Decline and Fall

CHAPTER I King's Thursday

Margot Beste-Chetwynde had two houses in England ‑ one in London and the other in Hampshire. Her London house, built in the reign of William and Mary, was, by universal consent, the most beautiful building between Bond Street and Park Lane, but opinion was divided on the subject of her country house. This was very new indeed; in fact, it was scarcely finished when Paul went to stay there at the beginning of the Easter holidays. No single act in Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's eventful and in many ways disgraceful career had excited quite so much hostile comment as the building, or rather the rebuilding, of this remarkable house.

It was called King's Thursday, and stood on the place which since the reign of Bloody Mary had been the seat of the Earls of Pastmaster. For three centuries the poverty and inertia of this noble family had preserved its home unmodified by any of the succeeding fashions that fell upon domestic architecture. No wing had been added, no window filled in; no portico, façade, terrace, orangery, tower, or battlement marred its timbered front. In the craze for coal‑gas and indoor sanitation, King's Thursday had slept unscathed by plumber or engineer. The estate carpenter, an office hereditary in the family of the original joiner who had panelled the halls and carved the great staircase, did such restorations as became necessary from time to time for the maintenance of the fabric, working with the same tools and with the traditional methods, so that in a few years his work became indistinguishable from that of his grandsires. Rushlights still flickered in the bedrooms long after all Lord Pastmaster's neighbours were blazing away electricity, and in the last fifty years Hampshire had gradually become proud of King's Thursday. From having been considered rather a blot on the progressive county, King's Thursday gradually became the Mecca of week‑end parties. 'I thought we might go over to tea at the Pastmasters', hostesses would say after luncheon on Sundays. 'You really must see their house. Quite unspoilt, my dear. Professor Franks, who was here last week, said it was recognized as the finest piece of domestic Tudor in England.

It was impossible to ring the Pastmasters up, but they were always at home and unaffectedly delighted to see their neighbours, and after tea Lord Pastmaster would lead the newcomers on a tour round the house, along the great galleries and into the bedrooms, and would point out the priest‑hole and the closet where the third Earl imprisoned his wife for wishing to rebuild a smoking chimney. 'That chimney still smokes when the wind's in the east, he would say, 'but we haven't rebuilt it yet.

Later they would drive away in their big motor cars to their modernized manors, and as they sat in their hot baths before dinner the more impressionable visitors might reflect how they seemed to have been privileged to step for an hour and a half out of their own century into the leisurely, prosaic life of the English Renaissance, and how they had talked at tea of field‑sports and the reform of the Prayer‑Book just as the very‑great‑grandparents of their host might have talked in the same chairs and before the same fire three hundred years before, when their own ancestors, perhaps, slept on straw or among the aromatic merchandise of some Hanse ghetto.

But the time came when King's Thursday had to be sold. It had been built in an age when twenty servants were not an unduly extravagant establishment, and it was scarcely possible to live there with fewer. But servants, the Beste‑Chetwyndes found, were less responsive thar their masters to the charms of Tudor simplicity; the bedrooms originally ordained for them among the maze of rafters that supported the arches of uneven stone roofs were unsuited to modern requirements, and only the dirtiest and most tipsy of cooks could be induced to inhabit the enormous stone‑flagged kitchen or turn the spits at the open fire. Housemaids tended to melt away under the recurring strain of trotting in the bleak hour before breakfast up and down the narrow servants' staircases and along the interminable passages with jugs of warm water for the morning baths. Modern democracy called for lifts and labour‑saving devices, for hot‑water taps and cold‑water taps and (horrible innovation!) drinking water taps, for gas‑rings, and electric ovens.

With rather less reluctance than might have been expected, Lord Pastmaster made up his mind to sell the house; to tell the truth, he could never quite see what all the fuss was about; he supposed it was very historic, and all that, but his own taste lay towards the green shutters and semi‑tropical vegetation of a villa on the French Riviera, in which, if his critics had only realized it, he was fulfilling the traditional character of his family far better than by struggling on at King's Thursday. But the County was slow to observe this, and something very like consternation was felt, not only in the Great Houses, but in the bungalows and the villas for miles about, while in the neighbouring rectories antiquarian clergymen devised folk‑tales of the disasters that should come to crops and herds when there was no longer a Beste-Chetwynde at King's Thursday. Mr Jack Spire in the London Hercules wrote eloquently on the Save King's Thursday Fund, urging that it should be preserved for the nation, but only a very small amount was collected of the very large sum which Lord Pastmaster was sensible enough to demand, and the theory that it was to be transplanted and re-erected in Cincinnati found wide acceptance.

Thus the news that Lord Pastmaster's rich sister‑in‑law had bought the family seat was received with the utmost delight by her new neighbours and by Mr Jack Spire, and all sections of the London Press which noticed the sale. Teneat Bene Beste-Chetwunde, the motto carved over the chimneypiece in the great hall, was quoted exultantly on all sides, for very little was known about Margot Beste‑Chetwynde in Hampshire, and the illustrated papers were always pleased to take any occasion to embellish their pages with her latest portrait; the reporter to whom she remarked, 'I can't think of anything more bourgeois and awful than timbered Tudor architecture, did not take in what she meant or include the statement in his 'story'.

King's Thursday had been empty for two years when Margot Beste‑Chetwynde bought it. She had been there once before, during her engagement.

'It's worse than I thought, far worse, she said as she drove up the main avenue which the loyal villagers had decorated with the flags of the sometime allied nations in honour of her arrival. 'Liberty's new building cannot be compared with it, she said, and stirred impatiently in the car, as she remembered, how many years ago, the romantic young heiress who had walked entranced among the cut yews, and had been wooed, how phlegmatically, in the odour of honeysuckle.

Mr Jack Spire was busily saving St Sepulchre's, Egg Street (where Dr Johnson is said once to have attended Matins), when Margot Beste‑Chetwynde's decision to rebuild King's Thursday became public. He said, very seriously: 'Well, we did what we could, and thought no more about it.

Not so the neighbours, who as the work of demolition proceeded, with the aid of all that was most pulverizing in modern machinery, became increasingly enraged, and, in their eagerness to preserve for the county a little of the great manor, even resorted to predatory expeditions, from which they would return with lumps of carved stonework for their rock gardens, until the contractors were forced to maintain an extra watchman at night. The panelling went to South Kensington, where it has come in for a great deal of admiration from the Indian students. Within nine months of Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's taking possession the new architect was at work on his plans.

It was Otto Friedrich Silenus's first important commission. 'Something clean and square, had been Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's instructions, and then she had disappeared on one of her mysterious world‑tours, saying as she left: 'Please see that it is finished by the spring.

Professor Silenus ‑ for that was the title by which this extraordinary young man chose to be called ‑ was a 'find' of Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's. He was not yet very famous anywhere, though all who met him carried away deep and diverse impressions of his genius. He had first attracted Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's attention with the rejected design for a chewing‑gum factory which had been produced in a progressive Hungarian quarterly. His only other completed work was the décor for a cinema‑film of great length and complexity of plot ‑ a complexity rendered the more inextricable by the producer's austere elimination of all human characters, a fact which had proved fatal to its commercial success. He was starving resignedly in a bedsitting‑room in Bloomsbury, despite the untiring efforts of his parents to find him ‑ they were very rich in Hamburg ‑ when he was offered the commission of rebuilding King's Thursday. 'Something clean and square' ‑ he pondered for three hungry days upon the aesthetic implications of these instructions and then began his designs.

