A Wreath for Rivera

CHAPTER III PREPRANDIAL

He was short, not more than five foot seven, but so compactly built that he did not give the impression of low stature. Everything about him was dapper, though not obtrusively so; his clothes, the flower in his coat, his well-brushed hair and moustache. His eyes, light grey with pinkish rims, had a hot impertinent look, his underlip jutted out and there were clearly defined spots of local colour over his cheek-bones. He came briskly into the room, bestowed a restless kiss upon his niece and confronted his wife.

“Who’s dinin’?” he said.

“Ourselves, Félicité, Carlisle, of course, and Edward Manx. And I have asked Miss Henderson to join us to-night.”

“Two more,” said Lord Pastern. “I’ve asked Bellairs and Rivera.”

“That is quite impossible, George,” said Lady Pastern, calmly.

“Why?”

“Apart from other unanswerable considerations, there is not enough food for two extra guests.”

“Tell ’em to open a tin.”

“I cannot receive these persons for dinner.”

Lord Pastern grinned savagely. “All right. Rivera can take Félicité to a restaurant and Bellairs can come here. Same number as before. How are you, Lisle?”

“I’m very well, Uncle George.”

“Félicité will not dine out with this individual, George. I shall not permit it.”

“You can’t stop ’em.”

“Félicité will respect my wishes.”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Lord Pastern. “You’re thirty years behind the times, m’dear. Give a gel her head and she’ll find her feet.” He paused, evidently delighted with this aphorism. “Way you’re goin’, you’ll have an elopement on your hands. Comes to that, I don’t see the objection.”

“Are you demented, George?”

“Half the women in London’d give anything to be in Fee’s boots.”

“A Mexican bandsman.”

“Fine, well-set-up young feller. Inoculate your old stock. That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it Lisle? I understand he comes of a perfectly good Spanish family. Hidalgo, or whatever it is,” he added vaguely. “A feller of good family happens to be an artist and. you go and condemn him. Sort of thing that makes you sick.” He turned to his niece: “I’ve been thinkin’ seriously of givin’ up the title, Lisle.”

“George!”

“About dinner, can you find something for them to eat or can’t you? Speak up.”

Lady Pastern’s shoulders rose with a shudder. She glanced at Carlisle, who thought she detected a glint of cunning in her aunt’s eye. “Very well, George,” Lady Pastern said. “I shall speak to the servants. I shall speak to Dupont. Very well.”

Lord Pastern darted an extremely suspicious glance at his wife and sat down. “Nice to see you, Lisle,” he said. “What have you been doin’ with yourself?”

“I’ve been in Greece, Famine Relief.”

“If people understood dietetics there wouldn’t be all this starvation,” said Lord Pastern darkly. “Are you keen on music?”

Carlisle returned a guarded answer. Her aunt, she realized, was attempting to convey by means of a fixed stare and raised eyebrows some message of significance.

“I’ve taken it up, seriously,” Lord Pastern continued. “Swing. Boogie-woogie. Jive. Find it keeps me up to the mark.” He thumped with his heel on the carpet, beat his hands together and in a strange nasal voice intoned: “ ‘Shoo-shoo-shoo, baby, Bye-bye, bye Baby.’ ”

The door opened and Félicité de Suze came in. She was a striking young woman with large black eyes, a wide mouth and an air of being equal to anything. She cried, “Darling — you’re heaven its very self,” and kissed Carlisle with enthusiasm. Lord Pastern was still clapping and chanting. His stepdaughter took up the burden of his song, raised a finger and jerked rhythmically before him. They grinned at each other. “You’re coming along very prettily indeed, George,” she said.

Carlisle wondered what her impression would have been if she were a complete stranger. Would she, like Lady Pastern, have decided that her uncle was eccentric to the point of derangement? “No,” she thought, “probably not. There’s really a kind of terrifying sanity about him. He’s overloaded with energy, he says exactly what he thinks and he does exactly what he wants to do. But he’s an oversimplification of type, and he’s got no perspective. He’s never mildly interested in anything. But which of us,” Carlisle reflected, “has not, at some time, longed to play the big drum?”

Félicité, with an abandon that Carlisle found unconvincing, flung herself into the sofa beside her mother. “Angel,” she said richly, “don’t be so grande dame! George and I are having fun!”

Lady Pastern disengaged herself and rose. “I must see Dupont.”

