“You wouldn’t do that, Carlos.”
“Let me tell you, my good Breezy, that if the law is to be invoked it is I who invoke it.”
“Damn and blast you,” Breezy shouted in a frenzy.
“What the devil’s all the row about?” asked Lord Pastern. He had entered unobserved. A wide-brimmed sombrero decorated his head, its strap supporting his double chin. “I thought I’d wear this,” he said. “It goes with the shootin’ don’t you think? Yipee!”
When Rivera left her, Félicité had sat on in the study, her hands clenched between her knees, trying to bury quickly and forever the memory of the scene they had just ended. She looked aimlessly about her, at the litter of tools in the open drawer at her elbow, at the typewriter, at familiar prints, ornaments and books. Her throat was dry. She was filled with nausea and an arid hatred. She wished ardently to rid herself of all memory of Rivera and in doing so to humiliate and injure him. She was still for so long that when at last she moved, her right leg was numb and her foot pricked and tingled. As she rose stiffly and cautiously, she heard someone cross to the landing, pass the study and go into the drawing-room next door.
“I’ll go up to Hendy,” she thought. “I’ll ask Hendy to tell them I’m not coming to the Metronome.”
She went out on the landing. Somewhere on the second floor her stepfather’s voice shouted: “My sombrero, you silly chap — Somebody’s taken it. That’s all. Somebody’s collared it.” Spence came through the drawing-room door, carrying an envelope on a salver.
“It’s for you, miss,” he said. “It was left on the hall table. I’m sure I’m very sorry it was not noticed before.”
She took it. It was addressed in typescript. Across the top was printed a large “Urgent” with “by District Messenger” underneath. Félicité returned to the study and tore it open.
Three minutes later Miss Henderson’s door was flung open and she, lifting her gaze from her book, saw Félicité, glowing before her.
“Hendy — Hendy, come and help me dress. Hendy, come and make me lovely. Something marvellous has happened. Hendy, darling, it’s going to be a wonderful party.”
CHAPTER V
A WREATH FOR RIVERA
Against a deep blue background the arm of a giant metronome kept up its inane and constant gesture. It was outlined in miniature lights, and to those patrons who had drunk enough, it left in its wake a formal ghost pattern of itself in colour. It was mounted on part of the wall overhanging the band alcove. The ingenious young man responsible for the décor had so designed this alcove that the band platform itself appeared as a projection from the skeleton tower of the metronome. The tip of the arm swept to and fro above the bandsmen’s heads in a maddening reiterative arc, pointing them out, insisting on their noise. An inverted metronome had been considered “great fun” by the ingenious young man but it had been found advisable to switch off the mechanism from time to time and when this was done the indicator pointed downwards. Either Breezy Bellairs or a favoured soloist was careful to place himself directly beneath the light-studded pointer at its tip.
On their semicircular rostrum the seven performers of the dance band crouched, blowing, scraping and hitting at their instruments. This was the band that worked on extension nights, from dinner time to eleven o’clock, at the Metronome. It was known as the Jivesters, and was not as highly paid or as securely established as Breezy Bellairs and His Boys. But of course it was a good band, carefully selected by Caesar Bonn, the manager and maître de café, who was also a big shareholder in the Metronome.
Caesar himself, glossy, immeasurably smart, in full control of his accurately graded cordiality, moved, with a light waggle of his hips, from the vestibule into the restaurant and surveyed his guests. He bowed roguishly as his headwaiter, with raised hand, preceded a party of five to their table. “Hullo, Caesar. Evenin’,” said Lord Pastern. “Brought my family, you see.”
Caesar flourished his hands. “It is a great evening for the Metronome, my lady. A gala of galas.”
“No doubt,” said her ladyship.
She seated her guests. She herself, with erect bust, faced the dance floor, her back to the wall. She raised her lorgnette. Caesar and the headwaiter hovered. Lord Pastern ordered hock.
“We are much too close, George,” Lady Pastern shouted above the Jivesters, who had just broken out in a frenzy. And indeed their table had been crammed in alongside the band dais and hard by the tympanist. Félicité could have touched his foot. “I had it put here specially,” Lord Pastern yelled. “I knew you’d want to watch me.”
Carlisle, sitting between her uncle and Edward Manx, nervously clutched her evening bag and wondered if they were all perhaps a little mad. What, for instance, had come over Félicité? Why, whenever she looked at Edward, did she blush? Why did she look so often and so queerly at him, like a bewildered and — yes — a besotted schoolgirl? And why, on the landing at Duke’s Gate, after a certain atrocious scene with Rivera (Carlisle closed her memory on the scent), had Ned behaved with such ferocity? And why, after all, was she, in the middle of a complicated and disagreeable crisis, so happy?
Edward Manx, seated between Félicité and Carlisle, was also bewildered. A great many things had happened to him that evening. He had had a row with Rivera in the dining-room. He had made an astonishing discovery. Later (and, unlike Carlisle, he found this recollection entirely agreeable) he had come on to the landing at the precise moment when Rivera was making a determined effort to embrace Carlisle and had hit Rivera very hard on the left ear. While they were still, all three of them, staring at each other, Félicité had appeared with a letter in her hands. She had taken one look at Edward and, going first white under her make-up and then scarlet, had fled upstairs. From that moment she had behaved in the most singular manner imaginable. She kept catching his eye and as often as this happened she smiled and blushed. Once she gave a mad little laugh. Edward shook his head and asked Lady Pastern to dance. She consented. He rose, and placing his right hand behind her iron waist walked her cautiously down the dance floor. It was formidable, dancing with Cousin Cécile.
“If anything,” she said when they had reached the spot farthest away from the band, “could compensate for my humiliation in appearing at this lamentable affair, my dearest boy, it is the change your presence has wrought in Félicité.”
“Really?” said Edward nervously.
“Indeed, yes. From her childhood, you have exerted a profound influence.”
“Look here, Cousin Cécile — ” Edward began in extreme discomfort, but at that moment the dance band, which had for some time contented itself with the emission of syncopated grunts and pants, suddenly flared up into an elaborate rumpus. Edward was silenced.
Lord Pastern put his head on one side and contemplated the band with an air of critical patronage. “They’re not bad, you know,” he said, “but they haven’t got enough guts. Wait till you hear us, Lisle. What?”
“I know,” Carlisle said encouragingly. At the moment his naïveté touched her. She was inclined to praise him as one would a child. Her eyes followed Edward, who now guided Lady Pastern gingerly past the band dais. Carlisle watched them go by and in so doing caught the eye of a man who sat at the next table. He was a monkish-looking person with a fastidious mouth and well-shaped head. A woman with short dark hair was with him. They had an air of comradeship. “They look nice,” Carlisle thought. She felt suddenly uplifted and kindly disposed to all the world, and, on this impulse, turned to Félicité. She found that Félicité, also, was watching Edward and still with that doting and inexplicable attention.