Читать книгу Gray youth - Oliver Onions - Страница 8

A shout went up that stirred the dust on the chandeliers. Stout, red-faced, rubbing his hands, and (in flat violation of Miss Addams’s rule) puffing a gigantic cigar, Mr. Wellcome himself stood in the doorway, frowning humorously on the group that twisted with laughter about Mrs. Deschamps.

“Now, now, now, now, now—what’s all this about?” Mr. Wellcome cried with mock severity.

Acclamations broke forth.

“Wellcome, by Jove!” cried Mr. Rainbow, in a sort of glad consternation.

“Bravo!” shouted Mr. Geake. “It’s old Wellcome!”

“Come in out o’ the wet!”

“Welcome, Wellcome!”

“Hooray!”

Mr. Wellcome came in, crossed straight to Miss Addams, kissed her without a moment’s hesitation (only remarking, “When the cat’s away—eh?”), slapped his hands loudly together, and then, turning his head half a dozen times this way and that, cried, “Well, and how are we all, eh?”

They cheered him again.

“And now where’s Massey and the blushing one?” Mr. Wellcome demanded; and when he had found them and shaken hands with them he almost doubled the scholastic stationer in two with the blow he gave him between the shoulder-blades. He gave a “Ha, ha, ha!” of amazing volume.

“Done it now, my boy!” he cried. “Nasty things, actions for Breach! Twopence on the bus from High Street to the Broadway now! Well, well, we all do it, even the flies on the sugar-basin! Congrats, congrats.—Now, Mrs. Deschamps! Damme, I must have a kiss from you too, if it was only for the sake of old times!—Where’s Mrs. W——? Tut-tut, you ought to know better than to ask; ask Massey, he knows—or he will one of these days! … Well, now we’re all here let’s get on with the Prayer Meeting. Phtt!”

Mr. Wellcome whistled and snapped his fingers to the waiter at the door.

For Mr. Wellcome never came empty-handed. The Belgian waiter approached with a tray, and it was now discovered that another tray chock-full of jingling glasses stood outside. Mr. Wellcome travelled for Perclay Barkins & Co., and knew butlers and wine-tasters and cellarmen and head-waiters, and was to be relied on for valuable information about vintages and bottling and tobacco-crops.—“Stand there, Whiskerino, by Miss Addams,” he commanded the waiter; and from the tray he began to toss into Miss Addams’s lap a number of articles.

“Thought you might find a use for these,” he said off-handedly. (They were packs of cards that had been used once in some Club or other.) “And you might as well have the latest multiple corkscrew as anybody else, I suppose, eh? Catch!—Now, friends and gentlemen all, oblige me by joining me in a smoke. The curtains, mother? Dash the curtains; Massey don’t get engaged every day, at least I hope he doesn’t; not that there’s any knowing what some of them does under the rose—ha, ha, ha! … Now, Sandys, help yourself. Here’s a cutter. Smoke half of it, and then throw t’other half away; there’s plenty more in the box.—Now, where’s Rainbow? Here you are; you’re my man; you know a little bit of all right when you taste it; half a minute, and I’ll ask your opinion of this——”

Mr. Wellcome’s face became deeply serious as he stooped for a minute; then, as he stood upright again with a bottle in his right hand and a liqueur glass in his left, it shone once more.

“Steady … there!” He passed an exquisitely filled glass to Mr. Rainbow. “Warm it in your hands a minute first—this way—smell it—and now roll it slowly round the inside o’ your mouth!——”

Had Mr. Rainbow been Cinquevalli balancing the billiard-balls every eye could not have been more intently on him.

“Mmmmmm!” he murmured ecstatically, lips closed, nostrils gently sniffing, eyes fondling the glass.

“Eh?” said Mr. Wellcome, winking to all and sundry, as much as to say, Hadn’t he told them so? “Eh? What? Spanish, should you say? I should think so! W. W. gives you his word for that, worth something or worth nothing as the case may be! … Now, all! Rainbow’s only the taster, in case it was poison; you hold that tray steady, Antonionio; ladies first, I think, is the law of politeness——”

And the tiny glasses, rich and deep as Amory’s hair, were passed round.

Never such a party had been given at Glenerne. The smell of the cigars and the brandy filled the air like some incense burned before the god of the naughty World; more witty things were said by loosened tongues than their owners could ever hope to remember. Fun? Oh, there was fun when Mr. Wellcome himself took matters in hand! … “Now, who says a flutter?” he said by and by, shuffling one of the packs of cards as only Mr. Wellcome could shuffle cards. “For love, Nellie—and forfeits——” But Nellie (Mrs. Deschamps) had already been fluttered by the Kissing Bee, and was in a mood too softened for cards; and, for fear the brandy should have affected anybody, another tray with strong coffee was passed round by Omar K, the red-fezzed boy from Smyrna with the face of the hue of a chocolate “shape.” They kept it up late; for once the “lights out at eleven” rule was suspended; and even Amory sat up quite a long time after she might without singularity have gone to bed. At last Mr. Wellcome rose. He for one had enjoyed himself just fair-to-middling, he said. The mats and rugs were left where they were, pushed back against the walls. Quite twenty voices downstairs in the hall sang that Mr. Wellcome was a jolly good fellow, and what remained of the Spanish brandy was brought downstairs for the two policemen who (nobody knew how) were presently discovered, smiling and with their helmets in their hands, just within the front door.—“Best respects, sir,” said one of them, and “Many of ’em,” said the other.

And so said all the rest.