Chapter 17

As they found their places at the long table (Sir Tito had exchanged cards, as though he meant to fight a duel with Edith's destined partner) of course the two turned their backs to one another. On her other side was Mr Mitchell. When Madame Frabelle noticed this, she gave Edith an arch shake of the head, and made a curious warning movement with her hand. Edith smiled at her in astonishment. She had utterly forgotten her friend's fancy about the imaginary intrigue supposed to be going on between her and Mr Mitchell, and she wondered what the gesture meant. Sir Tito also saw it, and, turning round to Edith, said in a low voice:

'Qu'est-ce-qu'elle a, la vieille?'

'I really don't know. I never understand signs. I've forgotten the code, I suppose!'

Mr Mitchell, after a word to the person he had taken down, gladly turned to Edith. He always complained that the host was obliged to sit between the oldest and the most boring guests. It was unusual for him to have so pretty a neighbour as Edith. But he was a collector: his joy was to see a heterogeneous mass of people, eating and laughing at his table. For his wife there were a few social people, for him the Bohemians, and always the younger guests.

'Not bad--not bad, is it?' he said, looking critically round down the two sides of the table, while his kind pink face beamed with hospitable joy.

'You've got a delightful party tonight.'

'What I always say is,' said Mr Mitchell; 'let them enjoy themselves! Dash it, I hate etiquette.' He lowered his voice. 'Bruce is looking pretty blooming. Not so many illnesses lately has he?'

'Not when he's at home,' said Edith.

'Ah! At the F O the dear fellow does, I'm afraid, suffer a good deal from nerves,' said Mr Mitchell, especially towards the end of the day. About four o'clock, I mean, you know! You know old Bruce! Good sort he is. I see he hasn't got the woman I meant him to sit next to, somehow or other. I see he's next to Miss Coniston.'

'Oh, he likes her.'

'Good, good. Thought she was a bit too artistic, and high-browed, as the Americans say, for him. But now he's used to that sort of thing, isn't he? Madame Frabelle, eh? Wonderful woman. No soup, Edith: why not?'

'It makes me silent,' said Edith; 'and I like to talk.'

Mitchell laughed loudly. 'Ha ha! Champagne for Mrs Ottley. What are you about?' He looked up reprovingly at the servant. Mr Mitchell was the sort of man who never knows, after twenty years' intimate friendship, whether a person takes sugar or not.

Edith allowed the man to fill her glass. She knew it depressed Mr Mitchell to see people drinking water. So she only did it surreptitiously, and as her glass was always full, because she never drank from it, Mr Mitchell was happy.

A very loud feminine laugh was heard.

'That's Miss Radford,' said Mr Mitchell. 'That's how she always goes on. She's always laughing. She was immensely charmed with you the day she called on you with my wife.'

'Was she?' said Edith, who remembered she herself had been out on that occasion.

'Tremendously. I can't remember what she said: I think it was how clever you were.'

'She saw Madame Frabelle. I wasn't at home.'

'Ha ha! Good, very good!' Mr Mitchell turned to his other neighbour.

'Eh bien,' said Sir Tito, who was waiting his opportunity. 'Commence!'

At once Edith began murmuring in a low voice her story of herself and Aylmer, and related today's conversation in Jermyn Street.

Sir Tito nodded his head occasionally. When he listened most intently, he appeared to be looking round the table at other people. He lifted a glass of champagne and bowed over it to Mrs Mitchell; then he put his hand to his lips and blew a kiss.

'Who's that for?' Edith asked, interrupting herself.

'C'est pour la vieille.'

'Madame Frabelle! Why do you kiss your hand to her?'

'To keep her quiet. Look at her: she's so impressed, and thinks it so wicked, that she's blushing and uncomfortable. I've a splendid way, Edith (pardon), of silencing all these elderly ladies who make love to me. I don't say "Ferme!" I'm polite to them.'

Edith laughed. Sir Tito was not offended.

'Yes, you needn't laugh, my dear child. I'm not old enough yet pour les jeunes; at any rate, if I am they don't know it. I'm still pursued by the upper middle-age class, with gratitude for favours to come (as they think).'

'Well, what's your plan?'

He giggled.

'I tell Madame Frabelle, Madame Meetchel, Lady Everard--first, that they have beautiful lips; then, that I can't look at them without longing to kiss them. Lady Everard, after I said that, kept her hand before her face the whole evening, so as not to distract me, and drive me mad. Consequently she couldn't talk.'

'Do they really believe you?'

'Evidemment!... I wonder,' he continued mischievously, as he refused wine, 'whether Madame Frabelle will confess to you tonight about my passion for her, or whether she will keep it to herself?'

'I dare say she'll tell me. At least she'll ask me if I think so or not.'

