Chapter XXXVII

"He's drunk!" said Mr Rathbone-Slater, breaking a terrific silence. "That's the matter with _him_."

Mrs Jehoram laughed hysterically.

The Vicar stood up, motionless, staring. "Oh! I _forgot_ to explain servants to him!" said the Vicar to himself in a swift outbreak of remorse. "I thought he _did_ understand servants."

"Really, Mr Hilyer!" said Lady Hammergallow, evidently exercising enormous self-control and speaking in panting spasms. "Really, Mr Hilyer!--Your genius is _too_ terrible. I must, I really _must_, ask you to take him home."

So to the dialogue in the corridor of alarmed maid-servant and well-meaning (but shockingly _gauche_) Angel--appears the Vicar, his botryoidal little face crimson, gaunt despair in his eyes, and his necktie under his left ear.

"Come," he said--struggling with emotion. "Come away.... I.... I am disgraced for ever."

And the Angel stared for a second at him and obeyed--meekly, perceiving himself in the presence of unknown but evidently terrible forces.

And so began and ended the Angel's social career.

In the informal indignation meeting that followed, Lady Hammergallow took the (informal) chair. "I feel humiliated," she said. "The Vicar assured me he was an exquisite player. I never imagined...."

"He was drunk," said Mr Rathbone-Slater. "You could tell it from the way he fumbled with his tea."

"Such a _fiasco_!" said Mrs Mergle.

"The Vicar assured me," said Lady Hammergallow. "'The man I have staying with me is a musical genius,' he said. His very words."

"His ears must be burning anyhow," said Tommy Rathbone-Slater.

"I was trying to keep him Quiet," said Mrs Jehoram. "By humouring him. And do you know the things he said to me--there!"

"The thing he played," said Mr Wilmerdings,"--I must confess I did not like to charge him to his face. But really! It was merely _drifting_."

"Just fooling with a fiddle, eigh?" said George Harringay. "Well I thought it was beyond me. So much of your fine music is--"

"Oh, _George_!" said the younger Miss Pirbright.

"The Vicar was a bit on too--to judge by his tie," said Mr Rathbone-Slater. "It's a dashed rummy go. Did you notice how he fussed after the genius?"

"One has to be so very careful," said the very eldest Miss Papaver.

"He told me he is in love with the Vicar's housemaid!" said Mrs Jehoram. "I almost laughed in his face."

"The Vicar ought _never_ to have brought him here," said Mrs Rathbone-Slater with decision.

THE TROUBLE OF THE BARBED WIRE.