Love

XIII

Soon after this the Fanshawes gave a dinner, and invited the Moncktons. It was, in fact, a dinner for Catherine, who hadn’t enjoyed their dance very much, they felt. Dinners were perhaps pleasanter for her now, they decided. It couldn’t be much fun, Ned had remarked, to sit looking on at that great red-headed lout of hers dancing with a pack of girls, just as if she were chaperoning her débutant s——

‘Oh hush, Ned!’ cried Kitty Fanshawe, stamping her foot.

For some reason, impossible Catherine considered to account for, except as one of the many off-shoots of their warmly benevolent dispositions, the Fanshawe family as one man loved her. They had known her slightly in the days of George, and with growing intimacy ever since. In those days they had deplored that she should be tied to one so old; they were now engaged in deploring that she should be tied to one so young. Fanshawe-like they wouldn’t even to themselves judge any one they loved, but tacitly making the best of a bad job, set about seeing what they could do to amuse and entertain her.

They came to the conclusion that a little dinner at a restaurant would be more amusing than a dinner at home, and chose the Berkeley; and they reserved one of those tables in the window-recesses which have sofas fitted round three sides of them.

The party was eight: themselves, the Moncktons, Sir Musgrove and Lady Merriman—great friends of theirs, and both delightful, which made them conspicuous among married couples, who sometimes were, the Fanshawes were forced regretfully to admit, unequal in attractiveness, so that while one of them would make a party go the other would prevent its budging—and Duncan Amory, a rising barrister. But at the last moment Kitty Fanshawe caught a cold and couldn’t come, and Mrs. Fanshawe invited Emily Wickford, an agreeable spinster, to take her place.

Five sat on the sofa, and three on chairs on the outer side of the table. Mrs. Fanshawe put Catherine in the middle of the sofa facing the room, between Ned and Sir Musgrove—Ned had invented a birthday for her, so that she should be the guest of honour and he could give her flowers, for Ned was good but tactless, and it hadn’t occurred to him that birthdays were the last things Catherine wished attention drawn to—and on Ned’s left sat Lady Merriman, and on her left sat Christopher, and on his left sat Miss Wickford, and on her left sat Duncan Amory, with Mrs. Fanshawe next to him on his other side, between him and Sir Musgrove.

All would have been well if it hadn’t been for Miss Wickford. That exquisite spinster, who had refused so many offers that she could hardly be called a spinster at all, was still only twenty-eight, and had the most beautiful eyes in London. She had been invited merely to fill Kitty’s place, and the Fanshawes had thought of her only because she was a great friend of Duncan Amory’s, and he at any rate would enjoy himself if she came.

Unfortunately, Sir Musgrove and Christopher enjoyed themselves too because she came—at least, Sir Musgrove did at the beginning. Taking advantage of the table being round, he leaned over whenever he could to talk to Miss Wickford, and while he was doing that he naturally wasn’t talking to Catherine, for whose entertainment he had been specially invited; and Christopher, whose duty it was to begin by talking to Lady Merriman, at once upset the balance of the party by talking to Miss Wickford instead.

This left Ned to amuse two neglected ladies, and as he wasn’t amusing he didn’t amuse them. It also cut off Duncan Amory from his dear Emily, for Emily liked beginnings rather than endings, and therefore preferred Christopher, whom she hadn’t seen before, to Duncan whom she had seen almost too much; and, regarding him as years younger than herself, probably still at Oxford, or the other place, proceeded to give the boy a good time and see that he thoroughly enjoyed his evening.

She succeeded. Christopher did enjoy himself. Here was a girl who was clever as well as pretty, delightful to talk to as well as delightful to look at. In ten minutes he felt as if they were old friends. She asked him if he had any Scandinavian blood in him, because that was what he looked like,—rather her idea of a sun-kissed young Norse god; and he retorted by asking her if she had any Greek blood in her, because that was what she looked like,—rather his idea of a sun-kissed young Greek goddess; and they laughed, and were pleased with each other. Aphrodite for choice, said Christopher warming to his work, and glancing first at Emily’s hair and then at her justly celebrated eyes; Aphrodite was fair too, and had eyes like the sea too, he said; all the most beautiful women were fair and had eyes like the sea, he said.

Emily was much pleased.

Sir Musgrove, catching the word Aphrodite, tried to chime in, for he was not only a well-known Greek scholar, engaged at that very moment in writing an inquiry into the mythologies, but he would have been interested to discuss the delicious goddess with Miss Wickford. Duncan Amory also tried to chime in, with a story about an American lady who by some mix-up at her baptism got christened Aphrodite, and the effect it had on her afterwards. It wasn’t a bad story, and anyhow it was apt, and he felt aggrieved that nobody listened to it except the Fanshawes. The others were absorbed in watching Emily. Emily wasn’t at all a good person to have at a party, thought Amory. She absorbed attention. Her proper place was a tête-à-tête. That was how he himself chiefly cultivated her. He shrugged his shoulders, and turned resolutely to Mrs. Fanshawe.

Lady Merriman was bored. Able and willing to talk about anything,—book, play, picture or politician—she found herself, because of Miss Wickford, left with only half a man; half of Ned Fanshawe, too, who even when he was whole had more of good nature than of conversation. And she wished very much to talk to this young Mr. Monckton and find out for herself what could have induced that middle-aged woman to be so reckless as to marry him. However, he was engrossed. Natural, she supposed, at his age. What wasn’t so natural was that Musgrove was engrossed too. He would talk to neither of his neighbours, and had eyes and ears only for Miss Wickford.

