CHAPTER XI

THE HEN-PARTY

It was the afternoon of the great Hen-party at Urquhart's Court.

Imagine a giantess's piece-box of scraps of every-coloured silk, muslin, and stuff,--blue, yellow, orange, and a pervading, blasting shade of pink--tumbled out haphazard over a giant's green billiard-table, and stirred by a freakish breeze into never-ceasing movement. This was the first impression of Eleanor's invading army of guests upon the eye.

Upon the ear smote the indistinguishable unending din of their voices. It filled all the air above the grave old basking house, and the stately lawns. Not actually loud, but high-pitched, shrill....

That clatter of feminine voices without a steadying bass among them! That acre-wide flutter of feminine garments with never a jacket-suit to give them value! That pinky-white speckle of feminine faces----

There appeared to be nothing but women, women, women at The Court to-day. For Eleanor, with so many women-volunteers, never engaged waiters for these occasions.

Even Mr. Beeton, the butler, was lying low in his pantry, sulking indignantly to think that a gentleman's country-house--a house where Mr. Beeton was in service! had been turned topsy-turvy into something more like Hampstead Heath on a Whit-Monday than anything he'd ever come across in the whole course of his experience--not that he knew anything about that neighbourhood except by hearsay. (He was an old sailor.) Mr. Marrow, the gardener, broken-hearted to think what those regular hooligans of young women might be up to on his lawns and in his gardens, had also taken the afternoon off--while those lawns and gardens hummed and buzzed and twittered with the invaders.

Rosamond Fayre, wide-hatted and cool in her white gown, paused for one moment on the Terrace where rows of tables and benches were set out, before she turned into the house on her next errand.

And out of the ivy-draped entrance of the house there came out to meet her the one and only man left about the place that day.

Ted Urquhart, nut-brown against his flannels, carried a large glass pitcher in either hand. All the afternoon he'd been carrying something: pyramids of cut cake, dishes of cucumber-sandwiches, relays of jugs of hot water; and all the afternoon he had worn the ultra-sweet and restrained look of one who longs to hurl at the nearest head that which he carries.

This time it was iced lemonade.

"Where do I take this to, Miss Fayre?" he asked, quietly.

"To Nurse Agatha's Invalid Girls' table. The furthest, under the lime-trees," Rosamond instructed him, a little shortly, pointing.

And as she turned into the house she thought, "This time I shall give him the slip. Really, Eleanor's dear Ted is too absurd this afternoon! Just because Eleanor told him he was to take his orders from me he elects to take them this way! Puts on that deadly-docile manner which always means that a man is smouldering with rage, and makes himself into Eleanor's secretary's shadow!"

For that many-coloured pool of girls on the lawn might swirl and surge and re-form, but all the afternoon it had been navigated by two figures in white never far apart; the tall fair girl so closely followed by the taller sun-burnt man.

"Just because Eleanor can't attend to him. Silly of him to show he minds! Fancy his minding so much.... Eleanor must have managed to make him very fond of her somehow. That's a mercy! Curious that you never can tell what will attract any given kind of man," reflected Rosamond Fayre, as she looked into old Mr. Urquhart's usually hushed study, now delivered over to the Ladies' Orchestra, white-clad, with blue velvet Zouave jackets, who were giggling joyously over an unduly prolonged feast of Mr. Marrow's peaches and lemonade. "So sorry to uproot you, but when you've finished, would you mind playing for some more dancing on the smaller lawn?" suggested Rosamond Fayre, sympathetically.

As she came out into the corridor again she was again confronted by that suppressed, that meek figure in nut-brown and white.

In a voice as mild as Rosamond's own voice when she was very much "_the Secretary_," Ted Urquhart said, "All the parties have had tea now, Miss Fayre. And lemonade. And ice-cream. Can't I bring you some----"

"Oh, I had some tea with the United Laundry Girls, thank you," said Rosamond Fayre.

"Then what," persisted Ted Urquhart smoothly, "can I do for you now?"