'The problem of architecture as I see it, he told a journalist who had come to report on the progress of his surprising creation of ferro‑concrete and aluminium, 'is the problem of all art ‑ the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best. All ill comes from man, he said gloomily; 'please tell your readers that. Man is never beautiful, he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces.

The journalist looked doubtful. 'Now, Professor, he said, 'tell me this. Is it a fact that you have refused to take any fee for the work you are doing, if you don't mind my asking?

'It is not, said Professor Silenus.

'Peer's Sister‑in‑Law Mansion Builder on Future of Architecture, thought the journalist happily. 'Will machines live in houses? Amazing forecast of Professor-Architect.

Professor Silenus watched the reporter disappear down the drive and then, taking a biscuit from his pocket, began to munch.

'I suppose there ought to be a staircase, he said gloomily. 'Why can't the creatures stay in one place? Up and down, in and out, round and round! Why can't they sit still and work? Do dynamos require staircases? Do monkeys require houses? What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self‑approval of his biological by-product! this half‑formed, ill‑conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!

Two hours later the foreman in charge of the concrete-mixer came to consult with the Professor. He had not moved from where the journalist had left him; his fawn-like eyes were fixed and inexpressive, and the hand which had held the biscuit still rose and fell to and from his mouth with a regular motion, while his empty jaws champed rhythmically; otherwise he was wholly immobile.

CHAPTER II Interlude in Belgravia

Arthur Potts knew all about King's Thursday and Professor Silenus.

On the day of Paul's arrival in London he rang up his old friend and arranged to dine with him at the Queen's Restaurant in Sloane Square. It seemed quite natural that they should be again seated at the table where they had discussed so many subjects of public importance, Budgets and birth control and Byzantine mosaics. For the first tilne since the disturbing evening of the Bollinger dinner he felt at ease. Llanabba Castle, with its sham castellations and preposterous inhabitants, had sunk into the oblivion that waits upon even the most lurid of nightmares. Here were sweet corn and pimentoes, and white Burgundy, and the grave eyes of Arthur Potts, and there on the peg over his head hung the black hat he had bought in St James's that afternoon. For an evening at least the shadow that has flitted about this narrative under the name of Paul Pennyfeather materialized into the solid figure of an intelligent, well‑educated, well‑conducted young man, a man who could be trusted to use his vote at a general election with discretion and proper detachment, whose opinion on a ballet or a critical essay was rather better than most people's, who could order a dinner without embarrassment and in a creditable French accent, who could be trusted to see to luggage at foreign railway‑stations and might be expected to acquit himself with decision and decorum in all the emergencies of civilized life. This was the Paul Pennyfeather who had been developing in the placid years which preceded this story. In fact, the whole of this book is really an account of the mysterious disappearance of Paul Pennyfeather, so that readers must not complain if the shadow which took his name does not amply fill the important part of hero for which he was originally cast.

'I saw some of Otto Silenus's work at Munich, said Potts. 'I think that he's a man worth watching. He was in Moscow at one time and in the Bauhaus at Dessau. He can't be more than twenty‑five now. There were some photographs of King's Thursday in a paper the other day. It looked extraordinarily interesting. It's said to be the only really imaginative building since the French Revolution. He's got right away from Corbusier, anyway.

'If people realized, said Paul, 'Corbusier is a pure nineteenth‑century, Manchester school utilitarian, and that's why they like him.

Then Paul told Potts about the death of Grimes and the doubts of Mr Prendergast, and Potts told Paul about rather an interesting job he had got under the League of Nations and how he had decided not to take his Schools in consequence and of the unenlightened attitude adopted in the matter by Potts's father.

For an evening Paul became a real person again, but next day he woke up leaving himself disembodied somewhere between Sloane Square and Onslow Square. He had to meet Beste‑Chetwynde and catch a morning train to King's Thursday, and there his extraordinary adventures began anew. From the point of view of this story Paul's second disappearance is necessary, because, as the reader will probably have discerned already, Paul Pennyfeather would never have made a hero, and the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.

CHAPTER III Pervigilium Veneris

'I'm looking forward to seeing our new house, said Beste-Chetwynde as they drove out from the station. 'Mamma says it may be rather a surprise.

The lodges and gates had been left undisturbed, and the lodge‑keeper's wife, white‑aproned as Mrs Noah, bobbed at the car as it turned into the avenue. The temperate April sunlight fell through the budding chestnuts and revealed between their trunks green glimpses of parkland and the distant radiance of a lake. 'English spring, thought Paul. 'In the dreaming ancestral beauty of the English country. Surely, he thought, these great chestnuts in the morning sun stood for something enduring and serene in a world that had lost its reason and would so stand when the chaos and confusion were forgotten? And surely it was the spirit of William Morris that whispered to him in Margot Beste‑Chetwynde's motor car about seed‑time and harvest, the superb succession of the seasons, the harmonious interdependence of rich and poor, of dignity, innocence, and tradition? But at a turn in the drive the cadence of his thoughts was abruptly transected. They had come into sight of the house.

'Golly! said Beste‑Chetwynde. 'Mamma has done herself proud this time.

The car stopped. Paul and Beste‑Chetwynde got out, stretched themselves, and were led across a floor of bottle-green glass into the dining‑room, where Mrs Beste-Chetwynde was already seated at the vulcanite table beginning her luncheon.

'My dears, she cried, extending a hand to each of them, 'how divine to see you! I have been waiting for this to go straight to bed.

She was a thousand times more beautiful than all Paul's feverish recollections of her. He watched her, transported.

'Darling boy, how are you? she said. 'Do you know you're beginning to look rather lovely in a coltish kind of way. Don't you think so, Otto?

Paul had noticed nothing in the room except Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde; he now saw that there was a young man sitting beside her, with very fair hair and large glasses, behind which his eyes lay like slim fish in an aquarium; they woke from their slumber, flashed iridescent in the light, and darted towards little Beste-Chetwynde.

'His head is too big, and his hands are too small, said Professor Silenus. 'But his skin is pretty.

'How would it be if I made Mr Pennyfeather a cocktail? Beste‑Chetwynde asked.

'Yes, Peter, dear, do. He makes them rather well. You can't think what a week I've had, moving in and taking the neighbours round the house and the Press photographers. Otto's house doesn't seem to be a great success with the county, does it, Otto? What was it Lady Vanburgh said?

'Was that the woman like Napoleon the Great?

'Yes, darling.

'She said she understood that the drains were satisfactory, but that, of course, they were underground. I asked her if she wished to make use of them, and said that I did, and went away. But, as a matter of fact, she was quite right. They are the only tolerable part of the house. How glad I shall be when the mosaics are finished and I can go!

'Don't you like it? asked Peter Beste‑Chetwynde over the cocktail‑shaker. 'I think it's so good. It was rather Chokey's taste before.

'I hate and detest every bit of it, said Professor Silenus gravely. 'Nothing I have ever done has caused me so much disgust. With a deep sigh he rose from the table and walked from the room, the fork with which he had been eating still held in his hand.

'Otto has real genius, said Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde. 'You must be sweet to him, Peter. There's a whole lot of people coming down to‑morrow for the week‑end, and, my dear, that Maltravers has invited himself again. You wouldn't like him for a stepfather, would you, darling?

'No, said Peter. 'If you must marry again do choose someone young and quiet.

'Peter, you're an angel. I will. But now I'm going to bed. I had to wait to see you both. Show Mr Pennyfeather the way about, darling.

The aluminium lift shot up, and Paul came down to earth.

'That's an odd thing to ask me in a totally strange house, said Peter Beste‑Chetwynde. 'Anyway, let's have some luncheon.

It was three days before Paul next saw Mrs Beste-Chetwynde.

