"Tired, baby?" asked Seaton-Carew, smiling at her across the table. "I suppose you've been on the go since breakfast-time, as usual?"
"I'm afraid she has," said Mrs. Haddington. "I think I shall have to have the telephone dismantled! It never stops ringing from morning till night, and always it's scinuxme wanting my frivolous daughter, isn't it, Miss Birtly?"
"Always," responded Beulah obediently.
"Oh, Mummy, what lies you do tell!" said Cynthia, hunching a pettish shoulder.
"That reminds me," said Seaton-Carew, with what even Mr. Harte acknowledged to be praiseworthy swiftness, "I've been cursing the telephone all day myself. Been expecting an important call, which hasn't come through. I've told the Exchange to put any calls for me through to this number, Lilias. I knew you wouldn't mind."
In this he was mistaken. Mrs. Haddington might be grateful to him for trying to cover up her daughter's lapse, but she could scarcely be expected to contemplate with pleasure the prospect of seeing the smooth running of her Bridge-party disturbed by the interruption of a telephone-call. Her response, though civil, was so lacking in cordiality that even Lord Guisborough became conscious of an atmosphere of constraint. However, Timothy was inspired to ask Cynthia if she had seen the latest gangster-film, showing at the Orpheum, a gambit which dispelled her ill-humour, and induced her to launch forth into an animated and enthusiastic discussion on this and several other films of the same order. The rest of dinner passed without untoward incident. Mrs. Haddington rose from the table, playfully apologising for not being able to allow her male guests more than ten minutes with the port, and inviting them to join her in her boudoir for coffee. She then led the way out of the room, and while Cynthia went up to her bedroom to put more powder on her face and to exaggerate the already beautiful curve of her upper lip, she reminded Beulah what her various duties would be during the rest of the evening. Obedient to her command, Seaton-Carew brought his fellow-guests up to the boudoir in good time; and Thrimby, leaving a couple of flurried subordinates to clear away the remains of dinner and transform the dining-room into a refreshment buffet, followed him with the coffee-tray, which he majestically offered to everyone in turn. Cynthia reappeared just as he was leaving the room, and nearly caused Seaton-Carew to spill his coffee by seizing his free hand and saying: "Oh, Dan darling, I've something frightfully important I want to tell you! Do come up to the drawing-room!"
"Not now, my pet," said Mrs. Haddington firmly. "You can talk to Dan some other time."
"But, Mummy, you don't understand! I particularly want to say something to him now.!"
"Darling, you're forgetting! You must stay and entertain Lance, and Mr. Harte. Besides, I want to have a word with Dan myself."
"We'll go into a huddle together later on, Cynny," said Seaton-Carew soothingly.
Cynthia pouted, and protested, but before her voice had developed more than a hint of a whining note her harassed parent had inexorably swept Mr. Seaton-Carew off to the library, to discuss with him, she said, certain minor details of the approaching contest.
"I do think people are sickening," Cynthia remarked. "Where's my coffee? Oh, thanks, Timothy, you are an angel! Did you pour it out for me?"
She then gravitated, as though drawn by a magnet, to the radio-cabinet in one corner of the room, switched it on, and began to twiddle the dials. Lord Guisborough followed her, and Timothy seized the opportunity to say to Beulah, in an undervoice; "Aren't we having fun? Have you had a bloody day? You look worn-out."
"That's not very polite. I expected better things of that charming Mr. Harte who has such lovely manners."
"Less of it, my girl!" said Timothy.
At this moment a reverent voice announced that they were listening to the Third Preeogramme, and were about to be regaled with a composition by Meeozart. "This little-kneeown work," continued the voice, in the kindly tone of one addressing a class of backward students, "was compeeosed by Meeozart at the age of eighteen. It was originally -"
"O God!" ejaculated Cynthia, swinging the dial round.
This seemed, on the whole, to be fair comment. "Well said!" approved Timothy. "I bar having my enjoyment of a concert marred by a patronising voice that tells me a lot of arid facts I am capable of looking up for myself, should I by any chance wish to acquaint myself with them."
"Wireless programmes are not primarily intended for the privileged few who have had the opportunity and the leisure to acquire your culture!" said Guisborough offensively.
"Wireless programmes are neither primarily nor secondarily intended for cultured persons," replied Timothy, quite unruffled. "Too often they appear to be intended either for the entirely witless, or for those desirous of acquiring without effort a little easy knowledge. I remember that someone once gave a fifteen minute talk on the Battle of Waterloo. A sobering thought."
"Well, at least that's better than incessant and uninspiring glorification of the Little Man," said Beulah.
"I suppose," said Guisborough contemptuously, "that you are one of those who fondly imagine that history is made by the so-called Great Man?"
"Yes," replied Beulah. "I am."
"Good heavens, woman, you mustn't say things like that!" exclaimed Timothy, shocked. "Next you will say that the race is to the swift!"
Guisborough flushed angrily, but the retort he was seen to make was providentially drowned by the cacophony of sound produced by Cynthia's efforts to discover a programme that appealed to her. While she rapidly travelled from one station to the next, conversation was impossible, and by the time she had switched the current off in disgust, Mrs. Haddington had come back into the room with the curt announcement that the first of the guests was arriving. She too was somewhat flushed, and it was apparent to the most casual observer that her interview with Dan Seaton-Carew had not been attended by complete harmony. Her lips were compressed, and her nostrils slightly distended; and it was some moments before she was again able to assume her social smile. She drove her guests upstairs to the drawing-room, told Beulah rather harshly to see to it that the coffee-cups were, removed from the boudoir, and swept out to receive Mr. Sydney Butterwick.
Chapter Six
By the time Mr. Sydney Butterwick had been relieved of his hat and coat, and sped on his way up the stairs to where Thrimby waited to announce hiss name, other guests were arriving. Mrs. Haddington had stationed herself just within the doorway to the front half of the drawing-room. This, since the room was L-shaped, faced the stairs, and stood at rightangles to the door leading into the back half of the room. Eight card-tables were set out in the drawing-room, the remaining three being relegated to the library on the ground floor.
Sydney Butterwick was a pretty youth, with fair, curly locks, a too-sensitive mouth, and an asthmatic constitution which had wrecked his early ambition to excel at games, and had later made him unacceptable to the authorities for military service. Very few people knew how deeply a canker of frustration had bitten into his soul, most of his acquaintances considering that he was that most fortunate of created beings: a rich man's son, with a flourishing business to step into. But Sydney, realising at an age when life could be blighted by a broken ambition, that lack of physical stamina set his First Fifteen colours and the Drysdale Cup beyond his reach, could not be content to play Rugby football or squash for the mere pleasure these games afforded him. He abandoned sport for headier amusements; drifted at school into a precious set, thence into company even more dangerous for a youth of his unbalanced temperament; and, by the time he had attained his majority, had forgotten earlier and healthier ambitions, and reserved his enthusiasm for Surrealism, the Ballet, racing motor-cars, and several exotic pursuits denied to young men of more limited means. He was neurotic, passionate, and easily influenced, spoilt by parents and circumstance, and morbidly self-conscious. He would respond like a shy girl to flattery, but he was quick to imagine slights, and could fly in an instant from the extreme of affection to the opposite pole of wounded hatred. As a child he had revelled in being the focal point of his mother's life; and he had never outgrown his desire of being petted, and admired. This led him to dislike girls, with whom he felt himself to stand in a relationship alien to his temperament, and to be happiest in the company either of elderly women who mothered him, or of such men as Dan Seaton-Carew.