“Sissignor,” said Francesco. “But the dinner is not yet quite ready, for I was watching with your telescope. Five liras!… There was once a man who backed five numbers at the Lotto, and behold they all came out even as he had backed them. He won a hundred thousand liras, and an estate in Calabria, and—”
“Dinner,” said I, and Francesco ran to the kitchen.
I walked on air. Alone that evening I had had the courage of my opinion, and for once had divined Mrs. Mackellar’s mind to the extent of backing my divination for five liras. That is a lot of money here—for a stall at the cinema (front row) only costs one.
THE ORIOLISTS
In spite of the unaccountable absence of a Cabinet Minister who should have sat between our hostess, Mrs. Withers and Miss Agnes Lockett, I felt that this luncheon-party must be considered as perhaps the most epoch-making that had, up to the present date, been enticed beneath that insatiably hospitable roof. Never had the comet-like orbit of our entertainer ascended quite so high towards the zenith.
With the negligible exception of myself, for whose presence there I shall soon amply account, there was not one among us, man, woman or child (for that prodigy on the fiddle, Dickie Sebastian, in his tight colossal sailor-suit, was of the company) whose name was not thrillingly familiar to the great percentage of the readers of those columns in the daily Press which inform us who was in the park on Sunday chatting with friends, or at the first night of the new play looking lovely.
Briefly to tell the number and brightness of these stars, there was a much beribboned general from Salonica, a girl just engaged to the heir of one of our most respectable dukedoms, a repatriated prisoner from Ruhleben, a medium possessed of devastating insight, a prominent actress from a revue, a lion hunter (not our amiable hostess, but a swarthy taciturnity from East Africa), and the adorable Agnes Lockett, lately created a Dame in the Order of the British Empire in connexion with Secret Service. She had just been demobilized, and, as she freely admitted, four years of conundrums and traps had undermined the frankness of her disposition. Schemes, plans, intrigues had become—for the moment—a second nature to her, and she was not happy unless she was laying a trap for somebody else, or suspecting (quite erroneously) that somebody was laying a trap for her. She had also become a smooth conversational liar. These things had not, it may be mentioned, affected her charm and her beauty.
Finally, there was myself, who had no claim to distinction of any kind beyond such as is inherent in living next door to Mrs. Withers and being honoured with the friendship of Agnes Lockett.
I had been asked by telephone just at luncheontime, as I was in the act of sitting down to a tough and mournful omelette alone, and I naturally felt quite certain that I had been bidden to take the place of some guest (not the Cabinet Minister whom she still expected) who had disappointed Mrs. Withers at the last moment. This was confirmed by the fact that she told me in her clearest telephone voice that I had promised to come today (which I knew was not the case) and that she was merely reminding me.
Obviously, then, she was in urgent need of somebody, for it was not her custom to “remind” all her expected guests at the very moment when they were due at her house, and my inclusion in this resplendent galaxy was certainly due to the convenient fact that, as I lived next door, I should not keep the rest of her party waiting.… It is, I hope, unnecessary to add that, with the unfortunate exception of myself, everyone present appeared in the informing pages of “Who’s Who,” so that his work and recreations were known to the reading public and would afford a good start to the medium in case we had a séance afterwards.
As the currents of conversation set this way and that, I was occasionally marooned in a backwater, and could hear what Mrs. Withers was saying to Agnes Lockett. The latter had been to the new play last night, and an allusion to it produced from our hostess a flood of typical monologue delivered in the judicial voice for which she was famous. She was a big lean woman who radiated a stinging vitality that paralysed the timid, and as she spoke, her eyes patrolled the distinguished table with the utmost satisfaction and controlled the service.
“Yes, Roland Somerville is marvellous in the part,” she said, “and I told him he had never done a finer piece of work. But I thought Margaret had not quite grasped his conception of it. I went round, of course, to see her afterwards, and as she asked me what I thought I told her just that.”
At this moment the telephone bell rang in the room adjoining, and Mrs. Withers, though continuing to analyse the play with her accustomed acumen (it had produced precisely the same effect on her as on the author of the critique in the Daily Herald) was a little distraite in manner till her parlour-maid communicated the message.
“Ah, that accounts for Hugh Chapel’s absence, who was to have sat between us,” she said to Agnes. “He was sent for to the Palace at a quarter-past one and is lunching there. And I ordered golden plovers especially for him. Hugh was at Priscilla’s last night, looking very tired, I thought. You know him, of course, Miss Lockett?”
Agnes was looking a little dazed.
“Not yet,” she said. “You asked me here to meet him.”
Mrs. Withers made a gesture of impatience at herself. As a matter of fact she had, in asking Agnes Lockett, told her that Mr. Chapel was coming, and in asking him, had told him that Miss Lockett was coming, thus hoping to kill two lions with one lunch.
“Of course! How stupid of me,” she said. “Let us instantly arrange another day when you can both be here. Ah! Do come to a little party I have on Thursday night. You will find Lord Marrible here too; he only got back from America ten days ago. Poor Jack! He had a terrible voyage, and he is such a bad sailor.”
A look of slight astonishment came over Agnes’s face, and remembering that she and Lord Marrible were old and intimate friends, I wondered whether she was surprised at this odd allusion to “poor Jack,” for he was known to his intimate circle as John. Personally, I had had the felicity of making him and my hostess known to each other only a few days ago, and I too wondered a little at the speedy ripening of the acquaintanceship. I did not wonder much, for I knew Mrs. Withers’s friendly disposition, and her tendency to allude to everybody by his Christian name. But at the moment a too rash act of swallowing on the part of Dickie Sebastian, who sat next me, made it my duty towards my neighbour to thump him on his fat back for fear that we should never hear his violin again, and my attention was distracted. When the fish-bone in question had been safely deposited on the edge of his plate, the telephone had again been ringing, and Mrs. Withers was retailing the reason for the absence of somebody called Humphrey, whose place I conjectured that I was now occupying.
During the discussion of the golden plovers, which had been provided for the absent Mr. Chapel, I became aware that Agnes Lockett was being drenched and bewildered with the flood of celebrated names that was playing on her as if from some fire-hose. Actors, authors, politicians, social stars, soldiers and sailors were deluging her, and, without exception, they had all been here, by their Christian names, last week, or at any rate were coming next week. Without exception, too, each of them had told Mrs. Withers in confidence what she repeated now to Agnes, knowing that it would go no farther. George had assured her of this, Arthur had hinted that, Jenny had thought this probable, Maudie had scouted the idea altogether, but however much they had disagreed, it was certain that they would all be here on Thursday evening, and Agnes could talk to them herself.
As I listened and looked, I saw that a species of desperation was seizing Agnes; she was finding the recital absolutely intolerable. Then an idea seemed to strike her, and looking round to catch a friendly eye, she caught mine, and spoke to me across the table.
“Have you seen Robert Oriole lately?” she asked in her delicious husky voice, that was so unlike the canary-tone of Mrs. Withers. But as she asked me this, she gave me a peremptory affirmative nod of which I could not miss the significance. I had never heard of Robert Oriole before, but I was certain that Aernes for some reason of her own insisted that I did know him, and accordingly I answered in that sense.
“We went to a play together last night,” I said. At that