“Ring for Spence,” said her husband. “Why d’you want to go burrowin’ about in the servants’ quarters?”

Lady Pastern pointed out, with great coldness, that in the present food shortage one did not, if one wished to retain the services of one’s cook, send a message at seven in the evening to the effect that there would be two extra for dinner. In any case, she added, however great her tact, Dupont would almost certainly give notice.

“He’ll give us the same dinner as usual,” her husband rejoined. “The Three Courses of Monsieur Dupont!”

“Extremely witty,” said Lady Pastern coldly. She then withdrew.

“George!” said Félicité. “Have you won?”

“I should damn’ well think so. Never heard anything so preposterous in me life. Ask a couple of people to dine and your mother behaves like Lady Macbeth. I’m going to have a bath.”

When he had gone, Félicité turned to Carlisle, and made a wide helpless gesture. “Darling, what a life! Honestly! One prances about from moment to moment on the edge of a volcano, never knowing when there’ll be a major eruption. I suppose you’ve heard all about ME.”

“A certain amount.”

“He’s madly attractive.”

“In what sort of way?”

Félicité smiled and shook her head. “My dear Lisle, he just does things for me.”

“He’s not by any chance a bounder?”

“He can bound like a ping-pong ball and I won’t bat an eyelid. To me he’s heaven; but just plain heaven.”

“Come off it, Fée,” said Carlisle. “I’ve heard all this before. What’s the catch in it?”

Félicité looked sideways at her. “How do you mean, the catch?”

“There’s always a catch in your young men, darling, when you rave like this about them.”

Félicité began to walk showily about the room. She had lit a cigarette and wafted it to and fro between two fingers, nursing her right elbow in the palm of the left hand. Her manner became remote. “When English people talk about a bounder,” she said, “they invariably refer to someone who has more charm and less gaucherie than the average Englishman.”

“I couldn’t disagree more; but go on.”

Félicité said loftily: “Of course I knew from the first Mama would kick like the devil. C’la va sans dire. And I don’t deny Carlos is a bit tricky. In fact, ‘It’s hell but it’s worth it’ is a fairly accurate summing-up of the situation at the moment. I’m adoring it, really— I think.”

“I don’t think.”

“Yes, I am,” said Félicité violently. “I adore a situation. I’ve been brought up on situations. Think of George. You know, I honestly believe I’ve got more in common with George than I would have had with my own father. From all accounts, Papa was excessively rangé.”

“You’d do with a bit more orderliness yourself, old girl. In what way is Carlos tricky?”

“Well, he’s just so jealous he’s like a Spanish novel.”

“I’ve never read a Spanish novel unless you count Don Quixote and I’m certain you haven’t. What’s he do?”

“My dear, everything. Rages and despairs and sends frightful letters by special messenger. I got a stinker this morning, à cause de — well, à cause de something that really is a bit daffy.”

She halted and inhaled deeply. Carlisle remembered the confidences that Félicité had poured out in her convent days, concerning what she called her “raves.” There had been the music master who had fortunately snubbed Félicité and the medical student who hadn’t. There had been the brothers of the other girls and an actor whom she attempted to waylay at a charity matinée. There had been a male medium, engaged by Lord Pastern during his spiritualistic period, and a dietician — Carlisle pulled herself together and listened to the present recital. It appeared that there was a crisis: a crise as Félicité called it. She used far more occasional French than her mother and was fond of laying her major calamities at the door of Gallic temperament.

“ — and as a matter of fact,” Félicité was saying, “I hadn’t so much as smirked at another soul, and there he was seizing me by the wrists and giving me that shattering sort of look that begins at your boots and travels up to your face and then makes the return trip. And breathing loudly, don’t you know, through the nose. I don’t deny that the first time was rather fun. But after he got wind of old Edward it really was, and I may say still is, beyond a joke. And now to crown everything, there’s the crise.”

“But what crisis? You haven’t said — ”

For the first time Félicité looked faintly embarrassed.

“He found a letter,” she said. “In my bag. Yesterday.”

“You aren’t going to tell me he goes fossicking in your bag? And what letter, for pity’s sake? Honestly, Fée!”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Félicité said grandly. “We were lunching and he hadn’t got a cigarette. I was doing my face at the time and I told him to help himself to my case. The letter came out of the bag with the case.”

