"Well, anyhow, we drink it now, as aperitif. A course by itself. Pass up your glasses everyone. Miss Pym, the chair is for you."
A basket chair had been imported and lined with a motley collection of cushions; except for the hard chair at the desk it was the only legitimate seat in the room, the rest of the party having brought their cushions with them and being now disposed about the floor or piled in relaxed heaps like kittens on the bed. Someone had tied a yellow silk handkerchief over the light so that a golden benevolence took the place of the usual hard brightness. The twilight beyond the wide-open window made a pale blue back-cloth that would soon be a dark one. It was like any student party of her own college days, but as a picture it had more brilliance than her own parties had had. Was it just that the colours of the cushions were gayer? That the guests were better physical types, without lank hair, spectacles, and studious pallor?
No, of course it wasn't that. She knew what it was. There was no cigarette smoke.
"O'Donnell isn't here yet," Thomas said, collecting tooth-glasses from the guests and laying them on the cloth that covered the desk.
"I expect she's helping Rouse to put up the boom," a Disciple said.
"She can't be," a second Disciple said, "it's Saturday."
"Even a P.T.I. stops work on a Sunday," said a third.
"Even Rouse," commented the fourth.
"Is Miss Rouse still practising rotatory travelling?" Lucy asked.
"Oh, yes," they said. "She will be, up to the day of the Dem."
"And when does she find time?"
"She goes when she is dressed in the morning. Before first class."
"Six o'clock," said Lucy. "Horrible."
"It's no worse than any other time," they said. "At least one is fresh, and there is no hurry, and you can have the gym. to yourself. Besides, it's the only possible time. The boom has to be put away before first class."
"She doesn't have to go," Stewart said, "the knack has come back. But she is terrified she will lose it again before the Dem."
"I can understand that, my dear," Dakers said. "Think what an immortal fool one would feel hanging like a sick monkey from the boom, with all the elite looking on, and Froken simply stabbing one with that eye of hers. My dear, death would be a happy release. If Donnie isn't doing her usual chore for Rouse, where is she? She's the only one not here."
"Poor Don," Thomas said, "she hasn't got a post yet." Thomas with her junior-of-three in Wales was feeling like a millionaire.
"Don't worry over Don," Hasselt said, "the Irish always fall on their feet."
But Miss Pym was looking round for Innes, and not finding her. Nor was Beau there.
Stewart, seeing her wandering eye, interpreted the question in it and said: "Beau and Innes wanted me to tell you how sorry they were to miss the party, and to hope that you would be their guest at another one before the end of term."
"Beau will be giving one for Innes," Hasselt said. "To celebrate Arlinghurst."
"As a matter of fact, we're all giving a party for Innes," a Disciple said.
"A sort of general jamboree," said a second Disciple.
"It's an honour for College, after all," said a third.
"You'll come to that, won't you, Miss Pym," said a fourth, making it a statement rather than a question.
"Nothing would please me more," Lucy said. And then, glad to skate away from such thin ice: "What has happened to Beau and Innes?"
"Beau's people turned up unexpectedly and took them off to the theatre in Larborough," Stewart said.
"That's what it is to own a Rolls," Thomas said, quite without envy. "You just dash around England as the fit takes you. When my people want to move they have to yoke up the old grey mare-a brown cob, actually-and trot twenty miles before they reach any place at all."
"Farmers?" Lucy asked, seeing the lonely narrow Welsh road winding through desolation.
"No, my father is a clergyman. But we have to keep a horse to work the place, and we can't have a horse and a car too."
"Oh, well," said a Disciple arranging herself more comfortably on the bed, "who wants to go to the theatre anyhow?"
"Of all the boring ways of spending an evening," said a second.
"Sitting with one's knees in someone's back," said a third.
"With one's eyes glued to opera glasses," said a fourth.
"Why opera glasses?" asked Lucy, surprised to find Miss Lux's attitude repeated in a gathering where sophistication had not yet destroyed a juvenile thirst for entertainment.
"What would you see without them?"
"Little dolls walking about in a box."
"Like something on Brighton pier."
"Except that on Brighton pier you can see the expression on the faces."
They were rather like something from Brighton pier themselves, Lucy thought. A turn. A sort of extended Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They were apparently not moved to speech unless one of their number made a remark; when the others felt called upon to produce corroborative evidence.
"Me, I'm only too glad to put my feet up and do nothing for a change," Hasselt said. "I'm breaking in a new pair of ballet shoes for the Dem. and my blisters are spectacular."
"Miss Hasselt," said Stewart, obviously quoting, "it is a student's business to preserve her body in a state of fitness at all times."
"That may be," said Hasselt, "but I'm not standing in a bus for five miles on a Saturday night to go anywhere, least of all to a theatre."
"Anyhow, it's only Shakespeare, my dears," Dakers said. "It is the cause, my soul! " she burlesqued, clutching at her breast.
"Edward Adrian, though," volunteered Lucy, feeling that her beloved theatre must have one champion.
"Who is Edward Adrian?" Dakers asked, in genuine inquiry.
"He's that weary-looking creature who looks like a moulting eagle," Stewart said, too busy about her hostess's duties to be aware of the reaction on Lucy: that was a horribly vivid summing-up of Edward Adrian, as seen by the unsentimental eyes of modern youth. "We used to be taken to see him when I was at school in Edinburgh."
"And didn't you enjoy it?" Lucy asked, remembering that Stewart's name headed the lists on the notice-board along with Innes's and Beau's, and that mental activity would not be for her the chore that it probably was for some of the others.
"Oh, it was better than sitting in a class-room," Stewart allowed. "But it was all terribly-old-fashioned. Nice to look at, but a bit dreary. I'm a tooth-glass short."
"Mine, I suppose," O'Donnell said, coming in on the words and handing over her glass. "I'm afraid I'm late. I was looking for some shoes that my feet would go into. Forgive these, won't you, Miss Pym," she indicated the bedroom slippers she was wearing. "My feet have died on me."
"Do you know who Edward Adrian is?" Lucy asked her.
"Certainly I do," O'Donnell said. "I've had a rave on him ever since I went to see him at the age of twelve in Belfast."
"You seem to be the only person in this room either to know or to admire him."
"Ah, the heathen," said O'Donnell, casting a scornful eye on the gathering-and it seemed to Lucy that O'Donnell was suspiciously bright about the eyes, as if she had been crying. "It's in Larborough I would be this minute, sitting at his feet, if it wasn't practically the end of term and I lacked the price of a seat."
And if, thought Lucy pitying, you hadn't felt that backing out of this party would be put down to your being the only one present not yet to have a post. She liked the girl who had dried her eyes and thought of the bedroom slipper excuse and come gaily to the party that was none of hers.