XI.

When at half-past eight next evening Frank arrived at Stonedge House and the footman, divesting him with critical thoughtfulness of his street clothes, ushered him into the inner rooms, a lady, regally resplendent, came out to meet him and, greeting him with spontaneous affability, took him upstairs to the drawing-room, saying, “I can’t drag Uncle Rex from the roasting fire in his room. He is always miserably cold.” But already Lord Ottercove, festal in his immaculate tailcoat and pumps, was slowly coming up the steps behind them, and--“How are you?” he asked.

A question to which it is difficult to say anything but, “Oh, very well.”

They had not been in the blue, mirrored drawing-room many moments when the butler flung open the doors and announced:

“His Majesty the Emir of Turkestania.”

A tall ample man, with a protruding shirt front, blew in like a whirlwind and immediately began to register a vocal admiration of the hostess’s sparkling sea-green gown. “The result of your Paris season I can see, Lady de Jones?” he boomed in tones of teasing gallantry.

“As I know to my cost,” said her uncle. “This is Mr. Frank Dickin, your Majesty. You’ve read his novels, of course.”

“Who hasn’t read them!” exclaimed the Emir and, turning to the hostess: “A most artistic, subversively provocative gown!” when the butler again appeared at the door on the landing and announced:

“Admiral Lord Battersea.”

Up the red carpeted steps came a corpulent figure with a visage, familiar to readers of the picture press in a large-rimmed naval cap tilted at a rakish angle over a wind-beaten sea-dog face, now projecting out of a prosaic but discreetly confident tailcoat.

From time to time the butler appeared on the threshold, announcing the guests as they came up the steps; and presently he ceased announcing, and at a sign they all trooped down again to dinner. As the footman pushed up the chair behind him, Frank began to take his dispositions. In a moment of periodical unemployment when both his partners were engaged in conversation, he would prick his ears--for he was curious about his fellow men--and listen. Admiral Battersea was saying in his hoarse, sea-grunting way to the pretty, dark-eyed woman at his side: “The Prince of Wales, I hear, kept very fit during the trip by taking a great deal of exercise....”

He found Lord de Jones at his side peculiarly congenial. Did he know the Kerrs? Didn’t he! Eva? “The darling!” said de Jones. And Mrs. Kerr?

Lord de Jones’s silence seemed to hold a lot.

“She craved for impossible things,” Dickin suggested.

“And she got them,” said de Jones.

“What she wanted.”

“Exactly what she wanted. They were Impossible.”

They covered many a familiar field--Russia, Vienna, the Tyrol. “Did you know her father?” asked de Jones. “I went out to Russia as a young man. I was taken to their country place by him. She had just got married. Lovely. She was lovely then; really lovely. Just like Eva now. If I’d known her three days earlier she wouldn’t have married Kerr.” He was pensive. “Eva might have been my daughter.” He stopped, as if realising the superfluity of his reflections. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now. A journey with her round the world. And then ... the _coup de grâce_! It is finished....” The butler was removing his plate. He looked ironically at Frank. “It is finished,” he said, a strange light in his greenish eyes.

“Would you mind it awfully?” he asked Frank.

“What?”

“If I were to end it all.”

“How do you mean?”

“At a stroke. The world and its suffering.”

“Which world?” Frank asked, he felt, rather stupidly, but he had mixed wine and his head was happily singing.

“The suffering world.”

“But I thought you were concerned to grow more wheat.” He thought Lord de Jones could not be quite right in the head.

“Wheat!” said de Jones, drinking lugubriously, “Wheat!”

When the ladies had left them to their smoke and smirky wit Frank found himself side by side with Admiral Battersea, who, he reflected, was surely the extreme opposite of his own type, so much so that if Lord Battersea had read his books, he would, given the chance, have gladly got him hanged and considered it as a service to the community. Lord Ottercove must have read his thoughts, for, “Admiral,” he said, “come and sit by my side.” The conversation turned upon whisky, which was described as a good thing; at which the Emir protested. “Wine,” he said, “is a good thing; but whisky--?!”

“_Good_ whisky, your Majesty.”

Good whisky, it was urged, was a good thing.

From whisky they switched on to politicians who drank whisky and from politicians to politics. “Ah, Joe,” said Lord Ottercove. “There’s nobody like him. Just you wait till he is again in the saddle.”

“He is a long way off it,” grunted a guest.

“But he wants it, he wants it with all his heart. When a man day and night thinks of the one thing he wants, he gets it.”

“He has oratory, inspiration, energy; he only lacks one thing: a goal, an objective,” said another guest.

“What can you do?” said the host. “Liberals have no policy, since the war. But now we have something. I am off myself with Chris”--he nodded towards Lord de Jones--“on this stunt of ours and I hope”--he dropped his voice to a whisper and his lips moved inaudibly--“to identify the party with it.”

Upstairs in the ball-room, where chairs had been spread in rows, a dark, passionate man was already singing and some guests had seated themselves and were listening, while Lord Ottercove walked about, with a long fat cigar in his mouth, looking pleased. Frank found the pretty girl on his left, now looking beautiful, with melodious eyes. She closed her eyes at him in bliss and said that passionate music stirred people’s passions. To his right, leaning back leisurely, was Lord Battersea, puffing away at his cigar, while the baritone squeezed juice and tears out of the “Lotusblume.” And when the song was done, the British Admiral, who had measured his strength on the high seas with von Scheer, each, on his own admission, emerging the victor, now with eyes dim with beatitude murmured ecstatically:

“_Die Lotusblume_ ... _Die Lotusblume_....”