“And he — well, never mind. What letter?”

“I know you’re going to say I’m mad. It was a sort of rough draft of a letter I sent to somebody. It had a bit in it about Carlos. When I saw it in his hand I was pretty violently rocked. I said something like ‘Hi-hi you can’t read that,’ and of course with Carlos that tore everything wide open. He said ‘So.’ ”

“So what?”

“So, all by itself. He does that. He’s Latin-American.”

“I thought that sort of ‘so’ was German.”

“Whatever it is I find it terrifying. I began to fluff and puff and tried to pass it off with a jolly laugh but he said that either he could trust me or he couldn’t and if he could, how come I wouldn’t let him read a letter? I completely lost my head and grabbed it and he began to hiss. We were in a restaurant.”

“Good Lord!”

“Well, I know. Obviously he was going to react in a really big way. So in the end the only thing seemed to be to let him have the letter. So I gave it to him on condition he wouldn’t read it till we got back to the car. The drive home was hideous. But hideous.”

“But what was in the letter, if one may ask, and who was it written to? You are confusing, Fée.”

There followed a long uneasy silence. Félicité lit another cigarette. “Come on,” said Carlisle at last.

“It happened,” said Félicité haughtily, “to be written to a man whom I don’t actually know, asking for advice about Carlos and me. Professional advice.”

“What can you mean! A clergyman? Or a lawyer?”

“I don’t think so. He’d written me rather a marvellous letter and this was thanking him. Carlos, of course, thought it was for Edward. The worst bit, from Carlos’s point of view, was where I said: ‘I suppose he’d be madly jealous if he knew I’d written to you like this.’ Carlos really got weaving after he read that. He — ”

Félicité‘s lips trembled. She turned away and began to speak rapidly, in a high voice. “He roared and stormed and wouldn’t listen to anything. It was devastating. You can’t conceive what it was like. He said I was to announce our engagement at once. He said if I didn’t he’d — he said he’d go off and just simply end it all — He’s given me a week. I’ve got till next Tuesday. That’s all. I’ve got to announce it before next Tuesday.”

“And you don’t want to?” Carlisle asked gently. She saw Félicité’s shoulders quiver and went to her. “Is that it, Fée?”

The voice quavered and broke. Félicité drove her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what I want,” she sobbed. “Lisle, I’m in such a muddle. I’m terrified, Lisle. It’s so damned awful, Lisle. I’m terrified.”

Lady Pastern had preserved throughout the war and its exhausted aftermath an unbroken formality. Her rare dinner parties had, for this reason, acquired the air of period pieces. The more so since, by feat of superb domestic strategy, she had contrived to retain at Duke’s Gate a staff of trained servants, though a depleted one. As she climbed into a long dress, six years old, Carlisle reflected that if the food shortage persisted, her aunt would soon qualify for the same class as that legendary Russian nobleman who presided with perfect equanimity at an interminable banquet of dry bread and water.

She had parted with Félicité, who was still shaking and incoherent, on the landing. “You’ll see him at dinner,” Félicité had said. “You’ll see what I mean.” And with a spurt of defiance: “And anyway, I don’t care what anyone thinks. If I’m in a mess, it’s a thrilling mess. And if I want to get out of it, it’s not for other people’s reasons. It’s only because— Oh, God, what’s it matter!”

Félicité had then gone into her own room and slammed the door. It was perfectly obvious, Carlisle reflected, as she finished her face and lit a cigarette, that the wretched girl was terrified and that she herself would, during the week-end, be a sort of buffer-state between Félicité, her mother and her stepfather. “And the worst of it is,” Carlisle thought crossly, “I’m fond of them and will probably end by involving myself in a major row with all three at once.”

She went down to the drawing-room. Finding nobody there, she wandered disconsolately across the landing and, opening a pair of magnificent double doors, looked into the ballroom.

