Chapter 19

"Thank God! I can't stick plays ... not this sort anyhow. I don't mind a musical comedy now and again, although I think you can have too much of that...."

Lady Cecily turned and waved her hand at her husband. "Ssh, Jimphy!" she whispered. "You're making a frightful row!"

The second act ended soon afterwards, and Lord Jasper scrambled to his feet ... he had been sitting on the ground at the back of the box, yawning and yawning ... and made for the door. "Come and have a drink, Quinn!" he said.

"No, thanks," Henry replied.

"Come on. Be a sport!"

"Do go with him, Mr. Quinn, please," Lady Cecily said. "He's sure to get lost or troublesome or something. Aren't you, Jimphy dear?"

"Aren't I what!"

"Aren't you sure to get lost or troublesome or something!"

Lord Jasper did not reply to his wife. "Come along, Quinn!" he said. "Cecily thinks she's being comic!..."

Henry hesitated for a moment or two. He did not wish to go to the bar, and he was sick of the sight of Lord Jasper. He wished very much to stay with Lady Cecily, and he felt hurt because she had urged him to accompany her husband. He would have to do as she had asked him, of course.... While he hesitated, Gilbert got up quickly from his seat and went to the door of the box. "I'll come with you, Jimphy!" he said, and then, almost pushing Lord Jasper in front of him, he went out, closing the door of the box behind him. Henry stared at the door for a second or two, nonplussed by the swiftness of Gilbert's action, and then he turned to Lady Cecily. A look of vexation on her face instantly disappeared and she smiled at Henry.

"Come and sit here," she said, "and tell me all about yourself. I haven't really got to know you, have I? Gilbert says you're Irish!"

"Yes," he answered, sitting down.

"How jolly!" she said.

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, yes. It's supposed to be awfully jolly to be Irish. All the Irish people in books seem to be very amused about something. I suppose it's the climate. They say there's a great deal of rain in Ireland...."

"Yes," he answered vaguely, "there is some sometimes!"

She questioned him about Gilbert and Ninian Graham and Roger Carey.

"It must be awfully jolly," she said, "to be living together like that, you four men!"

He noticed that Lady Cecily always spoke of things being "awfully jolly" and wondered why her vocabulary should be so limited in its expressions of pleasure.

"We get on very well together," he replied, "and it's very lively at times. Gilbert's very lively...."

"Is he?" she said. "He always seems so ... so ... well, not lively. I don't mean that he's solemn or pompous, but he's so ... so anxious to have his own way, if you understand me. Now, I'm not like that!" She broke off and laughed. "Oh, I don't quite mean that. I am selfish. I know I am. I love having my own way, but if I can't have a thing just as I want it ... well, I'm content to have it in the way that I can. Now, do you understand?"

Henry nodded his head.

"Gilbert isn't like me," she continued. "He says to himself, 'I must have this thing exactly in this way. If I can't have it exactly in this way, then I won't have it at all!' and it's so silly of him to behave like that!"

Henry looked up at her in a puzzled fashion. "What is it he wants?... I beg your pardon, I'm being impertinent!"

"Oh, no!" she replied, smiling graciously at him. "He wants ... oh, he wants everything like that. Haven't you noticed?"

"No," Henry answered, "I haven't."

"Well, you will some day. My motto is, Take what you can get in the way you can get it. It's so much easier to live if you act on that principle!"

"Gilbert's an artist, Lady Cecily, and he can't act on that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at all!"

"Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And it's so silly. But never mind. He's young yet, and he'll learn!"

She turned to gaze at the audience, and Henry, not knowing what else to do and having no more to say, looked too. He could think of plenty of fine things to say to her, but he could not get them on to his tongue. He wanted to tell her that he had scarcely heard a word of what was said in the first act of the play because he had filled his mind with thoughts of her, and had spent most of the time in gazing up at her as she sat leaning on the ledge of her box; but when he tried to speak, his mouth seemed to be parched and his tongue would not move.

3

"Do you like this play?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Why? I thought everybody admired Wilde's wit. It's clever, isn't it?"

"I don't like it!"

"But it's supposed to be awfully clever!" she insisted.

"It's a common melodrama with bits of wit and epigram stuck on to it!" Henry answered.

"Oh, really!"

