh?' said the Countess.
'Hungarian children. They suffer from it?'
'I do not know,' said the Countess. 'How should I?'
Lady Coote looked at her in some surprise.
'But I understood that you worked –'
'Oh, that!' The Countess uncrossed her legs, took her cigarette holder from her mouth and began to talk rapidly.
'I will tell you some horrors,' she said. 'Horrors that I have seen. Incredible! You would not believe!'
And she was as good as her word. She talked fluently and with a graphic power of description. Incredible scenes of starvation and misery were painted by her for the benefit of her audience. She spoke of Buda Pesth shortly after the war and traced its vicissitudes to the present day. She was dramatic, but she was also, to Bundle's mind, a little like a gramophone record. You turned her on, and there you were. Presently, just as suddenly, she would stop.
Lady Coote was thrilled to the marrow – that much was clear. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her large, sad, dark eyes fixed on the Countess. Occasionally, she interpolated a comment of her own.
'One of my cousins had three children burned to death. Awful, wasn't it?'
The Countess paid no attention. She went on and on. And she finally stopped as suddenly as she had begun.
'There!' she said. 'I have told you. We have money – but no organisation. It is organisation we need.'
Lady Coote sighed.
'I've heard my husband say that nothing can be done without regular methods. He attributes his own success entirely to that. He declares he would never have got on without them.'
She sighed again. A sudden fleeting vision passed before her eyes of a Sir Oswald who had not got on in the world. A Sir Oswald who retained, in all essentials, the attributes of that cheery young man in the bicycle shop. Just