Gilt chairs and music stands stood in a semicircle like an island in the vast bare floor. A grand piano stood in their midst. On its closed lid, with surrealistic inconsequence, were scattered a number of umbrellas and parasols. She looked more closely at them and recognized a black and white, exceedingly Parisian, affair, which ten years ago or more her aunt had flourished at Ascot. It had been an outstanding phenomenon, she remembered, in the Royal Enclosure and had been photographed. Lady Pastern had been presented with it by some Indian plenipotentiary on the occasion of her first marriage and had clung to it ever since. Its handle represented a bird and had ruby eyes. Its shaft was preposterously thin and was jointed and bound with platinum. The spring catch and the dark bronze section that held it were uncomfortably encrusted with jewels and had ruined many a pair of gloves. As a child, Félicité had occasionally been permitted to unscrew the head and the end section of the shaft, and this, for some reason, had always afforded her extreme pleasure. Carlisle picked it up, opened it, and jeering at herself for being superstitious, hurriedly shut it again. There was a pile of band parts on the piano seat and on the top of this a scribbled programme.

At the extreme end of the group of chairs, and a little isolated, was the paraphernalia of a dance-band tympanist — drums, rattles, a tambourine, cymbals, a wire whisk and coconut shells. Carlisle gingerly touched a pedal with her foot and jumped nervously when a pair of cymbals clashed. “It would be fun,” she thought, “to sit down and have a whack at everything. What can Uncle George be like in action!”

She looked round. Her coming-out ball had been here; her parents had borrowed the house for it. Utterly remote those years before the war! Carlisle repeopled the hollow room and felt again the curious fresh gaiety of that night. She felt the cord of her programme grow flossy under the nervous pressure of her gloved fingers. She saw the names written there and read them again in the choked print of casualty lists. The cross against the supper dances had been for Edward. “I don’t approve,” he had said, guiding her with precision, and speaking so lightly that, as usual, she doubted his intention. “We’ve no business to do ourselves as well as all this.”

“Well, if you’re not having fun — ”

“But I am. I am.” And he had started one of their novelettes: “In the magnificent ballroom at Duke’s Gate, the London house of Lord Pastern and Bagott, amid the strains of music and the scent of hot-house blooms — ” And she had cut in: “Young Edward Manx swept his cousin into the vortex of the dance.”

“Lovely,” she thought.

Lovely it had been. They had had the last dance together and she had been tired yet buoyant, moving without conscious volition; really floating, she thought. “Good night, good night, it’s been perfect.” Later, as the clocks struck four, up the stairs to bed, light-headed with fatigue, drugged with gratitude to all the world for her complete happiness.

“How young,” thought Carlisle, looking at the walls and floor of the ballroom, “and how remote. The Spectre of the Rose,” she thought, and a phrase of music ended her recollections on a sigh.

There had been no real sequel. More balls, with the dances planned beforehand, an affair or two and letters from Edward, who was doing special articles in Russia. And then the war.

She turned away and recrossed the landing to the drawing-room.

It was still unoccupied. “If I don’t talk to somebody soon,” Carlisle thought, “I shall get a black dog on my back.” She found a collection of illustrated papers and turned them over, thinking how strange it was that photographs of people eating, dancing, or looking at something that did not appear in the picture should command attention.

“Lady Dartmoor and Mr. Jeremy Thringle enjoyed a joke at the opening night of Fewer and Dearer.” “Miss Penelope Santon-Clarke takes a serious view of the situation at Sandown. With her, intent on his racing card, is Captain Anthony Barr-Barr.”

“At the Tarmac: Miss Félicité de Suze in earnest conversation with Mr. Edward Manx.”

“I don’t wonder,” thought Carlisle, “that Aunt Cécile thinks it would be a good match,” and put the paper away from her. Another magazine lay in her lap: a glossy publication with a cover illustration depicting a hilltop liberally endowed with flowers and a young man and woman of remarkable physique gazing with every expression of delight and well-being at something indistinguishable in an extremely blue sky. The title Harmony was streamlined across the top of the cover.

Carlisle turned the pages. Here was Edward’s monthly review of the shows. Much too good, it was, mordant and penetrating, for a freak publication like this. He had told her they paid very well. Here, an article on genetics by “The Harmony Consultant,” here something a bit overemotional about Famine Relief, which Carlisle, an expert in her way, skimmed through with disapproval. Next an article, “Radiant Living,” which she passed by with a shudder. Then a two-page article headed “Crime Pays,” which proved to be a highly flavoured but extremely outspoken and well-informed article on the drug racket. Two Latin-American business firms with extensive connections in Great Britain were boldly named. An editorial note truculently courted information backed by full protection. It also invited a libel action and promised a further article. Next came a serial by a Big Name and then, on the centre double-page with a banner headline:

