After this they went on to the Café de la Paix, where they met Johnny Hoop, who asked them all to the party in a few days’ time in the captive balloon.
But Ginger was not to be had twice.
“Oh, no, you know,” he said, “not in a captive balloon. You’re trying to pull the old leg again. Whoever heard of a party in a captive balloon? I mean to say, suppose one fell out, I mean?”
Adam telephoned his page through to the Excess, and soon after this a colored singer appeared, paddling his black suede shoes in a pool of limelight, who excited Ginger’s disapproval. He didn’t mind niggers, Ginger said; remarking justly that niggers were all very well in their place, but, after all, one didn’t come all the way from Colombo to London just to see niggers. So they left the Café de la Paix, and went to Lottie’s, where Ginger became a little moody, saying that London wasn’t home to him any more and that things were changed.
“You know,” said Ginger, “all the time I’ve been out in Ceylon I’ve always said to myself, ‘As soon as the governor kicks the bucket, and I come in for the family doubloons and pieces of eight, I’m going to come back to England and have a real old bust.’ And now when it comes to the point there doesn’t seem to be anything I much want to do.”
“How about a little drink?” said Lottie.
So Ginger had a drink, and then he and an American sang the Eton Boating Song several times. At the end of the evening he admitted that there was some life left in the jolly old capital of the Empire.
Next day Mr. Chatterbox’s readers learned that:
“Captain ‘Ginger’ Littlejohn, as he is known to his intimates, was one of the well-known sporting figures at the November Handicap who favored the new bottle-green bowler. Captain Littlejohn is one of the wealthiest and best-known bachelors in Society, and I have lately heard his name spoken of in connection with the marriage of the daughter of a famous ducal house. He came all the way to yesterday’s races in his own motor omnibus, which he drives himself…”
For some days Ginger’s name figured largely on Adam’s page, to his profound embarrassment. Several engagements were predicted for him, it was rumored that he had signed a contract with a film company, that he had bought a small island in the Bristol Channel which he proposed to turn into a country club, and that his forthcoming novel about Singhalese life contained many very thinly disguised portraits of London celebrities.
But the green bowler joke had gone too far. Adam was sent for by Lord Monomark.
“Now see here, Symes,” said the great man, “I like your page. It’s peppy; it’s got plenty of new names in it and it’s got the intimate touch I like. I read it every day and so does my daughter. Keep on that way and you’ll be all right. But what’s all this about bottle-green bowlers?”
“Well, of course, sir, they’re only worn by a limited number of people at present, but…”
“Have you got one? Show me a green bowler.”
“I don’t wear one myself, I’m afraid.”
“Well, where d’you see ’em? I haven’t seen one yet. My daughter hasn’t seen one. Who does wear ’em? Where do they buy ’em? That’s what I want to know. Now see here, Symes, I don’t say that there ain’t any such thing as a green bowler; there may be and again there mayn’t. But from now on there are going to be no more bottle-green bowlers in my paper. See. And another thing. This Count Cincinnati. I don’t say he doesn’t exist. He may do and he mayn’t. But the Italian Ambassador doesn’t know anything about him and the Almanak de Gotha doesn’t. So as far as my paper goes that’s good enough for him. And I don’t want any more about Espinosa’s. They made out my bill wrong last night.
“Got those three things clear? Tabulate them in the mind—1, 2, 3, that’s the secret of memory. Tab-u-late. All right, then, run along now and tell the Home Secretary he can come right in. You’ll find him waiting in the passage—ugly little man with a pince-nez.”
Eight
Two nights later Adam and Nina took Ginger to the party in the captive dirigible. It was not a really good evening. The long drive in Ginger’s car to the degraded suburb where the airship was moored chilled and depressed them, dissipating the gaiety which had flickered rather spasmodically over Ginger’s dinner.
The airship seemed to fill the whole field, tethered a few feet from the ground by innumerable cables over which they stumbled painfully on the way to the steps. These had been covered by a socially minded caterer with a strip of red carpet.
Inside, the saloons were narrow and hot, communicating to each other by spiral staircases and metal alleys. There were protrusions at every corner, and Miss Runcible had made herself a mass of bruises in the first half-hour. There was a band and a bar and all the same faces. It was the first time that a party was given in an airship.
Adam went aloft to a kind of terrace. Acres of inflated silk blotted out the sky, stirring just perceptibly in the breeze. The lights of other cars arriving lit up the uneven grass. A few louts had collected round the gates to jeer. There were two people making love to each other near him on the terrace, reclining on cushions. There was also a young woman he did not know, holding one of the stays and breathing heavily; evidently she felt unwell. One of the lovers lit a cigar and Adam observed that they were Mary Mouse and the Maharajah of Pukkapore.
Presently Nina joined him. “It seems such a waste,” she said, thinking of Mary and the Maharajah, “that two very rich people like that should fall in love with each other.”
“Nina,” said Adam, “let’s get married soon, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it’s a bore not being married.”
The young woman who felt ill passed by them, walking shakily, to try and find her coat and her young man to take her home.
