BOOK I

CHAPTER I
THE CITY DINNER

"Egotism is certainly the first," said Lady Conybeare with admirable firmness; "and your inclination towards your neighbour is the second."

Now, this was the sort of thing which Alice Haslemere liked; and she stopped abruptly in the middle of her rather languishing conversation with nobody in particular to ask for explanations. It sounded promising.

"The first what, and the second what, Kit?" she inquired.

"The first and the second lessons," said Lady Conybeare promptly. "The first and the second social virtues, if you are particular. I am going to set up a school for the propagation of social virtues, where I shall teach the upper classes to be charming. There shall be a special class for royalty."

Lady Haslemere was not generally known as being particularly particular, but she took her stand on Kit's conditional, and defended it.

"There is nothing like particularity – nothing," she said earnestly, with a sort of missionary zeal to disagree with somebody; "though some people try to get on without it."

Being a great friend of Kit's, she knew that it was sufficient for her to state a generality of any kind to get it contradicted. She was not wrong in this instance. Kit sighed with the air of a woman who meant to do her unpleasant duty like a sister and a Christian.

"Dear Alice," she said, "there is nothing so thoroughly irritating as particularity. I am not sure what you mean by it, but I suppose you allude either to people who are prudes or to people who are always letting fly precise information at one. They always want it back too. Don't you know how the people who insist on telling one the exact time are just those who ask one for the exact time. I never know the exact time, and I never want to be told it. And I hate a prudish woman," she concluded with emphasis, "as much as I abhor a well-informed man."

"Put it the other way round," said Lady Haslemere, "and I agree with you. I loathe a prudish man, and I detest a well-informed woman."

"There aren't any of either," said Lady Conybeare.

She sat up very straight in her chair as she made this surprising assertion, and arranged the lace round her throat. Her attitude gave one the impression somehow of a rakish frigate clearing for action, and on the moment came the first shot.

"I am a prude," said a low, bass voice at her elbow.

Kit scarcely glanced round.

"I know you are," she said, replying with a heavy broadside; "but then you are not a man."

"That depends on what you mean by a man," said the voice again.

The speaker was so hidden by the arms of the low chair in which he sat, that a knee, shin and foot, in a horizontal line on the invisible support of another knee, was all that could be seen of him.

"I mean a human being who likes killing things," said Kit without hesitation.

"I killed a wasp yesterday," said the voice; "at least, I think it died afterwards. Certainly I disabled it. Oh, I am sure I killed it."

"Yes, and you remembered it to-day," said Lady Conybeare briskly. "You did not really kill it; it lives in your memory, and – and poisons your life. In time it will kill you. Do you suppose Jack remembers the grouse he killed yesterday?"

"Oh, but Jack is like the oldest inhabitant," said Lady Haslemere. "He never remembers anything, just as the oldest inhabitant never remembers a flood or a thunderstorm or a famine at all like the one in question. That means they don't remember anything at all, for one famine is just like another; so are thunderstorms."

Kit paused a moment, with her head on one side, regarding the speaker.

"No; forgetfulness is not characteristic of Jack," she said, "any more than memory is. He remembers what he wants to remember, and forgets what he wants to forget. Now, it's just the opposite with me. I forget what I want to remember – horrid stories about my friends, for instance – and I remember the sort of thing I want to forget – like – like Sunday morning. Isn't it so, Jack?"

A slightly amused laugh came from a man seated in the window, who was no other than the Jack in question, and, incidentally, Kit's husband.

"It is true I make a point of forgetting unpleasant things," he said; "that is the only real use of having a memory decently under control. I forget Kit's milliner's bills – "

"So do I, darling," said Kit with sudden affection.

"No, you don't; you only remind me to forget them. I forget the names and faces of uninteresting people. I forget – no, I don't forget that – "

"What don't you forget, Jack?" demanded Kit with some sharpness. "I don't believe it."

"I don't forget that we've got to dine in the City at half-past seven. Why ever there was such an hour as half-past seven to put into a Christian clock I can't conjecture," he said in a tone of regretful wonder.

"Well, if you forget unpleasant things, and you don't forget that, perhaps it will be pleasant."

"I am quite certain it will be infernal," said Jack. "Go and dress, Kit."

Lady Conybeare frowned impatiently.

"Oh, Jack! when will you learn that I cannot do what you ask if you talk to me in that way?" she cried. "I was just going to dress. Now I can't, and we shall both be late, which will be very tiresome. You will curse and swear at me like St. Peter for keeping you waiting. How stupid you are, and how little you know me!"

Lord Conybeare looked at his watch.

"It is exactly three minutes to six," he said. "You needn't go for half an hour yet. There is loads of time – loads!"

Kit got up at once.

"That's a dear boy," she said. "Gracious! it's past the half-hour! I must fly! Good-bye, Alice; Conybeare and I will look in on you after our dinner. I think you said you were going to have a nice round game with counters. Good-bye, Tom, and learn not to be a prude."

"I'm sure you would teach me, if anybody could," said Tom rather viciously.

Kit adjusted the lace round her throat again.

"Thanks for the compliment," she said; "but prudes are born, not made. You don't shoot, you don't hunt, you remember every wasp you have possibly killed. Oh, Tom, I am afraid you are hopeless. Don't laugh. I mean what I say; at least, I think I mean the greater part of it."