Carlisle glanced through it. Here were letters from young women asking for advice on the conduct of their engagements and from young men seeking guidance in their choice of wives and jobs. Here was a married woman prepared, it seemed, to follow the instructions of an unknown pundit in matters of the strictest personal concern, and here a widower who requested an expert report on remarriage with someone twenty years his junior. Carlisle was about to turn the page when a sentence caught her eye:

She read it through to the end. The style was vividly familiar. The magazine had the look of having been frequently opened here. There was cigarette ash in the groove between the pages. Was it possible that Félicité —? But the signature. “Toots”! Could Félicité adopt a nom de plume like Toots? Could her unknown correspondent—? Carlisle lost herself in a maze of speculation from which she was aroused by some faint noise — a metallic click. She looked up. Nobody had entered the room. The sound was repeated and she realized it had come from her uncle’s study, a small room that opened off the far end of the drawing-room. She saw that the door was ajar and that the lights were on in the study. She remembered that it was Lord Pastern’s unalterable habit to sit in this room for half an hour before dinner, meditating upon whatever obsession at the moment enthralled him, and that he had always liked her to join him there.

She walked down the long deep carpet to the door and looked in.

Lord Pastern sat before the fire. He had a revolver in his hands and appeared to be loading it.

For a few moments Carlisle hesitated. Then, in a voice that struck her as being pitched too high, she said: “What are you up to, Uncle George?”

He started and the revolver slipped in his hands and almost fell.

“Hullo,” he said. “Thought you’d forgotten me.”

She crossed the room and sat opposite him. “Are you preparing for burglars?” she said.

“No.” He gave her what Edward had once called one of his leery looks and added: “Although you might put it that way. I’m gettin’ ready for my big moment.” He jerked his hand towards a small table that stood at his elbow. Carlisle saw that a number of cartridges lay there. “Just goin’ to draw the bullets,” said Lord Pastern, “to make them into blanks, you know. I like to attend to things myself.”

“But what is your big moment?”

“You’ll see, to-night. You and Fée are to come. It ought to be a party. Who’s your best young man?”

“I haven’t got one.”

“Why not?”

“Arst yourself.”

“You’re too damn’ stand-offish, me gel. Wouldn’t be surprised if you had one of those things — Oedipus and all that. I looked into psychology when I was interested in companionate marriage.”

Lord Pastern inserted his eyeglass, went to his desk and rummaged in one of the drawers.

“What’s happening to-night?”

“Special extension night at the Metronome. I’m playin’. Floor show at eleven o’clock. My first appearance in public. Breezy engaged me. Nice of him, wasn’t it? You’ll enjoy yourself, Lisle.”

He returned with a drawer filled with a strange collection of objects — pieces of wire, a fret-saw, razor blades, candle-ends, wood-carving knives, old photographs, electrical gear, plastic wood, a number of tools and quantities of putty in greasy paper. How well Carlisle remembered that drawer. It had been a wet-day solace of her childhood visits. From its contents, Lord Pastern, who was dextrous in such matters, had concocted manikins, fly-traps and tiny ships.

“I believe,” she said, “I recognize almost everything in the collection.”

“Y’ father gave me that revolver,” Lord Pastern remarked. “It’s one of a pair. He had ’em made by his gunsmith to take special target ammunition. Couldn’t be bored having to reload with every shot like you do with target pistols, y’know. Cost him a packet, these did. We were always at it, he and I. He scratched his initials one day on the butt of this one. We’d had a bit of a row about differences in performance in the two guns, and shot it out. Have a look.”

She picked up the revolver gingerly. “I can’t see anything.”

“There’s a magnifying glass somewhere. Look underneath near the trigger guard.”

Carlisle rummaged in the drawer and found a lens. “Yes,” she said. “I can make them out now. C.D.W.”

“We were crack shots. He left me the pair. The other’s in the case, somewhere in that drawer.”

Lord Pastern took out a pair of pliers and picked up one of the cartridges. “Well, if you haven’t got a young man,” he said, “we’ll have Ned Manx. That’ll please your aunt. No good asking anyone else for Fée. Carlos cuts up rough.”

“Uncle George,” Carlisle ventured as he busied himself over his task, “do you approve of Carlos? Really?”

