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“The worst part of it was,” hissed her ladyship, hitting her croquet ball with such vigour that it shot effortlessly through three hoops, “that the man was stark naked!”
“Really?” said Lord Fe
“Positively disgusting,” said her ladyship.
“Stark naked, eh?” repeated Lord Fe
“The lower classes,” said Lady Fe
Throughout this conversation Jonquil bad been standing staring into space. Now she fixed Adrian with a melting stare.
“I have never seen a naked man,” she said.
“Jonquil!” said Lord Fe
The Conversation succesfully diverted Lady Fe
He was now convinced that Lord Fe
“Just let me go quietly away with Rosy,” Adrian pleaded. “I assure you that when your wife finds out she’s going to go off like a volcano.”
“Nonsense!” said his lordship airily. “Why, when she sees our splendid entrance into the ballroom she’ll be so captivated she’ll be speechless.”
Adrian could not conceive of any set of circumstances that would render Lady Fe
“But when she finds out who I am,” he protested, “and when she finds out about Rosy . . . and . . . and . . . when she finds out about the fruit and the peacocks’ tails . . .” His voice trailed away. He was overcome by the mental image of Lady Fe
“Dear boy,” said his lordship, “don’t worry. You are a natural worrier. I’ve noticed it before. It’s terribly fatiguing for the nerves. Why, when that elephant enters the ballroom my wife—who is, as you will have noticed, perceptive to a degree—will realise instantly that no other ball in the district has ever had an elephant I tell you, dear boy, it will make her evening.”
It did make Lady Fe
So the great day dawned and the whole house hummed with activity. The ballroom into which Rosy was to make her entrance was a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide. At one end were two massive carved oak doors that led out on to the stone flagged terrace. It was through these that Rosy was to appear. Above the doors, like a swallow’s nest on the wall, was the gallery in which the musicians were to foregather. The whole setting was lit by twenty-four gigantic chandeliers that hung in two rows down the length of the ballroom, shimmering and glittering like upside-down Christmas trees. The floor of the ballroom had been polished and waxed so that it gleamed like a brown lake, and at the end of the room, opposite the great doors, there were long trestle tables covered with snow-white cloths. On them were great silver bowls of fruit; haunches of cold venison; lobster tails in aspic, gleaming like gigantic red flies in amber; enormous cold pies with autumn coloured crusts, stuffed with grouse, pheasant and quail; smoked eels crouching on beds of parsley and watercress; gigantic smoked salmon, each wearing a carefully embossed coat of mayo
Presently, up the moonlit drive, clopped and tinkled the first of the carriages, carrying bevies of handsome, be-whiskered men and great colourful scented clouds of women. The band had taken up its position in the minstrels’ gallery and was playing soft, soothing arrival music. Adrian, morosely drinking punch, was mentally cursing his uncle, Lord Fe
“What is it . . . what’s the matter?” asked his lordship irritably.
“Look here,” hissed Adrian frantically, “You’ve got to call this off. D’you realise who’s here?”
“Who?” asked his lordship.
“The Master of the Monkspepper Hunt, that’s who,” said Adrian.
“Well, I knew that,” said his lordship, surprised. “I invited him.”
“You invited him?” asked Adrian incredulously. “But what do you think he’s going to say when he sees Rosy?”
“Ha, ha,” said his lordship. “That’s why I invited him, dear boy, to see what he would say.”
“You must be mad,” said Adrian desperately. “Don’t you realise that the last time he met Rosy she picked him up in her trunk and hurled him to the ground? What d’you think he’s going to say when he sees her here?”
“I think it will be very diverting,” said his lordship.
“But he threatened to imprison me,” said Adrian.
“Oh, don’t you worry about old Darcey,” said his lordship airily, “I’ll soon smooth him down.”
Having seen his lordship’s complete inability to smooth Lady Fe
“Now, now, my dear boy,” said his lordship, you’re starting to worry again. Desist, I implore you. We shall need cool heads for the job ahead of us, cool, sober heads. I’ll call you in half an hour and we’ll get changed. I can hardly wait to see the effect.”
He drifted away before Adrian, panic-stricken and incoherent, could stop him.
The party was in full swing now, and the ballroom looked like a great, moving flowerbed as the couples danced to and fro over its gleaming surface. The wine and the punch were flowing freely, so that many of those gentlemen who had arrived with pale uninteresting complexions were now flushed and rosy, and those who had arrived flushed and rosy were now congested to a phenomenal degree. Ladies drooped exhausted in corners, fa