'Don't you think that she's the most wonderful woman in the world? said Paul.

'Wonderful? In what way?

He and Professor Silenus were standing on the terrace after dinner. The half‑finished mosaics at their feet were covered with planks and sacking; the great colonnade of black glass pillars shone in the moonlight; beyond the polished aluminium balustrade the park stretched silent and illimitable.

'The most beautiful and the most free. She almost seems like the creature of a different species. Don't you feel that?

'No, said the Professor after a few moments' consideration. 'I can't say that I do. If you compare her with other women of her age you will see that the particulars in which she differs from them are infinitesimal compared with the points of similarity. A few millimetres here and a few millimetres there, such variations are inevitable in the human reproductive system; but in all her essential functions ‑ her digestion, for example ‑ she conforms to type.

'You might say that about anybody.

'Yes, I do. But it's Margot's variations that I dislike so much. They are small, but obtrusive, like the teeth of a saw. Otherwise I might marry her.

'Why do you think she would marry you?

'Because, as I said, all her essential functions are normal. Anyway, she asked me to twice. The first time I said I would think it over, and the second time I refused. I'm sure I was right. She would interrupt me terribly. Besides, she's getting old. In ten years she will be almost worn out.

Professor Silenus looked at his watch ‑ a platinum disc from Cartier, the gift of Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde. 'Quarter to ten, he said. 'I must go to bed. He threw the end of his cigar clear of the terrace in a glowing parabola. 'What do you take to make you sleep?

'I sleep quite easily, said Paul, 'except on trains.

'You're lucky. Margot takes veronal. I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

That night as Paul marked his place in The Golden Bough, and, switching off his light, turned over to sleep he thought of the young man a few bedrooms away, lying motionless in the darkness, his hands at his sides, his legs stretched out, his eyes closed, and his brain turning and turning regularly all the night through, drawing in more and more power, storing it away like honey in its intricate cells and galleries, till the atmosphere about it became exhausted and vitiated and only the brain remained turning in the darkness.

So Margot Beste‑Chetwynde wanted to marry Otto Silenus, and in another corner of this extraordinary house she lay in a drugged trance, her lovely body cool and fragrant and scarcely stirring beneath the bedclothes; and outside in the park a thousand creatures were asleep, and beyond that, again, were Arthur Potts, and Mr Prendergast, and the Llanabba stationmaster. Quite soon Paul fell asleep. Downstairs Peter Beste‑Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

The aluminium blinds shot up, and the sun poured in through the vita‑glass, filling the room with beneficent rays. Another day had begun at King's Thursday.

From his bathroom window Paul looked down on to the terrace. The coverings had been removed, revealing the half‑finished pavement of silver and scarlet. Professor Silenus was already out there directing two workmen with the aid of a chart.

The week‑end party arrived at various times in the course of the day, but Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde kept to her room while Peter received them in the prettiest way possible. Paul never learned all their names, nor was he ever sure how many of them there were. He supposed about eight or nine, but as they all wore so many different clothes of identically the same kind, and spoke in the same voice, and appeared so irregularly at meals, there may have been several more or several less.

The first to come were The Hon. Miles Malpractice and David Lennox, the photographer. They emerged with little shrieks from an Edwardian electric brougham and made straight for the nearest looking‑glass.

In a minute the panotrope was playing, David and Miles were dancing, and Peter was making cocktails. The party had begun. Throughout the afternoon new guests arrived, drifting in vaguely or running in with cries of welcome just as they thought suited them best.

Pamela Popham, square‑jawed and resolute as a big-game huntress, stared round the room through her spectacles, drank three cocktails, said: 'My God! twice, cut two or three of her friends, and stalked off to bed.

'Tell Olivia I've arrived when she comes, she said to Peter.

After dinner they went to a whist drive and dance in the village hall. By half‑past two the house was quiet; at half‑past three Lord Parakeet arrived, slightly drunk and in evening clothes, having 'just escaped less than one second ago' from Alastair Trumpington's twenty‑first birthday party in London.

'Alastair was with me some of the way, he said, 'but I think he must have fallen out.

The party, or some of it, reassembled in pyjamas to welcome him. Parakeet walked round bird‑like and gay, pointing his thin white nose and making rude little jokes at everyone in turn in a shrill, emasculate voice. At four the house was again at rest.

Only one of the guests appeared to be at all ill at ease: Sir Humphrey Maltravers, the Minister of Transportation. He arrived early in the day with a very large car and two very small suitcases, and from the first showed himself as a discordant element in the gay little party by noticing the absence of their hostess.

'Margot? No, I haven't seen her at all. I don't believe she's terribly well, said one of them, 'or perhaps she's lost somewhere in the house. Peter will know.

Paul found him seated alone in the garden after luncheon, smoking a large cigar, his big red hands folded before him, a soft hat tilted over his eyes, his big red face both defiant and disconsolate. He bore a preternatural resemblance to his caricatures in the evening papers, Paul thought.

'Hullo, young man! he said. 'Where's everybody?

'I think Peter's taking them on a tour round the house. It's much more elaborate than it looks from outside. Would you care to join them?

'No, thank you, not for me. I came here for a rest. These young people tire me. I have enough of the House during the week. Paul laughed politely. 'It's the devil of a session. You keen on politics at all?

'Hardly at all, Paul said.

'Sensible fellow! I can't think why I keep on at it. It's a dog's life, and there's no money in it, either. If I'd stayed at the Bar I'd have been a rich man by now.

'Rest, rest and riches, he said ‑ 'it's only after forty one begins to value things of that kind. And half one's life, perhaps, is lived after forty. Solemn thought that. Bear it in mind, young man, and it will save you from most of the worst mistakes. If everyone at twenty realized that half his life was to be lived after forty…

'Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's cooking and Mrs Beste-Chetwynde's garden, said Sir Humphrey meditatively. 'What could be desired more except our fair hostess herself? Have you known her long?

'Only a few weeks, said Paul.

'There's no one like her, said Sir Humphrey. He drew a deep breath of smoke. Beyond the yew hedges the panotrope could be faintly heard. 'What did she want to build this house for? he asked. 'It all comes of this set she's got into. It's not doing her any good. Damned awkward position to be in ‑ a rich woman without a husband! Bound to get herself talked about. What Margot ought to do is to marry — someone who would stabilize her position, someone, said Sir Humphrey, 'with a position in public life.

And then, without any apparent connexion of thought, he began talking about himself. "Aim high" has been my motto, said Sir Humphrey, 'all through my life. You probably won't get what you want, but you may get something; aim low, and you get nothing at all. It's like throwing a stone at a cat. When I was a kid that used to be great sport in our yard; I daresay you were throwing cricket‑balls when you were that age, but it's the same thing. If you throw straight at it, you fall short; aim above, and with luck you score. Every kid knows that. I'll tell you the story of my life.

Why was it, Paul wondered, that everyone he met seemed to specialize in this form of autobiography? He supposed he must have a sympathetic air. Sir Humphrey told of his early life: of a family of nine living in two rooms, of a father who drank and a mother who had fits, of a sister who went on the streets, of a brother who went to prison, of another brother who was born a deaf‑mute. He told of scholarships and polytechnics, of rebuffs and encouragements, of a University career of brilliant success and unexampled privations.

'I used to do proof‑reading for the Holywell Press, he said, 'then I learned shorthand and took down the University sermons for the local papers.

As he spoke the clipped yews seemed to grow grey with the soot of the slums, and the panotrope in the distance took on the gay regularity of a barrel‑organ heard up a tenement staircase.