He muttered and grunted. She caught disjointed phrases: “ — take their course — own destiny — goin’ the wrong way to work. He’s a damn’ fine piano-accordionist,” he said loudly and added, more obscurely: “They’d much better leave things to me.”

“What’s he like?”

“You’ll see him in a minute. I know what I’m about,” said Lord Pastern, crimping the end of a cartridge from which he had extracted the bullet.

“Nobody else seems to. Is he jealous?”

“She’s had things too much her own way. Make her sit up a bit and a good job, too.”

“Aren’t you making a great number of blank cartridges?” Carlisle asked idly.

“I rather like making them. You never know. I shall probably be asked to repeat my number lots of times. I like to be prepared.”

He glanced up and saw the journal which Carlisle still held in her lap. “Thought you had a mind above that sort of stuff,” said Lord Pastern, grinning.

“Are you a subscriber, darling?”

“Y’ aunt is. It’s got a lot of sound stuff in it. They’re not afraid to speak their minds, b’God. See that thing on drug-runnin’? Names and everything and if they don’t like it they can damn’ well lump it. The police,” Lord Pastern said obscurely, “are no good; pompous incompetent lot. Hidebound. Ned,” he added, “does the reviews.”

“Perhaps,” Carlisle said lightly, “he’s G.P.F., too.”

“Chap’s got brains,” Lord Pastern grunted bewilderingly. “Hog sense in that feller.”

“Uncle George,” Carlisle demanded suddenly, “you don’t know by any chance if Fee’s ever consulted G.P.F.?”

“Wouldn’t let on if I did, m’dear. Naturally.”

Carlisle reddened. “No, of course you wouldn’t if she’d told you in confidence. Only usually Fée can’t keep anything to herself.”

“Well, ask her. She might do a damn’ sight worse.”

Lord Pastern dropped the bullets he had extracted into the waste-paper basket and returned to his desk. “I’ve been doin’ a bit of writin’ myself,” he said. “Look at this, Lisle.”

He handed his niece a sheet of music manuscript. An air had been set down, with many rubbings out, it seemed, and words had been written under the appropriate notes. “This Hot Guy,” Carlisle read, “does he get mean? This Hot Gunner with his accord-een. Shoots like he plays an’ he tops the bill. Plays like he shoots an’ he shoots to kill. Hi-de oh hi. Yip. Ho de oh do. Yip. Shoot buddy, shoot and we’ll sure come clean. Hot Guy, Hot Gunner on your accord-een. Bo. Bo. Bo.”

“Neat,” said Lord Pastern complacently. “Ain’t it?”

“It’s astonishing,” Carlisle murmured and was spared the necessity of further comment by the sound of voices in the drawing-room.

“That’s the Boys,” said Lord Pastern briskly. “Come on.”

The Boys were dressed in their professional dinner suits. These were distinctive garments, the jackets being double-breasted with the famous steel pointed buttons and silver revers. The sleeves were extremely narrow and displayed a great deal of cuff. The taller of the two, a man whose rotundity was emphasized by his pallor, advanced, beaming upon his host.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who’s here.”

It was upon his companion that Carlisle fixed her attention. Memories of tango experts, of cinema near-stars with cigarette holders and parti-coloured shoes, of armoured women moving doggedly round dance floors in the grasp of young men — all these memories jostled together in her brain.

“ — and Mr. Rivera — ” her uncle was saying. Carlisle withdrew her hand from Mr. Bellairs’s encompassing grasp and it was at once bowed over by Mr. Rivera.

“Miss Wayne,” said Félicité‘s Carlos.

He rose from his bow with grace and gave her a look of automatic homage. “So we meet, at last,” he said. “I have heard so much.” He had, she noticed, a very slight lisp.

Lord Pastern gave them all sherry. The two visitors made loud conversation. “That’s very fine,” Mr. Breezy Bellairs pronounced and pointed to a small Fragonard above the fireplace. “My God, that’s beautiful, you know, Carlos. Exquisite.”

“In my father’s hacienda,” said Mr. Rivera, “there is a picture of which I am vividly reminded. This picture to which I refer is a portrait of one of my paternal ancestors. It is an original Goya.” And while she was still wondering how a Fragonard could remind Mr. Rivera of a Goya, he turned to Carlisle. “You have visited the Argentine, Miss Wayne, of course?”

“No,” said Carlisle.

