Chapter IV: Part 4

‘_There_’, he said. ‘Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off her wig. . . . I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about it, if I were you.’

‘I seem to have over-estimated the gravity of the situation,’ said Father Rothschild.

‘Who is it, after all this?’ said Mr Outrage. ‘Where are those detectives? What does it all mean?’

‘That’ said Father Rothschild bitterly, ‘is _Mr Chatterbox_.’

‘Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person. . . . _Chatterbox_, indeed . . . you make us hide behind a curtain and then you tell us that some young man in a false beard is called Chatterbox. Really, Rothschild . . .’

‘Lord Balcairn,’ said Lord Metroland, ‘will you kindly leave my house immediately?’

‘_Is_ this young man called Chatterbox or is he not? . . . Upon my soul, I believe you’re all crazy.’

‘Oh yes, I’m going,’ said Simon. ‘You didn’t think I was going to go back to the party like this, did you?—or did you?’ Indeed, he looked very odd with little patches of black hair still adhering to parts of his chin and cheeks.

‘Lord Monomark is here this evening. I shall certainly inform him of your behaviour . . .’

‘He writes for the papers,’ Father Rothschild tried to explain to the Prime Minister.

‘Well, damn it, so do I, but I don’t wear a false beard and call myself Chatterbox. . . . I simply do not understand what has happened. . . . Where are those detectives? . . . Will no one explain? . . . _You treat me like a child_,’ he said. It was all like one of those Cabinet meetings, when they all talked about something he didn’t understand and paid no attention to him.

Father Rothschild led him away, and attempted with almost humiliating patience and tact to make clear to him some of the complexities of modern journalism.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ the Prime Minister kept saying. ‘It’s all humbug. You’re keeping something back. . . . _Chatterbox_, indeed.’

Simon Balcairn was given his hat and coat and shown to the door. The crowd round the awning had dispersed. It was still raining. He walked back to his little flat in Bourdon Street. The rain washed a few of the remaining locks from his face; it dripped down his collar.

They were washing a car outside his front door; he crept between it and his dustbin, fitted his latchkey in the lock and went upstairs. His flat was like _Chez Espinosa_—all oilcloth and Lalique glass; there were some enterprising photographs by David Lennox, a gramophone (on the instalment system) and numberless cards of invitation on the mantelpiece. His bath towel was where he had left it on his bed.

Simon went to the ice box in the kitchen and chipped off some ice. Then he made himself a cocktail. Then he went to the telephone.

‘Central ten thousand . . .’ he said. ‘. . . give me Mrs Brace. Hullo, this is Balcairn.’

‘Well . . . gotcher story?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve got my story, only this isn’t gossip, it’s news—front page. You’ll have to fill up the Chatterbox page on Espinosa’s.’

‘Hell!’

‘Wait till you see the story. . . . Hullo, give me news, will you. . . . This is Balcairn. Put on one of the boys to take this down, will you? . . . ready? All right.’

At his glass-topped table, sipping his cocktail, Simon Balcairn dictated his last story.

‘_Scenes of wild religious enthusiasm, comma, reminiscent of a negro camp-meeting in Southern America, comma, broke out in the heart of Mayfair yesterday evening at the party given for the famous American Revivalist Mrs Ape by the Viscountess Metroland, formerly the Hon. Mrs Beste-Chetwynd, at her historic mansion, Pastmaster House, stop. The magnificent ballroom can never have enshrined a more brilliant assembly . . ._’

It was his swan-song. Lie after monstrous lie bubbled up in his brain.

‘_. . . The Hon. Agatha Runcible joined Mrs Ape among the orchids and led the singing, tears coursing down her face . . ._’

Excitement spread at the _Excess_ office. The machines were stopped. The night staff of reporters, slightly tipsy, as always at that hour, stood over the stenographer as he typed. The compositors snatched the sheets of copy as they came. The sub-editors began ruthlessly cutting and scrapping; they suppressed important political announcements, garbled the evidence at a murder trial, reduced the dramatic criticism to one caustic paragraph, to make room for Simon’s story.

It came through ‘hot and strong, as nice as mother makes it,’ as one of them remarked.

‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’s on a good thing at last,’ said another.

‘What-ho,’ said a third appreciatively.

‘_. . . barely had Lady Everyman finished before the Countess of Throbbing rose to confess her sins, and in a voice broken with emotion disclosed the hitherto unverified details of the parentage of the present Earl. . . ._’

‘Tell Mr Edwardes to look up photographs of all three of ’em,’ said the assistant news editor.

‘_. . . The Marquess of Vanburgh shaken by sobs of contrition . . . . Mrs Panrast, singing feverishly. . . . Lady Anchorage with downcast eyes._’

‘_. . . The Archbishop of Canterbury, who up to now had remained unmoved by the general emotion, then testified that at Eton in the ’eighties he and Sir James Brown . . ._’

‘_. . . the Duchess of Stayle next threw down her emerald and diamond tiara, crying “a Guilt Offering”, an example which was quickly followed by the Countess of Circumference and Lady Brown, until a veritable rain of precious stones fell on to the parquet flooring, heirlooms of priceless value rolling among Tecla pearls and Chanel diamonds. A blank cheque fluttered from the hands of the Maharajah of Pukkapore . . ._’

It made over two columns, and when Simon finally rang off, after receiving the congratulations of his colleagues, he was for the first time in his journalistic experience perfectly happy about his work. He finished the watery dregs of the cocktail shaker and went into the kitchen. He shut the door and the window and opened the door of the gas oven. Inside it was very black and dirty and smelled of meat. He spread a sheet of newspaper on the lowest tray and lay down, resting his head on it. Then he noticed that by some mischance he had chosen Vanburgh’s gossip-page in the _Morning Despatch_. He put in another sheet. (There were crumbs on the floor.) Then he turned on the gas. It came surprisingly with a loud roar; the wind of it stirred his hair and the remaining particles of his beard. At first he held his breath. Then he thought that was silly and gave a sniff. The sniff made him cough, and coughing made him breathe, and breathing made him feel very ill; but soon he fell into a coma and presently died.