“… I don’t know if it sounds absurd,” said Adam, “but I do feel that a marriage ought to go on—for quite a long time, I mean. D’you feel that too, at all?”
“Yes, it’s one of the things about a marriage!”
“I’m glad you feel that. I didn’t quite know if you did. Otherwise it’s all rather bogus, isn’t it?”
“I think you ought to go and see papa again,” said Nina. “It’s never any good writing. Go and tell him that you’ve got a job and are terribly rich and that we’re going to be married before Christmas!”
“All right. I’ll do that.”
“… D’you remember last month we arranged for you to go and see him the first time?… just like this… it was at Archie Schwert’s party…”
“Oh, Nina, what a lot of parties.”
(… Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris—all that succession and repetition of massed humanity… Those vile bodies…)
He leaned his forehead, to cool it, on Nina’s arm and kissed her in the hollow of her forearm.
“I know, darling,” she said, and put her hand on his hair.
Ginger came strutting jauntily by, his hands clasped under his coattails.
“Hullo, you two,” he said. “Pretty good show this, what.”
“Are you enjoying yourself, Ginger?”
“Rather. I say, I’ve met an awful good chap called Miles. Regular topper. You know, pally. That’s what I like about a really decent party—you meet such topping fellows. I mean some chaps it takes absolutely years to know but a chap like Miles I feel is a pal straight away.”
Presently cars began to drive away again. Miss Runcible said that she had heard of a divine night club near Leicester Square somewhere where you could get a drink at any hour of the night. It was called the St. C
hristopher’s Social Club.
So they all went there in Ginger’s car.
On the way Ginger said, “That cove Miles, you know, he’s awfully queer…”
St. Christopher’s Social Club took some time to find.
It was a little door at the side of a shop, and the man who opened it held his foot against it and peeped round.
They paid ten shillings each and signed false names in the visitors’ book. Then they went downstairs to a very hot room full of cigarette smoke; there were unsteady tables with bamboo legs round the walls and there were some people in shirt sleeves dancing on a shiny linoleum floor.
There was a woman in a yellow beaded frock playing a piano and another in red playing the fiddle.
They ordered some whiskey. The waiter said he was sorry, but he couldn’t oblige, not that night he couldn’t. The police had just rung up to say that they were going to make a raid any minute. If they liked they could have some nice kippers.
Miss Runcible said that kippers were not very drunk-making and that the whole club seemed bogus to her.
Ginger said well anyway they had better have some kippers now they were there. Then he asked Nina to dance and she said no. Then he asked Miss Runcible and she said no, too.
Then they ate kippers.
Presently one of the men in shirt sleeves (who had clearly had a lot to drink before the St. Christopher Social Club knew about the police) came up to their table and said to Adam:
“You don’t know me. I’m Gilmour. I don’t want to start a row in front of ladies, but when I see a howling cad I like to tell him so.”
Adam said, “Why do you spit when you talk?”
Gilmour said, “That is a very unfortunate physical disability, and it shows what a howling cad you are that you mention it.”
Then Ginger said, “Same to you, old boy, with knobs on.”
Then Gilmour said, “Hullo, Ginger, old scout.”
And Ginger said, “Why, it’s Bill. You mustn’t mind Bill. Awfully stout chap. Met him on the boat.”
Gilmour said, “Any pal of Ginger’s is a pal of mine.”
So Adam and Gilmour shook hands.
Gilmour said, “This is a pretty low joint, anyhow. You chaps come round to my place and have a drink.”
So they went to Gilmour’s place.
Gilmour’s place was a bed-sitting-room in Ryder Street.
So they sat on the bed in Gilmour’s place and drank whiskey while Gilmour was sick next door.
And Ginger said, “There’s nowhere like London really you know.”
That same evening while Adam and Nina sat on the deck of the dirigible a party of quite a different sort was being given at Anchorage House. This last survivor of the noble town houses of London was, in its time, of dominating and august dimensions, and even now, when it had become a mere “picturesque bit” lurking in a ravine between concrete skyscrapers, its pillared facade, standing back from the street and obscured by railings and some wisps of foliage, had grace and dignity and otherworldliness enough to cause a flutter or two in Mrs. Hoop’s heart as she drove into the forecourt.
“Can’t you just see the ghosts?” she said to Lady Circumference on the stairs. “Pitt and Fox and Burke and Lady Hamilton and Beau Brummel and Dr. Johnson” (a concurrence of celebrities, it may be remarked, at which something memorable might surely have occurred). “Can’t you just see them—in their buckled shoes?”