'Si elle te demande, tu diras que tu n'en sais rien! Well, I think....'

'What?'

'You must wait. Wait and see. Really, it's impossible, my dear child, for you to accept an invitation for an elopement as if it were a luncheon-party. Not only that, it's good for Aylmer to be kept in doubt. Excellent for his health.'

'Really?'

'When I say his health, I mean the health and strength of his love for you. You must vacillate, Edith. Souvent femme varie. You sit on the fence, n'est-ce-pas? Well, offer the fence to him. But, take it away before he sits down. Voila!'

Edith laughed. 'But then this girl, Miss Clay, she's always there. And I like her.'

'What is her nationality?'

'How funny you should ask that! I think she must be of Spanish descent. She's so quiet, so religious, and has a very dark complexion. And yet wonderful light blue eyes.'

'Quelle histoire! Qu'est-ce-que ca fait?'

'The poor girl is mad about Aylmer. He doesn't seem to know it, but he makes her worse by his indifference,' Edith said.

'Why aren't you jealous of her, ma chere? No, I won't ask you that--the answer is obvious.'

'I mean this, that if I can't ever do what he wishes, I feel she could make him happy; and I could bear it if she did.'

'Spanish?' said Landi, as if to himself. 'Ole! ole! Does she use the castanets, and wear a mantilla instead of a cap?'

'How frivolous and silly you are. No, of course not. She looks quite English, in fact particularly so.'

'And yet you insist she's Spanish! Well, my advice is this. If he has a secret alliance with Spain, you should assume the Balkan attitude.'

'Good gracious! What's that?'

'We're talking politics,' said Landi, across the table. 'Politics, and geography! Fancy, Meetchel, Mrs Ottley doesn't know anything about the Balkans!'

'Ha, very good,' said Mitchell. 'Capital. What a fellow you are!' He gave his hearty, clubbable laugh. Mr Mitchell belonged to an exceptionally large number of clubs and was a favourite at all. His laugh was the chief cause of his popularity there.

'Il est fou,' said Landi quietly to Edith. 'Quel monde! I don't think there are half-a-dozen sane people at this table.'

'Oh, Landi!'

'And if there are, they shouldn't by rights be admitted into decent society. But the dear Meetchels don't know that; it's not public. I adore them both,' he went on, changing his satirical tone, and again apparently drinking the health of Mrs Mitchell, who waved her hand coquettishly from the end of the long table.

'Now listen, my child. Don't see Aylmer for a little while.'

'He wants me to take him out for a drive.'

'Take him for a drive. But not this week. How Madame Frabelle loves Bruce!' he went on, watching her.

'Really, Landi, I assure you you're occasionally as mistaken as she is. And she thinks I'm in love with our host.'

'That's because _elle voit double_. I don't.'

'What makes you think....'

'I read between the lines, my dear--between the lines on Madame Frabelle's face.'

'She hasn't any.'

'Oh, go along,' said Landi, who sometimes broke into peculiar English which he thought was modern slang. Raising his voice, he said: 'The dinner is _exquis--exquis_,' so that Mr Mitchell could hear.

'I can't help noting what you've eaten tonight, Landi, though I don't usually observe these things,' Edith said. 'You've had half-a-tomato, a small piece of vegetable marrow, and a sip of claret. Aren't you going to eat anything more?'

'Not much more. I look forward to my coffee and my cigar. Oh, how I look forward to it!'

'You know very well, Landi, they let you smoke cigarettes between the courses, if you like.'

'It would be better than nothing. We'll see presently.'

'Might I inquire if you live on cigars and coffee?'

'No,' he answered satirically; 'I live on eau sucre. And porreege. I'm Scotch.'

'I can't talk to you if you're so silly.'

'You'll tell me the important part on the little sofa upstairs in the salon,' he said. 'After dinner. Tonight, here, somehow, the food and the faces distract one--unless one is making an acquaintance. I know you too well to talk at dinner.'

'Quite true. I ought to take time to think then.'

'There's no hurry. Good heavens! the man has waited four years; he can wait another week. Quelle idee!'

'He's going back,' said Edith, 'as soon as he's well. He wants me to promise before he goes.'

'Does he! You remind me of the man who said to his wife: "Good-bye, my dear, I'm off to the Thirty Years' War." It's all right, Edith. We'll find a solution, I have no fears.'

She turned to Mr Mitchell.

* * * * *

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly. Alone with the women, Madame Frabelle was the centre of an admiring circle, as she lectured on 'dress and economy in war-time,' and how to manage a house on next to nothing a year. All the ladies gasped with admiration. Edith especially was impressed; because the fact that Madame Frabelle was a guest, and was managing nothing, did not prevent her talking as if she had any amount of experience on the subject, although, by her own showing she had been staying at hotels ever since the war began, except the last weeks she had spent with the Ottleys.