So the last Earl of Balcairn went, as they say, to his fathers (who had fallen in many lands and for many causes, as the eccentricities of British Foreign Policy and their own wandering natures had directed them; at Acre and Agincourt and Killiecrankie, in Egypt and America. One had been picked white by fishes as the tides rolled him among the tree-tops of a submarine forest; some had grown black and unfit for consideration under tropical suns; while many of them lay in marble tombs of extravagant design).

At Pastmaster House, Lady Metroland and Lord Monomark were talking about him. Lord Monomark was roaring with boyish laughter.

‘That’s a great lad,’ he said. ‘Came in a false beard, did he? That’s peppy. What’d you say his name was? I’ll raise him to-morrow first thing.’

And he turned to give Simon’s name to an attendant secretary.

And when Lady Metroland began to expostulate, he shut her up rather discourteously.

‘Shucks, Margot,’ he said. ‘You know better than to get on a high horse with me.’

_Chapter Seven_

Then Adam became Mr Chatterbox. He and Nina were lunching at Espinosa’s and quarrelling half-heartedly when a business-like, Eton-cropped woman came across to their table, whom Adam recognized as the social editress of the _Daily Excess_.

‘See here,’ she said, ‘weren’t you over at the office with Balcairn the day he did himself in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, a pretty mess he’s let us in for. Sixty-two writs for libel up to date and more coming in. And that’s not the worst. Left me to do his job and mine. I was wondering if you could tell me the names of any of these people and anything about them.’

Adam pointed out a few well-worn faces.

‘Yes, they ain’t no good. They’re on the black list. You see, Monomark was in an awful way about Balcairn’s story of Lady Metroland’s party, and he’s sent down a chit that none of the people who are bringing actions against the paper can be mentioned again. Well, I ask you, what’s one to do? It’s just bricks without straw. Why, we can’t even mention the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. I suppose you don’t know of any one who’d care to take on the job? They’d have to be a pretty good mutt, if they would.’

‘What do they pay?’

‘Ten pounds a week and expenses. Know any one?’

‘I’d do it myself for that.’

‘_You?_’ The social editress looked at him sceptically. ‘Would you be any good?’

‘I’ll try for a week or two.’

‘That’s about as long as any one sticks it. All right, come back to the office with me when you’ve finished lunch. You can’t cause more trouble than Balcairn, anyhow, and he looked the goods at first.’

‘Now we can get married,’ said Nina.

Meanwhile the libel actions against the authors, printers and publishers of Simon Balcairn’s last story practically paralysed the judicial system of the country. The old brigade, led by Mrs Blackwater, threw themselves with relish into an orgy of litigation such as they had not seen since the war (one of the younger counsel causing Lady Throbbing particular delight. . . . ‘I do think, when you get to my age, dear, there is something _sympathetique_ about a wig, don’t you? . . .’). The younger generation for the most part allowed their cases to be settled out of court and later gave a very delightful party on the proceeds in a captive dirigible. Miss Runcible, less well advised, filled two albums with Press cuttings portraying her various appearances at the Law Courts, sometimes as plaintiff, sometimes as witness, sometimes (in a hat borrowed from Miss Mouse) as part of the queue of ‘fashionably dressed women waiting for admission’, once as an intruder being removed by an usher from the Press gallery, and finally as prisoner being sentenced to a fine of ten pounds or seven days’ imprisonment for contempt of court.

The proceedings were considerably complicated by the behaviour of Mrs Ape, who gave an interview in which she fully confirmed Simon Balcairn’s story. She also caused her Press agent to wire a further account to all parts of the world. She then left the country with her angels, having received a sudden call to ginger up the religious life of Oberammergau.

At intervals letters arrived from Buenos Aires in which Chastity and Divine Discontent spoke rather critically of Latin American entertainment.

‘They didn’t know when they was well off,’ said Mrs Ape.

‘It don’t sound much different from us,’ said Creative Endeavour wistfully.

‘They won’t be dead five minutes before _they_ see the difference,’ said Mrs Ape.

Edward Throbbing and two secretaries returned to Hertford Street somewhat inopportunely for Miles and his dirt-track racer, who were obliged to move into Shepheard’s. Miles said that the thing he resented about his brother’s return was not so much the inconvenience as the expense. For some weeks Throbbing suffered from the successive discoveries by his secretaries of curious and compromising things in all parts of the house; his butler, too, seemed changed. He hiccoughed heavily while serving dinner to two Secretaries of State, complained of spiders in his bath and the sound of musical instruments, and finally had ‘the horrors’, ran mildly amok in the pantry with the kitchen poker, and had to be taken away in a van. Long after these immediate causes of distress had been removed, the life of Throbbing’s secretaries was periodically disturbed by ambiguous telephone calls and the visits of menacing young men who wanted new suits or tickets to America, or a fiver to go on with.

