Part 21

Dinner was not yet announced: the conversation, easy and elegant, embraced the topics of the day: while the more youthful wandered, as though aimlessly, towards the far corners of the spacious drawing-room, where stood the busts of notable men by Epstein and Mestrovic. Now Lady Surplice never would have cocktails served in her house since a friend of hers, an honourary _attaché_ at the Bulgarian Legation, had succumbed to a ptomaine poisoning gotten from swallowing a cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. But my lady’s butlers were wont, such is the ingenuity of the lower sort, to secrete cocktails behind the busts of notable men by Epstein and Mestrovic, thus killing two birds with one stone; for while, on the one hand, they satisfied the reasonable thirst of the company, they also, on the other hand, gave Lady Surplice much real pleasure in seeing how her friends were enamoured of the most advanced art of the day. Lady Surplice herself loved the most advanced art of the day. And the most advanced art of the day loved Lady Surplice. Playwrights, for instance, doted on her. One had put her into a play as a courtesan for money (1205 performances), one as a courtesan by temperament (2700 performances), another as a courtesan by environment (still running), and lastly another as a courtesan to pass the time. This last, however, was never produced, as the Lord Chamberlain had banned it on the ground that it was too cynical. However....

Imagine, said Dwight-Rankin, with what consternation Lady Surplice suddenly discovered that the company was thirteen in number! She was livid. She said: “It is the fault of that Dwight-Rankin man. I had forgotten that he had put me off at the last moment. That low, detestable man! How _rude_ people with two names can be! But what shall we do? We cannot dine thirteen, and on Christmas Eve! Your Highness, what would you advise? I am quite unable, my dear Highness, to sit down thirteen at meat. I detest meat, but you know what I mean. It would quite destroy my luck.”

“His Highness,” said Guy Godolphin Greville Hawke, 21st Viscount de Travest, “might very possibly prefer to have his luck completely destroyed; for the present luck of Royalty in Europe is, if I may say so, sickening.”

Lord Marketharborough had been for some time examining the busts of notable men by Mestrovic and Epstein, and had therefore not heard what had gone before; but that did not deter him from asking one of those pertinent questions which came naturally to his fearless mind. “Since,” said the Lord Chancellor, “we are thirteen, are we a woman too many or a man? Let us first get that quite clear.”

“There is always a woman too many,” snapped Lady Surplice, whereupon Dame Warp strode forward and said bitterly between her teeth: “I see I am not wanted. Let it never be said that a decent woman--I said a _decent_ woman--ever stood in the way of her friends’ enjoyment. I will go.” She was, however, soothed by Monsieur des Beaux-Aces, whilst the other gentlemen very properly laughed the superstition to scorn. In particular Mr. Warp, who was eminent in private life for his researches into the defunct branch of political thought once known as Liberalism, but was better known in public as the husband of Dame Warp, distinguished himself by the elegant scholarship of his scepticism.

Nor, said Dwight-Rankin, were the ladies--to wit, Shelmerdene, the Lady Fay Paradise, Lady Pynte, Miss Pamela Star and the Lady Amelia Peep, who was a young lady of the highest fashion with her hair parted at the side, a talent for writing poetry, and a governing-classes voice--nor were they behindhand with their ridicule of so childish a fancy as Lady Surplice’s, that they could be susceptible of the least harm through sitting thirteen at table.

“Dinner,” said the _doyen_ of the butlers from the door, “is served, my lady.”

“Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice. “How dared you not warn me that we were thirteen for dinner? Why do you not answer me? Is this a time for silence?”

“Decidedly,” said the Lord Chancellor. “For I am hungry.”

“My lady,” said the wretched Talbot, “I am sorry. It quite escaped my notice. I will send in my resignation in the morning.”

Says my lady with a high look: “Talbot, you will expiate your sin now. You will at once leave the house. You will walk round St. James’s Square. And you will invite the first person you meet in to dine with me. Go.”

The conversation after the butler had gone became, said Dwight-Rankin, rather strained; and only the polished genius of Lady Surplice could have sustained it at anything approaching a well-informed level, as when, turning to the Lady Amelia Peep, she said: “And what, my child, is your father doing to-night? I had asked him to dine with me, but he said he was engaged. I hope it is not serious.”