'We were a pretty hot lot at Scone in my time, he said, naming several high officers of state with easy familiarity, 'but none of them had so far to go as I had.

Paul listened patiently, as was his habit. Sir Humphrey's words flowed easily, because, as a matter of fact, he was rehearsing a series of articles he had dictated the evening before for publication in a Sunday newspaper. He told Paul about his first briefs and his first general election, the historic Liberal campaign of 1906, and of the strenuous days just before the formation of the Coalition.

'I've nothing to be ashamed of, said Sir Humphrey. 'I've gone farther than most people. I suppose that, if I keep on, I may one day lead the party. But all this winter I've been feeling that I've got as far as I shall ever get. I've got to the time when I should like to go into the other House and give up work and perhaps keep a racehorse or two' ‑ and his eyes took on the far‑away look of a popular actress describing the cottage of her dreams ‑ 'and a yacht and a villa at Monte. The others can do that when they like, and they know it. It's not till you get to my age that you really feel the disadvantage of having been born poor.

On Sunday evening Sir Humphrey suggested a 'hand of cards'. The idea was received without enthusiasm.

'Wouldn't that be rather fast? said Miles. 'It is Sunday. I think cards are divine, particularly the kings. Such naughty old faces! But if I start playing for money, I always lose my temper and cry. Ask Pamela; she's so brave and manly.

'Let's all play billiards and make a Real House Party of it, said David, 'or shall we have a Country House Rag?

'Oh I to feel such a rip, said Miles when he was at last persuaded to play. Sir Humphrey won. Parakeet lost thirty pounds, and opening his pocket book, paid him in ten‑pound notes.

'How he did cheat! said Olivia on the way to bed.

'Did he, darling? Well, let's jolly well not pay him, said Miles.

'It never occurred to me to do such a thing. Why, I couldn't afford to possibly.

Peter tossed Sir Humphrey double or quits, and won.

'After all, I am host, he explained.

'When I was your age, said Sir Humphrey to Miles, 'we used to sit up all night sometimes playing poker. Heavy money, too.

'Oh, you wicked old thing! said Miles.

Early on Monday morning the Minister of Transportation's Daimler disappeared down the drive. 'I rather think he expected to see mamma, said Peter. 'I told him what was the matter with her.

'You shouldn't have done that, said Paul.

'No, it didn't go down awfully well. He said that he didn't know what things were coming to and that even in the slums such things were not spoken about by children of my age. What a lot he ate! I did my best to make him feel at home, too, by talking about trains.

'I thought he was a very sensible old man, said Professor Silenus. 'He was the only person who didn't think it necessary to say something polite about the house. Besides, he told me about a new method of concrete construction they're trying at one of the Govermnent Superannuation Homes.

Peter and Paul went back to their cylindrical study and began another spelling‑lesson.

As the last of the guests departed Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde reappeared from her little bout of veronal, fresh and exquisite as a seventeenth‑century lyric. The meadow of green glass seemed to burst into flower under her feet as she passed from the lift to the cocktail table.

'You poor angels! she said. 'Did you have the hell of a time with Maltravers? And all those people? I quite forget who asked to come this week‑end. I gave up inviting people long ago, she said, turning to Paul, 'but it didn't make a bit of difference. She gazed into the opalescent depths of her absinthe frappé. 'More and more I feel the need of a husband, but Peter is horribly fastidious.

'Well, your men are all so awfill, said Peter.

'I sometimes think of marrying old Maltravers, said Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde, 'just to get my own back, only "Margot Maltravers" does sound a little too much, don't you think? And if they give him a peerage, he's bound to choose something quite awful….

In the whole of Paul's life no one had ever been quite so sweet to him as Margot Beste‑Chetwynde was during the next few days. Up and down the shining lift shafts, in and out of the rooms, and along the labyrinthine corridors of the great house he moved in a golden mist. Each morning as he dressed a bird seemed to be singing in his heart, and as he lay down to sleep he would pillow his head against a hand about which still hung a delicate fragrance of Margot Beste‑Chetwynde's almost unprocurable scent.

'Paul, dear, she said one day as hand in hand, after a rather fearful encounter with a swan, they reached the shelter of the lake house, 'I can't bear to think of you going back to that awful school. Do, please, write and tell Dr Fagan that you won't.

The lake house was an eighteenth‑century pavilion, built on a little mound above the water. They stood there for a full minute still hand in hand on the crumbling steps.

'I don't quite see what else I could do, said Paul.

'Darling, I could find you a job.

'What sort of job, Margot? Paul's eyes followed the swan gliding serenely across the lake; he did not dare to look at her.

'Well, Paul, you might stay and protect me from swans, mightn't you? Margot paused and then, releasing her hand, took a cigarette case from her pocket. Paul struck a match. 'My dear, what an unsteady hand! I'm afraid you're drinking too many of Peter's cocktails. That child has a lot to learn yet about the use of vodka. But seriously I'm sure I can find you a better job. It's absurd your going back to Wales. I still manage a great deal of my father's business, you know, or perhaps you didn't. It was mostly in South America in ‑ in places of entertainment, cabarets and hotels and theatres, you know, and things like that. I'm sure I could find you a job helping in that, if you think you'd like it.

Paul thought of this gravely. 'Oughtn't I to know Spanish? he said. It seemed quite a sensible question, but Margot threw away her cigarette with a little laugh and said: 'It's time to go and change. You are being difficult this evening, aren't you?

Paul thought about this conversation as he lay in his bath ‑ a sunk bath of malachite ‑ and all the time while he dressed and as he tied his tie he trembled from head to foot like one of the wire toys which street vendors dangle from trays.

At dinner Margot talked about matters of daily interest, about some jewels she was having reset, and how they had come back all wrong; and how all the wiring of her London house was being overhauled because of the fear of fire; and how the man she had left in charge of her villa at Cannes had made a fortune at the Casino and given her notice, and she was afraid she might have to go out there to arrange about it; and how the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings was demanding a guarantee that she would not demolish her castle in Ireland; and how her cook seemed to be going off his head that night, the dinner was so dull; and how Bobby Pastmaster was trying to borrow money from her again, on the grounds that she had misled him when she bought his house and that if he had known she was going to pull it down he would have made her pay more. 'Which is not logical of Bobby, she said. 'The less I valued this house, the less I ought to have paid, surely? Still, I'd better send him something, otherwise he'll go and marry, and I think it may be nice for Peter to have the title when he grows up.

Later, when they were alone, she said: 'People talk a great deal of nonsense about being rich. Of course it is a bore in some ways, and it means endless work, but I wouldn't be poor, or even moderately well‑off, for all the ease in the world. Would you be happy if you were rich, do you think?

'Well, it depends how I got the money, said PauL

'I don't see how that comes in.

'No, I don't quite mean that. What I mean is that I think there's only one thing that could make me really happy, and if I got that I should be rich too, but it wouldn't matter being rich, you see, because, however rich I was, and I hadn't got what would make me happy, I shouldn't be happy, you see.

'My precious, that's rather obscure, said Margot, 'but I think it may mean something rather sweet. He looked up at her, and her eyes met his unfalteringly. 'If it does, I'm glad, she added.

'Margot, darling, beloved, please, will you marry me? Paul was on his knees by her chair, his hands on hers.

'Well, that's rather what I've been wanting to discuss with you all day. But surely there was a tremor in her voice?

'Does that mean that possibly you might, Margot? Is there a chance that you will?

'I don't see why not. Of course we must ask Peter about it, and there are other things we ought to discuss first, and then, quite suddenly, 'Paul, dear, dear creature, come here.