"Well! Perhaps you might take Miss Newnham and her friends--those ladies who brought down the Kennington Road Group--and show them the grounds, and the fish-pond----"

"Is that the Stinor-Wrangler Lady and her party?" asked young Urquhart. For one second his face expressed a wish to show that party into the fish-pond and leave them there. But he only said, "I'd rather do something for the girls themselves if I might?"

"Play games with them, then?" suggested Rosamond, not without mischief, as she walked away from him into the Hall. For here they were met by a nearer sound against that background of incessant treble clamour--the sound that drifted in of a singing game, played on the cleared portion of the Terrace by one of the "nursery-parties."

These girls still wore their befrizzled hair bobbing against their backs and their skirts swinging up to their knees as their light heels kicked up Mr. Marrow's gravel as they sang in chorus:--

"_We're waitin' for a part-ner! Waitin' for a part-ner! Open the ring! And choose your Queen_ (A sound of scuffling here) _And kiss her when you've got her in._"

Then, more loudly as Rosamond Fayre and the one man left at Urquhart's Court appeared framed in the doorway under the old red-brick shield, the little Cockneys sang:--

"_On the carpet you shall meet As the grass grows in the wheat; Stand up now upon your feet, And kiss the one you love so sweet! We're waitin'----_"

"Are you coming to play this game?" the young man in the doorway rather brusquely asked Rosamond Fayre.

"I? No time!" she said, blushing a little for no reason except that she found herself for no reason blushing a little.

She left Mr. Ted Urquhart to watch that game or play it as he chose, and descended the Terrace steps to the lawn again.

The dabs of moving colour seen from above became moving figures, most of whom Rosamond knew by sight.... She walked beset by greetings from Eleanor's girls, smiling to herself as the pervading buzz disentangled itself into tags of sentences.

"Hoo! Talk about lar-arf! If you'd 'a' seen me and her gittin' it done, ready to come, at four this mornin'----"

"Why, in the train comin' along----"

"I says to 'im, well, if I don't go to-day, I says, there may never be a next time, I says, very well, 'e says; Gow! and I--"

"Miss, dear! Trailin' a twig on your skirt! Yer sweetheart's thinkin' of you!"

"'Ilder!"

"'Ere, young Dais! You've got a cheek, to----"

"Seller! Seller!"

Then, in a very different sort of dialect----

"Has anyone seen Miss Newnham? Ah, Hypatia; there you are.... Impossible, in this mêlée.... But of _course_ I shall come to the Meeting afterwards, if only I can hale these young barbarians back to their native wilds of Kentish Town in time----"

"_Whey-ah_ is Eleanor Urquhart? Yes, I know! she sent some sort of a myrmidon of hers, a typist-individual, I think, to----"

Rosamond primmed her mouth. She did not greatly care for those specially-looked-up-to friends of Eleanor's who had degrees after their names and who wore hand-wrought silver Suffrage-brooches and who made little "cultured" jokes about the girls....

The enjoying girls themselves were all right. So were their other guardians. Those Hospital Nurses, for instance, cheery and crisp and trim in the mauve-and-white uniform that one of them had not taken off, as she smilingly admitted, for the last thirty-six hours--coming straight on, off duty----

"Wouldn't you like a little more to eat, Nurse----"

"My dear, I'd like a little less, if possible!"

They were dears, Rosamond thought. So were the Sisters of Mercy, who, for all their black robes and veils and twisted girdles, were the gayest of the gay; their white-linen-bound faces bright as their own silver crosses, free from all care that was not for others.

"Sister! Have you had anything yourself? You haven't, I know," said Rosamond Fayre. "I'll send----" She turned--to meet the usual resigned and following figure. "Oh, Mr. Urquhart! Would you mind going up to the house and making them bring some fresh tea here--a little tray----"

It was young Urquhart himself who brought that little tray. He carried it, without the loss of a drop, over the crowded lawn, to the garden-seat under the trees, to that Sister-in-Charge.

But this did not check him for long from this obviously deliberate and idiotic plan of dogging the footsteps of Miss Urquhart's second-in-command.

Surely, surely he could see for himself what to do? He could choose which girls to show round the place (his own place) on his own initiative, couldn't he?