“Wearing,” said the Lady Amelia, “rather than serious. He is in S. W. 1 district, in the queue outside Buck House, waiting to be made a Duke in the New Year’s Honours. He is so old-fashioned in his tastes! He will be wanting to learn dancing soon.”

“Dukes,” said Lady Surplice, “are not a fit subject for conversation. One should avoid being a Duke. They are low. Look, for instance, how they took up with that Amp woman! Look how that handsome but ill-mannered Duke of Mall made a fuss of that dreadful Mrs. Omroy Pont! And look at the Duke of Dear! One cannot know that man. He has actually been divorced time over again. England is getting simply flooded with ex-Duchesses of Dear. And while the Duke indulges his almost violent partiality for middle-class indiscretions, his only son has invented a rod with which he can catch smoked salmon. Is that patrician, is it even gentlemanly? Answer me, your Highness. Is this a time for silence? Then look at the Duchess of Sandal and Sand! She is in Paris now, and I hear she has lovers right and left and sits up every night at the _Jardin de Ma Sœur_ staring at people through an emerald monocle and drinking pink champagne through a straw. Is that just, is it reasonable, is it even decent? Monseigneur, what do you think? Is this a time for silence?”

“Yes, please!” pleaded Fay Paradise. “For just look at what’s happening!”

But it was Shelmerdene, said Dwight-Rankin, who had first seen the great doors opening. And Shelmerdene was very favourably impressed.

“Captain Charity,” announced Talbot.

Lady Surplice, said Dwight-Rankin, was also very favourably impressed. She cried: “My dear Captain Charity, how kind of you to come to a perfectly strange house! But you are so good-looking that I feel I ought to have known you all my life.”

Now he who was called Captain Charity did not appear to be of those who suffer from nervousness. His lean presence, indeed, radiated a certain authority. And he smiled at Lady Surplice in a cold but charming way. But one can’t do better, said Dwight-Rankin, than take Shelmerdene’s swift first impression of the man. Shelmerdene said that he was a tall, lean, young man, dark and beautiful; his air was military, but with a pleasing suggestion of culture; and as he came towards the company he appeared to look at nobody but Guy de Travest, and always he smiled, Shelmerdene had told Dwight-Rankin, in a cold but charming way.

“Haven’t we,” doubtfully said de Travest to the teeth of that faint smile, “met before somewhere?”

One must imagine those two, said Dwight-Rankin, as making as brave-looking a pair of men as one could wish to see: the stranger, dark and beautiful, and Guy de Travest, quiet and yellow-fair: the lean dark dandy with the mocking mouth and the fair thunder-god of dandies with the frozen eyes.

“I think not,” said Captain Charity, and he said: “But you are very like Michael.”

“Michael?” quoth my lord. “And who, pray, is your Michael?”

“The archangel,” said Captain Charity, and that was that, for Lady Surplice, who was fairly taken with the dark beauty of the stranger, could no longer brook these masculine asides. She said: “My dear Captain Charity, you must be introduced. It is quite usual. I have already presented you to His Highness. He is charming. Here are Dame Warp and Lady Pynte, who buys her shoes at Fortnum and Mason’s and rides to hounds four days in the week all through the summer just to set a good example. While this is Miss Pamela Star, who was left many millions by an Armenian. Armenians are rather difficult, my dear Captain Charity, but she is charming. And this is Shelmerdene, who has no surname because she has no surname, but who is becoming the heroine of all the ladies in all the suburbs because a misguided young man once put her into a book. Ah, and Fay! My dear Captain Charity, this is Lady Fay Paradise, the most beautiful woman in England. She never eats with her meals and never uses the same lover twice. Do you, darling? Whereas here is Lady Amelia Peep, who is as yet unmarried but she writes poetry about birds and her father wants to be made a Duke. You will like her. She is appointed with every modern convenience. And here--Percy, where are you? Ah, there he is, always admiring works of art! Look at the back of his head--the strength, the charm, the moral poise of it! Percy, come here at once! This, my dear Captain Charity, is Lord Marketharborough, who is a Lord Chancellor, you know. Aren’t you, Percy? But why do you not answer me? Is this a time for silence?”

“Dinner,” said the man Talbot, “is served, my lady.”

“Good!” said Lord Marketharborough.