They found Peter in the dining‑room eating a peach at the sideboard.

'Hullo, you two! he said.

'Peter, we've something to tell you, said Margot. 'Paul says he wants me to marry him.

'Splendid! said Peter. 'I am glad. Is that what you've been doing in the library?

'Then you don't mind? said Paul.

'Mind? It's what I've been trying to arrange all this week. As a matter of fact, that's why I brought you here at all. I think it's altogether admirable, he said, taking another peach.

'You're the first man he's said that about, Paul. I think it's rather a good omen.

'Oh, Margot, let's get married at once.

'My dear, I haven't said that I'm going to yet. I'll tell you in the morning.

'No, tell me now, Margot. You do like me a little, don't you? Please marry me just terribly soon.

'I'll tell you in the morning. There're several things I must think about first. Let's go back to the library.

That night Paul found it unusually diflicult to sleep. Long after he had shut his book and turned out the light he lay awake, his eyes open, his thoughts racing uncontrollably. As in the first night of his visit, he felt the sleepless, involved genius of the house heavy about his head. He and Margot and Peter and Sir Humphrey Maltravers were just insignificant incidents in the life of the house: this new‑born monster to whose birth ageless and forgotten cultures had been in travail. For half an hour he lay looking into the darkness until gradually his thoughts began to separate themselves from himself, and he knew he was falling asleep. Suddenly he was roused to consciousness by the sound of his door opening gently. He could see nothing, but he heard the rustle of silk as someone came into the room. Then the door shut again.

'Paul, are you asleep?

'Margot!

'Hush, dear! Don't turn on the light. Where are you? The silk rustled again as though falling to the ground. 'It's best to make sure, isn't it, darling, before we decide anything? It may be just an idea of yours that you're in love with me. And, you see, Paul, I like you so very much, it would be a pity to make a mistake, wouldn't it?

But happily there was no mistake, and next day Paul and Margot announced their engagement.

CHAPTER IV Resurrection

Crossing the hall one afternoon a few days later, Paul met a short man with a long red beard stumping along behind the footman towards Margot's study.

'Good Lord! he said.

'Not a word, old boy! said the bearded man as he passed on.

A few minutes later Paul was joined by Peter. 'I say, Paul, he said, 'who do you think's talking to Mamma?

'I know, said Paul. 'It's a very curious thing.

'I somehow never felt he was dead, said Peter. 'I told Clutterbuck that to try and cheer him up.

'Did it?

'Not very much, Peter admitted. 'My argument was that if he'd really gone out to sea he would have left his wooden leg behind with his clothes, but Clutterbuck said he was very sensitive about his leg. I wonder what he's come to see Mamma about?

A little later they ambushed him in the drive, and Grimes told them. 'Forgive the beaver, he said, 'but it's rather important at the moment.

'In the soup again? asked Paul.

'Well, not exactly, but things have been rather low lately. The police are after me. That suicide didn't go down well. I was afraid it wouldn't. They began to fuss a bit about nobody being found and about my game leg. And then my other wife turned up, and that set them thinking. Hence the vegetation. Clever of you two to spot me.

They led him back to the house, and Peter mixed him a formidable cocktail, the principal ingredients of which were absinthe and vodka.

'It's the old story, said Grimes. 'Grimes has fallen on his feet again. By the way, old boy, I have to congratulate you, haven't I? You've done pretty well for yourself, too. His eye travelled appreciatively over the glass floor, and the pneumatic rubber furniture, and the porcelain ceiling, and the leather‑hung walls. 'It's not everyone's taste, he said, 'but I think you'll be comfortable. Funny thing, I never expected to see you when I came down here.

'What we want to know, said Peter, 'is what brought you down to see Mamma at all.

'Just good fortune, said Grimes. 'It was like this. After I left Llanabba I was rather at a loose end. I'd borrowed a fiver from Philbrick just before he left, and that got me to London, but for a week or so things were rather thin. I was sitting in a pub one day in Shaftesbury Avenue, feeling my beard rather warm and knowing I only had about five bob left in the world, when I noticed a chap staring at me pretty hard in the other corner of the bar. He came over after a bit and said: "Captain Grimes, I think?" That rather put the wind up me. "No, no, old boy," I said, "quite wrong, rotten shot. Poor old Grimes is dead, drowned. Davy Jones' locker, old boy!" And I made to leave. Of course it wasn't a very sensible thing to say, because, if I hadn't been Grimes, it was a hundred to one against my knowing Grimes was dead, if you see what I mean. "Pity," he said, "because I heard old Grimes was down on his luck, and I had a job I thought might suit him. Have a drink, anyway." Then I realized who he was. He was an awful stout fellow called Bill, who'd been quartered with me in Ireland. "Bill," I said, "I thought you were a bobby." "That's all right, old boy," said Bill. Well, it appeared that this Bill had gone off to the Argentine after the war and had got taken on as manager of a… ‑ Grimes stopped as though suddenly reminded of something ‑ 'a place of entertainment. Sort of night club, you know. Well, he'd done rather well in that job, and had been put in charge of a whole chain of places of entertainment all along the coast. They're a syndicate owned in England. He'd come back on leave to look for a couple of chaps to go out with him and help. "The Dagos are no use at the job," he said, "not dispassionate enough." Had to be chaps who could control themselves where women were concerned. That's what made him think of me. But it was a pure act of God, our meeting.

'Well, apparently the syndicate was first founded by young Beste‑Chetwynde's grandpapa, and Mrs Beste-Chetwynde still takes an interest in it, so I was sent down to interview her and see if she agreed to the appointment. It never occurred to me it was the same Mrs Beste-Chetwynde who came down to the sports the day Prendy got so tight. Only shows how small the world is, doesn't it?

'Did Mamma give you the job? asked Peter.

'She did, and fifty pounds advance on my wages, and some jolly sound advice. It's been a good day for Grimes. Heard from the old man lately, by the way?

'Yes, said Paul, 'I got a letter this morning, and he showed it to Grimes:

Llanabba Castle,

North Wales.

My dear Pennyfeather,

Thank you for your letter and the enclosed cheque! I need hardly tell you that it is a real disappointment to me to hear that you are not returning to us next term. I had looked forward to a long and mutually profitable connexion. However my daughters and I join in wishing you every happiness in your married life. I hope you will use your new influence to keep Peter at the school. He is a boy for whom I have great hopes. I look to him as one of my prefects in the future.

The holidays so far have afforded me little rest. My daughters and I have been much worried by the insistence of a young Irish woman of most disagreeable appearance and bearing who claims to be the widow of poor Captain Grimes. She has got hold of some papers which seem to support her claim. The police, too, are continually here asking impertinent questions about the number of suits of clothes my unfortunate son‑in‑law possessed.

Besides this, I have had a letter from Mr Prendergast stating that he too wishes to resign his post. Apparently he has been reading a series of articles by a popular bishop and has discovered that there is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. This seems to be a comfort to him, but it adds to my own inconvenience.

Indeed, I hardly think that I have the heart to keep on at Llanabba. I have had an offer from a cinema company, the managing director of which, oddly enough, is called Sir Solomon Philbrick, who wish to buy the Castle. They say that its combination of medieval and Georgian architecture is a unique advantage. My daughter Diana is anxious to start a nursing‑home or an hotel. So you see that things are not easy.

Yours sincerely,

Augustus Fagan.

There was another surprise in store for Paul that day. Hardly had Grimes left the house when a tall young man with a black hat and thoughtful eyes presented himself at the front door and asked for Mr Pennyfeather. It was Potts.

'My dear fellow, said Paul, 'I am glad to see you.