But all these events, though of wide general interest, are of necessity a closed book to the readers of Mr Chatterbox’s page.

Lord Monomark’s black list had made a devastating change in the personnel of the _Daily Excess_ gossip. In a single day Mr Chatterbox’s readers found themselves plunged into a murky underworld of nonentities. They were shown photographs of the misshapen daughters of backwoods peers carrying buckets of meal to their fathers’ chickens; they learned of the engagement of the younger sister of the Bishop of Chertsey and of a dinner party given in Elm Park Gardens by the widow of a High Commissioner to some of the friends she had made in their colony. There were details of the blameless home life of women novelists, photographed with their spaniels before rose-covered cottages; stories of undergraduate ‘rags’ and regimental reunion dinners; anecdotes from Harley Street and the Inns of Court; snaps and snippets about cocktail parties given in basement flats by spotty announcers at the B.B.C., of tea dances in Gloucester Terrace and jokes made at High Table by dons.

Urged on by the taunts of the social editress, Adam brought new enterprise and humanity into this sorry column. He started a series of ‘Notable Invalids’, which was from the first, wildly successful. He began chattily. ‘_At a dinner party the other evening my neighbour and I began to compile a list of the most popular deaf peeresses. First, of course, came old Lady ——. . ._’

Next day he followed it up with a page about deaf peers and statesmen; then about the one-legged, blind and bald. Postcards of appreciation poured in from all over the country.

‘_I have read your column for many years now_,’ wrote a correspondent from Bude, ‘_but this is the first time I have really enjoyed it. I have myself been deaf for a long time, and it is a great comfort to me to know that my affliction is shared by so many famous men and women. Thank you, Mr Chatterbox, and good luck to you._’

Another wrote: ‘_Ever since childhood I have been cursed with abnormally large ears which have been a source of ridicule to me and a serious handicap in my career (I am a chub fuddler). I should be so glad to know whether any great people have suffered in the same way._’

Finally, he ransacked the lunatic asylums and mental houses of the country, and for nearly a week ran an extremely popular series under the heading ‘Titled Eccentrics’.

‘_It is not generally known that the Earl of ——, who lives in strict retirement, has the unusual foible of wearing costume of the Napoleonic Period. So great, indeed, is his detestation of modern dress that on one occasion . . ._’

‘_Lord ——, whose public appearances are regrettably rare nowadays, is a close student of comparative religions. There is an amusing story of how, when lunching with the then Dean of Westminster, Lord —— startled his host by proclaiming that so far from being of divine ordinance, the Ten Commandments were, in point of fact, composed by himself and delivered by him to Moses on Sinai. . . ._’

‘_Lady ——, whose imitations of animal sounds are so lifelike that she can seldom be persuaded to converse in any other way, . . ._’

And so on.

Besides this, arguing that people did not really mind _whom_ they read about provided that a kind of vicarious inquisitiveness into the lives of others was satisfied, Adam began to invent people.

He invented a sculptor called Provna, the son of a Polish nobleman, who lived in a top-floor studio in Grosvenor House. Most of his work (which was all in private hands) was constructed in cork, vulcanite and steel. The Metropolitan Museum at New York, Mr Chatterbox learned, had been negotiating for some time to purchase a specimen, but so far had been unable to outbid the collectors.

Such is the power of the Press, that soon after this a steady output of early Provnas began to travel from Warsaw to Bond Street and from Bond Street to California, while Mrs Hoop announced to her friends that Provna was at the moment at work on a bust of Johnny, which she intended to present to the nation (a statement which Adam was unable to record owing to the presence of Mrs Hoop’s name on the black list, but which duly appeared, under a photograph of Johnny, in the Marquess of Vanburgh’s rival column).

Encouraged by his success, Adam began gradually to introduce to his readers a brilliant and lovely company. He mentioned them casually at first in lists of genuine people. There was a popular young attaché at the Italian Embassy called Count Cincinnati. He was descended from the famous Roman Consul, Cincinnatus, and bore a plough as his crest. Count Cincinnati was held to be the best amateur ’cellist in London. Adam saw him one evening dancing at the Café de la Paix. A few evenings later Lord Vanburgh noticed him at Covent Garden, remarking that his collection of the original designs for the Russian ballet was unequalled in Europe. Two days later Adam sent him to Monte Carlo for a few days’ rest, and Vanburgh hinted that there was more in this visit than met the eye, and mentioned the daughter of a well-known American hostess who was staying there at her aunt’s villa.

There was a Captain Angus Stuart-Kerr, too, whose rare appearances in England were a delight to his friends; unlike most big-game hunters, he was an expert and indefatigable dancer. Much to Adam’s disgust he found Captain Stuart-Kerr taken up by an unknown gossip writer in a twopenny, illustrated weekly, who saw him at a point-to-point meeting, and remarked that he was well known as the hardest rider in the Hebrides. Adam put a stop to that next day.

‘_Some people_,’ he wrote, ‘_are under the impression that Captain Angus Stuart-Kerr, whom I mentioned on this page a short time ago, is a keen rider. Perhaps they are confusing him with Alastair Kerr-Stuart, of Inverauchty, a very distant cousin. Captain Stuart-Kerr never rides, and for a very interesting reason. There is an old Gaelic rhyme repeated among his clansmen which says in rough translation “the Laird rides well on two legs”. Tradition has it that when the head of the house mounts a horse the clan will be dispersed._’[C]

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[C] This story, slightly expanded, found its way later into a volume of Highland Legends called _Tales from the Mist_, which has been approved to be read in elementary schools. This shows the difference between what is called a ‘living’ as opposed to a ‘dead’ folk tradition.