"The wit isn't natural ... it doesn't grow naturally out of the life of the play, I mean. It's stuck on like ... like plaster images on the front of a house. The witty speeches aren't spontaneous ... they don't come inevitably!... I'm afraid I'm not making myself very clear, but anyhow, I don't like the play. I don't like anything Wilde wrote, except 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' and even that's not true. That's really why I dislike his work. It isn't true, any of it. It's all lies...."

"How awfully interesting!"

"Do you know 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'? he asked.

"No.... Oh, yes! I have read it. Of course, I have. Somebody lent it to me or I bought it or something.... Anyhow, I have read it, but I can't remember...."

"Do you remember the lines?...

_For all men kill the thing they love, But all men do not die."_

"I seem to remember something ..." she said vaguely.

"Well, that's a lie. All men don't kill the thing they love. Wilde couldn't help lying even when he was most sincere!"

"That's awfully interesting," Lady Cecily said. "Do you know I've never thought of that before. Won't you come and see me one afternoon, Mr. Quinn?"

"I should like to," he said, and as he spoke, the door of the box opened and Gilbert entered, followed by Lord Jasper.

Lady Cecily turned eagerly to Gilbert. "Oh, Gilbert," she said, "Mr. Quinn promised to come and see me one afternoon. You'll bring him, won't you? Come on Wednesday, both of you!"

"I should like to," Henry murmured again.

"I don't think I can come on Wednesday," Gilbert said.

"Oh, yes, you can," Lady Cecily exclaimed, "and if you can't, you can come some other day. You'll come, Mr. Quinn, won't you?"

"Yes, Lady Cecily!..."

"And.... Jimphy, dear, do be nice and ask them to come to supper with us after the play. We're going to the Savoy afterwards. I thought it would please Jimphy to go there because he'd be sure not to like the play...."

"Yes, you come along, you chaps!" Jimphy said, willingly.

"I can't. I'm sorry," Gilbert replied. "I've got to go down to Fleet Street and write a notice of this play!"

"Can't you put it off for once, Gilbert!" Lady Cecily said.

Gilbert laughed. "I should like to see Dilton's face if I were to do that...."

"Dilton! Dilton!! Who is Dilton?" she demanded.

"My editor. Very devoted to the human note, Dilton is. No, Cecily, I'm sorry, but I must go down to Fleet Street. Henry can go with you."

She paused for a moment, and then said, "How long will it take you to write the notice of the play?" she asked, adding before he could answer, "Can't you do it now?"

"Yes, Gilbert," Henry said, "you can do it now. You know the play, and you've seen the acting in two acts...."

Gilbert looked at him very directly, and when he spoke, his voice was very firm. "No," he said, "I must go down to Fleet Street!"

Lady Cecily was cross and hurt, and she turned away pettishly.

"Oh, very well!" she said shortly.

There was a slight air of restraint among them ... even Lord Jasper seemed to feel it. It was he who spoke next.

"You can come and join us at the Savoy after you've done your ... whatyoumaycallit, can't you?" he said.

Gilbert paused for a moment. He looked as if he were undecided as to what he should say. Then he said, "Yes, I can do that ... if I get away from the office in time!"

Henry was about to say, "Why, of course, you can get away in plenty of time!" but he checked himself and did not say it.

"Oh, that will do excellently," said Lady Cecily, all smiles again.

Then the lights of the theatre were lowered and the third act began.

4

When the play was over, they drove to Fleet Street in Lord Jasper's motor-car. Lady Cecily had suggested that they should take Gilbert to his newspaper office in order to save time, and he had consented readily enough.

"We might wait for you!..." she added, but Gilbert would not agree to this proposal. "It isn't fair to keep Jimphy from his birthday treat any longer," he said, "and I may be some time before I'm ready!"

She was sitting next to Gilbert, and Henry and Jimphy were together with their backs to the chauffeur. She did not appear to be tired nor had the sparkle of her beautiful eyes diminished. She lay against the padded back of the car and chattered in an inconsequent fashion that was oddly amusing. She did not listen to replies that were made to her questions, nor did she appear to notice that sometimes replies were not made. It seemed to Henry that she would have chattered exactly as she was now chattering if she had been alone. Neither Gilbert nor Jimphy answered her, but Henry felt that something ought to be said when she made a direct remark.