Apparently not!

Rosamond, shepherding a Guild of Girl Needleworkers past the walled gardens to the other lawn where the tuning-up of three fiddles and a 'cello grew louder as they approached, found that Mr. Ted Urquhart was practically upon her heels once more.

Once more, she supposed, he'd bring out that monotonous, restrained, but temper-struck "What can I do for you now?"

No!

For at the further side of the lawn from the white and blue wooden stand where the blue-and-white-clad Ladies' Orchestra were tuning up she perceived at last Mr. Ted Urquhart's _fiancée_.

Eleanor, wearing her most "responsible"-looking costume of stone-grey, and too absorbed to notice her _fiancé's_ approach, was pacing that further path beside an enlightened-looking young woman in pince-nez and brown patterned Liberty delaine, who conversed in earnest gasps, something about----

"Such a futile Committee, though! Narrow-minded Bishops! Silly old retired militarist Colonels! ... What can you expect, my dear Miss Urquhart, from imbecile survivals of that type? ... How can they hope to realise that We of To-day are not, not as women were forced to be in our grandmothers' time? ... As I say, the New Spirit has percolated even to the strata of these poor Guild-girls here! ... Even _they_ read Wells and Galsworthy! even they are growing to probe into things for themselves! To learn to live with their Brains instead of merely----"

Here, as if in soft denial of all she had been saying, the band broke into the alluring drawl of an old-fashioned waltz-tune, played rather slowly.

Three bars of the unspoilable Eton Boating Song filled the lawn with girls in smoothly revolving couples. They waltzed; their young bodies turning as one, their cheaply-shod feet scarcely leaving the turf, their faces set, grave and happy and hypnotised by the rhythm of music and movement....

It was all strikingly unlike that Saturnalian gambol that old Mr. Urquhart had prophesied!

These girlish toilers, set free for one summer afternoon from sweltering labour in pickle-factory and hand-laundry and underground eating-house--dressed in cheap finery--of "pink and Saxe and sky and helio"--for which they would pay by a shilling at a time, danced on the grass with a stateliness lost to the ball-rooms of their rulers. They danced, slum-bred and born into drudgery as they were; and they made of Byron's waltz a measure as decorous as the Pavane itself.

"Row--Row to-gether," hummed Urquhart, as the insistent melody that will surely live when the last echo of tango and rag-time has died away, throbbed in his blood and set his foot tapping in time upon the turf. Rosamond, without turning her head, realised that this young man was yearning, as she yearned, to dance. He raised his voice a little.

"I say, Eleanor! D'you care to----"

Eleanor, as Rosamond to her amusement noticed, did not hear the voice of the young man at her elbow.

He spoke again.

"I say, Eleanor. It's rather jolly. Come and have a turn, won't you?"

Eleanor Urquhart looked round absently at last.

"Er--Oh, you want to dance, Ted? Do you very much mind if I don't?" said the engaged girl. "I have so much to ask my friend, Miss Fabian. I shan't get her to myself again, I know.... Dance with somebody else. Miss Fayre will dance with you, I'm sure, if you ask her. Rosamond dear," she turned to her secretary with that little "settling" voice of hers. "You'll dance with Mr. Urquhart, won't you?"

Rosamond Fayre became conscious of an unexpected thrill of sudden and warm and young and undeniable delight....

She adored dancing.

The Eton Boat Song remained her favourite waltz.

An eye used to summing up partners at a glance told her that this lithe-limbed engineer-man of Eleanor's would dance as well as he fetched-and-carried or helped to pitch refreshment tents. Yes! By the way he moved you could see that he belonged to those ideal and flawless partners of whom every woman can recall perhaps six during the whole of her dancing-days; forgetting names and faces but remembering always "_that gorgeous waltz I had with that man at the So-and-so dance_."

He took a quick, eager step forward; put out a long arm, muttered a hasty "Oh, may I----"

And at that moment Rosamond Fayre herself could not have explained why she said--what she did say.

Which was: "Oh! Do you mind if I don't dance either? Waltzing always makes me so--so giddy. I'll find you a good partner instead, though, Mr. Urquhart."