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But Adam’s most important creation was Mrs Andrew Quest. There was always some difficulty about introducing English people into his column as his readers had a way of verifying his references in Debrett (as he knew to his cost, for one day, having referred to the engagement of the third and youngest daughter of a Welsh baronet, he received six postcards, eighteen telephone calls, a telegram and a personal visit of protest to inform him that there are two equally beautiful sisters still in the schoolroom. The social editress had been scathing about this). However, he put Imogen Quest down one day, quietly and decisively, as the most lovely and popular of the younger married set. And from the first she exhibited signs of a marked personality. Adam wisely eschewed any attempts at derivation, but his readers nodded to each other and speedily supplied her with an exalted if irregular origin. Everything else Adam showered upon her. She had slightly more than average height, and was very dark and slim, with large Laurencin eyes and the negligent grace of the trained athlete (she fenced with the sabre for half an hour every morning before breakfast). Even Provna, who was notoriously indifferent to conventional beauty, described her as ‘justifying the century’.

Her clothes were incomparable, with just that suggestion of the haphazard which raised them high above the mere _chic_ of the mannequin.

Her character was a lovely harmony of contending virtues—she was witty and tender hearted; passionate and serene, sensual and temperate, impulsive and discreet.

Her set, the most intimate and brilliant in Europe, achieved a superb mean between those two poles of savagery Lady Circumference and Lady Metroland.

Soon Imogen Quest became a byword for social inaccessibility—the final goal for all climbers.

Adam went one day to a shop in Hanover Square to watch Nina buy some hats and was seriously incommoded by the heaps of bandboxes disposed on the chairs and dressing-tables ostentatiously addressed to Mrs Andrew Quest. He could hear her name spoken reverently in cocktail clubs, and casually let slip in such phrases as ‘My dear, I never see Peter now. He spends all his time with Imogen Quest,’ or ‘As Imogen would say . . .’ or ‘I think the Quests have got one like that. I must ask them where it came from.’ And this knowledge on the intangible Quest set, moving among them in uncontrolled dignity of life, seemed to leaven and sweeten the lives of Mr Chatterbox’s readers.

One day Imogen gave a party, the preparations for which occupied several paragraphs. On the following day Adam found his table deep in letters of complaint from gate-crashers who had found the house in Seamore Place untenanted.

Finally a message came down that Lord Monomark was interested in Mrs Quest; could Mr Chatterbox arrange a meeting. That day the Quests sailed for Jamaica.

Adam also attempted in an unobtrusive way to exercise some influence over the clothes of his readers. ‘_I noticed at the Café de la Paix yesterday evening_,’ he wrote, ‘_that two of the smartest men in the room were wearing black suède shoes with their evening clothes—one of them, who shall be nameless, was a Very Important Person indeed. I hear that this fashion, which comes, like so many others, from New York, is likely to become popular over here this season._’ A few days later he mentioned Captain Stuart-Kerr’s appearance at the Embassy ‘_wearing, of course, the ultra-fashionable black suède shoes_’. In a week he was gratified to notice that Johnny Hoop and Archie Schwert had both followed Captain Stuart-Kerr’s lead, while in a fortnight the big emporiums of ready-made clothes in Regent Street had transposed their tickets in the windows and arranged rows of black suède shoes on a silver step labelled ‘For evening wear’.

His attempt to introduce a bottle-green bowler hat, however, was not successful; in fact, a ‘well-known St James’s Street hatter’, when interviewed by an evening paper on the subject, said that he had never seen or heard of such a thing, and though he would not refuse to construct one if requested to by an old customer, he was of the opinion that no old customer of his would require a hat of that kind (though there was a sad case of an impoverished old beau who attempted to stain a grey hat with green ink, as once in years gone by he had been used to dye the carnation for his buttonhole).

As the days passed, Mr Chatterbox’s page became almost wholly misleading. With sultanesque caprice Adam would tell his readers of inaccessible eating-houses which were now the centre of fashion; he drove them to dance in temperance hotels in Bloomsbury. In a paragraph headed ‘Montparnasse in Belgravia’, he announced that the buffet at Sloane Square tube station had become the haunt of the most modern artistic coterie (Mr Benfleet hurried there on his first free evening, but saw no one but Mrs Hoop and Lord Vanburgh and a plebeian topper with a celluloid collar).

As a last resort, on those hopeless afternoons when invention failed and that black misanthropy settled on him which waits alike on gossip writer and novelist, Adam sometimes found consolation in seizing upon some gentle and self-effacing citizen and transfiguring him with a blaze of notoriety.

He did this with a man called Ginger.

As part of his duties, which led him into many unusual places, Adam and Nina went up to Manchester for the November Handicap. Here they had the disheartening experience of seeing Indian Runner come in an easy winner and the totalisator paying out thirty-five to one. It was during the bottle-green bowler campaign, and Adam was searching in vain for any sign of his influence when, suddenly, among the crowd, he saw the genial red face of the drunk Major to whom he had entrusted his thousand pounds at Lottie’s. It seemed odd that a man so bulky could be so elusive. Adam was not sure whether the Major saw him, but in some mysterious way Adam’s pursuit coincided with the Major’s complete disappearance. The crowd became very dense, brandishing flasks and sandwiches. When Adam reached the spot where the Major had stood he found two policemen arresting a pickpocket.