Now the high position that Lady Surplice had won for herself in the hierarchy of hostesses was due to nothing so much as to the fact that she would not ever tolerate any but general conversation about her table. Whereas, said Dwight-Rankin, at every other dinner in London one must be continually blathering in whispers to one’s right or left to women who have nothing to say and don’t know how to say it, so that there never can be any conversational give-and-take about the table. But Lady Surplice most properly insisted on conversational give-and-take at her parties. She gave, you took. She gave, said Dwight-Rankin, magnificently.

IV

Lady Surplice said: “I detest self-conscious people. No one was ever self-conscious until the middle classes were invented. Oscar Wilde invented the middle classes so that he could make fun of them, as he would not have dreamt of making fun of his betters, like that Somerset Maugham man. Unfortunately Oscar died without making a will, and as no one knew what to do with his invention we let them, with usual English slackness, grow until they have swamped the whole country.”

“The other day,” said the Lady Amelia Peep, “I went into my father’s study to tell him that I was engaged to be married----”

“But, Amelia, you are not!” cried Lady Pynte.

“True,” said the Lady Amelia. “But to say one is engaged when one is not and to be married without being engaged are the only parlour games open to a _jeune fille_ of any real modesty. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I am engaged to be married. What do you know about that?’ He was busy writing a letter, but absent-mindedly he stretched a hand out towards a volume of Debrett, saying: ‘What initials, child?’ I thought that so sweet.”

“Personally,” said Lady Pynte, “I adore snobs. They are at least faithful to their principles.”

“Faithful!” cried my Lady Surplice. “Did you say _faithful_, Cornelia? Is there such a thing as fidelity?”

“_Dans un sauvage_,” bitterly said M. des Beaux-Aces. He would, said Dwight-Rankin.

“But what is fidelity?” cried my lady. “Your Highness, why do you not amuse us? I ask, what is fidelity? Is this a time for silence?”

“‘Fidelity’ is the title of a new novel,” said a young gentleman who had not spoken before and who was requested not to speak again.

“Fidelity,” bitterly said Dame Warp, “is the only game of which a decent woman--I said a _decent_ woman--never tires. I except, of course, auction bridge.”

“Fidelity would be such fun,” sighed Fay Paradise, “if only one could ever decide whom to be faithful to.”

“Amelia,” cried Lady Surplice. “I hear you were at Martha Putney’s ball last night. What was it like?”

“Lousy, dear,” sighed the Lady Amelia.

“Fidelity,” said Lord Marketharborough, “is a beautiful talent, if I may say so. Unfortunately, however, I am not a man of talent. I am a genius.”

“I,” complained the Lady Amelia Peep, “know nothing of fidelity or infidelity, as I have so far been a martyr to virginity.”

“Fidelity,” said Captain Charity, “is an art. But, surely, _ars est celare artem_!”

“Fidelity is fiddlesticks,” snapped M. des Beaux-Aces.

“I beg your pardon!” cried Lady Pynte. “My good man, I myself know several women who have gone through incredible ordeals in the Divorce Courts and the Press owing to their fidelity to their lovers. Heavens, allow us to retain _some_ virtue!”

“Fidelity,” said the young gentleman who had spoken only once before, “is an affectation prevalent among musical-comedy actresses and generally directed towards wealthy Jews.”

“Talking of Jews,” said M. des Beaux-Aces, “I hear that all the best Jews are becoming Roman Catholics.”

“And what, sir, has that to do with the point?” thundered the Lord Chancellor.

“Nothing, thank God!” said M. des Beaux-Aces. “I detest points.”

“Amelia,” bitterly said Dame Warp, “I hear you were at Martha Putney’s ball last night. What was it like?”

“Divine, dear,” sighed the Lady Amelia.

Thus, said Dwight-Rankin, the dinner proceeded with a degree of animation, of gaiety, that was unusual even about Lady Surplice’s memorable table. The _morale_ of the diners was excellent: their address polite, their appetites suave, their wit easy and swift: their _ton_, in fine, irreproachable. While even His Highness the Prince de Finaleauseltz was so agreeably affected by the swift interchange of repartee and back-chat that, Dwight-Rankin assured me, he contributed on two separate occasions to the entertainment. However....

All was, therefore, going beautifully when the Lady Fay Paradise remarked, with amusement not untinged with repulsion, that someone had spilled the salt.

“La!” cried Lady Pynte.

“Who has spilled the salt?” cried Lady Surplice.

“The Lord Chancellor has spilled the salt,” said Mr. Warp.