“But you must. It would appeal to you enormously. It is a little difficult, by the way, for a visitor to see us, as it were, from the inside. The Spanish families are very exclusive.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, yes. An aunt of mine, Doña Isabella de Manuelos-Rivera, used to say ours was the only remaining aristocracy.” He inclined towards Lord Pastern and laughed musically. “But, of course, she had not visited a certain charming house in Duke’s Gate, London.”

“What? I wasn’t listening,” said Lord Pastern. “Look here, Bellairs, about to-night — ”

“To-night,” Mr. Bellairs interrupted, smiling from ear to ear, “is in the bag. We’ll rock them, Lord Pastern. Now, don’t you worry about to-night. It’s going to be wonderful. You’ll be there, of course, Miss Wayne?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Carlisle murmured, wishing they were not so zealous in their attentions.

“I’ve got the gun fixed up,” her uncle said eagerly. “Five rounds of blanks, you know. What about those umbrellas, now — ”

“You are fond of music, Miss Wayne? But of course you are. You would be enchanted by the music of my own country.”

“Tangos and rhumbas?” Carlisle ventured. Mr. Rivera inclined towards her. “At night,” he said, “with the scent of magnolias in the air — those wonderful nights of music. You will think it strange, of course, that I should be — ” he shrugged up his shoulders and lowered his voice — “performing in a dance band. Wearing these appalling clothes! Here, in London. It is terrible, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why.”

“I suppose,” Mr. Rivera sighed, “I am what you call a snob. There are times when I find it almost unendurable. But I must not say so.” He glanced at Mr. Bellairs, who was deep in conversation with his host. “A heart of gold,” he whispered. “One of nature’s gentlemen. I should not complain. How serious we have become,” he added gaily. “We meet and in two minutes I confide in you. You are simpática, Miss Wayne. But of course you have been told that before.”

“Never,” said Carlisle firmly and was glad to see Edward Manx come in.

“Evenin’, Ned,” said Lord Pastern, blinking at him. “Glad to see you. Have you met — ”

Carlisle heard Mr. Rivera draw in his breath with a formidable hiss. Manx, having saluted Mr. Bellairs, advanced with a pleasant smile and extended hand. “We haven’t met, Rivera,” he said, “but at least I’m one of your devotees at the Metronome. If anything could teach me how to dance I’m persuaded it would be your piano-accordion.”

“How do you do,” said Mr. Rivera, and turned his back. “As I was saying, Miss Wayne,” he continued, “I believe entirely in first impressions. As soon as we were introduced — ”

Carlisle looked past him at Manx, who had remained perfectly still. At the first opportunity, she walked round Mr. Rivera and joined him. Mr. Rivera moved to the fireplace, before which he stood with an air of detachment, humming under his breath. Lord Pastern instantly button-holed him. Mr. Bellairs joined them with every manifestation of uneasy geniality. “About my number, Carlos,” said Lord Pastern, “I’ve been tellin’ Breezy — ”

“Of all the filthy rude — ” Manx began to mutter. Carlisle linked her arm in his and walked him away. “He’s just plain frightful, Ned. Félicité must be out of her mind,” she whispered hastily.

“If Cousin George thinks I’m going to stand round letting a bloody fancy-dress dago insult me — ”

“For pity’s sake don’t fly into one of your rages. Laugh it off.”

“Heh-heh-heh.”

“That’s better.”

“He’ll probably throw his sherry in my face. Why the devil was I asked, if he was coming. What’s Cousin Cécile thinking of?”

“It’s Uncle George — shut up. Here come the girls.”

Lady Pastern, encased in black, entered with Félicité at her heels. She suffered the introductions with terrifying courtesy. Mr. Bellairs redoubled his geniality. Mr. Rivera had the air of a man who never blossoms but in the presence of the great.

“I am so pleased to have the honour, at last, of being presented,” he said. “From Félicité I have heard so much of her mother. I feel, too, that we may have friends in common. Perhaps, Lady Pastern, you will remember an uncle of mine who had, I think, some post at our embassy in Paris, many years ago. Señor Alonso de Manuelos-Rivera.”

Lady Pastern contemplated him without any change of expression. “I do not remember,” she said.

“After all it was much too long ago,” he rejoined gallantly. Lady Pastern glanced at him with cold astonishment and advanced upon Manx. “Dearest Edward,” she said, offering her cheek, “we see you far too seldom. This is delightful.”