‘’Ere, who are you pushing?’ asked the spectators.

‘Have you seen a drunk Major anywhere?’ asked Adam.

But no one could help him, and he returned disconsolately to Nina, whom he found in conversation with a young man with a curly red moustache.

The young man said he was fed up with racing, and Adam said he was too; so the young man said why didn’t they come back to London in his bus, so Adam and Nina said they would. The bus turned out to be a very large, brand-new racing car, and they got to London in time for dinner. Nina explained that the young man used to play with her as a child, and that he had been doing something military in Ceylon for the last five years. The young man’s name was Eddy Littlejohn, but over dinner he said, look here, would they call him Ginger; every one else did. So they began to call him Ginger, and he said wouldn’t it be a good idea if they had another bottle of fizz, and Nina and Adam said yes, it would, so they had a magnum and got very friendly.

‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘it was awful luck meeting you two to-day. I was getting awfully fed up with London. It’s so damn slow. I came back meaning to have a good time, you know, paint the place red a bit, and all that. Well, the other day I was reading the paper, and there was a bit that said that the posh place to go to dance nowadays was the Casanova Hotel in Bloomsbury. Well, it seemed a bit rum to me—place I’d never heard of, you know—but, still, I’d been away for some time and places change and all that, so I put on my bib and tucker and toddled off, hoping for a bit of innocent amusement. Well, I mean to say, you never saw such a place. There were only about three people dancing, so I said, “Where’s the bar?” And they said, “Bar!” And I said, “You know, for a drink.” And they said, well, they could probably make me some coffee. And I said, “No, not coffee.” And then they said they hadn’t got a licence for what they called alcohol. Well, I mean to say, if that’s the best London can do, give me Colombo. I wonder who writes things like that in the papers?’

‘As a matter of fact, _I_ do.’

‘I say no, do you? You must be frightfully brainy. Did you write all that about the green bowlers?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I mean to say, whoever heard of a green bowler, I mean. . . . I tell you what, you know, I believe it was all a leg pull. You know, I think that’s damn funny. Why, a whole lot of poor mutts may have gone and bought green bowlers.’

After this they went on to the Café de la Paix, where they met Johnny Hoop, who asked them all to the party in a few days’ time in the captive balloon.

But Ginger was not to be had twice.

‘Oh, no you know,’ he said, ‘not in a captive balloon. You’re trying to pull the old leg again. Whoever heard of a party in a captive balloon? I mean to say, suppose one fell out, I mean?’

Adam telephoned his page through to the _Excess_, and soon after this a coloured singer appeared, paddling his black suède shoes in a pool of limelight, who excited Ginger’s disapproval. He didn’t mind niggers, Ginger said; remarking justly that niggers were all very well in their place, but, after all, one didn’t come all the way from Colombo to London just to see niggers. So they left the Café de la Paix, and went to Lottie’s, where Ginger became a little moody, saying that London wasn’t home to him any more and that things were changed.

‘You know,’ said Ginger, ‘all the time I’ve been out in Ceylon I’ve always said to myself, “As soon as the governor kicks the bucket, and I come in for the family doubloons and pieces of eight, I’m going to come back to England and have a real old bust.” And now when it comes to the point there doesn’t seem to be anything I much want to do.’

‘How about a little drink?’ said Lottie.

So Ginger had a drink, and then he and an American sang the Eton Boating Song several times. At the end of the evening he admitted that there was some life left in the jolly old capital of the Empire.

Next day Mr Chatterbox’s readers learned that: ‘_Captain “Ginger” Littlejohn, as he is known to his intimates, was one of the well-known sporting figures at the November Handicap who favoured the new bottle-green bowler. Captain Littlejohn is one of the wealthiest and best-known bachelors in Society, and I have lately heard his name spoken of in connection with the marriage of the daughter of a famous ducal house. He came all the way to yesterday’s races in his own motor omnibus, which he drives himself . . ._’

For some days Ginger’s name figured largely on Adam’s page, to his profound embarrassment. Several engagements were predicted for him, it was rumoured that he had signed a contract with a film company, that he had bought a small island in the Bristol Channel which he proposed to turn into a country club, and that his forthcoming novel about Singalese life contained many very thinly disguised portraits of London celebrities.

But the green bowler joke had gone too far. Adam was sent for by Lord Monomark.

‘Now see here, Symes,’ said the great man, ‘I like your page. It’s peppy; it’s got plenty of new names in it and it’s got the intimate touch I like. I read it every day and so does my daughter. Keep on that way and you’ll be all right. But _what’s all this about bottle-green bowlers_?’

‘Well, of course, sir, they’re only worn by a limited number of people at present, but . . .’

‘Have you got one? Show me a green bowler.’

‘I don’t wear one myself, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, where d’you see ’em? I haven’t seen one yet. My daughter hasn’t seen one. Who does wear ’em? Where do they buy ’em? That’s what I want to know. Now see here, Symes, I don’t say that there ain’t any such thing as a green bowler; there may be and again there mayn’t. But from now on there are going to be no more bottle-green bowlers in my paper. See. And another thing. This Count Cincinnati. I don’t say _he_ doesn’t exist. He may do and he mayn’t. But the Italian Ambassador doesn’t know anything about him and the Almanak de Gotha doesn’t. So as far as my paper goes that’s good enough for him. And I don’t want any more about Espinosa’s. They made out my bill wrong last night.

