Fate Cannot Harm Me (19 page)

This time the beady eye winked unashamedly.

“And I,” said Monty, “am a poor impecunious journalist—full of genius and short of money—and so far untouched by matrimony.”

“Now that's mean. You haven't told me a thing. Never mind, I'll have it all out of you if we're going to be here together for the rest of the week-end. Unless, of course, you meant it for a proposal?”

Monty shook his head.

“No, no, we go slowly in this old country. What do we talk about next?”

“Why, of course, about the people here. You tell me about the ones you know, and I'll tell you about the ones I know. But you mustn't be squeamish or discreet or think about good manners or I won't learn a thing.”

“An admirable suggestion, if you play fair too. Well, there's our host and hostess, but we needn't discuss them.”

“Our hostess and host,” corrected Mrs. Vanhaer. “No, we both know all about them. But what about the three nieces?
Daisy introduced me to three nieces, I know, but they seemed all to have different names.”

Monty glanced down the table.

“Oh, you mean Sybil Montresor and her cousin and Nancy Gillan,” he said. “Of course they aren't really Daisy's nieces at all, but then any really good-looking young woman of sufficient juniority and unimpeachable ancestry gets honorary rank as a niece of Daisy's. It's a sort of hall-mark of social success among the débutantes, I believe. You see, Daisy's a clever woman and she knows what sort of people make a party go. You'll never find her without a bevy of attendant virgins. I expect that's why the actress is here, too,” he added a little maliciously.

“Snakes,” ejaculated Mrs. Vanhaer with emphasis.

“But who's the hook-nosed man on Daisy's right?” Unexpectedly Mrs. Vanhaer produced a lorgnette from a bag and surveyed the table.

“I can manage him,” she answered. “He's Sir John Bullerton, or that's what he calls himself; the very fat woman is his wife, and he owns a lot of newspapers. And I can guess, too, what part of New York he'd have lived in if he'd ever lived there”—she added rather cryptically. “And we can cross off the little timid-looking man with the thin wife with the diamonds who's sitting next to Lord Dormansland. They're Lord and Lady Sevenoaks, and there's nothing to them.”

She shut the lorgnette with a snap. “I got the idea of that little tool from a duchess,” she remarked complacently as she returned it to her bag. “Now it's your turn.”

“Well, you've missed the most important people of the lot. The man on Daisy's left, and the woman on Lord Dormansland's right. He's Sir William Pindle, and he's a Cabinet Minister.”

“You don't say? And what's he in the Cabinet for?”

“I should like notice of that question, as they say in
Parliamentary circles. He's the sort of Cabinet Minister whom you always look up in Whitaker's Almanac when you get home—and your Whitaker's always two years old, so you never know. Anyhow, none of Daisy's parties is complete without at least one member of the Cabinet, so he's a very important man. Who comes next?”

“Let's have something younger. You know I'm really enjoying my dinner. Tell me about Mr. Blenkinsop, the one they all call Bertie.”

Monty laughed.

“How has he registered so far? Have you got him placed?”

“More or less. I heard that odious Sir Smedley Patteringham discussing him the day I arrived. ‘His heart rules his head,' Daisy said—she loves that sort of inane cliché.”

“And what did Patteringham say to that?”

Mrs. Vanhaer twisted her mouth into a sour and sneering line, and gave a very passable imitation of Sir Smedley's voice.

“‘It rules over a very small dominion,' was the answer. Beyond that, and the fact that he's clearly a nitwit, and looks like a rabbit, I've not much of a line on him.”

Monty shook his head sadly.

“Uncharitable, uncharitable, Mrs. Vanhaer. Bertie has distinct points. If he did not exist Mr. P. G. Wodehouse would certainly have been compelled to invent him. It is true that he has the smallest brain in Britain, and that his appearance is lamentable, but he's quite good-natured and he's the Conservative candidate for this part of the world. He'll get in, too, at the next election.”

“In the States,” said Mrs. Vanhaer with decision, “he'd be earning twenty-five dollars a week, and nothing found. Modern democracy …”

“Is not a fit subject for conversation at dinner,” Monty hastily interjected.

“Among really intelligent folk,” added Mrs. Vanhaer, accepting the implied reproof. “Anyhow I'd rather vote for the sheep-faced man next to one of the nieces, as you call them, than for him.”

“That's old Bursar Browne, as they call him. He's been a country gentleman all his life, and is supposed to know all about farming and such like. For a time they made him Bursar of my old college at Oxford, and he nearly had them bankrupt in a couple of years. Besides, he dropped such frightful bricks whenever he put pen to paper that they just had to get rid of him.”

“What kind of bricks?”

“Well, I remember one in particular. It was part of his duties to compose an annual report about the events of the year and old members of the college. One year he sent round a circular to collect information and he put in it the sentence, The Bursar will be glad to hear of the deaths of all old members of the college,' a very clumsy remark, which some of the older men resented. So he's back again among his turnips—laying down the law to all the agriculturalists. But why, by the way, did you express such obvious dislike of my friend Sir Smedley Patteringham just now? Of course he's caviare to the general, but I should have thought that you would have appreciated him.”

Both of them turned and looked at the thin, elderly man at the far end of the table.

“That odious man,” said Mrs. Vanhaer, “I could murder him. Why anyone should invite him to their house just has me beat. Do you know what he said to me when we were introduced?”

“No. What was it?”

“Why, I began to talk about the Elwoods because I knew that he knew them, and they're old friends of mine
—Sadie Elwood came from Virginia, you know—and I said that we might easily have met at their house, for I'd stayed there most part of last summer. And he looked at me down that long straggling nose of his and said: ‘Ah, yes, we might have met there. Mrs. Elwood really sets
no
limits to her hospitality.' And I” (Mrs. Vanhaer's voice was almost a snort) “I never realized till ten minutes too late how rude he was trying to be! That—that polecat!”