"Isn't Fleet Street funny at this time of night?" she said. "So quiet. I do hope the supper will be fit to eat. Oh, Gilbert, I wish you'd say something in your notice of Wilde's play about his insincerity. I felt all the time I was listening to the play that ... that it wasn't true!'"

Gilbert sat up straight in his seat and looked at her.

"Oh!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she went on. "The wit seemed to be stuck on to the play ... it wasn't part of it!..."

Gilbert leant back in his seat again. "You've been talking to Henry about Wilde, haven't you?"

She laughed lightly and turned towards Henry. "Oh, of course. Mr. Quinn, I always repeat what other people say. I forget that they've said it to me and think that I've thought of it myself!"

Henry professed to be pleased that she had accepted his ideas so completely.

"But, of course," she continued, "what you said was quite true. I've always felt that there was something wrong with Wilde's plays...."

"I can't think what you all want to talk about a play for. I never see anything in 'em to talk about!" Jimphy murmured sleepily.

"Go to sleep, Jimphy, dear. Well wake you when we get to the Savoy...."

"Always ragging a chap!" Jimphy muttered, and then closed his eyes.

The car turned down one of the narrow streets that lead from Fleet Street to the Thames Embankment, and then turned again and stopped.

"Oh, is this your office, Gilbert?" Lady Cecily said. "Such an ugly, dark looking place! But I suppose it's interesting inside? Newspaper offices are supposed to be awfully interesting inside, aren't they?"

"Are they?" Gilbert replied, as he got out of the car. "I've never noticed it. Noisy holes where no one has time to think. Good-bye."

"Not 'good-bye,' Gilbert! We shall see you soon at the Savoy, shan't we?"

"Oh, yes. Yes. I'd almost forgotten that!"

The car drove off, threading the narrow steep street slowly. They could hear the deep rurr-rurr of the printing machines coming from the basements of the buildings, and now and then great patches of pallid blue light shot out of open windows. Motor-vans and horse-waggons were drawn up against the pavements in front of the office-doors, waiting for the newly-printed papers. Bundles of _Daily Reflexions_ were already printed and were being thrown on to the cars and waggons for distribution.

"Are they printed already?" Lady Cecily said.

"Most of them were printed at nine o'clock," Henry replied. "The ha'penny illustrated papers go all over the country before the ordinary papers are printed at all!"

"How awfully clever of them!" she said.

The car turned into Fleet Street and quickly drove up to the Savoy.

"Thank God!" said Jimphy. "I shall get some fun out of my birthday now!"

"Jimphy loves his food," Lady Cecily exclaimed. "Don't you, Jimphy? Don't you love your little tum-tum?..."

They entered the hotel and found the table which had been reserved for them. There was a queer, hectic gaiety about the place, as if every one present were making a desperate effort to eat, drink _and_ be merry. People greeted Lady Cecily as she passed them and muttered, "'loa, Jimphy!" Henry had never been to a fashionable restaurant before, and the barbaric beauty of the scene fascinated him. The women were riotously dressed, and the colours of their garments mingled and merged like the colours of a sunset. There was a constant flow of people through the room, and the chatter of animated voices and bursts of laughter and the jingling, sentimental music played by the orchestra made Jimphy forget how bored he had been at the theatre. The slightly fuddled air which he had had in the bar of St. James's had left him and he began to talk.

"Ripping woman, that!" he said to Henry, indicating a slight, dark girl who had entered the restaurant in company with a tall, flaxen-haired man. "Pretty little flapper, I call her! I like thin women, myself. Well, slender's a better word, isn't it? What you say, Cecily?"

Lady Cecily had tapped her husband's arm. "Ernest Lensley's just come in," she said. "He's with Boltt. Go and bring them both here. They can't find seats, poor dears!"