‘Got those three things clear? Tabulate them in the mind—1, 2, 3, that’s the secret of memory. Tab-u-late. All right, then, run along now and tell the Home Secretary he can come right in. You’ll find him waiting in the passage—ugly little man with a pince-nez.’

_Chapter Eight_

Two nights later Adam and Nina took Ginger to the party in the captive dirigible. It was not a really good evening. The long drive in Ginger’s car to the degraded suburb where the airship was moored chilled and depressed them, dissipating the gaiety which had flickered rather spasmodically over Ginger’s dinner.

The airship seemed to fill the whole field, tethered a few feet from the ground by innumerable cables over which they stumbled painfully on the way to the steps. These had been covered by a socially minded caterer with a strip of red carpet.

Inside, the saloons were narrow and hot, communicating to each other by spiral staircases and metal alleys. There were protrusions at every corner, and Miss Runcible had made herself a mass of bruises in the first half hour. There was a band and a bar and all the same faces. It was the first time that a party was given in an airship.

Adam went aloft to a kind of terrace. Acres of inflated silk blotted out the sky, stirring just perceptibly in the breeze. The lights of other cars arriving lit up the uneven grass. A few louts had collected round the gates to jeer. There were two people making love to each other near him on the terrace, reclining on cushions. There was also a young woman he did not know, holding one of the stays and breathing heavily; evidently she felt unwell. One of the lovers lit a cigar and Adam observed that they were Mary Mouse and the Maharajah of Pukkapore.

Presently Nina joined him. ‘It seems such a waste,’ she said, thinking of Mary and the Maharajah, ‘that two very rich people like that should fall in love with each other.’

‘Nina,’ said Adam, ‘let’s get married soon, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, it’s a bore not being married.’

The young woman who felt ill passed by them, walking shakily, to try and find her coat and her young man to take her home.

‘. . . I don’t know if it sounds absurd,’ said Adam, ‘but I do feel that a marriage ought to _go on_—for quite a long time, I mean. D’you feel that too, at all?’

‘Yes, it’s one of the things about a marriage!’

‘I’m glad you feel that. I didn’t quite know if you did. Otherwise it’s all rather bogus, isn’t it?’

‘I think you ought to go and see papa again,’ said Nina. ‘It’s never any good writing. Go and tell him that you’ve got a job and are terribly rich and that we’re going to be married before Christmas!’

‘All right. I’ll do that.’

‘. . . D’you remember last month we arranged for you to go and see him the first time? . . . just like this . . . it was at Archie Schwert’s party . . .’

‘Oh, Nina, _what a lot of parties_.’

(. . . Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris—all that succession and repetition of massed humanity. . . . Those vile bodies . . .)

He leant his forehead, to cool it, on Nina’s arm and kissed her in the hollow of her forearm.

‘I _know_, darling,’ she said, and put her hand on his hair.

Ginger came strutting jauntily by, his hands clasped under his coat-tails.

‘Hullo, you two,’ he said. ‘Pretty good show this, what.’

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Ginger?’

‘_Rather._ I say, I’ve met an awful good chap called Miles. Regular topper. You know, _pally_. That’s what I like about a really decent party—you meet such topping fellows. I mean some chaps it takes absolutely years to know but a chap like Miles I feel is a pal straight away.’

Presently cars began to drive away again. Miss Runcible said that she had heard of a divine night club near Leicester Square somewhere where you could get a drink at any hour of the night. It was called the St Christopher’s Social Club.

So they all went there in Ginger’s car.

On the way Ginger said, ‘That cove Miles, you know, he’s awfully _queer_ . . .’

St Christopher’s Social Club took some time to find.

It was a little door at the side of a shop, and the man who opened it held his foot against it and peeped round.

They paid ten shillings each and signed false names in the visitor’s book. Then they went downstairs to a very hot room full of cigarette smoke; there were unsteady tables with bamboo legs round the walls and there were some people in shirt sleeves dancing on a shiny linoleum floor.

There was a woman in a yellow beaded frock playing a piano and another in red playing the fiddle.

They ordered some whisky. The waiter said he was sorry, but he couldn’t oblige, not that night he couldn’t. The police had just rung up to say that they were going to make a raid any minute. If they liked they could have some nice kippers.

Miss Runcible said that kippers were not very drunk-making and that the whole club seemed bogus to her.

Ginger said well anyway they had better have some kippers now they were there. Then he asked Nina to dance and she said no. Then he asked Miss Runcible and she said no, too.

Then they ate kippers.

Presently one of the men in shirt sleeves (who had clearly had a lot to drink before the St Christopher Social Club knew about the police) came up to their table and said to Adam:

‘You don’t know me. I’m Gilmour. I don’t want to start a row in front of ladies, but when I see a howling cad I like to tell him so.’

Adam said, ‘Why do you spit when you talk?’

Gilmour said, ‘That is a very unfortunate physical disability, and it shows what a howling cad you are that you mention it.’

Then Ginger said, ‘Same to you, old boy, with nobs on.’

Then Gilmour said, ‘Hullo, Ginger, old scout.’

And Ginger said, ‘Why, it’s Bill. You mustn’t mind Bill. Awfully stout chap. Met him on the boat.’

Gilmour said, ‘Any pal of Ginger’s is a pal of mine.’

So Adam and Gilmour shook hands.

Gilmour said, ‘This is a pretty low joint, anyhow. You chaps come round to my place and have a drink.’