“Hell!” said the Lord Chancellor.

“Over your shoulder, over your shoulder!” cried Lady Pynte.

“Oh, Percy!” cried my lady. “To spill the salt is _most_ unlucky!”

“Oh, pouf!” said the Lady Amelia.

“Oh, dear!” said Pamela Star.

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

“_Need_ you have spilled the salt?” bitterly said Dame Warp.

“Really, why all this fuss?” sighed Fay Paradise.

“Fuss indeed!” cried Lady Surplice.

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

“My father,” said His Highness, “lost his crown on the day he spilled some salt.”

“Then to spill salt must be lucky,” remarked de Travest, “for your grandfather, sir, lost his head without having the chance to spill any salt.”

“Well, all I can say is,” sighed my lady, “that I thank Heaven we are not dining thirteen.”

“I’m really very sorry,” said the Lord Chancellor.

It was exactly at that moment, said Dwight-Rankin, that someone at the table let out a yell. Who it was, no one can tell to this day. But someone, even as Lord Marketharborough spoke, sobbed:

“But we are! We are thirteen!”

You can’t, said Dwight-Rankin, describe in so many words the effect of that sob of terror. It must have been as though someone had turned a tap somewhere and let out the blood from all their faces. One might imagine them, said Dwight-Rankin, as all eyes, blanched eyes, staring frantically at the empty chair on which had been but a moment before the person of him who called himself Captain Charity.

“But this is too much!” sobbed Lady Pynte.

Lord Marketharborough, however, appeared to be quite unmoved. He said: “When is a chap not a chap? When he falls under the table before even the port has been round.”

But Captain Charity wasn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, under the table. He wasn’t, in fact, anywhere to be seen in the large room. They looked everywhere, while the bewildered silence was broken only by the breathing of Dame Warp, who had notable adenoids.

“Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice.

“I’m afraid poor Talbot won’t be much use on _this_ occasion,” murmured Shelmerdene.

“But the man can’t have disappeared!” cried my lady. “Talbot, did you see Captain Charity leave the room? Answer me at once, Talbot. Is this a time for silence?”

It needed, said Dwight-Rankin, only the base terror on the man Talbot’s rugged face to seal the terror of the company.

“For God’s sake, man, speak up!” snapped the young gentleman who had spoken only twice before.

“I saw him go!” whispered the man Talbot. “Saw ’im, I did, with these eyes! One second he was on that chair, and the next--gorn, phut! Begging your pardon, my lady----”

And then, said Dwight-Rankin, came perhaps the worst blow of all. It was only then that Shelmerdene grew really, sharply, terrified. For on the immovability, the valiancy, of my lord Viscount de Travest all who were privileged to know him were wont to rely, as on a very column of courage. Whereas now, what could they think? For, as the man Talbot made an end to his craven whispering, Guy de Travest was seen to be rising in his chair, his eyes as though frozen to some point of the room, his forehead, glistening with those clean drops of sweat that add to the charm of officers of the Household Cavalry and distinguish them from those genteel persons who “perspire.” However....

“The deuce!” whispered de Travest. “Oh, the deuce! Look!”

“Oh!” screamed the Lady Amelia Peep, and, screaming, fainted.

He didn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, know much about furniture: but along the wall towards the doors was a long sort of antique whatdoyoucallem--anyhow, there was an antique arrangement there, and on it, at intervals of a foot or so apart, stood a noble line of a dozen candles in tall candlesticks.

“Guy!” cried Fay Paradise. “Guy, what is it?”

De Travest, now standing high above the company, was staring at the line of twelve candles on the whatdoyoucallem. He murmured: “I don’t know.”

“Percy,” shrilled Lady Surplice, “what do you think?”

“There’s some trickery here!” sternly said the Lord Chancellor, who had followed the direction of de Travest’s eyes. “Tell Talbot to keep that door closed.”

“I daren’t, my lady!” the man Talbot trembled.

Someone laughed.

“Who laughed?” cried Shelmerdene.

De Travest snapped: “Why are you going, man? What’s your hurry?”

“But who is he talking to?” sobbed Lady Pynte.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Dame Warp bitterly.

“You there, who are you?” snapped de Travest.

“Gently, Guy, gently!” said Mr. Warp. “Let us not provoke him. Let us not provoke anyone.”

