Mr Weatherby began to show signs of distress. Before he could open his mouth Jane went on rather fast and anxiously.
"No it's all Christian names these days isn't that so and very sensibly too in my opinion. Anything to do away with the gulf between generations. Oh whenever will these sweet tiresome guests of mine drag themselves off to bed at last. John it's been such a day and a half and I'm so tired!"
"Bed? You think of bed on a night like this?"
"I truly am so tired John dear!!"
"Well I feel I could go on somewhere. What d'you say Liz?"
"Can Philip and I drop you back?"
"I can't very well go before the people I've invited can I?" Mrs Weatherby answered Mary in a sharp tone of voice. "Oh do you think I could send for the bill?"
"Really Jane" Mr Pomfret protested. "You'd never hear the last if you did."
She looked round the noisy party, the people who went from table to table with laughing flushed faces.
"They wouldn't notice you'd hardly think?" she hazarded.
"Shall I get hold of Richard?" Miss Jennings volunteered.
"Perhaps he could go tactfully round, Liz, to drop a word here and there but not so much that anyone would actually realize."
"No no both of you" John said. "Jane can't break up her own party."
"I don't know" Mr Weatherby suggested "but Mary and I don't feel quite as if we wanted to go home yet. And if we went on somewhere it might start the others off."
"Of course you darlings want to be alone. Oh don't I remember! And who wouldn't!! But Richard has most cruelly deserted me all evening."
"I shouldn't wonder he just found he couldn't intrude" John explained.
"Then you maintain I should have gone to that beastly bitch's daughter's table" Liz almost shouted. She seemed to have difficulty focusing her eyes.
"My dear Liz" he replied with gentleness "I regard you almost as one of the family."
"Thanks" she said and appeared to subside. "Okay" she said.
"A woman needs another by her at a time like this" Mrs Weatherby murmured.
"Well, parents" Philip began. "What say if we simply pushed off?"
"Certainly not" Jane sharply reproved him. "Not now you're the guests of the evening. And before this surprise started it was your twent-firster after all. Please remember, if only to please me please remember that!"
"Why of course" Mary Pomfret agreed and seemed most nervons. "We wouldn't dream of the slightest things-"
"Hm-m" Mrs Weatherby replied. "That's settled then."
"You know Mary" her father pronounced "this is a great moment in a woman's life. Yon must be extra nice with Jane, it has quite bowled her over."
"But I am Daddy."
"Of course you are you angel" the older woman agreed.
"Now John don't butt in between, we shall manage our own affairs perfectly shan't we dear? Still I can't tell why all these people shouldn't go. I really feel I almost hardly know them now. I'm so tired don't you understand John? No of course you two must stay at least for the present, dreadfully dull as it must be for you both. I've such a tearlng headache. God what a day!"
"Anything I can do Mamma?"
"Just don't let poor darling Penelope the little saint into this secret, promise me will you?! know her better than anyone in the whole wide world but even I couldn't tell what the results might be now, I wouldn't dare."
"I say, she could be one of our bridesmaids" Philip said.
"I should hope so indeed" his mother took him up. "If not then I can't possibly imagine who else. And when we've just got her over the man in chains down at Brighton! Oh my dear if you didn't ask the child why she'd simply rather die."
"Well it's not exactly secret now is it Mamma?"
"But we must break it gently don't you understand" his mother answered. "We've had this wedding trouble before with the sainted little sweet. Oh I blame myself but really John wasn't it wicked of you and now only four months later we're to go through this all over again! And when I told her the facts of life a year back, she was just five and a half then, will you believe me but she's forgotten every word, she must have done from what the little angel's said lately. Oh isn't parenthood confusing! I always tell these girls when they get engaged they simply can't guess what they're in for." At which she gaily laughed "Now there I go again" she went on, beaming at Mary "I do declare I'd quite forgotten for the second. What will you think of me? Oh Philip your stupid Mamma!"
"When they began giving sex instruction at Council schools" Philip told them "there was a woman wrote to say the lesson had taken ninety minutes each week off her daughter's mathematics and surely maths must be more important."
"My dear boy" Mrs Weatherby approved "that was almost witty."
"Good for you Philip!" Mr Pomfret said. "Well then mum's the word where Pen's concerned eh?"
"Yes, you must all and every one of you promise me faithfully" Jane agreed. "In fact the less spoken about this secret engagement the better, so it doesn't get to her sacred little ears poor soul."
LATER on, when John Pomfret's excitement drove him to circulate among the other tables with Liz and Mary in tow, Richard Abbot came back to his rightful place at Jane's left hand.
"Where have yon been?" the lady cried. "And what d'you mean by it just when I wanted you!"
"Family matter I, thought. Felt an outsider!"
"Well Liz didn't did she? She stayed. Oh Richard you let me down at times of crisis."
"Now my dear this's been a great day for all. Only natural to be overwrought a bit."
"Oh I am" she wailed, her large eyes even more enormous. "Don't you think Richard you could persuade them all to go so I can get home to bed?"
"My dear Jane, can't do that! Let me fetch you a black coffee."
"In a moment. No, sit here" and she patted the chair next her. "Oh Richard I'm worried about little Penelope. You remember how she was after she imagined she'd married John? Well what will it be like when she realizes her brother has got engaged to what she must truly believe to be her own stepdaughter, have you thought of that?"
"She'll have forgotten everything about it."
"But how can she, I ask you? Richard do concentrate, this is important to me. Her little sanity's at stake,"
"She'll have forgotten about that tomfoolery with John I meant."
"If you say so, then you pit yourself against the psychoanalyst. I asked Maud Winder's advice who'd such a lot of trouble with her girl at one time and I went to the best. He told me it might have bruised Pen's soul, he couldn't be sure he said until he had seen the child but I wouldn't allow that, don't you think I wasright, I mean one never knows where these clever famous men will end does one, playing politics with my own precious darling's very being, Richard."
"Don't hold with 'em myself."
"Yet I'm not trying to say the chief responsibility doesn't rest with me, it must of course, it always will, oh my dear the load devilish Providence has put on my poor bended back. No I have to guard her against her sweet self. And when she hears and starts one of her things the desperate brave little martyr, I shan't be able to turn everything off as I did to finish the escapist at Brighton by giving the child a bag she liked to hang from the elbow she would insist on holding. Still if I have to I shall think of a ruse, it's what I'm here for after all. But the strain Richard!"
"Shouldn't wonder if Philip's a bit worked up too eh?"
"Oh the boy's all right. Not normal of course but in absolutely no need of help I can tell you."
"Don't know Jane. Big moment in a young fellow's life, must be."
"How can you iudge? You yourself have simply never even risked it."
"Not from want of trying."