Part 1 - Chapter 15. A Supper-Party At The "Queen's"

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_ PART I CHAPTER XV. A SUPPER-PARTY AT THE "QUEEN'S"

Brooks was shown into a private room at the Queen's Hotel, and he certainly had no cause to complain of the warmth of his welcome. Lady Sybil, in fact, made room for him by her side, and he fancied that there was a gleam of reproach in her eyes as she looked up at him.

"Is Medchester really so large a place that one can get lost in it?" she asked. "Lord Arranmore has been sending messengers in every direction ever since we decided upon our little excursion.

"I telephoned to your office, sent a groom to your rooms and to the club, and at last we had given you up," Lord Arranmore remarked.

"And I," Sybil murmured, "was in a shocking bad temper."

"It is very good of you all," Brooks remarked, cheerfully. "I left the office rather early, and have been giving a sort of lecture to-night at the Secular Hall. Then I went up to have a game of billiards with Mr. Bullsom. Your telephone message found me there. You must remember that even if Medchester is not a very large place I am a very unimportant person."

"Dear me, what modesty," Lady Caroom remarked, laughing. "To us, however, you happened to be very important. I hate a party of three."

Brooks helped himself to a quail, and remembered that he was hungry.

"This is very unusual dissipation, isn't it?" he asked. "I never dreamed that you would be likely to come into our little theatre."

"It was Sybil's doings," Lady Caroom answered. "She declared that she was dull, and that she had never seen A /Message from Mars./ I think that all that serious talk the other evening gave her the blues."

"I am always dull in the winter when there is no hunting," Sybil remarked. "This frost is abominable. I have not forgotten our talk either. I feel positively wicked every time I sip champagne."

"Our young philanthropist will reassure you," Arranmore remarked, drily.

Lady Caroom sighed.

"I wonder how it is," she murmured, "that one's conscience and one's digestion both grow weaker as one grows old. You and I, Arranmore, are content to accept the good things of the earth as they come to us."

"With me," he answered, "it is the philosophy of approaching old age, but you have no such excuse. With you it must be sheer callousness. You are in an evil way, Lady Caroom. Do have another of these quails."

"You are very rude," she answered, "and extremely unsympathetic. But I will have another quail."

"I do not Want to destroy your appetite, Mr. Brooks," Lady Sybil said, "but this is--if not a farewell feast, something like it."

He looked at her with sudden interest.

"You are going away?" he exclaimed.

"Very soon," she assented. "We were so comfortable at Enton, and the hunting has been so good, that we cut out one of our visits. Mamma developed a convenient attack of influenza. But the next one is very near now, and our host is almost tired of us."

Lord Arranmore was for a moment silent.

"You have made Enton," he said, "intolerable for a solitary man. When you go I go."

"I wish you could say whither instead of when," Lady Caroom answered. "How bored you would be at Redcliffe. It is really the most outlandish place we go to."

"Why ever do we accept, mamma?" Sybil asked. "Last year I nearly cried my eyes out, I was so dull. Not a man fit to talk to, or a horse fit to ride. The girls bicycle, and Lord Redcliffe breeds cattle and talks turnips."

"And they all drink port after dinner," Lady Caroom moaned; "but we have to go, dear. We must live rent free somewhere during these months to get through the season."

Sybil looked at Brooks with laughter in her eyes.

"Aren't we terrible people?" she whispered. "You are by way of being literary, aren't you? You should write an article on the shifts of the aristocracy. Mamma and I could supply you with all the material. The real trouble, of course, is that I don't marry."

"Fancy glorying in your failure," Lady Caroom said, complacently. "Three seasons, Arranmore, have I had to drag that girl round. I've washed my hands of her now. She must look after herself. A girl who refuses one of the richest young men in England because she didn't like his collars is incorrigible."

"It was not his collars, mother," Sybil objected. "It was his neck. He was always called 'the Giraffe.' He had no head and all neck--the most fatuous person, too. I hate fools."

"That is where you lack education, dear," Lady Caroom answered. "A fool is the most useful person--for a husband."

Sybil glanced towards Brooks with a little sigh, and, catching a glimpse of his expression, burst out laughing.

"Mother, you must really not let your tongue run away with you. Mr. Brooks is believing every word you say. You needn't," she murmured in a discreet undertone. "Mother and I chaff one another terribly, but we're really very nicely-behaved persons--for our station in life."

"Lady Caroom has such a delightfully easy way of romancing," Brooks said.

Sybil nodded.

"It's quite true," she answered. "She ought to write the prospectuses for gold mines and things."

Arranmore smiled across the table at Brooks.

"This," he said, "is what I have had to endure for the last six weeks. Do you wonder that I am getting balder, or that I set all my people to work tonight to try and find some one to suffer with me?"

"He'll be so dull when we've gone," Lady Caroom sighed.

"You've no idea how we've improved him," Sybil murmured. "He used to read Owen Meredith after dinner, and go to sleep. By the bye, where are you going when we leave Enton?"

Lord Arranmore hesitated.

"Well, I really am not sure," he said. "You have alarmed me. Don't go."

Lady Caroom laughed.

"My dear man," she said, "we must! I daren't offend the Redcliffes. He's my trustee, and he'll never let me overdraw a penny unless I'm civil to him. If I were you I should go to the Riviera. We'll lend you our cottage at Lugiano. It has been empty for a year."