“Oh!” screamed Lady Surplice, and then it was that everyone realised to the full what ghastly portent it was that held the grim attention of the Lord Chancellor and Guy de Travest. For, said Dwight-Rankin, the flames of the twelve candles on the whatdoyoucallem were one by one being obscured before their very eyes, as by a presence passing between them and the candles towards the door; and as the presence passed on its way, so each small flame was again visible.

“But I can’t bear this!” sobbed Lady Surplice. “What does it mean? Why doesn’t someone speak? Is this a time for silence?”

Slowly, slowly, the presence passed between their eyes and the candles towards the door: the eighth candle, the ninth, tenth, eleventh----

“Talbot, hold that door!” cried de Travest.

Someone laughed.

“Who laughed?” sobbed Lady Pynte.

Lord Marketharborough spoke: “What is this absurdity, sir? Who the devil are you? Speak up now!”

They saw the door-knob turn, they heard it turn.

“Not so quickly!” cried de Travest. “We can’t let you go so quickly!”

“Gently, Guy, gently!” said Mr. Warp. “Let him go. We can then discuss the matter at our leisure.”

They saw the door open, an inch, a little further....

“The word ‘devil,’” said a voice from the opening door, and the very voice, said Dwight-Rankin, seemed to smile in a cold but charming way, “the word ‘devil,’ my lord, comes very apt to this moment; and is, if you but knew it, more precisely organic to the occasion than at any previous time in the life which you have dedicated to me with such high scholarship, iron principle and lofty ardour. But I must take this opportunity to protest,” warmly continued the voice of Captain Charity, “against the present frivolous use of such major expletives as ‘hell,’ ‘damnation’ and ‘devil.’ They were created only for occasions of deep corruption, for moments of incredible baseness, for profound and monstrous annoyances, and, in particular, for use during times of inconceivable boredom. For instance, I might with propriety apply each one of them severally to different aspects of Lady Surplice’s charming dinner-party; but courtesy forbids. I give you farewell, my lord, ladies and gentlemen.”

“You might apply, sir! You give us farewell, sir! How, sir!” cried my Lord Marketharborough, who was not less fearless as a man than he was puissant as a lawyer. “And you dare to say, young man, that I have dedicated my life to you!”

“’Tis a point that seems to me self-evident, Lord Marketharborough. Since when have you been taught in your schools that the laws, which you, my lord, so vigorously interpret, come from Jehovah? The only laws that Jehovah ever gave to the world were the tribal laws that may have been good enough for a pack of grubby Jews in the dawn of understanding but have been broken ever since at Satan’s instigation by every self-respecting person: laws that encourage cruelty, exact poverty, condemn beauty, deride chivalry, proscribe joy, deplore elegance, and insist on a sordid and indiscriminate chastity. But was it Jehovah who gave you the divine consolation of Divorce? Or is it not He, the jealous God, who is ever so envious of Satan’s suggestions for greater happiness between men and women that He has imbued His priests on earth with a ferocious enmity to everything that can untie a man and a woman from the intolerable ordeal of an unhappy union. Jehovah has given you the sword, the rack, pestilence, Christianity, The King’s Proctor and Prohibition. Satan gave you the glorious beauty of Greece, the Pax Romana and the genius of invention. Jehovah gave you that ill-favoured lout, Martin Luther. Satan gave you Voltaire, who was a fallen archangel incarnate. Jehovah gave you the Cross. Satan gave you Chivalry. O Chivalry, poor broken-winged angel of light! She was the dark one’s favourite child, but your dour civilisation of the past ten centuries has been maiming her until she now lies broken and dying, her tears washing over the ruins of the past, her soul agonised by visions of the holocausts of the future, her eyes set with despairing prayer only on the few scientists, inventors and artists who are the hope of this rapacious and saintly world.”

The agreeable and scholarly voice of Mr. Warp broke the silence:

“Your utterances, sir, appear to me to show a decidedly anti-Semitic bias. Are you sure that is quite wise?”

“Socially, yes; politically, no. And I believe, Mr. Warp, that all good Englishmen have been accommodating themselves to that dilemma for the last fifty years. By inclination, however, I am naturally an anti-Semite, since Hebrew is the language current in Paradise.”

“For pity’s sake,” said M. des Beaux-Aces, “don’t say that English is the language current in Hell. They have already all the richest colonies.”