Lady Merriman, who was fond of Musgrove, and had been faithfully and patiently through the thick and the thin of him for twenty-five years, was a little put out; not on her own account, for nothing, she knew, could alter his complete private dependence on her, but on his. She didn’t like her man, who was anything but silly, to look it. Also, she did wish he would amuse poor Mrs. Monckton, and distract her attention from what that boy of hers was saying to Miss Wickford. Marriage, thought Lady Merriman, observing the expression on Musgrove’s face and observing the expression on Catherine’s, was rich in humiliations. If one allowed it to be, that is; if one didn’t keep them out by the only real defence—laughter.

The band began to play a fox-trot. One or two active young people got up from neighbouring tables and danced.

‘Will you dance?’ Christopher asked Miss Wickford.

‘I’d adore to,’ she answered, getting up just as the waiter put a nice hot quail on her plate. ‘May we?’ she asked, smiling at Mrs. Fanshawe, and floating off without waiting for an answer.

‘Ah, youth, youth,’ said Sir Musgrove, shaking his head indulgently. ‘And we greybeards console ourselves with quails.’

This was tactless of Musgrove, Mrs. Fanshawe considered, and she protested.

‘There are no greybeards here,’ protested Mrs. Fanshawe with great vigour.

‘Ah well—I speak allegorically,’ said Sir Musgrove, following Miss Wickford’s movements as she exquisitely gyrated in Christopher’s arms.

‘I should eat your quail before it gets cold, Musgrove,’ said his wife,—it was all Martha’s fault for not having put such effervescent guests on the sofa, safe behind the table where they couldn’t have got out. But some one ought to tell Mrs. Monckton not to look quite so....

‘Personally, I think it foolish to interrupt a good dinner and let it get cold,’ said Duncan Amory, who didn’t at all like the way Emily was behaving.

‘My dear friend, they are at the golden age when dinner is of no consequence,’ said Sir Musgrove. ‘A good-looking couple—a very good-looking couple,’ he added dreamily, his eye on Emily.

Well, really—hadn’t Musgrove grasped the fact that the young man was Mrs. Monckton’s husband? thought Lady Merriman, trying to catch the eye that was fixed so persistently on Miss Wickford.

The Fanshawes saw their mistake, and were repenting bitterly. Of course Emily Wickford should have been put on the sofa. Better still, not asked at all. She was ruining the party for every one except Catherine’s husband. Duncan Amory, usually such good company, was sulking; Musgrove—they couldn’t have believed it of him; Lydia Merriman—naturally she was vexed; Catherine—well, they hardly liked to look at her.

The band left off playing, and the couples all came back except Christopher and Miss Wickford. They disappeared through the arch into the next room, Emily smiling back over her shoulder at her hosts, and Christopher holding up an explanatory cigarette case.

It was Emily who proposed this. She said she didn’t want any more dinner, and thought it much more fun not to sit cooped up at that table, with which Christopher heartily agreed.

‘They all seem so old,’ said Emily, bending forward for him to light her cigarette. ‘Don’t you think so?’

‘Fossils,’ said Christopher, forgetting in his admiration of the face being lit up by the match he was holding, that Catherine was one of them, but he did ask, after a minute, whether she didn’t think the Fanshawes would mind their not going back.

‘Oh, they never mind anything,’ said Emily easily. ‘They’re darlings.’

The Fanshawes, however, did mind this. They fumed. It was a stricken party that remained at the table. Mrs. Fanshawe was casting her mind back to whether Emily knew Christopher was Catherine’s husband, and couldn’t remember that she had made this clear when she introduced them. But how, after all, could one make a thing like that clear, short of taking the other person aside and explaining in a whisper? Just to say, ‘And this is Mr. Monckton,’ after having introduced somebody to Mrs. Monckton wasn’t in this case, she was afraid, enough. On the other hand one couldn’t introduce him as Mrs. Monckton’s husband. Still, instinct ought to have told Emily. Mrs. Fanshawe, who never was unfair, was unfair now. She was angry. She was the last person in the world to grudge young people having a good time, and was of an easy-goingness that verged on laxity; but this deeply annoyed her, this carrying off of Christopher. Also, she considered that Christopher oughtn’t to have let himself be carried off. He, at any rate, knew he was Catherine’s husband.

It was a stricken party. Ned was furious, Sir Musgrove fidgeted, Duncan Amory sulked, and Catherine seemed to be shrivelling smaller before their very eyes. Only Lady Merriman and Mrs. Fanshawe talked,—across the table to each other, gallantly, after the manner of women, trying to cover things up.

The music began again, and everybody watched the arch. It was some time before the two appeared, and when they did they were talking and laughing as happily as ever.

‘Come here—you are very unkind, you two, deserting us like this,’ Mrs. Fanshawe called out to them as they danced past; but they didn’t hear, and danced on.

At the end, when the party was breaking up, Miss Wickford, who had enjoyed her evening immensely, said to Christopher, ‘Come and see me on Sunday.’

‘No—you come to us,’ he answered.

She looked at him surprised. ‘But wouldn’t that bore your mother dreadfully?’ she asked.

‘Bore my mother?’ echoed Christopher, staring. ‘What mother?’

‘Why, isn’t——’

Miss Wickford broke off, instinctively feeling she was somehow getting into trouble. That little made-up Mrs. Monckton on the sofa—wasn’t she the boy’s mother?

‘My mother died when I was three,’ said Christopher.

‘Poor you,’ murmured Miss Wickford non-commitally: something warned her to be cautious.

‘But my wife will be delighted if you’ll come.’

There was the briefest silence. Then Emily managed to say, without, she trusted, showing her astonishment, ‘How perfectly sweet of her. I’ll ring up and ask.’