The Parts Men Play. Beverley Baxter
climate you have in this London!'
'Just what I tha-a-y,' bleated Mr. Pyford, sinking into his chair in an apparently boneless heap. 'The other night, at a fella's thupper-party, I'——
'MRS. LE ROY JENNINGS.'
The resolutionist swept into the room clothed in black disorder, much as if she had started to dress in a fit of temper and had been overtaken by a gale.
She knew Madame Carlotti.—She did not know Mr. Norton Pyford, the Norton Pyford.—She was glad to know him.
He muttered something inarticulate, and glancing at the ring of women about him, shrank into his clothes until his collar almost hid his lower lip.
'We were discussing,' said Lady Durwent, vaguely relying on the last sounds retained by her ear—'discussing—suppers.'
'Don't believe in 'em,' said Mrs. Jennings sternly; 'three regular meals—tea at eleven and four, and hot milk with a bit of ginger in it before retiring—are sufficient for any one.'
The Italian took in the forceful figure of the New Woman and smiled with her teeth.
'Madame Jennings,' she said, 'perhaps finds sufficient distraction in just ordinary life—and una tazza di tè. But we who are not so—comment dirai-je?—so self-complete must rely on frivolous things like una buona cena.'
'Don't believe in 'em,' reiterated the resolutionist; 'three regular'——
'Ah, c'est mauvais,' gesticulated Madame Carlotti, who alternated between Italian and French phrases in London, and kept her best English for the Continent.
'Mr. Pyford,' put in Lady Durwent, descrying a storm on the yellow and black horizon, 'has just written'——
'MR. H. STACKTON DUNCKLEY,' announced the butler, with an appropriate note of mysterioso. Lady Durwent summoned a blush, and rose to meet the ardent author, who was dressed in a characterless evening suit with disconsolate legs, and whose chin was heavily powdered to conceal the stubble of beard grown since morning.
'You have come,' she said softly and dramatically.
'I have,' said the writer, bowing low over her hand.
'I rely on you to be discreet,' she murmured.
'Eh?'
'Discreet,' she coquetted. 'People will talk.'
'Let them,' said Mr. Dunckley earnestly.
'Madame Carlotti, I think you know Mr. Dunckley—H. Stackton Dunckley—and you too, Mrs. Le Roy Jennings; you clever people ought to be friends at once.—And I want you to meet Mr. Pyford, the'——
'Hah d'ye do?'
'How are you?'
'Ro—splendid, thanks.'
'We were discussing,' said Lady Durwent—'discussing'——
'MR. AUSTIN SELWYN.'
Every one turned to see the guest of the evening, as the hostess rose to meet him. He was a young man on the right side of thirty, with dark, closely brushed hair that thinned slightly at the temples. He was clean-shaven, and his light-brown eyes lay in a smiling setting of quizzical good-humour. He was of rather more than medium height, with well-poised shoulders; and though a firmness of lips and jaw gave a suggestion of hardness, the engaging youthfulness of his eyes and a hearty smile that crinkled the bridge of his nose left a pleasant impression of frankness, mingled with a certain naïveté.
'Mr. Selwyn,' said Lady Durwent, 'I knew you would want to meet some of
London's—I should say some of England's—accomplished people.'
'Oimè! I am afraid that obleeterates me,' smiled Madame Carlotti, whose social charm was rising fast at the sight of a good-looking stranger.
'No, indeed, Lucia,' effused the hostess. 'To be the personification of Italy in dreary London is more than an accomplishment; it—it'——
'It is a boon,' said Dunckley, coming to the aid of his floundering loved one.
'Exactly,' said Lady Durwent with a sigh of relief. 'Madame Lucia
Carlotti—Mr. Selwyn of New York.'
'Buona sera, signora.'
'Buona sera, signore.'
He stooped low and pressed a light kiss on the Neapolitan's hand, thus taking the most direct route obtainable by an Anglo-Saxon to the good graces of a woman of Italy.
'How well you speak Italian!' cooed Madame Carlotti; 'so—like one of us.'
The American bowed. It was rarely he achieved a reputation with so little effort.
The remaining introductions were effected; the clock struck eight-thirty; and there followed an awkward silence, born of an absolute unanimity of thought.
'Of course, you two authors,' said Lady Durwent, forcing a smile, 'knew of each other, anyway. It's like asking H. G. Wells if he ever heard of Mark Twain.'
The smile in the American's eyes widened. 'Lady Durwent flatters me,' he said. 'I am not widely known in my own country, and can hardly expect that you should know of me on this side of the Atlantic.'
'What,' said Mr. Dunckley—'what does New York think of "Precipitate
Thoughts"?'
The American considered quickly. He wished that in conversation, as well as in writing, people would use inverted commas.
'Whose precipitate thoughts?' he ventured.
'Mine,' said H. S. D., with ill-concealed importance.
'Oh yes, of course,' said Selwyn, wondering how any one so stationary as the other could project anything precipitate. 'New York was keenly interested.'
'Ah,' said the English author benignly, 'it is satisfactory to hear that. Of course, the great difference between there and here is that in New York one impresses: in London one is impressed.'
An ominous silence followed this epigrammatic wisdom (which Dunckley had just heard from the lips of a poet who had succeeded in writing both an American and an English publishing house into bankruptcy) while the various members of the group pursued their trains of thought along the devious routes of their different mentalities.
'Dear me!' said Lady Durwent anxiously, 'what can have detained'——
'MR. JOHNSTON SMYTH.'
With a jerky action of the knees, the futurist briskly entered the room with all the easy confidence of a famous comedian following on the heels of a chorus announcing his arrival. He looked particularly long and cadaverous in an abrupt, sporting-artistic, blue jacket, with sleeves so short that when he waved his arms (which he did with almost every sentence) he reminded one of a juggler requesting his audience to notice that he has absolutely nothing up his sleeves.
'Lady Durwent,' he exclaimed, striking an attitude and looking over his Cyrano-like nose with his right eye as if he were aligning the sights of a musket, 'don't tell me I'm late. If you do, I shall never speak to the Duke of Earldub again—never!'
As he refused to move an inch until assured that he was not late, and as Lady Durwent was anxious to proceed with the main business of the evening (to say nothing of maintaining the friendship between Smyth and the Duke of Earldub, whose part in his dilatory arrival was rather vague), she granted the necessary pardon, whereupon he straightened his legs and winked long and solemnly at Norton Pyford.
'Good gracious!' cried Lady Durwent just as she was about to suggest an exodus to the dining-room, 'I had forgotten all about Elise!' She hurriedly rang the bell, which was answered by the butler. 'Send word to Miss Elise