“That you’re as pure as the driven snow,” said Linda. “Algy, darling, do, do please tell us all about it. And if you did sell them, do tell me how, and where, and what you got for them, because I might try and collect something myself-I’m most awfully hard up. If I got Monty in the melting mood, I might get something out of him.”
“Not you,” said Giles-“he hates you like sin.”
“Does he hate sin?” said the dark young man.
Algy said, “Apparently.” He owed Linda something, and was always ready to pay.
“Yes, isn’t it a shame?” she said. “And all because someone told him I said that it gave me the jitters to think of ever having another horse’s neck-after meeting Maud, you know. And I adored them before, and someone told Monty, and he’s been dead cuts with me ever since. Not my fault that Maud is the dead spit and image of a mare in the knacker’s yard-now is it? But, Algy my angel, you haven’t confided in us. Did you sell Monty, or didn’t you? And what did you get for it? And are they going to shoot you at dawn?”
“The sentence has been commuted to an evening with you, my dear. Death by tongue-pricks-a nasty lingering affair. Be kind and get it over. Perhaps Giles will tell me what I am supposed to have done.”
Fatal for Giles to hesitate, but he did-almost but not quite imperceptibly. Then he came in with a gay,
“You would be the last to hear about it. It’s the most marvellous tale-all the Cabinet secrets gone down the drain, and your’s the hand that loosed the plug.”
There was no hesitation about Algy’s laughter. If you didn’t laugh at a thing like this, if you couldn’t laugh at it, then you would go down under it and be dead, and damned, and done for. But Algy had no intention of being done for. He threw back his head and laughed, and it took him all he knew, but quite suddenly in the middle of it there came a strange rushing conviction that he was going to come out on top. He linked his arm with Mary Craster’s and said,
“Marvellous! Poor Monty-has anyone broken it to him?”
Linda hung affectionately on his other arm.
“Darling, will he have to come and see you shot? In the front row. With Maud. He’ll simply hate it-won’t he? So humanitarian. But I suppose he’ll have to. Home Secretaries do, don’t they?”
“Too much imagination, my dear,” said Algy. “Go and write a dime novel.”
Linda shook her head.
“No, I’m going to do an anonymous autobiography. You know, Malice in Mayfair, or Velvet and Venom, or-”
“Lispings of a Liar,” said Giles rudely.
“Jealous!” said Linda. “He won’t be jealous about me, but he’d hate me to write a book-wouldn’t you, darling?”
“Well, I’d have to settle up for the libel actions. And if you don’t stop making love to Algy I shall probably break his head. Woman, your guests arrive. Behave!”
“It’ll be Sylvia Colesborough,” said Linda.
The front door of the flat opened and shut again. The maid announced, “Lady Colesborough and Mr. Rooster.”
Sylvia came in without hurry. She wore a pale gold frock. She had a radiance. The lights shone on her. Cyril Brewster, thin, dark, and earnest, followed her into the room. Linda surveyed him with surprise.
“Oh, Linda darling!” Sylvia kissed her. “I do hope you don’t mind, but Francis couldn’t come. He got a telephone call-from Birmingham, I think-they’re generally from Birmingham-and he had to rush off. I do think being in business is a bore. But, darling, I’m afraid I’ve made rather a muddle, because I’d written you down for tomorrow, so I was going to dine with Mr. Brewster, but when Francis said he couldn’t come I remembered-you know how one does all of a sudden-so I thought if I brought him along it wouldn’t put your table out.”
Mr. Brewster looked decidedly unhappy. The soul of correctness, he was being placed in a position which was irregular if not actually incorrect. The lady’s husband had been asked. He was not the lady’s husband. Far from it. He had only met her three times, and she had really given him no choice, she had simply brought him. Instead of her husband. And now it appeared that her husband hadn’t been asked either. Lady Colesborough had always known he was going to be away.
“You said so all along, Sylvia-you know you did,” said Linda, with an edge on her voice. Because really Sylvia was the limit, and the table could just be got to hold eight, but definitely wouldn’t take nine. Well, it had got to-that was all. And anyhow it would make a frightfully good story, Sylvia trailing in about twenty minutes late with that awful stick Cyril and apologizing for Francis who hadn’t been asked. She pushed aside Cyril’s painstaking politeness with a laugh.
“The more the merrier, and if there isn’t enough to go round, it shall be Giles. Or he and Algy can take it by turns. There’s going to be too much of both of them if they don’t watch it.”
Amid indignant protests the door opened. Food began to come in, and they sorted themselves. The table stretched, as tables do, and there was plenty to eat, as there always was in Linda’s house. She adored food, and could have lived on cream and potatoes without ever putting on a quarter of an ounce. Gay, racketing talk went to and fro. The red-haired girl, whose name was Muriel, told them she had been staying in a nudist colony and had felt an urge towards crinolines and large Victorian shawls ever since. She was wearing a shawl now, bright green and Spanish, and her very full black taffeta skirts swept the floor. Giles’ friend with the superiority complex looked moody and said nothing. His name was Cedric, and his infatuation for lively red-haired Muriel had reached a point of which it was a fiery torment to himself and a source of extreme boredom to everyone else. Muriel’s reactions those of the eternal feminine-a desire to prod, to poke, to stir the fire, and drop fresh fuel on the flame. Giles was hating her, and Linda despising him. The talk leapt flashing to and fro from pointed tongues.
Nobody said anything more about Algy. He was grateful, but he wondered why, discerning ultimately a queer substratum of loyalty that closed the ranks-and the tongues-against the outsider. Because Brewster-well there he was, just Brewster, Monty’s Industrious Apprentice, not quite one of themselves. Algy would be thrown only to his own wolf pack to rend. And who said dog didn’t eat dog? Wait and see.
X
Masses of people came in after dinner. They played darts, and shove-halfpenny, and the ancient, never-dying games of Love and Scandal in their most up-to-date forms-fewer words to the game, but the same call of the eye, the same lift of the eyebrow that beckoned a man or killed a reputation in Egypt, Greece or Rome two thousand years ago.
Sylvia couldn’t throw a dart straight to save her life. She regarded shove-halfpenny with horror. Why handle coppers if you hadn’t got to? She didn’t play the other games either. Algy took her to the window, lifted a bright green curtain, and let it fall again behind them.
“Look out here. Wait a minute till you can see. It’s worth while.”
They looked down as from a cliff on the dark tops of trees, all dark, all blurred, all moving in a wind which made no sound. More trees. Black houses away on the other side of the square, with bright lines showing here and there where a blind fell short or a curtain did not meet and just one window high up, bright and bare, with a black shadow coming and going in the room behind. And the river away to the left. Lights on it, moving lights, and a dark, slow stream, and the line of houses beyond, like an escarpment, blank and sheer.
To look out like this at night was to be soothed, consoled, assured of things immeasurably old and permanent-London-the river-trees and clouds-houses where people kindled fires from the same flame of hope which burned for ever and did not burn away. Things went on. You were up against it, you sweated blood, you won perhaps. And the game went on. Meanwhile this moment was good. Seen, Sylvia delighted and satisfied the eye. Unseen, she had the gift of silence. She stood with her shoulder touching his and leaned a little upon the sill, but did not speak. The good moment was shared. At least that is how it seemed to Algy. He heard the faintest of faint sighs, and thought it a tribute to the night.