The Silver Spoon

Michael cloaked her shoulders.

“‘Great Itch,’ I think; there’s no other scream so certain.”

After their scream they came out into a mild night. High up in red and green the bright signs fled along the air: ‘Tomber’s Tires for Speed and Safety,’ ‘Milkoh Makes Mothers Merry.’ Through Trafalgar Square they went and down Whitehall, all moonlight and Portland stone.

“The night’s unreal,” said Fleur. “‘Fantoches’!”

Michael caught her waist.

“Don’t. Suppose some Member saw you!”

“He’d only sympathise. How nice and solid you feel!”

“No! Fantoches have no substance.”

“Then give me shadow.”

“The substance is in Bethnal Green.”

Michael dropped his arm.

“That’s a strange thought.”

“I have intuitions, Michael.”

“Because I can admire a good woman, can I not love you?”

“I shall never be ‘good’; it isn’t in me.”

“Whatever you are’s enough for me.”

“Prettily said. The Square looks jolly, tonight! Open the doll’s house.”

The hall was dark, with just a glimmer coming through the fanlight. Michael took off her cloak and knelt down. He felt her fingers stir his hair; real fingers, and real all this within his arms; only the soul elusive. Soul?

“Fantoches!” came her voice, soft and mocking. “And so to bed!”

Chapter IX.

ROUT AT MRS. MAGUSSIE’S

There are routs social, political, propagandic; and routs like Mrs. Magussie’s. In one of Anglo–American birth, inexhaustible wealth, unimpeachable widowhood, and catholic taste, the word hostess had found its highest expression. People might die, marry, and be born with impunity so long as they met, preferably in her house, one of the largest in Mayfair. If she called in a doctor, it was to meet another doctor; if she went to church, it was to get Canon Forant to meet Dean Kimble at lunch afterwards. Her cards of invitation had the words: “To meet” printed on them; and she never put “me.” She was selfless. Once in a way she had a real rout, because once in a way a personality was available, whose name everybody, from poets to prelates, must know. In her intimate belief people loved to meet anybody sufficiently distinguished; and this was where she succeeded, because almost without exception they did. Her two husbands had ‘passed on,’ having met in their time nearly everybody. They had both been distinguished, and had first met in her house; and she would never have a third, for Society was losing its landmarks, and she was too occupied. People were inclined to smile at mention of Bella Magussie, and yet, how do without one who performed the function of cement? Without her, bishops could not place their cheeks by the jowls of ballet-girls, or Home Secretaries be fertilised by disorderly dramatists. Except in her house, the diggers-up of old civilisations in Beluchistan never encountered the levellers of modern civilisation in London. Nor was there any chance for lights of the Palace to meet those lights of the Halls—Madame Nemesia and Top Nobby. Nowhere else could a Russian dancer go in to supper with Sir Walter Peddel, M.D., F.R.S.T.R., P.M.V.S., ‘R.I.P.,’ as Michael would add. Even a bowler with the finest collection of ducks’ eggs in first-class cricket was not without a chance of wringing the hand of the great Indian economist Sir Banerjee Bath Babore. Mrs. Magussie’s, in fine, was a house of chief consequence; and her long face, as of the guardian of some first principle, moving above the waters of celebrity, was wrinkled in a great cause. To meet or not to meet? She had answered the question for good and all.

The “meetee” as Michael always called it for her opening rout in 1925 was the great Italian violinist Luigi Sporza, who had just completed his remarkable tour of the world, having in half the time played more often than any two previous musicians. The prodigious feat had been noted in the Press of all countries with every circumstance—the five violins he had tired out, the invitation he had received to preside over a South American Republic, the special steamer he had chartered to keep an engagement in North America, and his fainting fit in Moscow after the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, the Bach chaco

Michael and Fleur, passing up the centre stairway, saw a man ‘not ‘arf like a bull’—Michael muttered—whose hand people were seizing, one after the other, to move away with a look of pain.

“Only Italy can produce men like that,” Michael said in Fleur’s ear. “Give him the go-by. He’ll hurt you.”

But Fleur moved forward.

“Made of sterner stuff,” murmured Michael. It was not the part of his beloved to miss the hand of celebrity, however horny! No portion of her charming face quivered as the great athlete’s grip closed on hers, and his eyes, like those of a tired minotaur, traversed her gracefulness with a gleam of interest.

‘Hulking brute!’ thought Michael, disentangling his own grasp, and drifting with her over shining space. Since yesterday’s ordeal and its subsequent spring-ru

“Stick to me!” he said. “These bees are too bee busy.”

“Were you in Court yesterday?” asked Michael.

“No; one read about it. You did well.”

“She did better.”

“H’m!” said Mr. Blythe. “By the way, The Evening Sun was at us again this afternoon. They compared us to kittens playing with their tails. It’s time for your second barrel, Mont.”

“I thought—on the agricultural estimates.”

“Good! Governmental purchase and control of wheat. Stress use of the present machinery. No more officials than are absolutely necessary.”

“Blythe,” said Michael suddenly, “where were you born?”

“Lincolnshire.”

“You’re English, then?”

“Pure,” said Mr. Blythe.

“So am I; so’s old Foggart—I looked him up in the stud-book. It’s lucky, because we shall certainly be assailed for lack of patriotism.”

“We ARE,” said Mr. Blythe. “‘People who can see no good in their own country… Birds who foul their own nest… Gentry never happy unless ru

“Unfortunately,” said Michael, “I do; it hurts me inside. It’s so damned unjust. I simply can’t bear the idea of England being in a fix.”

Mr. Blythe’s eyes rolled.

“She’s bee well not going to be, if we can help it.”

“If only I amounted to something,” murmured Michael; “but I always feel as if I could creep into one of my back teeth.”