________________________________________________
_ The farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised in
honour of her son's departure threatened from the outset to be a
doubtfully successful function. In the first place, as he observed
privately, there was very little of Comus and a good deal of
farewell in it. His own particular friends were unrepresented.
Courtenay Youghal was out of the question; and though Francesca
would have stretched a point and welcomed some of his other male
associates of whom she scarcely approved, he himself had been
opposed to including any of them in the invitations. On the other
hand, as Henry Greech had provided Comus with this job that he was
going out to, and was, moreover, finding part of the money for the
necessary outfit, Francesca had felt it her duty to ask him and his
wife to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to cling to some
people like a garment throughout their life had caused Mr. Greech
to accept the invitation. When Comus heard of the circumstance he
laughed long and boisterously; his spirits, Francesca noted, seemed
to be rising fast as the hour for departure drew near.
The other guests included Serena Golackly and Lady Veula, the
latter having been asked on the inspiration of the moment at the
theatrical first-night. In the height of the Season it was not
easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice,
and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of
bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose
feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His
travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover
much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was
one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the
strength of a few days' stay in a coast town as intimately and
dogmatically as a paleontologist will reconstruct an extinct mammal
from the evidence of a stray shin bone. He had the loud
penetrating voice and the prominent penetrating eyes of a man who
can do no listening in the ordinary way and whose eyes have to
perform the function of listening for him. His vanity did not
necessarily make him unbearable, unless one had to spend much time
in his society, and his need for a wide field of audience and
admiration was mercifully calculated to spread his operations over
a considerable human area. Moreover, his craving for attentive
listeners forced him to interest himself in a wonderful variety of
subjects on which he was able to discourse fluently and with a
certain semblance of special knowledge. Politics he avoided; the
ground was too well known, and there was a definite no to every
definite yes that could be put forward. Moreover, argument was not
congenial to his disposition, which preferred an unchallenged flow
of dissertation modified by occasional helpful questions which
formed the starting point for new offshoots of word-spinning. The
promotion of cottage industries, the prevention of juvenile street
trading, the extension of the Borstal prison system, the
furtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering of
inter-racial ententes, all found in him a tireless exponent, a
fluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing,
advocate. With the real motive power behind these various causes
he was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers who
carried on the actual labours of each particular movement he bore
the relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at the
surface, but able to devote a proportionately far greater amount of
time to the advertisement of his progress and achievements. Such
was Stephen Thorle, a governess in the nursery of Chelsea-bred
religions, a skilled window-dresser in the emporium of his own
personality, and needless to say, evanescently popular amid a wide
but shifting circle of acquaintances. He improved on the record of
a socially much-travelled individual whose experience has become
classical, and went to most of the best houses--twice.
His inclusion as a guest at this particular dinner-party was not a
very happy inspiration. He was inclined to patronise Comus, as
well as the African continent, and on even slighter acquaintance.
With the exception of Henry Greech, whose feelings towards his
nephew had been soured by many years of overt antagonism, there was
an uncomfortable feeling among those present that the topic of the
black-sheep export trade, as Comus would have himself expressed it,
was being given undue prominence in what should have been a festive
farewell banquet. And Comus, in whose honour the feast was given,
did not contribute much towards its success; though his spirits
seemed strung up to a high pitch his merriment was more the
merriment of a cynical and amused onlooker than of one who responds
to the gaiety of his companions. Sometimes he laughed quietly to
himself at some chance remark of a scarcely mirth-provoking nature,
and Lady Veula, watching him narrowly, came to the conclusion that
an element of fear was blended with his seemingly buoyant spirits.
Once or twice he caught her eye across the table, and a certain
sympathy seemed to grow up between them, as though they were both
consciously watching some lugubrious comedy that was being played
out before them.
An untoward little incident had marked the commencement of the
meal. A small still-life picture that hung over the sideboard had
snapped its cord and slid down with an alarming clatter on to the
crowded board beneath it. The picture itself was scarcely damaged,
but its fall had been accompanied by a tinkle of broken glass, and
it was found that a liqueur glass, one out of a set of seven that
would be impossible to match, had been shivered into fragments.
