We could not hear what John said, but we inferred the general nature of the disaster from the response accorded to his news. The vicar merely clicked his tongue with a frown of grave disapproval, but his wife advertised the disaster for us by saying,—
“It’s that man Carter, from the Oak, you know; not our own man. I’ve never liked Carter.”
“Quite hopelessly, eh?” Jervaise asked John, and John’s perturbed shake of the head answered that question beyond any doubt.
“In any case,” Mrs. Sturton began, and I hazarded a guess that she was going to refuse to drive behind Carter in any stage of intoxication; but she decided to abandon that line and went on with a splendid imitation of cheerfulness, “However, there’s nothing to be done, now, but walk. It’s quite a fine night, fortunately.” She looked at her husband for approval.
“Oh! quite, quite,” he said. “A beautiful night. Let us walk by all means.”
A general rustle of relief spread up the gallery of the staircase, and was followed at once by a fresh outburst of chatter. The waiting audience of would-be dancers had responded like one individual. It was as if their single over-soul had sighed its thankfulness and had then tried to cover the solecism. Their relief was short-lived. Mrs. Jervaise “couldn’t think” of the Sturtons walking. They must have the motor. She insisted. Really nothing at all. Their chauffeur was sure to be up, still.
“Of course, certainly, by all means,” Jervaise agreed warmly, and then, to John, “He hasn’t gone to bed yet, I suppose?”
“I saw him not half an hour ago, sir,” was John’s response.
“Tell him to bring the motor round,” Jervaise ordered, and added something in a lower voice, which, near as I was to them, I could not catch. I imagined that it might be an instruction to have the chauffeur out again if he had by any chance slunk off to bed within the last half-hour.
I think Miss Tattersall said “Damn!” Certainly the over-soul of the staircase group thought it.
“They’ll be here all night, at this rate,” was my companion’s translation of the general feeling.
“If they have to wake up the chauffeur,” I admitted.
“He’s a new man they’ve got,” Miss Tattersall replied. “They’ve only had him three months…” It seemed as if she were about to add some further comment, but nothing came.
“Oh!” was all that I found appropriate.
I felt that the action of my opera was hanging fire. Indeed, every one was beginning to feel it. The Hall door had been shut against the bane of the night-air. The stimulus of the fragrant night-stock had been excluded. Miss Tattersall pretended not to yawn. We all pretended that we did not feel a craving to yawn. The chatter rose and fell spasmodically in short devitalised bursts of polite effort.
I looked round for Brenda, but could not see her anywhere.
“Won’t you come back into the drawing-room?” Mrs. Jervaise was saying to the Sturtons.
“Oh! thank you, it’s hardly worth while, is it?” Mrs. Sturton answered effusively, but she loosened the shawl that muffled her throat as if she were preparing for a longer wait. “I’m so sorry,” she apologised for the seventh time. “So very unfortunate after such a really delightful evening.”
They kept up that kind of conversation for quite a long time, while we listened eagerly for the sound of the motor-horn.
And no motor-horn came; instead, after endlessly tedious minutes, John returned bearing himself like a portent of disaster.
The confounded fellow whispered again.
“What, not anywhere?” Jervaise asked irritably. “Sure he hasn’t gone to bed?”
John said something in that too discreet voice of his, and then Jervaise scowled and looked round at the ascending humanity of the staircase. His son Frank detached himself from the swarm, politely picked his way down into the Hall, and began to put John under a severe cross-examination.
“What’s up now, do you suppose?” Miss Tattersall asked, with the least tremor of excitement sounding in her voice.
“Perhaps the chauffeur has followed the example of Carter, and afterwards hidden his shame,” I suggested.
I was surprised by the warmth of her contradiction. “Oh, no” she said. “He isn’t the least that sort of man.” She said it as if I had aspersed the character of one of her friends.
“He seems to have gone, disappeared, any-way,” I replied.
“It’s getting frightfully mysterious,” Miss Tattersall agreed, and added inconsequently, “He’s got a strong face, you know; keen—looks as if he’d get his own way about things, though, of course, he isn’t a gentleman.”
I had a suspicion that she had been flirting with the romantic chauffeur. She was the sort of young woman who would flirt with any one.
I wished they would open that Hall door again. The action of my play had become dispersed and confused. Frank Jervaise had gone off through the baize door with John, and the Sturtons and their host and hostess were moving reluctantly towards the drawing-room.
“We might almost as well go and sit down somewhere,” I suggested to Miss Tattersall, and noted three or four accessible blanks on the staircase.
“Almost,” she agreed after a glance at the closed door that shut out the night.
In the re-arrangement I managed to leave her on a lower step, and climbed to the throne of the gods, at present occupied only by Gordon Hughes, one of Frank Jervaise’s barrister friends from the Temple. Hughes was reputed “brilliantly clever.” He was a tallish fellow with ginger red hair and a long nose—the foxy type.
“Rum start!” I cried, by way of testing his intellectual quality, but before I could get on terms with him, the stage was taken by a dark, curly-haired, handsome boy of twenty-four or so, generally addressed as “Ronnie.” I had thought him very like a well-intentioned retriever pup. I could imagine him worrying an intellectual slipper to pieces with great gusto.
“I say, it’s all U.P. now,” he said, in a dominating voice. “What’s the time?” He was obviously too well turned out to wear a watch with evening dress.
Some one said it was “twenty-five to one.”
“Fifty to one against another dance, then,” Ronnie barked joyously.
“Unless you’ll offer yourself up as a martyr in a good cause,” suggested Nora Bailey.
“Offer myself up? How?” Ronnie asked.
“Take ’em home in your car,” Nora said in a penetrating whisper.
“Dead the other way,” was Ronnie’s too patent excuse.
“It’s only a couple of miles through the Park, you know,” Olive Jervaise put in. “You might easily run them over to the vicarage and be back again in twenty minutes.”
“By Jove; yes. So I might,” Ronnie acknowledged. “That is, if I may really come back, Miss Jervaise. Awfully good of you to suggest it. I didn’t bring my man with me, though. I’ll have to go and wind up the old buzz-wagon myself, if your fellow can’t be found. Do you think … could any one…”
He was looking round, searching for some one who was not there.
“Want any help?” Hughes asked.
“No, thanks. That’s all right. I know where the