'We talk of living in London, but it's a most inadequate description. There must be ten Londons to live in!'
'Quite – without counting the slums.'
'We ought to say London A, or London B, or London C. Social districts, like the postal ones; only far more of them. I suppose some people can live in more than one?'
'Yes, a few; and a good many people pay visits.'
'Are you Bohemian?' she asked, indicating the company with a little movement of her hand.
'Look at them!' he answered. 'They are smart and spotless. I'm the only one who looks the part in the least. And, behold, I am frugal, temperate, a hard worker, and a scientific man!'
'There are believed to be Bohemians still in Kensington and Chelsea,' observed Tommy Trent. 'They will think anything you please, but they won't dine out without their husbands.'
'If that's the criterion, we can manage it nearer than Chelsea,' said Trix. 'This side of Park Lane, I think.'
'You've got to have the thinking too, though,' smiled Airey.
Miles Childwick had apparently been listening; he raised his voice a little and remarked: 'The divorce between the theoretical bases of immorality – '
'Falsely so called,' murmured Hanson Smith.
'And its practical development is one of the most – '
It was no use; Peggy gurgled helplessly, and hid her face in her napkin. Childwick scowled for an instant, then leant back in his chair, smiling pathetically.
'She is the living negation of serious thought,' he complained, regarding her affectionately.
Peggy, emerging, darted him a glance as she returned to her chicken.
'When I published "Myra Lacrimans" – ' began Arty Kane.
In an instant everybody was silent. They leant forward towards him with a grave and eager attention, signing to one another to keep still. Tommy whispered: 'Don't move for a moment, waiter!'
'Oh, confound you all!' exclaimed poor Arty Kane, as he joined in the general outburst of laughter.
Trix found herself swelling it light-heartedly.
'We've found by experience that that's the only way to stop him,' Tommy explained, as with a gesture he released the grinning waiter. 'He'll talk about "Myra" through any conversation, but absolute silence makes him shy. Peggy found it out. It's most valuable. Isn't it, Mrs. John?'
'Most valuable,' agreed Mrs. John. She had made no other contribution to the conversation for some time.
'All the same,' Childwick resumed, in a more conversational tone, but with unabated perseverance, 'what I was going to say is true. In nine cases out of ten the people who are – ' He paused a moment.
'Irregular,' suggested Manson Smith.
'Thank you, Manson. The people who are irregular think they ought to be regular, and the people who are regular have established their right to be irregular. There's a reason for it, of course – '
'It seems rather more interesting without one,' remarked Elfreda Flood.
'No reason, I think?' asked Horace Harnack, gathering the suffrages of the table.
'Certainly not,' agreed the table as a whole.
'To give reasons is a slur on our intellects and a waste of our time,' pronounced Manson Smith.
'It's such a terribly long while since I heard anybody talk nonsense on purpose,' Trix said to Airey, with a sigh of enjoyment.
'They do it all the time; and, yes, it's rather refreshing.'
'Does Mr. Childwick mind?'
'Mind?' interposed Tommy. 'Gracious, no! He's playing the game too; he knows all about it. He won't let on that he does, of course, but he does all the same.'
'The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed, 'that the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the emotions disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such patience, ladies and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne with a triumphant air.
'You beat us that time,' said Peggy, with a smile of congratulation.
Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an interrupted conversation.
'If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she looks horrid, and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene looks horrid. I'm sure I don't know what to do.'
'It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack.
'I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. 'She always gets her way.'
'I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with some warmth, 'because he spelt "dreamed" with a "t." He always does. And he'd dined with me only two nights before!'
'Where?' asked Manson Smith.
'At my own rooms.'
'Then he certainly wrote it. I've dined with you there myself.'
Trix had fallen into silence, and Airey Newton seemed content not to disturb her. The snatches of varied talk fell on her ears, each with its implication of a different interest and a different life, all foreign to her. The very frivolity, the sort of schoolboy and chaffy friendliness of everybody's tone, was new in her experience, when it was united, as here it seemed to be, with a liveliness of wits and a nimble play of thought. The effect, so far as she could sum it up, was of carelessness combined with interest, independence without indifference, an alertness of mind which laughter softened. These people, she thought, were all poor (she did not include Tommy Trent, who was more of her own world), they were none of them well known, they did not particularly care to be, they aspired to no great position. No doubt they had to fight for themselves sometimes – witness Elfreda and her battle of the colours – but they fought as little as they could, and laughed while they fought, if fight they must. But they all thought and felt; they had emotions and brains. She knew, looking at Mrs. John's delicate fine face, that she too had brains, though she did not talk.
'I don't say,' began Childwick once more, 'that when Mrs. John puts us in a book, as she does once a year, she fails to do justice to our conversation, but she lamentably neglects and misrepresents her own.'
Trix had been momentarily uneasy, but Mrs. John was smiling merrily.
'I miss her pregnant assents, her brief but weighty disagreements, the rich background of silence which she imparts to the entertainment.'
Yes, Mrs. John had brains too, and evidently Miles Childwick and the rest knew it.
'When Arty wrote a sonnet on Mrs. John,' remarked Manson Smith, 'he made it only twelve lines long. The outside world jeered, declaring that such a thing was unusual, if not ignorant. But we of the elect traced the spiritual significance.'
'Are you enjoying yourself, Airey?' called Peggy Ryle.
He nodded to her cordially.
'What a comfort!' sighed Peggy. She looked round the table, laughed, and cried 'Hurrah!' for no obvious reason.
Trix whispered to Airey, 'She nearly makes me cry when she does that.'
'You can feel it?' he asked in a quick low question, looking at her curiously.
'Oh, yes, I don't know why,' she answered, glancing again at the girl whose mirth and exultation stirred her to so strange a mood.
Her eyes turned back to Airey Newton, and found a strong attraction in his face too. The strength and kindness of it, coming home to her with a keener realisation, were refined by the ever-present shadow of sorrow or self-discontent. This hint of melancholy persisted even while he took his share in the gaiety of the evening; he was cheerful, but he had not the exuberance of most of them; he was far from bubbling over in sheer joyousness like Peggy; he could not achieve even the unruffled and pain-proof placidity of Tommy Trent. Like herself then – in spite of a superficial remoteness from her, and an obviously nearer kinship with the company in life and circumstances – he was in spirit something