“Thank you, Cousin Cécile. For me, too.”

“I want to consult you— You will forgive us, George. I am determined to have Edward’s opinion on my petit point.”

“Let me alone,” Manx boasted, “with petit point.”

Lady Pastern put her arm through his and led him apart. Carlisle saw Félicité go to Rivera. Evidently she had herself well in hand: her greeting was prettily formal. She turned with an air of comradeship from Rivera to Bellairs and her stepfather. “Will anyone bet me,” she said, “that I can’t guess what you chaps have been talking about?” Mr. Bellairs was immediately very gay. “Now, Miss de Suze, that’s making it just a little tough. I’m afraid you know much too much about us. Isn’t that the case, Lord Pastern?”

“I’m worried about those umbrellas,” said Lord Pastern moodily and Bellairs and Félicité began to talk at once.

Carlisle was trying to make up her mind about Rivera and failing to do so. Was he in love with Félicité? If so was his jealousy of Ned Manx a genuine and therefore an alarming passion? Was he on the other hand a complete adventurer? Could any human being be as patently bogus as Mr. Rivera or was it within the bounds of possibility that the scions of noble Spanish-American families behaved in a manner altogether too faithful to their Hollywood opposites? Was it her fancy or had his olive-coloured cheeks turned paler as he stood and watched Félicité? Was the slight tic under his left eye, that smallest possible muscular twitch, really involuntary or, as everything else about him seemed to be, part of an impersonation along stereotyped lines? And as these speculations chased each other through her mind, Rivera himself came up to her.

“But you are so serious,” he said. “I wonder why. In my country we have a proverb: a woman is serious for one of two reasons — she is about to fall in love or already she loves without success. The alternative being unthinkable, I ask myself — to whom is this lovely lady about to lose her heart?”

Carlisle thought: “I wonder if this is the line of chat that Félicité has fallen for.” She said: “I’m afraid your proverb doesn’t apply out of South America.”

He laughed as if she had uttered some brilliant equivocation and began to protest that he knew better, indeed he did. Carlisle saw Félicité stare blankly at them and, turning quickly, surprised just such another expression on Edward Manx’s face. She began to feel acutely uncomfortable. There was no getting away from Mr. Rivera. His raillery and archness mounted with indecent emphasis. He admired Carlisle’s dress, her modest jewel, her hair. His lightest remark was pronounced with such a killing air that it immediately assumed the character of an impropriety. Her embarrassment at these excesses quickly gave way to irritation when she saw that while Mr. Rivera bent upon her any number of melting glances he also kept a sharp watch upon Félicité. “And I’ll be damned,” thought Carlisle, “if I let him get away with that little game.” She chose her moment and joined her aunt, who had withdrawn Edward Manx to the other end of the room and, while she exhibited her embroidery, muttered anathemas upon her other guests. As Carlisle came up, Edward was in the middle of some kind of uneasy protestation: “ — but, Cousin Cécile, I don’t honestly think I can do much about it. I mean — oh, hullo, Lisle. Enjoyed your Latin-American petting party?”

“Not enormously,” said Carlisle, and bent over her aunt’s embroidery. “It’s lovely, darling,” she said. “How do you do it?”

“You shall have it for an evening bag. I have been telling Edward that I fling myself on his charity, and,” Lady Pastern added in a stormy undertone, “and on yours, my dearest child.” She raised her needlework as if to examine it and they saw her fingers fumble aimlessly across its surface. “You see, both of you, this atrocious person. I implore you — ” Her voice faltered. “Look,” she whispered, “look now. Look at him.”

Carlisle and Edward glanced furtively at Mr. Rivera, who was in the act of introducing a cigarette into a jade holder. He caught Carlisle’s eye. He did not smile but glossed himself over with appraisement. His eyes widened. “Somewhere or other,” she thought, “he has read about gentlemen who undress ladies with a glance.” She heard Manx swear under his breath and noted with surprise her own gratification at this circumstance. Mr. Rivera advanced upon her.

“Oh, Lord!” Edward muttered.

“Here,” said Lady Pastern loudly, “is Hendy. She is dining with us. I had forgotten.”

The door at the far end of the drawing-room had opened and a woman plainly dressed came quietly in.

“Hendy!” Carlisle echoed. “I had forgotten Hendy,” and went swiftly towards her.