"I reserve the less, then," said Tom. "I must go too. So Alice and Haslemere and I will see you to-night?"

"Yes; we'll escape as soon as we can from the dinner. Mind you take some money with you, Jack, for the round game. I must fly," she said again, and took her graceful presence very slowly out of the room.

There was a short silence, broken by Lord Conybeare.

"It is odd how you can tell a man by the hour at which he dines," he said. "Seven is an impossible hour, and the people who dine at seven are as impossible as the hour. People who dine at half-past are those who are trying to dine at eight and cannot manage it. They are also trying not to be impossible, and cannot."

Lady Haslemere got up.

"I once knew a man who dined at ten minutes to eight," she said, "which struck me as extremely curious. He was an archdeacon. I believe all archdeacons dine at ten minutes to eight. And they call it a quarter to, which is even odder."

"I don't know any archdeacons," said Tom, with a touch of wistfulness in his voice. "Introduce me to one to-night, Alice."

"Archdeacons don't come to Berkeley Street," said she.

"Why not? How exclusive! Do they expect Berkeley Street to come to them?"

"Probably. They are trained to believe nothing which is not incredible. It is exactly that which makes them impossible."

"Extremes meet," said Lord Conybeare. "The sceptic forces himself to believe everything that is perfectly credible. And he succeeds so well. Sceptics believe that they once ate nuts – we've all eaten nuts once – and are descended from apes. And how obvious is their genealogy from their faces! If I was going to be anything, it should not be a sceptic."

Lady Haslemere wandered once round the room, condemning the china silently.

"I must positively go," she said.

"Do, Alice!" said Jack; "because I want to dress. But you are rather like Kit. When she says she must fly, it means she has little intention of walking, just yet."

Lady Haslemere laughed.

"Come, Tom," she said. "We are not wanted. How deeply pathetic that is! They will want us some day, as the hangman said. Well, Jack, we shall see you later. I am going."

Lord Conybeare went upstairs to his dressing-room, revolving with some intentness the affair of this City dinner. The taking off his coat led him to wind up his watch, and he was so lost in thought that for a moment he looked surprisedly at his dress-clothes, which were laid out for him, as if pyjamas would have been a more likely find. But his linked and studded shirt was an irresistible reminder that it was dinner-time, not bedtime, and he proceeded to dress with a certain neat haste that was clearly characteristic of him. In stature he was somewhat below the average size, both in height and breadth; but one felt that an auctioneer of men might most truthfully have said, when he came to him at a sale: "Here is a rather smaller specimen, gentlemen, but much more highly finished, and very strong!"

The quick deftness of even unimportant movements certainly gave the impression of great driving power; everything he did was done unerringly; he had no fumblings with his studs, and his tie seemed to fashion a faultless, careless bow under a mere suggestion from his thin, taper-nailed fingers. He looked extremely well bred, and a certain Mephistophelian sharpness about his face, though it might have warned those whom Kit would have called prudes – for this was rather a sweeping word with her – that he might not be desirable as a friend, would certainly have warned the prudent that he would assuredly be much more undesirable as an enemy. On the whole, a prudent prude would have tried to keep on good terms with him. He appeared, in fact, even on so hasty and informal a glance as that which we are giving him as he arranges his tie, to be one of those lucky people to whom it is well to be pleasant, for it was difficult to imagine that he was afraid of anything or cared for anybody. Certain happily-constituted folk have never had any doubt about the purpose of the world, so clearly was it designed to feed and amuse them. Lord Conybeare was one of these; and in justice to the world we must say that it performed its altruistic part very decently indeed.

Jack Conybeare was still on the sunny side of thirty-five. He and Kit had been married some seven years, and had no children, a privation for which they were touchingly thankful. They had, both of them, quite sufficient responsibilities, or, to speak more precisely, liabilities; and to be in any way responsible for any liabilities beyond their own would have seemed to them a vicarious burden of the most intolerable sort. Their own, it is only fair to add, sat but lightly on them; Kit, in particular, wore hers most gracefully, like a becoming mantle. Chronic conditions, for the most part, tend to cease being acutely felt, and both she and Jack would far sooner have had a couple of thousand pounds in hand, and fifty thousand pounds in debt, than not to have owed or owned a penny. Kit had once even thought of advertising in the morning papers that a marchioness of pleasing disposition was willing to do anything in the world for a thousand pounds, and Jack had agreed that there was something in the idea, though the flaw in it was cheapness: you should not give yourself away. He himself had mortgaged every possible acre of his property, and sold all that was available to sell, and the close of every day exhibited to a wondering world how it was possible to live in the very height of fashion and luxury without any means of living at all. Had he and Kit sat down for a moment by the side of a road, or loitered in Park Lane, they would probably have been haled, by the fatherly care of English law, to the nearest magistrate, for that they had no apparent means of sustenance. Luckily they never thought of doing anything of the kind, finding it both safer and pleasanter to entertain princes and give the best balls in London.

A want of money is an amiable failing, common to the saint and the sinner alike, and does not stand in the way of the accusé acquiring great popularity. Jack, it is true, had no friends, for the very simple reason that he did not in the least want them; Kit, on the other hand, had enough for two.