'I saw your engagement in The Times, said Potts, 'and as I was in the neighbourhood, I wondered if you'd let me see the house.

Paul and Peter led him all over it and explained its intricacies. He admired the luminous ceiling in Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's study and the indiarubber fungi in the recessed conservatory and the little drawing‑room, of which the floor was a large kaleidoscope, set in motion by an electric button. They took him up in the lift to the top of the great pyramidal tower, from which he could look down on the roofs and domes of glass and aluminium which glittered like Chanel diamonds in the afternoon sun. But it was not this that he had come to see. As soon as he and Paul were alone he said, as though casually: 'Who was that little man I met coming down the drive?

'I think he was something to do with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, said Paul. 'Why?

'Are you sure? asked Potts in evident disappointment 'How maddening! I've been on a false scent again.

'Are you doing Divorce Court shadowings, Potts?

'No, no, it's all to do with the League of Nations, said Potts vaguely, and he called attention to the tank of octopuses which was so prominent a feature of the room in which they were standing.

Margot invited Potts to stay to dinner. He tried hard to make a good impression on Professor Silenus, but in this he was not successful. In fact, it was probably Potts' visit which finally drove the Professor from the house. At any rate, he left early the next morning without troubling to pack or remove his luggage. Two days later, when they were all out, he arrived in a car and took away his mathematical instruments, and some time after that again appeared to fetch two clean handkerchiefs and a change of underclothes. That was the last time he was seen at King's Thursday. When Margot and Paul went up to London they had his luggage packed and left downstairs for him, in case he should come again, but there it stayed, none of the male servants finding anything in it that he would care to wear. Long afterwards Margot saw the head gardener's son going to church in a batik tie of Professor Silenus's period. It was the last relic of a great genius, for before that King's Thursday had been again rebuilt.

CHAPTER V The Latin-American Entertainment Co., Ltd

At the end of April Peter returned to Llanabba, Dr Fagan having announccd that the sale of the Castle had not been effected, and Margot and Paul went up to London to make arrangements for the wedding, which, contrary to all reasonable expectation, Margot decided was to take place in church with all the barbaric concomitants of bridesmaids, Mendelssohn, and Mumm. But before the wedding she had a good deal of South American business to see to.

'My first honeymoon was rather a bore, she said, 'so I'm not taking any chances with this one. I must get everything settled before we start, and then we're going to have the three best months of your life.

The work seemed to consist chiefly of interviewing young women for jobs in cabarets and as dancing partners. With some reluctance Margot allowed Paul to be present one morning as she saw a new batch. The room in which she conducted her business was the Sports Room, which had been decorated for her, in her absence, by little Davy Lennox, the society photographer. Two stuffed buffaloes stood one on each side of the door. The carpet was of grass‑green marked out with white lines, and the walls were hung with netting. The lights were in glass footballs, and the furniture was ingeniously designed of bats and polo‑sticks and golf‑clubs. Athletic groups of the early nineties and a painting of a prize ram hung on the walls.

'It's terribly common, said Margot, 'but it rather impresses the young ladies, which is a good thing. Some of them tend to be rather mannery if they aren't kept in order.

Paul sat in the corner ‑ on a chair made in the shape of an inflated Channel swimmer ‑ enraptured at her business ability. All her vagueness had left her, she sat upright at the table, which was covered with Balmoral tartan, her pen poised over an inkpot, which was set in a stuffed grouse, the very embodiment of the Feminist movement. One by one the girls were shown in.

'Name? said Margot.

'Pompilia de la Conradine.

Margot wrote it down.

'Real name?

'Bessy Brown.

'Age?

'Twenty‑two.

'Real age?

'Twenty‑two.

'Experience?

'I was at Mrs Rosenbaum's, in Jermyn Street, for two years, mum.

'Well, Bessy, I'll see what I can do for you. Why did you leave Mrs Rosenbaum's?

'She said the gentlemen liked a change.

'I'll just ask her. Margot took up the telephone, which was held by a boxing‑glove. 'Is that Mrs Rosenbaum? This is Latin‑American Entertainments, Ltd speaking. Can you tell me about Miss de la Conradine?… Oh, that was the reason she left you? Thank you so much! I rather thought that might be it. She rang off. 'Sorry, Bessy; nothing for you just at present.

She pressed the bell, which was in the eye of a salmon trout, and another young lady was shown in.

'Name?

'Jane Grimes.

'Who sent you to me?

'The gentleman at Cardiff. He gave me this to give you. She produced a crumpled envelope and handed it across the table. Margot read the note. 'Yes, I see. So you're new to the business, Jane?

'Like a babe unborn, mum.

'But you married?

'Yes, mum, but it was in the war, and he was very drunk.

'Where's your husband?

'Dead, so they do say.

'That's excellent, Jane. You're just the sort we want. How soon can you sail?

'How soon would you be wanting me to?

'Well, there's a vacancy in Rio I'm filling at the end of the week. I'm sending our two very nice girls. Would you like to be going with them?

'Yes, mum, very pleased, I'm sure.

'D'you want any money in advance?

'Well, I could do with a bit to send my dad if you could spare it.

Margot took some notes from a drawer, counted them, and made out the receipt.

'Sign this, will you? I've got your address. I'll send you your tickets in a day or so. How are you off for clothes?

'Well, I've got a fine silk dress, but it's at Cardiff with the other things. The gentleman said I'd be getting some new clothes, perhaps.

'Yes, quite right. I'll make a note of that. The arrangement we generally make is that our agent chooses the clothes and you pay for them out of your salary in instalments.

Mrs Grimes went out, and another girl took her place.

By luncheon‑time Margot Beste‑Chetwynde was tired. 'Thank heavens, that's the last of them, she said. 'Were you terribly bored, my angel?

'Margot, you're wonderful. You ought to have been an empress.

'Don't say that you were a Christian slave, dearest.

'It never occurred to me, said Paul.

'There's a young man just like your friend Potts on the other side of the street, said Margot at the window. 'And my dear, he's picked up the last of those poor girls, the one who wanted to take her children and her brother with her.

'Then it can't be Potts, said Paul lazily. 'I say, Margot, there was one thing I couldn't understand. Why was it that the less experience those chorus‑girls had, the more you seemed to want them? You offered much higher wages to the ones who said they'd never had a job before.

'Did I, darling? I expect it was because I feel so absurdly happy.

At the time this seemed quite a reasonable explanation, but, thinking the matter over, Paul had to admit to himself that there had been nothing noticeably light‑hearted in Margot's conduct of her business.

'Let's have luncheon out to‑day, said Margot. 'I'm tired of this house.

They walked across Berkeley Square together in the sunshine. A footman in livery stood on the steps of one of the houses. A hatter's van, emblazoned with the royal arms, trotted past them on Hay Hill, two cockaded figures upright upon the box. A very great lady, bolstered up in an old‑fashioned landaulette, bowed to Margot with an inclination she had surely learned in the Court of the Prince Consort. All Mayfair seemed to throb with the heart of Mr Arlen.

Philbrick sat at the next table at the Maison Basque eating the bitter little strawberries which are so cheap in Provence and so very expensive in Dover Street.

'Do come and see me some time, he said. 'I'm living up the street at Batts's.

'I hear you're buying Llanabba, said Paul.

'Well, I thought of it, said Philbrick. 'But I'm afraid it's too far away, really.

'The police came for you soon after you left, said Paul.

'They're bound to get me some time, said Philbrick. 'But thanks for the tip all the same! By the way, you might warn your fiancée that they'll be after her soon, if she's not careful. That League of Nations Committee is getting busy at last.