Monty laughed a little more heartily than his companion wished.

“A very characteristic utterance,” he said. “But I see that I must tell you all about the egregious Sir Smedley—and believe me you'll get a bit of pleasure out of studying him if you take him the right way. Why, I could write a book about him—he's one of my special subjects. But first of all I'll answer your first question. Do you know what they meant in the eighteenth century by ‘storming the closet'?”

“No,” said Mrs. Vanhaer suspiciously, “and I'm not sure I ought to.”

“Oh, it's quite all right. It meant this. When a politician was out of office and wanted to get in he would make himself so damned offensive and so tiresome in attacking the government that he'd force the king to give him a fat place and a big job just to keep him quiet. That's been Smedley's little game all his life. He's got the tongue of a serpent, and what he says gets quoted. He's the first person Daisy asks to every one of her parties, because she's in terror of what he'd say about her if she didn't. And half the hostesses in England are in the same boat. He is in fact the extreme egotist, and the most successful one I know. The man's a perfect master of his trade—and he's never done a stroke of work in his life except to make Smedley Patteringham more comfortable. A great friend of mine, an eminent lawyer, shrewd, worldly-wise, and humorous, has often
pretended to me that he governs his life according to three great principles.”

“What are they? I didn't know that lawyers ever had principles.”

“‘Self not service,' is one, ‘Live and let die,' the second—and, most important of all, ‘The best is good enough for me.' In my friend's case these principles are an elaborate joke, for he has the kindest of hearts, but I've often thought that Patteringham really never deviates from his observance of them. Lately, I think, he's added a fourth—‘Anything to give pain.'”

“Pain,” snorted Mrs. Vanhaer, “he gives me the pip. And anyhow let an old woman remind you that life doesn't really offer any compensation for cynics. I've never met a happy egotist or a happy cynic yet.”

Her voice had lost its asperity, and she smiled at Monty a look of shrewd understanding.

Monty nodded agreement and watched his companion transfer an enormous helping of ice to her plate.

“I like the simple pleasures,” she continued, regarding the ice with favour, “but come on, we haven't gone round the table yet. You see those three opposite?”

Her voice sank to a whisper, and she indicated Cynthia, who was sitting between Basil and Robin, exactly opposite to Monty and herself.

But Monty had no need to look up to know to whom she referred. All through dinner he had out of the corner of his eye watched the two men struggling each to secure for himself Cynthia's undivided attention. The gloves were off, and so far honours seemed to be easy.

“Yes, I know all about those three,” he answered.

“Oh, that's just too bad, and I was saving them up to the last to tell you all about them. Anyhow I've got to tell you this. Those two writing-men are head over heels in love with Cynthia, and she knows it. They won't give each other any quarter, either, however much they may be friends. There's a drama for you, Mr. Renshaw.”

She pronounced it “drammer,” but Monty did not wince. He was much too interested in discovering exactly how the affair was working itself out.

“Yes,” went on Mrs. Vanhaer impressively, “the situation is as full of drammer as … as …”

“As an egg is full of meat,” suggested Monty helpfully.

“As a film actress is full of sex appeal,” concluded Mrs. Vanhaer triumphantly, for she liked to finish her own sentences.

“Which of them, do you think, looks like winning?”

“I just don't know. All these last two days they've been hard at it. If Mr. Paraday-Royne drags her away for golf all by themselves in the morning, then Mr. Hedley plays tennis with her all the afternoon, and she—well, she knows her stuff, I'll say that.”

Her eyes twinkled.

“But which do you want to win?”

Mrs Vanhaer considered the question carefully.

“See here,” she answered at length, “when I get back to Boston I shall talk a whole heap about those two men and their books and all the long conversations I've had with them about literatoor. I'll tell them what a beautiful man the Paraday-Royne creature is, and all about Mr. Hedley's psychological insight. But if you ask me right now I'd say they're a couple of poops compared to Cynthia, and I hope she won't have either of them. Still of the two it seems to me that Mr. Paraday-Royne is the greater danger, and I think, on the whole, he's had more of her society than the other. Now you watch me correct the balance.”

“Mr. Paraday-Royne,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” said Basil, whose attention was entirely on Cynthia.

“Don't forget that you're going to play golf with me to-morrow morning; you promised, you know. You're to give me a half …”

“I'm. sorry, Mrs. Vanhaer, I'm afraid I …”

“Oh, yes, you did promise, and I'm looking forward to it just too terribly. Nobody ever put
me
off.”

“What about making it a foursome?” suggested Basil, attempting to make the best of a bad job. “We might get Cynthia and …”

“No,” said Mrs. Vanhaer firmly. “I'm a single woman—where golf is concerned—and I want you all to myself; you haven't told me half enough about all your beautiful books. Besides, I can never
really
talk in a foursome.”

She turned back to Monty and winked shamelessly.

At Lady Dormansland's end of the table conversation had become general. Sir William Pindle was, it seemed, discussing with discretion the other members of the Cabinet.

“If it is proper for me to hint a fault (he was saying)—a very small one—I might suggest that my colleague has a tendency—and I would have you understand that it is only a tendency, and not in itself blameworthy—indeed perhaps necessary in these democratic days—a tendency, as I was saying, to put all his goods in the—ah—shop-window.”

“The window is curiously empty,” commented Sir Smedley acidly. Lady Dormansland plunged to the rescue.

“Do try the melon, Sir Smedley. I grow them myself, you know, and I'm really proud of them this year.”