So they went to Gilmour’s place.

Gilmour’s place was a bed-sitting room in Ryder Street.

So they sat on the bed in Gilmour’s place and drank whisky while Gilmour was sick next door.

And Ginger said, ‘There’s nowhere like London really you know.’

That same evening while Adam and Nina sat on the deck of the dirigible a party of quite a different sort was being given at Anchorage House. This last survivor of the noble town houses of London was, in its time, of dominating and august dimensions, and even now, when it had become a mere ‘picturesque bit’ lurking in a ravine between concrete skyscrapers, its pillared façade, standing back from the street and obscured by railings and some wisps of foliage, had grace and dignity and other-worldliness enough to cause a flutter or two in Mrs Hoop’s heart as she drove into the forecourt.

‘Can’t you just see the _ghosts_? she said to Lady Circumference on the stairs. ‘Pit and Fox and Burke and Lady Hamilton and Beau Brummel and Dr Johnson’ (a concurrence of celebrities, it may be remarked, at which something memorable might surely have occurred). ‘Can’t you just _see_ them—in their buckled shoes?’

Lady Circumference raised her lorgnette and surveyed the stream of guests debouching from the cloak-rooms like City workers from the Underground. She saw Mr Outrage and Lord Metroland in consultation about the Censorship Bill (a statesmanlike and much-needed measure which empowered a committee of five atheists to destroy all books, pictures and films they considered undesirable, without any nonsense about defence or appeal). She saw both Archbishops, the Duke and Duchess of Stayle, Lord Vanburgh and Lady Metroland, Lady Throbbing and Edward Throbbing and Mrs Blackwater, Mrs Mouse and Lord Monomark and a superb Levantine, and behind and about them a great concourse of pious and honourable people (many of whom made the Anchorage House reception the one outing of the year), their women-folk well gowned in rich and durable stuffs, their men-folk ablaze with orders; people who had represented their country in foreign places and sent their sons to die for her in battle, people of decent and temperate life, uncultured, unaffected, unembarrassed, unassuming, unambitious people, of independent judgment and marked eccentricities, kind people who cared for animals and the deserving poor, brave and rather unreasonable people, that fine phalanx of the passing order, approaching as one day at the Last Trump they hoped to meet their Maker, with decorous and frank cordiality to shake Lady Anchorage by the hand at the top of her staircase. Lady Circumference saw all this and sniffed the exhalation of her own herd. But she saw no ghosts.

‘That’s all my eye,’ she said.

But Mrs Hoop ascended step by step in a confused but very glorious dream of eighteenth-century elegance.

The Presence of Royalty was heavy as thunder in the drawing-room.

The Baroness Yoshiwara and the Prime Minister met once more.

‘I tried to see you twice this week,’ she said, ‘but always you were busy. We are leaving London. Perhaps you heard? My husband has been moved to Washington. It was his wish to go. . .’

‘No. I say, Baroness . . . I had no idea. That’s very bad news. We shall all miss you terribly.’

‘I thought perhaps I would come to make my adieux. One day next week.’

‘Why, yes, of course, that would be delightful. You must both come to dine. I’ll get my secretary to fix something up to-morrow.’

‘It has been nice being in London . . . you were kind.’

‘Not a bit. I don’t know what London would be without our guests from abroad.’

‘Oh, twenty damns to your great pig-face,’ said the Baroness suddenly and turned away.

Mr Outrage watched her bewildered. Finally he said, ‘For East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet’ (which was a poor conclusion for a former Foreign Secretary).

Edward Throbbing stood talking to the eldest daughter of the Duchess of Stayle. She was some inches taller than him and inclined slightly so that, in the general murmur of conversation, she should not miss any of his colonial experience. She wore a frock such as only Duchesses can obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel. Neither powder, rouge nor lipstick had played any part in her toilet and her colourless hair was worn long and bound across her forehead in a broad fillet. Long pearl drops hung from her ears and she wore a tight little collar of pearls round her throat. It was generally understood that now Edward Throbbing was back these two would become engaged to be married.

Lady Ursula was acquiescent if unenthusiastic. When she thought about marriage at all, which was rarely (for her chief interests were a girls’ club in Canning Town and a younger brother at school), she thought what a pity it was that one had to be so ill to have children. Her married friends spoke of this almost with relish and her mother with awe.

An innate dilatoriness of character rather than any doubt of the ultimate issue kept Edward from verbal proposal. He had decided to arrange everything before Christmas and that was enough. He had no doubt that a suitable occasion would soon be devised for him. It was clearly suitable that he should marry before he was thirty. Now and then when he was with Ursula he felt a slight quickening of possessive impulse towards her fragility and distance; occasionally when he read some rather lubricious novel or saw much love-making on the stage he would translate the characters in his mind and put Lady Ursula, often incongruously, in the place of the heroine. He had no doubt that he was in love. Perhaps he would propose this very evening and get it over. It was up to Lady Ursula to engineer an occasion. Meanwhile he kept the conversation on to the subject of labour problems in Montreal, about which his information was extensive and accurate.

‘He’s a nice, steady boy,’ said the Duchess, ‘and it’s a comfort, nowadays, to see two young people so genuinely fond of each other. Of course, nothing is actually arranged yet, but I was talking to Fanny Throbbing yesterday, and apparently Edward has already spoken to her on the subject. I think that everything will be settled before Christmas. Of course, there’s not a great deal of money, but one’s learnt not to expect that nowadays, and Mr Outrage speaks very highly of his ability. Quite one of the coming men in the party.’