'I haven't the least idea what you mean, said Paul, and returned to his table.

'Obviously the poor man's dotty, said Margot when he told her of the conversation.

CHAPTER VI A Hitch in the Wedding Preparations

Meanwhile half the shops in London were engaged on the wedding preparations. Paul asked Potts to be his best man, but a letter from Geneva declined the invitation. In other circumstances this might have caused him embarrassment, but during the past fortnight Paul had received so many letters and invitations from people he barely remembered meeting that his only difficulty in filling his place was the fear of offending any of his affectionate new friends. Eventually he chose Sir Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington, because he felt that, how ever indirectly, he owed him a great deal of his present good fortune. Sir Alastair readily accepted, at the same time borrowing the money for a new tall hat, his only one having come to grief a few nights earlier.

A letter from Onslow Square, which Paul left unanswered, plainly intimated that Paul's guardian's daughter would take it as a personal slight, and as a severe blow to her social advancement, if she were not chosen as one of the bridesmaids.

For some reason or other, Paul's marriage seemed to inspire the public as being particularly romantic. Perhaps they admired the enterprise and gallantry with which Margot, after ten years of widowhood, voluntarily exposed herself to a repetition of the hundred and one horrors of a fashionable wedding, or perhaps Paul's sudden elevation from schoolmaster to millionaire struck a still vibrant chord of optimism in each of them, so that they said to themselves over their ledgers and typewriters: 'It may be me next time. Whatever the reason, the wedding was certainly an unparalleled success among the lower orders. Inflamed by the popular Press, a large crowd assembled outside St Margaret's on the eve of the ceremony equipped, as for a first night, with collapsible chairs, sandwiches, and spirit stoves, while by half past two, in spite of heavy rain, it had swollen to such dimensions that the police were forced to make several batoncharges and many guests were crushed almost to death in their attempts to reach the doors, and the route down which Margot had to drive was lined as for a funeral with weeping and hysterical women.

Society was less certain in its approval, and Lady Circumference, for one, sighed for the early nineties, when Edward Prince of Wales, at the head of ton, might have given authoritative condemnation to this ostentatious second marriage.

'It's maddenin' Tangent having died just at this time, she said. 'People may think that that's my reason for refusin'. I can't imagine that anyone will go.

'I hear your nephew Alastair Trumpington is the best man, said Lady Vanburgh.

'You seem to be as well informed as my chiropodist, said Lady Circumference with unusual felicity, and all Lowndes Square shook at her departure.

In the unconverted mewses of Mayfair and the upper rooms of Shepherd's Market and North Audley Street, where fashionable bachelors lurk disconsolately on their evenings at home, there was open lamentation at the prey that had been allowed to slip through their elegantly gloved fingers, while more than one popular dancing man inquired anxiously at his bank to learn whether his month's remittance had been paid in as usual. But Margot remained loyal to all her old obligations, and invitations to her wedding‑reception were accepted by whole bevies of young men who made it their boast that they never went out except to a square meal, while little Davy Lennox, who for three years had never been known to give anyone a 'complimentary sitting', took two eloquent photographs of the back of her head and one of the reflection of her hands in a bowl of ink.

Ten days before the wedding Paul moved into rooms at the Ritz, and Margot devoted herself seriously to shopping. Five or six times a day messengers appeared at his suite bringing little by‑products of her activity ‑ now a platinum cigarette‑case, now a dressing‑gown, now a tie-pin or a pair of links ‑ while Paul, with unaccustomed prodigality, bought two new ties, three pairs of shoes, an umbrella, and a set of Proust. Margot had fixed his personal allowance at two thousand a year.

Far away in the Adriatic feverish preparations were being made to make Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's villa at Corfu ready for the first weeks of her honeymoon, and the great bed, carved with pineapples, that had once belonged to Napoleon III, was laid out for her reception with fragrant linen and pillows of unexampled softness. All this the newspapers retailed with uncontrolled profusion, and many a young reporter was handsomely commended for the luxuriance of his adjectives.

However, there was a hitch.

Three days before the date fixed for the wedding Paul was sitting in the Ritz opening his morning's post, when Margot rang him up.

'Darling, rather a tiresome thing's happened, she said. 'You know those girls we sent to Rio the other day? Well, they're stuck at Marseilles, for some reason or other. I can't quite make out why. I think it's something to do with their passports. I've just had a very odd cable from my agent there. He's giving up the job. It's such a bore all this happening just now. I do so want to get everything fixed before Thursday. I wonder if you could be an angel and go over and see to it for me? It's probably only a matter of giving the right man a few hundred francs. If you fly you'll be back in plenty of time. I'd go myself, only you know, don't you, darling, I simply haven't one minute to spare.

Paul did not have to travel alone. Potts was at Croydon, enveloped in an ulster and carrying in his hand a little attaché case.

'Leaguc of Nations business, he said, and was twice sick during the flight.

At Paris Paul was obliged to charter a special aeroplane. Potts saw him off.

'Why are you going to Marseilles, he asked. 'I thought you were going to be married.

'I'm only going there for an hour or two, to see some people on business, said Paul.

How like Potts, he thought, to suppose that a little journey like this was going to upset his marriage. Paul was beginning to feel cosmopolitan, the Ritz to‑day, Marseilles to‑morrow, Corfu next day, and afterwards the whole world stood open to him like one great hotel, his way lined for him with bows and orchids. How pathetically insular poor Potts was, he thought, for all his talk of internationalism.

It was late evening when Paul arrived at Marseilles. He dined at Basso's in the covered balcony off bouillabaisse and Meursault at a table from which he could see a thousand lights reflected in the still water. Paul felt very much of a man of the world as he paid his bill, calculated the correct tip, and sat back in the open cab on his way to the old part of the town.

'They'll probably be at Alice's, in the Rue de Reynarde, Margot had said. 'Anyway, you oughtn't to have any difficulty in finding them if you mention my name.

At the corner of the Rue Ventomargy the carriage stopped. The way was too narrow and too crowded for traffic. Paul paid the driver. 'Merci, Monsieur! Gardez bien votre chapeau, he said as he drove off. Wondering what the expression could mean, Paul set off with less certain steps down the cobbled alley. The houses overhung perilously on each side, gaily alight from cellar to garret; between them swung lanterns; a shallow gutter ran down the centre of the path. The scene could scarcely have been more sinister had it been built at Hollywood itself for some orgiastic incident of the Reign of Terror. Such a street in England, Paul reflected, would have been saved long ago by Mr Spire and preserved under a public trust for the sale of brass toasting forks, picture postcards, and 'Devonshire teas'. Here the trade was of a different sort. It did not require very much wordly wisdom to inform him of the character of the quarter he was now in. Had he not, guide‑book in hand, traversed the forsaken streets of Pompeii?

No wonder, Paul reflected, that Margot had been so anxious to rescue her protégées from this place of temptation and danger.

A Negro sailor, hideously drunk, addressed Paul in no language known to man, and invited him to have a drink. He hurried on. How typical of Margot that, in all her whirl of luxury, she should still have time to care for the poor girls she had unwittingly exposed to such perils.

Deaf to the polyglot invitations that arose on all sides, Paul pressed on his way. A young lady snatched his hat from his head; he caught a glimpse of her bare leg in a lighted doorway; then she appeared at a window, beckoning him to come in and retrieve it.

All the street seemed to be laughing at him. He hesitated; and then, forsaking, in a moment of panic, both his black hat and his self‑possession, he turned and fled for the broad streets and the tram lines where, he knew at heart, was his spiritual home.

