“Don’t prevaricate,” said Mrs. Fortune. “I also noticed Ann Bracy.”
“Which was that?” Reggie opened eyes of dreamy innocence.
“Yes, you were all eyes and no ears. The only creature you looked at.”
“My dear girl! Oh, my dear girl! Not just. Not even clever. You mean the madonna girl with the colonel. I was lookin’ at her because I was thinkin’ about Burchard. Where does he come in? Everybody else seemed to be local. And it was Burchard Mrs. Healy shoved at Mrs. Mead. Gettin’ him into county society, what? And why?”
“Humbug,” said Mrs. Fortune. “She is a beautiful child. A young madonna, yes - springtime - and one is so wise and wicked and fat. Too bad.” For which there was vengeance.
Many more people sat down to dinner. Between two vigorous sporting matrons, old and young, Lady This and Lady That - he never distinguished their names - Reggie learnt a good deal of the company. Almost everybody was somebody in Midshire. Dignitaries were pointed out to him. Oh, that man; that was Colonel Bracy; no, he didn’t belong to Midshire; he was just a friend of Mrs. Healy’s from somewhere. The fair girl in the blue frock? His daughter, of course. Pretty creature, wasn’t she, in her childish way? Such a pity Mrs. Healy was going. Letley Hall was really one of the finest places in Midshire, but terrible to keep up nowadays. What was going to happen to it nobody knew. The poor Maminot boy! That was Oliver Maminot, the big youth at the far end. Such a nice boy. But, of course, not a bean! Absolutely.
Reggie surveyed Oliver Maminot. He had a genial and open countenance. His dubious future was not troubling him. He liked his dinner and his neighbours, and gave not a look beyond. A stalwart youth.
For Mrs. Healy’s housekeeping Reggie has maintained a respectful admiration. It provides him with one of his favourite examples for a theory which he maintains against the incredulity of mankind - that a woman can give you good claret. In spite of a master of foxhounds who would talk horses to him, her Haut Brion brought him to the dance in a benign humour.
So he admitted the justice of Mrs. Mead’s prognostication that to see the great hall of Letley at its best you must see a dance in it. No daylight could make as much of the heraldry on the screen and the windows as the blaze of the many electric candelabra which hung in mid - air from the lofty roof, and the great curved beams up there in the half dark loomed as a vast, intricate pattern of mysterious harmonies. In the minstrels’ gallery the light fell on a band of comical, gay uniforms bringing the flash of folly which the hall needed to set off its formal grandeur. The slow kaleidoscopic rhythm of the dancing crowd furnished just the pageantry for which it was made.
“Great place,” Reggie murmured to the frisky matron with whom he was walking a careful foxtrot.
“I’ll tell the world,” she smiled. “Nothing like Letley for a big show. Decent of Ma Healy to give it a send - off like this. Get it talked about, and Oliver ought to get a buyer if anybody’s got any money left.”
Oliver was not then in need of sympathy. His dancing had more power than grace, but it was Ann Bracy he pushed round the hall, respectful of her fragility with a droll self - satisfied concentration.
The dance stopped on a clash, and Reggie, conceiving that he had done enough for duty, slid round the edges into obscurity.
He found the door ajar, and a man drew away from the side of it, a black - jowled fellow in morning dress - some gentleman’s gentleman who had been at pains to look on.
Reggie gave himself a small cigar and a glass of seltzer water before he thought of coming back. Then he wandered upstairs, and surveyed the dance from the back of the minstrels’ gallery behind the band. Burchard had Ann Bracy in his arms. A faint dislike of the man entered Reggie’s languid mind. He was possessive. He had a grin.
The girl did not seem aware of it. She yielded to his pressure as if she felt nothing unusual in it. Her face was poised to look up at him in ritual attention, but with a calm, childish candour neither excited nor exciting.
Burchard took her out of the hall, and Reggie went downstairs again, and, as he went, saw the black - jowled man flitting in front of him.
On his return to the hall he obeyed a glance of command from Mrs. Fortune, and she assigned him to a robust Diana, whose talk was of Pekinese, whose legs moved on a larger scale. After the first round he kept his feet out of her range, but the effort was exhausting.
When Mrs. Fortune came upstairs, she found him in bed. He rolled over and blinked at her.
“Coward,” said she.
“Oh, no. Casualty. Why are wives so social? These are the riddles nobody can solve. Backward animal, woman. Not yet fit for marriage. Still in the herd stage. However. What did you make of it Joan?”
“A coward,” said she, and wrinkled her attractive nose. “A superior person.”
“My dear girl! Treatin’ serious subject with levity. Why was it? What’s it all about?”
Mrs. Fortune let down her hair. “Why? Oh, infant. Do you want a reason for a woman giving a dance? How like you!”
“Yes. This dance. With these people. Farewell to the county by Mrs. Bountiful. All right. Then why the honoured friends who are not of the county, the Burchard and the Bracys? Why thrust them on the local gods?”
“My good child, the woman can have friends of her own. She may even like to see them. We’re not all self - sufficient.”
“No. Lot of mindin’ other people’s business. That’s what I complain of. However. We’re goin’ away tomorrow.” He turned over and with placid concentration went to sleep.
His hope had been to escape before lunch. Late in the morning, when people began to come down, Mrs. Healy proposed to show the house to the Bracys and Burchard, and Mrs. Mead was taken into the party, and to his dumb despair she told Reggie that he would like to come too.
It was a comprehensive inspection. They were marched through the great chamber and the library and the winter parlour and the dark chapel which had been turned into a lounge, retaining of its sanctity only the stained glass apostles of the windows. There Oliver Maminot was discovered, and commanded to act as guide because he knew all about everything. He seemed to expect the commission. But it was Mrs. Mead who made the most of the best things, with Mrs. Healy playing a tactful second. They had ready applause from Colonel Bracy, interest from Burchard, and his endeavours to interest Ann Bracy were politely received. She walked through the exhibition with the docility of a good child.
They went up the great staircase and turned to the west wing. “This is the oldest part, you know,” Maminot explained. “The jolly old castle wall makes one side here, and the gallery was built on in Queen Elizabeth’s time when the family made their pile. The state bedroom is along here.” He looked a question at Mrs. Healy.
