spite of the unaccountable absence of a Cabinet Minister who should have sat between our hostess, Mrs. Withers and Miss Agnes Lockett, I felt that this luncheon-party must be considered as perhaps the most epoch-making that had, up to the present date, been enticed beneath that insatiably hospitable roof. Never had the comet-like orbit of our entertainer ascended quite so high towards the zenith.
With the negligible exception of myself, for whose presence there I shall soon amply account, there was not one among us, man, woman or child (for that prodigy on the fiddle, Dickie Sebastian, in his tight colossal sailor-suit, was of the company) whose name was not thrillingly familiar to the great percentage of the readers of those columns in the daily Press which inform us who was in the park on Sunday chatting with friends, or at the first night of the new play looking lovely.
Briefly to tell the number and brightness of these stars, there was a much be-ribanded general from Salonica, a girl just engaged to the heir of one of our most respectable dukedoms, a repatriated prisoner from Ruhleben, a medium possessed of devastating insight, a prominent actress from a révue, a lion hunter (not our amiable hostess, but a swarthy taciturnity from East Africa), and the adorable Agnes Lockett, lately created a Dame in the Order of the British Empire in connexion with Secret Service. She had just been demobilized, and, as she freely admitted, four years of conundrums and traps had undermined the frankness of her disposition. Schemes, plans, intrigues had become—for the moment—a second nature to her, and she was not happy unless she was laying a trap for somebody else, or suspecting (quite erroneously) that somebody was laying a trap for her. She had also become a smooth conversational liar. These things had not, it may be mentioned, affected her charm and her beauty.
Finally, there was myself, who had no claim to distinction of any kind beyond such as is inherent in living next door to Mrs. Withers and being honoured with the friendship of Agnes Lockett.
I had been asked by telephone just at luncheon-time, as I was in the act of sitting down to a tough and mournful omelette alone, and I naturally felt quite certain that I had been bidden to take the place of some guest (not the Cabinet Minister whom she still expected) who had disappointed Mrs. Withers at the last moment. This was confirmed by the fact that she told me in her clearest telephone voice that I had promised to come to-day (which I knew was not the case) and that she was merely reminding me.
Obviously, then, she was in urgent need of somebody, for it was not her custom to “remind” all her expected guests at the very moment when they were due at her house, and my inclusion in this resplendent galaxy was certainly due to the convenient fact that, as I lived next door, I should not keep the rest of her party waiting. ... It is, I hope, unnecessary to add that, with the unfortunate exception of myself, everyone present appeared in the informing pages of “Who's Who,” so that his work and recreations were known to the reading public and would afford a good start to the medium in case we had a séance afterwards.
As the currents of conversation set this way and that, I was occasionally marooned in a backwater, and could hear what Mrs. Withers was saying to Agnes Lockett. The latter had been to the new play last night, and an allusion to it produced from our hostess a flood of typical monologue delivered in the judicial voice for which she was famous. She was a big lean woman who radiated a stinging vitality that paralysed the timid, and as she spoke, her eyes patrolled the distinguished table with the utmost satisfaction and controlled the service.
“Yes, Roland Somerville is marvellous in the part,” she said, “and I told him he had never done a finer piece of work. But I thought Margaret had not quite grasped his conception of it. I went round, of course, to see her afterwards, and as she asked me what I thought I told her just that.”
At this moment the telephone bell rang in the room adjoining, and Mrs. Withers, though continuing to analyse the play with her accustomed acumen (it had produced precisely the same effect on her as on the author of the critique in the Daily Herald) was a little distraite in manner till her parlour-maid communicated the message.
“Ah, that accounts for Hugh Chapel's absence, who was to have sat between us,” she said to Agnes. “He was sent for to the Palace at a quarter-past one and is lunching there. And I ordered golden plovers especially for him. Hugh was at Priscilla's last night, looking very tired, I thought. You know him, of course, Miss Lockett?”
