“Then why demobilize him?” I asked. “He can always be in France when it is convenient to us.”
She was quite firm about this.
“It would never do,” she said. “Mrs. Withers might make inquiries about him from some General in the Flying Corps. Indeed, I am almost sorry he was an airman at all, but that can’t be helped now.”
“He can go to India to see his parents’ graves,” said I, “if we want to get him out of the country for a long period.”
“Yes, but he can’t always be doing that. No one would make constant visits to India to see graves, however beloved were their occupants. Besides, it takes so long to go to India and back. He had much better be in his lovely home in the Lakes, and pay flying visits to London—here today and gone tomorrow—just giving us a new poem on vellum. That will be much more fun. Oh, a most important point! He must have some other friends besides us who are worthy of knowing him. John Marrible will be a nice friend for him; John will appreciate him. I will tell a few trustworthy people about Robbie, and you must do the same. We will call ourselves the Oriolists.”
Mrs. Withers, of course, telephoned both to Agnes and to me to bring Robert Oriole to her party on Thursday evening; but there were so many new and resplendent friends there that she did not, except for a passing moment, regret the absence of that poetic airman, who was up in Westmorland. We had each of us provided him with two or three nice friends, who were in sympathy with him, but for some days after that he made no particular developments, and I began to think that, having served his purpose in protecting Agnes from insanity at Mrs. Withers’s luncheon party, she was losing interest in her benefactor.
Then suddenly he burst out in renewed glory, for it came to Agnes’s ears that in allusion to that same luncheon party Mrs. Withers had said to a mutual friend that dear Aggie had told her the most wonderful things about the Secret Service which she could not possibly repeat. This was sufficient to put new life and vigour into Robert Oriole. Agnes—who had never been called “Aggie” before—dragged me from the music-room at an evening party, where Dickie Sebastian was playing all that had ever been written for the violin, and recounted this outrage on the stairs.
“I have seen that woman three times,” she said, “once when I was introduced to her, once when I lunched with her on the day Robbie was born, and once when I didn’t bring him to her Thursday evening. And now I am ‘Aggie,’ and told her all about the Secret Service! I was almost inclined to let Robbie fade away again, but now she shall see. Heavens! There she is!”
Dickie Sebastian had ceased for the moment, and a few straggling couples emerged stealthily from the music-room, the first of whom was Mrs. Withers and Lord Marrible. Mrs. Withers would have been content, so it struck me, to kiss her hand to Agnes and pass on, for she had just been alluding to Aggie again, but since he came to a stop, she was obliged to wait also. He had already heard that he was “Jack,” and his broad good-humoured face was a-chink with merriment as he spoke to my companion.
“Hallo, Aggie!” he said. “Been talking Secret Service on the stairs?”
“Mr. Goodenough and I,” said Agnes carefully, “were waiting for Robbie. Do go and find him and bring him here by his golden hair.”
“What, is Robbie here?” he asked, thereby conveying to me that he was an Oriolist. “I didn’t see him. If Robbie is in a room it’s not easy to miss him. I didn’t even know he was in town.”
“Of course he is,” said Agnes. “Fancy not knowing if Robbie is in town. You might as well not know—”
“If the sun is shining,” said I fervently.
“Quite. Lord Marrible, do go back and see if he isn’t there. He and Mr. Goodenough and I are going back to his flat, and he is going to read to us. And then he is going to play the piano and then I suppose it will be time for breakfast before we have talked enough.”
Mrs. Withers rose like a great salmon fresh from the sea, and rushed at this wonderful lure.
“I never heard anything so improper,” she said. “You and—and Mr. Goodenough and Robbie Oriole! My dear Miss Lockett, who is chaperoning you?”
Agnes’s face dimpled into the most delicious smile.
“Ah, we don’t want any chaperon in the sunlight,” she said, as John shouldered his way back into the music-room.
“Then let me drop you all at his flat,” said Mrs. Withers. “I have my motor here, and I’m going home now. I am sure it is not out of my way.”
Agnes nudged me with her elbow to indicate that I had to answer this.
“Robbie’s car is here, many thanks,” I said. “It’s waiting for us. I saw it when I came in.”
“And he plays the piano too?” asked Mrs. Withers.
Agnes laughed.
“Ah, I believe you know him all the time,” she said, “and mean to repeat to him all the nice things that we say about him. You know him intimately, I believe, but if you tell me that he has already sent you those three sonnets he wrote as he flew to Cologne the other day, which he promised to read us tonight, I don’t think I could bear it. Mr. Goodenough and I were promised the first hearing of them, and I believe he has sent them to you already.”
“Indeed he hasn’t,” said Mrs. Withers in a social agony. “I really don’t know Mr. Oriole, though I am dying to. I hoped you would have brought him to my little party last Thursday.”
“Thursday, Thursday,” said Agnes. “Yes, I remember: Robbie was up in the Lakes. Such a pity! He would have loved it, just the sort of party he adores.”
Mrs. Withers’s brow, that Greek brow with a fillet of crimson velvet across it, from which depended a splendid pearl, grew slightly corrugated, and made the pearl tremble. She prided herself on knowing all her engagements for a week ahead, but the recollection of them was difficult even to her.
“Sunday at lunch then,” she said. “Will you both come and bring Mr. Oriole? Tell him how divine it would be if he would read us the Cologne sonnets.”
“I’ll tell Robbie,” said Agnes, “but as for your chance of finding him disengaged, I couldn’t promise anything. How his friends grab him when he appears I Ah, there’s John—I mean Lord Marrible. Well?”
“He simply isn’t here.”
Agnes turned to me.
“Ah, now I remember,” she said. “He told me that if he couldn’t get here by half-past ten, he wouldn’t come at all, but would just send the car for us. What time is it now?”
“Eleven,” said I.
“Oh, come quick, then,” said she. “We’ve missed half an hour already.”
Lord Marrible turned to Mrs. Withers.
“Well, you and I must console ourselves with supper,” he said, “as Robbie hasn’t asked us.”
It was all very well for Agnes to say that we would go quickly, but Mrs. Withers just clung.
“But wouldn’t he let me come too?” she said. “Mayn’t I drop you at his door, Miss Lockett, and I would wait while you asked him if I might come in?”
Agnes’s face dimpled again.
“My dear, if it were possible!” she said. “But with Robbie, however intimately you know him, you can’t quite do that. You agree with me, Lord Marrible, I know. But if—if he gives me a copy of the Cologne sonnets, or lets me make one, you may guess to whom I will show it, unless he absolutely forbids me to show it to anybody. How tiresome it is that you don’t know him!”
Mrs. Withers’s pearl trembled again.
“Or if lunch on Sunday won’t suit Mr. Oriole,” she said, “I have got a few people to dinner on Tuesday