Читать книгу The Parts Men Play - Beverley Baxter - Страница 31

Lady Durwent was blessed in the possession of a cook whose artistry was beyond question, if the same could not be said of the guests to whom she so frequently ministered. She was a descendant of the French, that race which makes everything tend towards development of the soul, and consequently looks upon a meal as something of a sacrament. She prepared a dinner with a balance of contrast and climax that a composer might show in writing a tone poem.

On this eventful evening, therefore, the dinner-party, stimulated by her art and by potent wines (gazing with long-necked dignity at the autocratic whisky-decanter), rapidly assumed a crescendo and an accelerando—the two things for which a hostess listens.

H. Stackton Dunckley had held the resolutionist in a duel of language—a combat with broadswords—and honours were fairly even. The short-sleeved Johnston Smyth had waged futurist warfare against the modernist Pyford, while the Honourable Miss Durwent sat helplessly between them, with as little chance of asserting her rights as the Dormouse at the Mad Hatter's tea-party. The American had held his own in badinage with the daughter of Italy on one side and his hostess on the other, the latter, however, being too skilled in entertaining to do more than murmur a few encouragements to the spontaneity that so palpably existed.

'Let me see,' said Lady Durwent as the meal came to a close and the butler looked questioningly at her. 'Shall we'—she opened the caverns of her throat, producing a volume that instantly silenced every one—'SHALL WE HAVE COFFEE IN HERE OR IN THE DRAWING-ROOM? I suppose you gentlemen, as usual, want to chat over your port and cigars alone.'

H. Stackton Dunckley protested that absence from the ladies, even for so short a time, would completely spoil his evening—receiving in reward a languorous glance from Lady Durwent. Johnston Smyth, who had done more than ample justice to the wines, offered to 'pink' at fifty yards any man who would consider the proposition for a moment. Only Norton Pyford, in a sort of befuddled gallantry, suggested that the ladies might have sentimental confidences to exchange, and leered amorously at Elise Durwent.

'Well,' said Lady Durwent, 'I am sure we are all curious to hear what Mr. Selwyn thinks of England, so I think we shall have coffee here. Is it agreeable to every one?'

Unanimous approval greeted the proposal, and, at a sign from the hostess, cigarettes, cigars, and coffee made their appearance, with the corresponding niceties of 'Just one, please,' 'Well, perhaps a cigarette might be enjoyable,' 'I know men like a cigar,' 'After you, old man,' and all those various utterances which tickle the ear, creating in the speaker's breast the feeling of saying the right thing and doing it rather well.

Throughout the dinner the daughter of the house had sat practically without a remark, and even when chorus effects were achieved by the rest, remained with almost immobile features, merely glancing from one to another, momentarily interested or openly bored. Several times the American had looked furtively at the arresting face, marred by too apparent mental resentment, but the barricade of Johnston Smyth's angular personality had been too powerful for him to surmount with anything but the most superficial persiflage.

He had watched her take a cigarette, accepting a light from Smyth, who surrounded the action with a ludicrous dignity, when she looked up and met his eyes.

'Mr. Selwyn,' she said, speaking with the same rapidity of phrasing that had both held and exasperated him before, 'we are all waiting for the verdict of the Man from America.'

'Over there,' he smiled, 'it is customary to take evidence before giving a verdict.'

'Good,' boomed the resolutionist; 'very good!'

'Then,' said Lady Durwent, 'we seven shall constitute a jury.'

'Order!' Johnston Smyth rose to his feet and hammered the table with a bottle. 'Oyez, oyez, you hereby swear that you shall well and truly try'——

'Can't,' said Norton Pyford, pulling himself up; 'I'm prejudiced.'

'For or against?'

'Against the culprit.'

'My discordant friend,' said Smyth, producing a second bottle from an unsuspected source and making it disappear mysteriously, 'means that he is prejudiced against England. Am I right, sir?'

'Not exactly,' drawled the composer. 'I don't mind England—but I think the English are awful.'

'That is a nice point,' said Lady Durwent.

'Ah,' broke in Madame Carlotti, 'but, much as I detest the English, I hate England more. Nom de Dieu! I—a daughter of the Mediterranean, where the sun ees so rarely a stranger, and the sky and the water it ees always blue. In Italy one lives because she ees alive—it ees sufficient. Here it ees always gray, gray—always g-r-ray. When the sun comes—sacramento! he sees his mistake and goes queek away. Ah, Signor Selwyn, it ees désolant that I am compelled to live here.'

A roar of unfeeling laughter greeting her familiar plaint, Madame Carlotti took a hitch in her gown and reimprisoned some of her person which had escaped from custody.

'Then,' said Johnston Smyth, 'if we are all of a mind, there is no need to have a trial. You have all seen the accusation in Mr. Selwyn's eye, you have considered the unbiassed evidence of the lovely Carlotti'——

'But jurors can't give evidence,' muttered Mr. Dunckley.

'My dear sir, I know she can't, but she did,' said Smyth triumphantly. 'Oyez, oyez—all in favour'——

'But,' interrupted the American, 'are we not to hear any one for the defence?'

'No,' said Smyth, who was thoroughly happy as a self-constituted master of ceremonies. 'No one would accept the brief.'

'Then,' said Selwyn, 'I apply for the post of counsel for the defence, for in the limited time I have been in your country I have seen much that appeals to me.'

'Of course, it is a well-known fact,' said Dunckley sententiously, 'that American humour relies on exaggeration.'

'No, no,' said Johnston Smyth, hushing the voices with a pianissimo movement of his hands, 'it is not humour on Mr. Selwyn's part, but gratitude. In return for Christopher Columbus discovering America, this gentleman is going to repay the debt of the New World to the Old by discovering England.'

'SHALL WE HAVE SOME PORT?' said Lady Durwent, opening the sluice-gates of her vocal production.