Ernest Lensley and Boltt were fashionable novelists. Lensley was an impudent-looking man with very blue eyes who had written a number of popular stories about society women who "chattered" very much in the way that Lady Cecily chattered. The heroine of his best-known book was modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to have an intimate knowledge of the statesman's family life solely because they had read Lensley's novel. It was a flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley. Boltt, a tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered "the human note" of which Gilbert's editor prated continually. He was a precise, priggish man, extraordinarily vain though no vainer than Lensley, who, however, had an easy manner that Boltt would never acquire. He spoke in the way in which one might expect a "reduced gentlewoman, poor dear!" to speak, and there was something about him that made a man long to kick him up a room and down a room and across a room and back again. His heroes were all big, burly, red-haired giants, who wore beards and old clothes and said "By God, yes!" when they admired the scenery, and led a vagabond life in a perfectly gentlemanly manner until they met the heroine.... His heroines constantly fell into situations which were extremely compromising in the eyes of a censorious world, but they were never completely compromised. The whole world knew, before the conclusion of the story, that the heroine had been falsely suspected. If she had spent the night in the hero's bedroom, she had done so with the best intentions, under the strictest chaperonage ... usually that of her dear, devoted old nurse, God bless her!... whose presence in the bedroom had been hidden, until the middle of the penultimate chapter, from the heroine's friends and relatives. The hero, of course, poor, manly, broken giant, had been ill, suffering from a fever, and in his delirium had called for her, discontent until she had put her cool firm hand upon his hot brow, and the doctor had said that if she would stay with him, she would save his life. So she had flung her reputation to the winds and had hurried to his bedroom.... It was pretentious, flatulent stuff, through which a thin stream of tepid lust trickled so gently that it seemed like a stream of pretty sentiment, and it was written with such cleverness that young ladies in Bath and Cheltenham and Atlantic City, U.S.A., were tricked into believing that this was Life ... Real Life....

Lensley and Boltt followed Jimphy eagerly to Lady Cecily's table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed listening to Cecily's babble because he could always be certain of getting something out of her speech that would just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to members of the governing class. They completely ignored Henry after they had been introduced to him.

"Mr. Quinn is writing a novel, too!" said Lady Cecily.

"Oh, yes!" said Lensley.

"Indeed!" Boltt burbled.

Thereafter they addressed themselves exclusively to Lady Cecily and her husband. Lensley told Lady Cecily that she was to be the heroine of his next book. "I'm studying you now, dear Lady Cecily!" he said. "Jotting you down in my little book ... all your little plaguey ways and speeches!..."

"How awfully exciting!" she replied, and her eyes seemed to become brighter, and she leant towards the novelist as if she meant to reveal herself more clearly to him.

"You'll be angry with me when you see the book," he said. "Dreadfully angry. You know poor Mrs. Maldon was very hurt about '_Jennifer_'!" Mrs. Maldon was the wife of the Cabinet Minister.

"I shan't mind what you say about me," Lady Cecily said, "so long as you make me the heroine of the book. What are you going to call it?..."

"The Delectable Lady!"

"How awfully nice!..."

5

Henry began to feel bored. He wished that Gilbert would come. Gilbert would soon rout this paltry little tuppenny-ha'penny Society novelist with his pretty-pretty chatter and his pretty-pretty blue eyes and his air of being a knowing dog. Lady Cecily seemed to have forgotten Henry altogether.... He turned to Lord Jasper who was trying hard not to yawn in Mr. Boltt's face. Mr. Boltt had been a surveyor at one period of his life, and his favourite theme of conversation was Renascence architecture. He was now telling Jimphy of the glories of French Cathedrals, and Jimphy, who cared even less for French Cathedrals than he cared for English ones, was wondering just how he could change the conversation to a discussion of the latest ballet at the Empire and particularly of a girl he knew who was a perfect lady and, as a matter of fact, lived with her mother. The supper party seemed likely to end dismally, and Henry, when he was not wishing that Gilbert would come, was wishing that he himself had not come. He could not understand why it was that he had so much difficulty in talking easily with strangers. Lensley was prattling as if he were determined to discharge an entire novelful of "chatter" at Lady Cecily, and Boltt's little clipped, pedantic voice recited a long rigmarole about a glorious view in France which he had lately seen while motoring in that country. Boltt admired Nature in the way in which any man of careful upbringing would admire a really nice woman....

Henry had lately reviewed a book by Boltt for a daily paper, and he had expressed scorn for it and its stuffed dummies, masquerading as men and women ... and Boltt, who took himself very seriously indeed, had written a letter of complaint to the editor of the paper. Henry wondered what Boltt would say if he knew that the review had been written by him, and an imp in him made him interrupt the long recital of the glories of France.