Francesca's almost motherly love for her possessions made her
peculiarly sensible to a feeling of annoyance and depression at the
accident, but she turned politely to listen to Mrs. Greech's
account of a misfortune in which four soup-plates were involved.
Mrs. Henry was not a brilliant conversationalist, and her flank was
speedily turned by Stephen Thorle, who recounted a slum experience
in which two entire families did all their feeding out of one
damaged soup-plate.
"The gratitude of those poor creatures when I presented them with a
set of table crockery apiece, the tears in their eyes and in their
voices when they thanked me, would be impossible to describe."
"Thank you all the same for describing it," said Comus.
The listening eyes went swiftly round the table to gather evidence
as to how this rather disconcerting remark had been received, but
Thorle's voice continued uninterruptedly to retail stories of East-
end gratitude, never failing to mention the particular deeds of
disinterested charity on his part which had evoked and justified
the gratitude. Mrs. Greech had to suppress the interesting sequel
to her broken-crockery narrative, to wit, how she subsequently
matched the shattered soup-plates at Harrod's. Like an imported
plant species that sometimes flourishes exceedingly, and makes
itself at home to the dwarfing and overshadowing of all native
species, Thorle dominated the dinner-party and thrust its original
purport somewhat into the background. Serena began to look
helplessly apologetic. It was altogether rather a relief when the
filling of champagne glasses gave Francesca an excuse for bringing
matters back to their intended footing.
"We must all drink a health," she said; "Comus, my own dear boy, a
safe and happy voyage to you, much prosperity in the life you are
going out to, and in due time a safe and happy return--"
Her hand gave an involuntary jerk in the act of raising the glass,
and the wine went streaming across the tablecloth in a froth of
yellow bubbles. It certainly was not turning out a comfortable or
auspicious dinner party.
"My dear mother," cried Comus, "you must have been drinking healths
all the afternoon to make your hand so unsteady."
He laughed gaily and with apparent carelessness, but again Lady
Veula caught the frightened note in his laughter. Mrs. Henry, with
practical sympathy, was telling Francesca two good ways for getting
wine stains out of tablecloths. The smaller economies of life were
an unnecessary branch of learning for Mrs. Greech, but she studied
them as carefully and conscientiously as a stay-at-home plain-
dwelling English child commits to memory the measurements and
altitudes of the world's principal mountain peaks. Some women of
her temperament and mentality know by heart the favourite colours,
flowers and hymn-tunes of all the members of the Royal Family; Mrs.
Greech would possibly have failed in an examination of that nature,
but she knew what to do with carrots that have been over-long in
storage.
Francesca did not renew her speech-making; a chill seemed to have
fallen over all efforts at festivity, and she contented herself
with refilling her glass and simply drinking to her boy's good
health. The others followed her example, and Comus drained his
glass with a brief "thank you all very much." The sense of
constraint which hung over the company was not, however, marked by
any uncomfortable pause in the conversation. Henry Greech was a
fluent thinker, of the kind that prefer to do their thinking aloud;
the silence that descended on him as a mantle in the House of
Commons was an official livery of which he divested himself as
thoroughly as possible in private life. He did not propose to sit
through dinner as a mere listener to Mr. Thorle's personal
narrative of philanthropic movements and experiences, and took the
first opportunity of launching himself into a flow of satirical
observations on current political affairs. Lady Veula was inured
to this sort of thing in her own home circle, and sat listening
with the stoical indifference with which an Esquimau might accept
the occurrence of one snowstorm the more, in the course of an
Arctic winter. Serena Golackly felt a certain relief at the fact
that her imported guest was not, after all, monopolising the
conversation. But the latter was too determined a personality to
allow himself to be thrust aside for many minutes by the talkative
M.P. Henry Greech paused for an instant to chuckle at one of his
own shafts of satire, and immediately Thorle's penetrating voice
swept across the table.