The men soon joined them.

A group of war valetudinarians, amongst whom Bruce was not the least emphatic, told each other their symptoms in a quiet corner. They described their strange shiverings down the spine; the curious fits of hunger that came on before meals; the dislike to crossing the road when there was an accident; the inability to sleep, sometimes taking the form of complete insomnia for as much as twenty minutes in the early morning. They pitied each other cordially, though neither listened to the other's symptoms, except in exchange for sympathy with their own.

'The war has got on my nerves; I can't think of anything else,' Bruce said. 'It's an _idee fixe_. I pant for the morning when the newspaper's due, and then I can't look at it! Not even a glance! Odd, isn't it?'

The Rev. Byrne Fraser, who gave his wife great and constant anxiety by his fantasies, related how he had curious dreams--the distressing part of which was that they never came true--about the death of relatives at the front. Another man also had morbid fancies on the subject of the casualty list, and had had to go and stay at a farm so as to 'get right away from it all'. But he soon left, as he had found, to his great disappointment, that his companions there were not intellectual, and could not even talk politics or discuss literature. And yet they went in (or so he had heard) for 'intensive culture'!...

Presently Sir Tito played his Italian march. The musical portion of the party, and the unmusical alike, joined in the chorus. Then the party received a welcome addition. Valdez, the great composer, who had written many successful operas and had lived so much abroad that he cared now for nothing but British music, looked in after a patriotic concert given in order to help the unengaged professionals. Always loyal to old friends, he had deserted royalty itself tonight to greet Mrs. Mitchell and was persuaded by adoring ladies to sing his celebrated old song, 'After Several Years.' It pleased and thrilled the audience even more than Landi's 'Adieu Hiver'. Indeed, tonight it was Valdez who was the success of the evening. Middle-aged ladies who had loved him for years loved him now more than ever. Young girls who saw him now for the first time fell in love, just as their mothers had done, with his splendid black eyes and commanding presence, and secretly longed to stroke at least every seventh wave of his abundant hair. When Edith assured him that his curls were 'like a flock of goats on Mount Gilead' he laughed, declared he was much flattered at the comparison, and kissed her hand with courtly grace.

Young Mr. Cricker, who came because he wasn't asked, insisted on dancing like Nijinsky because he was begged not to, but his leaps and bounds were soon stopped by a few subalterns and very young officers on leave, who insisted, with some fair partners, on dancing the Fox Trot to the sound of a gramophone.

* * * * *

For a few moments on the little sofa Edith managed to convey the rest of her confidence to Landi. She pointed out how hurried, how urgent, how pressing it was to give an answer.

'He wants a war elopement, I see,' said Landi. 'Mais ca ne se fait pas!'

'Then what am I to say?'

'Rien.'

'But, Landi, you know I shan't really ever...'

'Would it give you pleasure to see him married to the Spanish girl?'

'She's not exactly Spanish--she only looks it. Don't laugh like that!'

'I don't know why, but Spain seems always to remind me of something ridiculous. Onions--or guitars.'

'Well, I shouldn't mind her nearly so much as anyone else.'

'You don't mind her,' said Landi. 'Vous savez qu'il ne l'epouse pas? What would you dislike him to do most?'

'I think I couldn't bear anyone else to take my place exactly,' admitted Edith.

'C'est ca! you don't want him to be in love with another married woman with a husband like Bruce? Well, my dear, he won't. There is no other husband like Bruce.

Landi promised to consider the question, and she arranged to go and see him at his studio before seeing Aylmer again.

* * * * *

As they went out of the house Miss Coniston ran after Madame Frabelle and said eagerly:

'Oh, do tell me again; you say _soupe a la vinaigre_ is marvellously nourishing and economical. I can have it made for my brother at our flat?'

'Of course you can! It costs next to nothing.'

Arthur Coniston came up.

'And tastes like nothing on earth, I suppose?' he grumbled in his sister's ear. 'You can't give me much less to eat than you do already.'

'Oh, Arthur!' his sister said. 'Aren't you happy at home? I think you're a pessimist.'

'A pessimist!' cried Mitchell, who was following them into the hall. 'Oh, I hate pessimists! What's the latest definition of them? Ah, I know; an optimist is a person who doesn't care what happens as long as it doesn't happen to him.'

'Yes,' said Edith quickly, 'and a pessimist is the person who lives with the optimist.'

'Dear, dear. I always thought the old joke was that an optimist looks after the eyes, and a pessimist after the feet!' cried Madame Frabelle as she fastened her cloak.

'Why, then, he ought to go to a cheer-upadist!' said Mr Mitchell. And they left him in roars of laughter.