Mrs. Palmer was waiting in the anteroom at Sherry's when her two English guests arrived, and greeted them with shrill enthusiasm. A rather stout young American, good-looking in a coarse, uncultivated kind of manner, and dressed in a subtly ill-dressed, expensive mode, was with her.
'And here you are!' she cried. 'How are you, Lord Keynes? I'm delighted to see you again. Mrs. Massington, you must let me present to you Mr. Armstrong, who has been so long dying to make your acquaintance that I thought he would be dead before you got here. Mrs. Massington, Mr. Reginald Armstrong. Lord Keynes, Mr. Armstrong.'
The American murmured his national formula about being very pleased, and Mrs. Palmer continued without intermission.
'And I've got no party to meet you,' she said, 'because I thought you would be tired with your journey, and want to have a quiet evening, and we'll go in to dinner at once. Lord Keynes, you look as if America agreed with you, and I see they have been interviewing you already. Well, that's our way here. Why, when Reginald Armstrong gave his equestrian party down at Port Washington last week, I assure you there was a string of our newspaper men a quarter of a mile long waiting to see him.'
The curious shrillness of talk peculiar to America sounded loud in the restaurant as they made their sidling way by crowded tables toward one of the windows looking on the street.
'Equestrian party?' asked Mrs. Massington. 'What is that?'
'Tell them, Reginald,' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Why, it tickled me to death, your equestrian party. Mrs. Massington, those are blue points. You must eat them. Tell them, Reginald.'
'Well, my stable was burned down last fall,' said he, 'and I've been building a new one. So I determined to open it in some kind of characteristic way.'
'His own idea,' said Mrs. Palmer in a loud aside to Bertie. 'He's one of our brightest young men; you'll see a lot of him.'
'So I thought,' continued Mr. Armstrong, 'that I'd give a stable party—make everyone dress as grooms. But then the ladies objected to dressing as grooms. I'm sure I don't know why. I should have thought they'd have liked to show their figures. But some objected. Mrs. Palmer objected. I don't know why she objected—looking at her—but she did object.'
Mrs. Palmer smiled.
'Isn't he lovely?' she said loudly across the table to Mrs. Massington.
'Well, she objected,' again continued Mr. Armstrong; 'and when Mrs. Palmer objects, she objects. She said she wouldn't come. So I had to think of something else. And it occurred to me that the best thing we could do was to have dinner on horseback in the stables.'
He paused a moment.
'Well, that dinner was a success,' he said. 'I say it was a success, and I'm modest too. I had fifty tables made, fitting on to the horses' shoulders, and we all sat on horseback, and ate our dinners in the new stables. Fifty of us in a big circle with the horses' heads pointing inwards, and simultaneously the horses ate their dinner out of a big circular manger. And that dinner has been talked about for a week, and it 'll be talked about till next week. Next week Mrs. Palmer gives a party, and my dinner will be as forgotten as what Adam and Eve had for tea when they were turned out of Paradise.'
'No, don't tell them,' screamed Mrs. Palmer. 'Reginald, if you tell them, I shall never forgive you.'
'Please don't, then, Mr. Armstrong,' said Sybil. 'I should hate it if you were never forgiven. Besides, I like surprises. I should have loved your dinner; I think it was too unkind of you to have given it before I came. Or else it is unkind of you to have told me about it now that it is over.'
She laughed with genuine amusement.
'Bertie, is it not heavenly?' she said. 'We think of that sort of thing sometimes in England. Do you remember the paper ball? But we so seldom do it. And did it all go beautifully? Did not half fall off their horses?'
'Well, Mrs. Palmer's husband, Lewis S., he wouldn't get on a real horse,' he said. 'He said that he was endangering too many shareholders. So I got a wooden horse for him, and had it covered with gold-leaf.'
'Lewis on a rocking-horse!' screamed his wife. 'I died—I just died!'
'Luckily, she had a resurrection,' said Mr. Armstrong; 'otherwise I should never have forgiven myself. But you did laugh, you did laugh,' he said.
Mrs. Palmer probably did. Certainly she did now.
The dinner went on its way. Everything was admirable: what was designed to be cold was iced; what was designed to be hot was molten. Round them the shrill-toned diners grew a little shriller; outside the crisp noise of horses' hoofs on asphalt grew more frequent. Mrs. Emsworth's first night was the feature of the evening; and even the harassed financiers, to whom to-morrow, as dictated by the voice of the telephone from Long Island, might mean ruin or redoubled fortunes, had with closing hours laid all ideas of dollars aside, and, like sensible men, proposed to distract themselves till the opening of business next morning distracted them. For Mrs. Emsworth was something of a personality; her friends, who were many, said she could act; her enemies, who were legion, allowed she was beautiful, and New York, which sets the time in so many things, takes its time very obediently in matters of artistic import from unbusiness-like England and France. In this conviction, it was flocking there to-night. Besides the great impresario, Bilton, had let her the Dominion Theatre, and was known to have given her carte blanche in the matter of mounting and dresses. This meant, since he was a shrewd man, a belief in her success, for into the value of business he never allowed any other consideration to enter. Furthermore, there had been from time to time a good deal of interest in England over Mrs. Emsworth's career, the sort of interest which does more for a time in filling a theatre than would acting of a finer quality than hers have done. The piece she was to appear in was a petit saleté of no importance whatever. That always suited her best; she liked her audience to be quite undistracted by any interest in the plot, so that they might devote themselves to the contemplation of her dresses and herself. Of her dresses the quality was admirable, the quantity small; of herself there was abundance, both of quality and quantity, for she was a tall woman, and, as we have said, even her enemies conceded her good looks.
The piece had already begun when the little partie carrée from Sherry's entered, and rustled to the large stage-box which Bilton had reserved for them. Mrs. Emsworth, in fact, was at the moment making her first entrance, and, as they took their places, was acknowledging the applause with which she was greeted. Naturally enough, her eye, as she bowed to the house, travelled over its occupants, and she saw the party arriving. This was made easy for her by Mrs. Palmer's voluble enthusiasm, which really for the moment divided the attention of the house between the stage and her box.
'I adore her, I just adore her!' she cried; 'and she promised to come down from Saturday till Monday to Long Island. You know her, of course, Lord Keynes? There's something magnetic to me about her. I told her so this afternoon. I think it's her neck. Look at her bending her head, Mrs. Massington. I really think that Mrs. Emsworth's neck is the most magnetic thing I ever saw. Reginald, isn't it magnetic?'
The magnetic lady proceeded. She acted with immense and frolicsome enjoyment, like some great good-humoured child bursting with animal spirits. To the rather tired and heated occupants of the stalls she came like a sudden breeze on a hot day, so infectious was her enjoyment, so natural and unaffected her pleasure in exhibiting her beauty and buoyant vitality. The critical element in the audience—in any case there was not much—she simply took by the scruff of the neck and turned out of the theatre. 'We are here to enjoy ourselves,' she seemed to say. 'Laugh, then; look at me, and you will.' And they looked and laughed. Whether she was an actress or not was really beside the point; there was in her, anyhow, something of the irrepressible gamin of the streets, and the gamin that there is in everybody hailed its glorious cousin. Long before the act was over her success was assured, and when Mr. Bilton came in to see them in the interval, it was no wonder that his mercantile delight was apparent in his face. Once more, for the fiftieth or the hundredth time, he had staked heavily and won