She turned to a couple who had just fallen aside out of the throng. A girl in a long black velvet coat was panting under a black fur stole and gasping huskily, "'Ere! 'Arf-time, Pan!" to the other girl, who wore the most ambitious gown to be seen at Urquhart's Court that day. Satin of the colour of fruit-juice poured over a silver spoon set off her opulent figure, and she turned a laughing, boldly-handsome face under a halo of frilled and crimson tulle as Miss Fayre called "Pansy!"

Another moment and Ted Urquhart found himself twirled into that turning, turning throng, his arm about the crimson-satin-swathed waist of his old acquaintance the Principal Boy.

"Well! Fancy meeting Mister You! Brings back the dear old days, don't it?" beamed the resplendent and perfumed Pansy as they swung into step. "Quite a treat for me not having to dance gentleman for once! I s'pose you're such a rarity this afternoon, you've got to be handed round--like the other ices, eh? Thought I wasn't mistaken on the front just now. I said to young Annie, 'See who that is playing comic butler with the little tray?' (Oh, _come_ on, High-Jinkski, you can Bos'!) 'He's too proud to look our way,' I said. 'Still, if it isn't him all right! It's Miss Fayre's boy,' I said----"

"Please! Please don't say it," her partner cut her short, in a tone that made her stare quickly up into his set, sun-burnt face. "Er--There's been a mistake here, Miss Pansy. You don't know my name, I think----"

"'Think' is good!" laughed the Principal Boy, her brown eyes gleaming, evidently with a memory of that sparring-match a propos of names over the Hostel tea-table in France.

But her partner finished curtly. "My name is Urquhart."

"Urq---- Why! Fancy! I never knew our Miss Urquhart had got a brother?"

"She hasn't. I'm not. I am----"

It seemed to stick in his throat. He could not say it. He said, "I am her cousin."

"Brother to the other cousin?"' enquired Pansy interestedly. "Brother to the one Miss Urquhart's goin' to marry?"

So he had to say it, after all.

"I am engaged to be married to Miss Urquhart."

"What?" cried the Principal Boy very sharply. "Go on?"

She fell out of step, bumped against the next couple, recovered herself with a short "Go where you're lookin'!" She did not speak again until they had waltzed twice round the lawn, from which Miss Fayre had vanished now.

Then, still waltzing, Pansy asked steadily, "Straight? It's true?"

"Yes."

"Then, if it's not a rude question, what's the meaning of----"

"There is no 'meaning,'" said Ted Urquhart distinctly, as the sky-blue-jacketed First Violin, erect in the middle of her platform, tapped her bow against her music-stand as a signal. The tune was allowed to languish to its close. "Thank you, so much," said Urquhart. "It has been--er--delightful seeing you again like this. May I bring you some lemonade?"

"All right, if there's nothing to drink," murmured the Pantomime Boy, absently. Her face was a bewildered blank as her partner strode off down the path towards the refreshment tent.

And to herself she muttered, "Now, wot's all this?"

She could not be expected to guess that "all this" meant a very special form of Purgatory for the only man present at this afternoon's hen-party.

Tossed about like a shuttle-cock between the girl he was pledged to marry and the other girl who--who grudged him one glance, dash it, one turn of a waltz! "Miss Fayre's boy," forsooth--a sort of District Messenger Boy, that was how she treated him! Sent him off airily here, there, and everywhere----

Anywhere, except where he'd meant to stay; namely, _near her!_

Well, at all events this infernal party would soon be over, Urquhart reflected as he finished handing round the last of the lemonade. Nearly half-past five. He was surely at an end of his trials for to-day at least?

No!

Two more trials were in store for him.