‘Well,’ said Lady Circumference, ‘you know your own business, but if you ask me I shouldn’t care to see a daughter of mine marry into that family. Bad hats every one of them. Look at the father and the sister, and from all I hear the brother is rotten all through.’

‘I don’t say it’s a match I should have chosen myself. There’s certainly a bad strain in the Malpractices . . . but you know how headstrong children are nowadays, and they seem so fond of each other . . . and there seem so few young men about. At least I never seem to see any.’

‘Young toads, the whole lot of them,’ said Lady Circumference.

‘And these _terrible_ parties which I’m told they give. I don’t know what I should have done if Ursula had ever wanted to go to them . . . the poor Chasms. . . .’

‘If I were Viola Chasm I’d give that girl a thunderin’ good hidin’.’

The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn. Royalty remarked on their absence and those happy mothers who had even one docile daughter in tow swelled with pride and commiseration.

‘I’m told that they’re having another of their parties,’ said Mrs Mouse, ‘in an aeroplane this time.’

‘In an aeroplane? How very extraordinary.’

‘Of course, I never hear a word from Mary, but her maid told my maid . . .’

‘What I always wonder, Kitty dear, is what they actually _do_ at these parties of theirs, I mean, _do_ they . . . ?’

‘My dear, from all I hear, I think they do.’

‘Oh, to be young again, Kitty. When I think, my dear, of all the trouble and exertion which we had to go through to be even moderately bad . . . those passages in the early morning, and mama sleeping next door.’

‘And yet, my dear, I doubt very much whether they really _appreciate_ it all as much as we should . . . young people take things so much for granted. _Si la jeunesse savait._’

‘_Si la vieillesse pouvait_, Kitty.’

Later that evening Mr Outrage stood almost alone in the supper-room drinking a glass of champagne. Another episode in his life was closed, another of those tantalizing glimpses of felicity capriciously withdrawn. Poor Mr Outrage, thought Mr Outrage; poor, poor old Outrage, always just on the verge of revelation, of some sublime and transfiguring experience; always frustrated. . . . Just Prime Minister, nothing more, bullied by his colleagues, a source of income to low caricaturists. Was Mr Outrage an immortal soul, thought Mr Outrage; had he wings, was he free and unconfined, was he born for eternity? He sipped his champagne, fingered his ribbon of the Order of Merit, and resigned himself to the dust.

Presently he was joined by Lord Metroland and Father Rothschild.

‘Margot’s left—gone on to some party in an airship. I’ve been talking to Lady Anchorage for nearly an hour about the younger generation.’

‘Every one seems to have been talking about the younger generation to-night. The most boring subject I know.’

‘Well, after all, what does all this stand for if there’s going to be no one to carry it on?’

‘All what?’ Mr Outrage looked round the supper-room, deserted save for two footmen who leant against the walls looking as waxen as the clumps of flowers sent up that morning from hothouses in the country. ‘What does all what stand for?’

‘All this business of government.’

‘As far as I’m concerned it stands for a damned lot of hard work and precious little in return. If those young people can find a way to get on without it, good luck to them.’

‘I see what Metroland means,’ said Father Rothschild.

‘Blessed if I do. Anyway I’ve got no children myself, and I’m thankful for it. I don’t understand them, and I don’t want to. They had a chance after the war that no generation has ever had. There was a whole civilization to be saved and remade—and all they seem to do is to play the fool. Mind you, I’m all in favour of them having a fling. I dare say that Victorian ideas _were_ a bit strait-laced. Saving your cloth, Rothschild, it’s only human nature to run a bit loose when one’s young. But there’s something wanton about these young people to-day. That stepson of yours, Metroland, and that girl of poor old Chasm’s and young Throbbing’s brother.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Father Rothschild gently, ‘that perhaps it is all in some way historical? I don’t think people ever _want_ to lose their faith either in religion or anything else. I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence. I think all these divorces show that. People aren’t content just to muddle along nowadays. . . . And this word “bogus” they all use. . . . They won’t make the best of a bad job nowadays. My private schoolmaster used to say, “If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.” My Church has taught that in different words for several centuries. But these young people have got hold of another end of the stick, and for all we know it may be the right one. They say, “If a thing’s not worth doing well, it’s not worth doing at all.” It makes everything very difficult for them.’

‘Good heavens, I should think it did. What a darned silly principle. I mean to say if one didn’t do anything that wasn’t worth doing well—why, what _would_ one do? I’ve always maintained that success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth . . . distribution of energy. . . . And, I suppose, most people would admit that I was a pretty successful man.’

‘Yes, I suppose they would, Outrage,’ said Father Rothschild, looking at him rather quizzically.

But that self-accusing voice in the Prime Minister’s heart was silent. There was nothing like a little argument for settling the mind. Everything became so simple as soon as it was put into words.

‘And anyway, what do you mean by “historical”?’

‘Well, it’s like this war that’s coming. . . .’

‘_What war?_’ said the Prime Minister sharply. ‘No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I’ll be damned,’ he said defiantly, ‘if they shall have a war without consulting me. What’s a Cabinet for if there’s not more mutual confidence than that? What do they want a war for, anyway?’

‘That’s the whole point. No one talks about it, and no one wants it. No one talks about it _because_ no one wants it. They’re all afraid to breathe a word about it.’

‘Well, hang it all, if no one wants it, who’s going to make them have it?’