"The _Morning Report_ had a good go at your last novel, Boltt!" he said.

The novelist looked reproachfully at Henry, as if he were rebuking him for indelicacy.

"I never see the _Morning Report_," he replied loftily.

"Oh, then, I suppose you didn't see the review. I thought you probably got clippings from a Press-cuttings agency!..."

"Yes, oh, yes, I do. I seem to remember that the _Morning Report_ was unkind. Not quite fair, I should say!"

Lord Jasper began to take an intelligent interest in the conversation. "Have you published another book, Boltt?" he asked innocently.

"Yes ... a ... Lord Jasper ... I have!" Mr. Boltt said, and there was some sniffiness in his tones. He was accustomed to lengthy reviews on the day of publication, and it annoyed him to think that there was some one in the world, some one, too, with whom he was acquainted, who did not know that the publication of one of his books was an event.

"I can't think how you writing chaps keep it up," said Jimphy. "I couldn't write a book to save my life!..."

"No?" said Mr. Boltt, smiling in the way of one who says to himself, "God help you, my poor fellow, God help you!"

"I suppose it's all a question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it. I'm not what you'd call a sentimental fellow at all, but that song ... you know, about the honeysuckle and the bee ... I _could not_ get that song out of my head. I thought I should go cracked over it. Always humming it or whistling it ... and I suppose if you get an idea for a yarn into your head, Boltt, well, it's something like that!"

Lady Cecily had exhausted the "chatter" of Mr. Lensley.

"What's that!" she exclaimed.

"Lord Jasper is describing the processes of literature to me, Lady Cecily," said Mr. Boltt sarcastically. "I have been greatly interested."

The man's conceit irritated Henry and he longed to disconcert him.

"Yes," he said. "It all began by my saying something about a review of Boltt's last novel in the _Morning Report!_ ..."

Mr. Boltt made motions with his hands. "Really," he said, "Lady Cecily isn't in the least interested in my effusions."

"Oh, but I am, Mr. Boltt," Lady Cecily interrupted. "What did the paper say? I'm sure it was very flattering!..."

"The reviewer said that the book would probably please the vicar's only daughter, but that it wouldn't impose upon her when she grew up...."

"Oh!" said Lady Cecily.

"Some rival, I'm afraid!" Mr. Boltt murmured. "Some one who dislikes me...."

"The chief complaint was that your people aren't real...." Henry continued, though Mr. Boltt frowned heavily.

"Yes. I don't think we need discuss the matter further, Mr...."

"Quinn!!" said Henry.

He felt happier now that he had pricked the egregious fellow's vanity.

"Silly of 'em to say that," said Lord Jasper. "Boltt sells a tremendous number of books, don't you, Boltt? More than Lensley does. And that shows, doesn't it? If a chap can sell as many books as Boltt sells ... well, he must be some good. I've never read any of 'em, of course, but then I'm not a chap that reads much. All the same, a chap I know says Boltt's all right, and he's a chap that knows what he's talking about. I mean to say, he's written books himself!"

Lady Cecily was no longer interested in the history of Mr. Boltt's novel. The meal was almost at an end, and Gilbert had not arrived. She glanced towards the door, looking straight over Mr. Lensley's head, and Henry could see that she was fidgeting.

"Gilbert's a long time," he said to her.

She did not answer, and before he could repeat his remark to her, Lord Jasper exclaimed, "I say, you know, we ought to be getting home, Cecily. It's getting jolly late!..."

"Let's wait a little longer," she said, "Gilbert hasn't come yet!"

"But I mean to say, this place'll be closing soon...." Mr. Boltt made a satirical remark on the ridiculously early hours at which restaurants are compelled by law to close in England. In France, he said ... but Lord Jasper did not wait to hear what is done in France.

"He won't come now," he said. "He wouldn't have time to eat any supper if he were to come ... and it's getting jolly late, and I'm jolly tired!"

He got up from the table as he spoke. "Very well," said Lady Cecily, rising too.

The others followed her example, and Boltt and Lensley prepared to escort Lady Cecily to the door, but she gave her hand to them and said "Good-night!"