The first of these announced itself in an alien Voice which smote upon Urquhart's ear from behind one of the clipped box hedges. A Voice that emitted squib-like cries of "Now, isn't this just Old Eng--land? Say, Amanda! Isn't this just the most typical yet?" And then there came into sight Miss Fayre escorting two ladies in long coats and small veiled hats, carrying binoculars and guide-books. Hurriedly Rosamond explained that these ladies wished to be taken over Urquhart's Court. They had heard that it was "an exhibition-place"--which by the way it wasn't. But Ted Urquhart found himself adding to the many odd jobs of the afternoon that of taking these American tourists over his domain; and of listening to their unsolicited testimonials upon those charming; old-world; delightful; fas'natingly delicious; harmonious-looking house and gardens!

For after each adjective the Voice seemed to pause for a semi-colon of appreciation. It dwelt upon that beautiful; priceless; exquisite Romney portrait of "Mrs. Edward Urquhart," and at the priest's hole it vociferated, "Say, Amanda! doesn't the mere sight of this carry us way, way, way back into the days of Cramwell?"

Young Urquhart wished it could....

Why did this type of American insist upon leaving nothing, _nothing_ unsaid?

These women were very different from that Dresden china figurine of an American bride he'd met over in France, that friendly little lady who--but he mustn't think of what _she'd_ said....

He turned his thoughts resolutely away, tried to think of the awful English tourists, in America, who must give the more charming American class an appalling idea of what our own nation is really like.

These Americans here were their revenge for it all! This dreadful "Amanda" and her companion!

In the hall at the end of the tour, Miss Fayre, who was fetching a mislaid wrap for one of the University Settlement workers, came in for a share of the thanks poured upon the wretched and fidgeting host. The Lady with the Voice grasped both the secretary-girl's hands and held them as she announced that she just couldn't go until she'd told this beautiful; charming; graceful; tender; womanly; delightful-looking young English lady the impression she'd made upon two strangers that day.

"Soon as we saw you," effused the Voice, "in that simple; fas'nating white gown on the green lawn! with the glorious; genuine; Anglo-Saxon fair hair! And that lovely; reel; milk-and-peach blow; English complexion! Like a young Queen, I guess! Among all your humble guests! I said, 'Why! If _she_! Isn't the very unmistakable; absolute Image and Ideal of what the beautiful young mistress of an old English country-house ought! To _be_!' I tell you, my dear young lady----"

"Oh! Please don't!" gasped Miss Urquhart's paid secretary, standing beside Miss Urquhart's _fiancé_, as if they were both hypnotised by these relentless compliments.

That Voice went on to thank her, Rosamond Fayre, for providing strangers with a memory that they guessed they would never; never forget! The memory of a perfect; wonderful; Picture that they reckoned couldn't be beaten by all those miles and miles of galleries they'd done in Europe! It was a pity that Mr. Sargent didn't take and paint it right there!--"the old hall with the oak-beams and the carving, and you, my dear, in the doorway of your adorable; English home! standing beside this fine; tall; manly; real English-looking; devoted young husband of yours----"

Here Mr. Ted Urquhart literally turned tail and fled. Rosamond Fayre, crimson to the roots of her admired hair, saw his white-clad figure speed helter-skelter down the Terrace steps, thread the maze of colour on the lawn, and plunge into the green depths of the lime-tree Avenue. Every movement, she fancied, conveyed the young man's last word:

"I won't stand any more. All these cackling women! This finishes it! Here's where I knock off!"

It was, indeed, a fairly accurate version of young Urquhart's feelings as he paused on the Avenue at last, lighted up a pipe, and told himself that he'd give a fiver to have a man to talk to.

Even as he tossed the match into the hedge he saw the figure of a man in grey, appearing round the bend of the drive, who walked briskly towards him.

"Good-afternoon!" began this stranger, who seemed very young, with a fresh-coloured pleasant face, blonde as a biscuit. "This is Urquhart's Court, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Ted, welcomingly. "Come up to the house, will you? I'm afraid you may have to wait a bit if you've come to see my Uncle. My name's Urquhart."

"My name's Bray; Cecil Bray," the younger man introduced himself.

Then he introduced the second of those two last trials that had been in store for Mr. Ted Urquhart that afternoon.

For this pleasant-voiced, very decent-seeming sort of young fellow called Bray added, "I'm afraid your uncle doesn't know me; I've come, as a matter of fact, to see Miss Fayre."