Lady Circumference raised her lorgnette and surveyed the stream of guests debouching from the cloakrooms like City workers from the Underground. She saw Mr. Outrage and Lord Metroland in consultation about the Censorship Bill (a statesmanlike and much-needed measure which empowered a committee of five atheists to destroy all books, pictures and films they considered undesirable, without any nonsense about defense or appeal). She saw both Archbishops, the Duke and Duchess of Stayle, Lord Vanburgh and Lady Metroland, Lady Throbbing and Edward Throbbing and Mrs. Blackwater, Mrs. Mouse and Lord Monomark and a superb Levantine, and behind and about them a great concourse of pious and honorable people (many of whom made the Anchorage House reception the one outing of the year), their womenfolk well gowned in rich and durable stuffs, their menfolk ablaze with orders; people who had represented their country in foreign places and sent their sons to die for her in battle, people of decent and temperate life, uncultured, unaffected, unembarrassed, unassuming, unambitious people, of independent judgment and marked eccentricities, kind people who cared for animals and the deserving poor, brave and rather unreasonable people, that fine phalanx of the passing order, approaching, as one day at the Last Trump they hoped to meet their Maker, with decorous and frank cordiality to shake Lady Anchorage by the hand at the top of her staircase. Lady Circumference saw all this and sniffed the exhalation of her own herd. But she saw no ghosts.
“That’s all my eye,” she said.
But Mrs. Hoop ascended step by step in a confused but very glorious dream of eighteenth-century elegance.
The Presence of Royalty was heavy as thunder in the drawing room.
The Baroness Yoshiwara and the Prime Minister met once more.
“I tried to see you twice this week,” she said, “but always you were busy. We are leaving London. Perhaps you heard? My husband has been moved to Washington. It was his wish to go…”
“No. I say, Baroness… I had no idea. That’s very bad news. We shall all miss you terribly.”
“I thought perhaps I would come to make my adieux. One day next week.”
“Why, yes, of course, that would be delightful. You must both come to dine. I’ll get my secretary to fix something up tomorrow.”
“It has been nice being in London… you were kind.”
“Not a bit. I don’t know what London would be without our guests from abroad.”
“Oh, twenty damns to your great pig face,” said the Baroness suddenly and turned away.
Mr. Outrage watched her bewildered. Finally he said, “For East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet” (which was a poor conclusion for a former Foreign Secretary).
Edward Throbbing stood talking to the eldest daughter of the Duchess of Stayle. She was some inches taller than he and inclined slightly so that, in the general murmur of conversation, she should not miss any of his colonial experiences. She wore a frock such as only duchesses can obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel. Neither powder, rouge nor lipstick had played any part in her toilet and her colorless hair was worn long and bound across her forehead in a broad fillet. Long pearl drops hung from her ears and she wore a tight little collar of pearls round her throat. It was generally understood that now Edward Throbbing was back these two would become engaged to be married.
Lady Ursula was acquiescent if unenthusiastic. When she thought about marriage at all, which was rarely (for her chief interests were a girls’ club in Canning Town and a younger brother at school), she thought what a pity it was that one had to be so ill to have children. Her married friends spoke of this almost with relish and her mother with awe.
An innate dilatoriness of character rather than any doubt of the ultimate issue kept Edward from verbal proposal. He had decided to arrange everything before Christmas and that was enough. He had no doubt that a suitable occasion would soon be devised for him. It was clearly suitable that he should marry before he was thirty. Now and then when he was with Ursula he felt a slight quickening of possessive impulse towards her fragility and distance; occasionally when he read some rather lubricious novel or saw much lovemaking on the stage he would translate the characters in his mind and put Lady Ursula, often incongruously, in the place of the heroine. He had no doubt that he was in love. Perhaps he would propose this very evening and get it over. It was up to Lady Ursula to engineer an occasion. Meanwhile he kept the conversation on to the subject of labor problems in Montreal, about which his in
formation was extensive and accurate.
“He’s a nice, steady boy,” said the Duchess, “and it’s a comfort, nowadays, to see two young people so genuinely fond of each other. Of course, nothing is actually arranged yet, but I was talking to Fanny Throbbing yesterday, and apparently Edward has already spoken to her on the subject. I think that everything will be settled before Christmas. Of course, there’s not a great deal of money, but one’s learned not to expect that nowadays, and Mr. Outrage speaks very highly of his ability. Quite one of the coming men in the party.”
“Well,” said Lady Circumference, “you know your own business, but if you ask me I shouldn’t care to see a daughter of mine marry into that family. Bad hats every one of them. Look at the father and the sister, and from all I hear the brother is rotten all through.”
“I don’t say it’s a match I should have chosen myself. There’s certainly a bad strain in the Malpractices… but you know how headstrong children are nowadays, and they seem so fond of each other… and there seem so few young men about. At least I never seem to see any.”
“Young toads, the whole lot of them,” said Lady Circumference.
“And these terrible parties which I’m told they give. I don’t know what I should have done if Ursula had ever wanted to go to them… the poor Chasms…”
“If I were Viola Chasm I’d give that girl a thunderin’ good hidin’.”
The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn. Royalty remarked on their absence and those happy mothers who had even one docile daughter in tow swelled with pride and commiseration.
“I’m told that they’re having another of their parties,” said Mrs. Mouse, “in an aeroplane this time.”
“In an aeroplane? How very extraordinary.”
“Of course, I never hear a word from Mary, but her maid told my maid…”
“What I always wonder, Kitty dear, is what they actually do at these parties of theirs. I mean, do they…?”