"Come and be hostess," he said. "I promise you that I will not hesitate then."

She shook her head towards Sybil.

"How can I marry that down there?" she demanded. "No young men who are really respectable go abroad at this time of the year. They are all hunting or shooting. The Riviera is thronged with roues and invalids and adventurers, and we don't want any of them. Dear me, what sacrifices a grown-up daughter does entail. This coming season shall be your last, Sybil. I won't drag on round again. I'm really getting ashamed of it."

"Isn't she dreadful?" Sybil murmured to Brooks. "I hope you will come to Enton before we leave."

"It is very kind of you, Lady Sybil," Brooks said, "but you must remember that I am not like most of the men you meet. I have to work hard, especially just now."

"And if I were you I would be thankful for it," she said, warmly. "From our point of view, at any rate, there is nothing so becoming to a man as the fact that he is a worker. Sport is an excellent thing, but I detest young men who do nothing else but shoot and hunt and loaf about. It seems to me to destroy character where work creates it. All the same, I hope you will find an opportunity to come to Enton and say good-bye to us."

Brooks was suddenly conscious that it would be no pleasant thing to say good-bye to Lady Sybil. He had never known any one like her, so perfectly frank and girlish, and yet with character enough underneath in her rare moments of seriousness. More than ever he was struck with the wonderful likeness between mother and daughter.

"I will come at any time I am asked," he answered, quietly, "but I am sorry that you are going."

They had finished supper, and had drawn their chairs around the fire. Arranmore was smoking a cigarette, and Brooks took one from his case. The carriage was ordered in a quarter of an hour. Brooks found that he and Sybil were a little apart from the others.

"Do you know, I am sorry too," she declared. "Of course it has been much quieter at Enton than most of the houses we go to, and we only came at first, I think, because many years ago my mother and Lord Arranmore were great friends, and she fancied that he was shutting himself up too much. But I have enjoyed it very much indeed."

He looked at her curiously. He was trying to appreciate what a life of refined pleasure which she must live would really be like--how satisfying--whether its limitations ever asserted themselves. Sybil was a more than ordinarily pretty girl, but her face was as smooth as a child's. The Joie de vivre seemed to be always in her eyes. Yet there were times, as he knew, when she was capable of seriousness.

"I am glad," he said, "Lord Arranmore will miss you."

She laughed at him, her eyebrows raised, a challenge in her bright eyes.

"May I add that I also shall?" he whispered.

"You may," she answered. "In fact, I expected it. I am not sure that I did not ask for it. And that reminds me. I want you to do me a favour, if you will."

"Anything I can do for you," he answered, "you know will give me pleasure."

She laughed softly.

"It is wonderful how you have improved," she murmured. "I want you to go and see Lord Arranmore as often as you can. We are both very fond of him really, mamma especially, and you know that he has a very strange disposition. I am convinced that solitude is the very worst thing for him. I saw him once after he had been alone for a month or two, and really you would not have known him. He was as thin as a skeleton, strange in his manner, and he had that sort of red light in his eyes sometimes which always makes me think of mad people. He ought not to be alone at all, but the usual sort of society only bores him. You will do what you can, won't you?"

"I promise you that most heartily," Brooks declared. "But you must remember, Lady Sybil, that after all it is entirely in his hands. He has been most astonishingly kind to me, considering that I have no manner of claim upon him. He has made me feel at home at Enton, too, and been most thoughtful in every way. For, after all, you see I am only his man of business. I have no friends much, and those whom I have are Medchester people. You see I am scarcely in a position to offer him my society. But all the same, I will take every opportunity I can of going to Enton if he remains there."

She thanked him silently. Lady Caroom was on her feet, and Sybil and she went out for their wraps. Lord Arranmore lit a fresh cigarette and sent for his bill.

"By the bye, Brooks," he remarked, "one doesn't hear much of your man Henslow."

"Mr. Bullsom and I were talking about it this evening," Brooks answered. "We are getting a little anxious.

"You have had seven years of him. You ought to know what to expect."

"The war has blocked all legislation," Brooks said. "It has been the usual excuse. Henslow was bound to wait. He would have done the particular measures which we are anxious about more harm than good if he had tried to force them upon the land. But now it is different. We are writing to him. If nothing comes of it, Mr. Bullsom and I are going up to see him."

Arranmore smiled.

"You are young to politics, Brooks," he remarked, "yet I should scarcely have thought that you would have been imposed upon by such a man as Henslow. He is an absolute fraud. I heard him speak once, and I read two of his speeches. It was sufficient. The man is not in earnest. He has some reason, I suppose, for wishing to write M.P. after his name, but I am perfectly certain that he has not the slightest idea of carrying out his pledges to you. You will have to take up politics, Brooks."

He laughed--a little consciously.

"Some day," he said, "the opportunity may come. I will confess that it is amongst my ambitions. But I have many years' work before me yet."

Lord Arranmore paid the bill, and they joined the women. As Brooks stood bareheaded upon the pavement Arranmore turned towards him.

"We must have a farewell dinner," he said. "How would to-morrow suit you--or Sunday?"

"I should like to walk over on Sunday, if I might," Brooks answered, promptly.

"We shall expect you to lunch. Good-night."

The carriage drove off. Brooks walked thoughtfully through the silent streets to his rooms. _

Read next: Part 1: Chapter 16. Uncle And Niece

Read previous: Part 1: Chapter 14. An Awkward Question

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