"Oh, you politicians!" he exclaimed, with pleasant superiority;
"you are always fighting about how things should be done, and the
consequence is you are never able to do anything. Would you like
me to tell you what a Unitarian horsedealer said to me at Brindisi
about politicians?"
A Unitarian horsedealer at Brindisi had all the allurement of the
unexpected. Henry Greech's witticisms at the expense of the Front
Opposition bench were destined to remain as unfinished as his
wife's history of the broken soup-plates. Thorle was primed with
an ample succession of stories and themes, chiefly concerning
poverty, thriftlessness, reclamation, reformed characters, and so
forth, which carried him in an almost uninterrupted sequence
through the remainder of the dinner.
"What I want to do is to make people think," he said, turning his
prominent eyes on to his hostess; "it's so hard to make people
think."
"At any rate you give them the opportunity," said Comus,
cryptically.
As the ladies rose to leave the table Comus crossed over to pick up
one of Lady Veula's gloves that had fallen to the floor.
"I did not know you kept a dog," said Lady Veula.
"We don't," said Comus, "there isn't one in the house."
"I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall this
evening," she said.
"A small black dog, something like a schipperke?" asked Comus in a
low voice.
"Yes, that was it."
"I saw it myself to-night; it ran from behind my chair just as I
was sitting down. Don't say anything to the others about it; it
would frighten my mother."
"Have you ever seen it before?" Lady Veula asked quickly.
"Once, when I was six years old. It followed my father
downstairs."
Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost his father
at the age of six.
In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her talkative
friend.
"Really, rather an interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes in
all sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at a
drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some
unheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium,
and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll be
perfectly happy; I must say I hadn't realised how overpowering he
might be at a small dinner-party."
"I should say he was a very good man," said Mrs. Greech; she had
forgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate story.
The party broke up early as most of the guests had other
engagements to keep. With a belated recognition of the farewell
nature of the occasion they made pleasant little good-bye remarks
to Comus, with the usual predictions of prosperity and
anticipations of an ultimate auspicious return. Even Henry Greech
sank his personal dislike of the boy for the moment, and made
hearty jocular allusions to a home-coming, which, in the elder
man's eyes, seemed possibly pleasantly remote. Lady Veula alone
made no reference to the future; she simply said, "Good-bye,
Comus," but her voice was the kindest of all and he responded with
a look of gratitude. The weariness in her eyes was more marked
than ever as she lay back against the cushions of her carriage.
"What a tragedy life is," she said, aloud to herself.
Serena and Stephen Thorle were the last to leave, and Francesca
stood alone for a moment at the head of the stairway watching Comus
laughing and chatting as he escorted the departing guests to the
door. The ice-wall was melting under the influence of coming
separation, and never had he looked more adorably handsome in her
eyes, never had his merry laugh and mischief-loving gaiety seemed
more infectious than on this night of his farewell banquet. She
was glad enough that he was going away from a life of idleness and
extravagance and temptation, but she began to suspect that she
would miss, for a little while at any rate, the high-spirited boy
who could be so attractive in his better moods. Her impulse, after
the guests had gone, was to call him to her and hold him once more
in her arms, and repeat her wishes for his happiness and good-luck
in the land he was going to, and her promise of his welcome back,
some not too distant day, to the land he was leaving. She wanted
to forget, and to make him forget, the months of irritable jangling
and sharp discussions, the months of cold aloofness and
indifference and to remember only that he was her own dear Comus as
in the days of yore, before he had grown from an unmanageable
pickle into a weariful problem. But she feared lest she should
break down, and she did not wish to cloud his light-hearted gaiety
on the very eve of his departure. She watched him for a moment as
he stood in the hall, settling his tie before a mirror, and then
went quietly back to her drawing-room. It had not been a very
successful dinner party, and the general effect it had left on her
was one of depression.
Comus, with a lively musical-comedy air on his lips, and a look of
wretchedness in his eyes, went out to visit the haunts that he was
leaving so soon. _
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