By daylight the old town had lost most of its terrors. Washing hung out between the houses, the gutters ran with fresh water and the streets were crowded with old women carrying baskets of fish. Chez Alice showed no sign of life, and Paul was forced to ring and ring before a tousled old concierge presented himself.

'Avez‑vous les jeunes filles de Madame Beste‑Chetwynde? Paul asked, acutely conscious of the absurdity of the question.

'Sure, step right along, Mister, said the concierge; 'she wired us you was coming.

Mrs Grimes and her two friends were not yet dressed, but they received Paul with enthusiasm in dressing‑gowns which might have satisfied the taste for colour of the elder Miss Fagan. They explained the difficulty of the passports, which, Paul thought, was clearly due to some misapprehension by the authorities of their jobs in Rio. They didn't know any French, and of course they had explained things wrong.

He spent an arduous morning at consulates and police bureaux. Things were more difficult than he had thought, and the officials received him either with marked coldness or with incomprehensible winks and innuendo.

Things had been easier six months ago, they said, but now, with the League of Nations ‑ And they shrugged their shoulders despairingly. Perhaps it might be arranged once more, but Madame Beste‑Chetwynde must really understand that there were forms that must be respected. Eventually the young ladies were signed on as stewardesses.

'And if they should not go farther with me than Rio, said the captain, 'well, I have a sufficient staff already. You say there are posts waiting for them there? No doubt their employers will be able to arrange things there with the authorities.

But it cost Paul several thousand francs to complete the arrangements. 'What an absurd thing the League of Nations seems to be! said Paul. 'They seem to make it harder to get about instead of easier. And this, to his surprise, the officials took to be a capital joke.

Paul saw the young ladies to their ship, and all three kissed him good‑bye. As he walked back along the quay he met Potts.

'Just arrived by the morning train, he said. Paul felt strongly inclined to tell him his opinion of the League of Nations, but remembering Potts' prolixity in argument and the urgency of his own departure, he decided to leave his criticisms for another time. He stopped long enough in Marseilles to cable to Margot, 'Everything arranged satisfactorily. Returning this afternoon. All my love, and then left for Paris by air, feeling that at last he had done something to help.

At ten o'clock on his wedding morning Paul returned to the Ritz. It was raining hard, and he felt tired, unshaven and generally woebegone. A number of newspaper reporters were waiting for him outside his suite, but he told them that he could see no one. Inside he found Peter Beste‑Chetwynde, incredibly smart in his first morning‑coat.

'They've let me come up from Llanabba for the day, he said. 'To tell you the truth, I'm rather pleased with myself in these clothes. I bought you a buttonhole in case you'd forgotten. I say, Paul, you're looking tired.

'I am, rather. Turn on the bath for me like an angel.

When he had had his bath and shaved he felt better. Peter had ordered a bottle of champagne and was a little tipsy. He walked round the room, glass in hand, talking gaily, and every now and then pausing to look at himself in the mirror. 'Pretty smart, he said, 'particularly the tie; don't you think so, Paul? I think I shall go back to the school like this. That would make them see what a superior person I am. I hope you notice that I gave you the grander buttonhole? I can't tell you what Llanabba is like this term, Paul. Do try and persuade Mamma to take me away. Clutterbuck has left, and Tangent is dead, and the three new masters are quite awful. One is like your friend Potts, only he stutters, and Brolly says he's got a glass eye. He's called Mr Makepeace. Then there's another one with red hair who keeps beating everyone all the time, and the other's rather sweet, really, only he has fits. I don't think the Doctor cares for any of them much. Flossie's been looking rather discouraged all the time. I wonder if Mamma could get her a job in South America? I'm glad you're wearing a waistcoat like that. I nearly did, but I thought perhaps I was a bit young. What do you think? We had a reporter down at the school the other day wanting to know particulars about you. Brolly told a splendid story about how you used to go out swimming in the evenings and swim for hours and hours in the dark composing elegiac verses, and then he spoilt it by saying you had webbed feet and a prehensile tail, which made the chap think he was having his leg pulled. I say, am I terribly in the way?

As Paul dressed his feelings of well‑being began to return. He could not help feeling that he too looked rather smart. Presently Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington came in, and drank some champagne.

'This wedding of ours is about the most advertised thing that's happened for a generation, he said. 'D'you know, the Sunday Mail has given me fifty pounds to put my name to an article describing my sensations as best man. I'm afraid every one will know it's not me, though; it's too jolly well written. I've had a marvellous letter from Aunt Greta about it, too. Have you seen the presents? The Argentine Chargé d'Affaires has given you the works of Longfellow bound in padded green leather, and the Master of Scone has sent those pewter plates he used to have in his hall.

Paul fastened the gardenia in his buttonhole, and they went down to luncheon. There were several people in the restaurant obviously dressed for a wedding, and it gave Paul some satisfaction to notice that he was the centre of interest of the whole room. The maître d'hôtel offered his graceful good wishes as he led them to their table. Peter, earlier in the morning, had ordered the luncheon.

'I doubt if we shall have time to eat it all, he said, 'but fortunately the best things all come at the beginning.

As he was peeling his second gull's egg, Paul was called away to the telephone.

'Darling, said Margot's voice, 'how are you? I've been so anxious all the time you were away. I had an awful feeling something was going to stop you coming back. Are you all right, dearest? Yes, I'm terribly well. I'm at home having luncheon in my bedroom and feeling, my dear, I can't tell you how virginal, really and truly completely débutante. I hope you'll like my frock. It's Boulanger, darling, do you mind? Good‑bye, my sweet. Don't let Peter get too drunk, will you?

Paul went back to the dining‑room.

'I've eaten your eggs, said Peter. 'I just couldn't help it.

By two o'clock they had finished their luncheon. Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's second‑best Hispano Suiza was waiting in Arlington Street.

'You must just have one more drink with me before we go, said the best man; 'there's heaps of time.

'I think perhaps it would be a mistake if I did, said Peter.

Paul and his best man refilled their glasses with brandy.

'It is a funny thing, said Alastair Digby‑VaneTrumpington. 'No one could have guessed that when I had the Boller blind in my rooms it was going to end like this.

Paul turned the liqueur round in his glass, inhaled its rich bouquet for a second, and then held it before him.

'To Fortune, he said, 'a much‑rnaligned lady!

'Which of you gentlemen is Mr Paul Pennyfeather?

Paul put down his glass and turned to find an elderly rnan of military appearance standing beside him.

'I am, he said. 'But I'm afraid that, if you're from the Press, I really haven't time…

'I'm Inspector Bruce, of Scotland Yard, said the stranger. 'Will you be so good as to speak to me for a minute outside?

'Really, officer, said Paul, 'I'm in a great hurry. I suppose it's about the men to guard the presents. You should have come to me earlier.

'It's not about presents, and I couldn't have come earlier. The warrant for your arrest has only this minute been issued.

'Look here, said Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington, 'don't be an ass. You've got the wrong man. They'll laugh at you like blazes over this at Scotland Yard. This is the Mr Pennyfeather who's being married to‑day.

'I don't know anything about that, said Inspector Bruce. 'All I know is, there's a warrant out for his arrest, and that anything he says may be used as evidence against him. And as for you, young man, I shouldn't attempt to obstruct an officer of the law, not if I was you.

'It's all some ghastly mistake, said Paul. 'I suppose I must go with this man. Try and get on to Margot and explain to her.

Sir Alastair's amiable pink face gaped blank astonishment. 'Good God, he said, 'how damned funny! At least it would be at any other time. But Peter, deadly white, had left the restaurant.