XII.

Next morning Frank telephoned to Eva and arranged to take her out to lunch. He waited for her half-an-hour in the Victoria Arcade and suddenly caught sight of her mouse-grey cap and mouse-grey fur mounting the underground stairs (Eva looked down when she walked) and she was at his side, and she was in the taxi, and at once she was kissing....

“Why so late?”

“Shopping,” she said.

“Mummy has come back with John from Ireland,” she told him over lunch, “and absolutely wants me to bring you to tea.”

“Where?”

“At home. I mean at Pilling’s flat in Maida Vale.”

As they were half way through with their lunch and waiting for the sweets, she passed him, with a smile but without a word, an account, he perceived, for £203 10s.

“What’s this?”

“Furniture,” she said. “A dining room suite for Zita. It’s her birthday, you know.”

“You ordered her that?”

“I’ve had it sent this morning with a visiting card--‘With Miss Eva Kerr’s compliments.’”

“Oh. And who is to pay for it?”

“I thought it would be nothing to you, darling, now that you can draw on Lord Ottercove without limit. And it would take me years and years to pay it out of my secretarial funds.”

“God Almighty!” he said; and then again, after a pause: “God Almighty!”

“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked.

He grasped his head with both hands and shook it savagely. “God Almighty!” he said.

“You are an awful old miser,” she said.

“But why did you do such a thing?”

“I thought Pilling would look pleased.”

“But why couldn’t you _ask_?”

“But you haven’t seen the furniture! It isn’t at all expensive for what it is: it’s real lemon wood.”

“But whatever made you buy such a thing?”

“Because they already have a bedroom suite and are paying off for it; but not a dining room suite. They can’t afford a dining room suite.”

“But what is that to me?”

“But I’ve _told_ you: it’s her birthday, darling, and it’s nothing to you.”

“But to run up to such a figure! Are you mad?”

“But you haven’t seen it!” she cried impatiently. “Wait till you’ve seen it. What’s the use of arguing before you’ve seen it!”

“I’ll stop it!” he said, rising.

“It’s been delivered this morning, darling.”

“I’ll get them to take it back.”

“You can’t do such a thing; it’s a birthday gift.”

“I shall apply for facilities of payment, and Pilling can pay it off within the next hundred years.”

“You can’t, darling. It would look so shabby. And Pilling wouldn’t think you were a gentleman. Besides, I said to them at the shop this morning: ‘There will be no trouble: Lord Ottercove, you know....’ And they looked like understanding.”

“This morning?”

“That’s why I was late, darling.”

He felt that he had nothing further to say.

They took a taxi-cab and went straight to the Pillings. They found the family, except for Raymond, in full strength. Pilling, a strong, wiry man with crisp, curly black hair, frivolous on the surface but really with ‘no nonsense about him,’ was almost fulsomely flattering and trying to speak French to Mrs. Kerr.

“He speaks it remarkably fluently for an Englishman,” was Mrs. Kerr’s comment as she turned to Frank. “I was just telling Mr. Pilling that my father, who had graduated at eight different faculties and universities, could speak twelve languages like a native.”

“I envy him,” said Pilling, with a little bow which he thought continental ideas of good breeding exacted. “If I had his abilities and, I understand, wealth, all the doors would be open to me. As it is I try to keep up my French whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

“In buses and trains,” added Zita. “Morty’s such a bore!”

“Well, French is an amiable language,” said Frank, “but I find it difficult to scintillate in it--even more difficult than in any other language!”

He expected the natural retort: “The difficulty would seem to lie in your scintillation rather than in any particular language.” But that also seemed to be their own difficulty. Pilling replied: “My own idea, though you may correct me, is that nothing so helps the study of foreign languages as travel, and as I hope, with the financing of my project, presently to come into some money, my beloved Zita and myself propose to undertake an extensive European trip to improve our linguistic equipment and to broaden our general outlook.”

“If you go to Abbazia,” cried Mrs. Kerr eagerly, “I can give you an introduction to the lady friend of the Spaniard Rodrigo. A very nice, quiet, well-read woman.”

“Yes, yes!” Eva cried.

“Or if you pass through Innsbruck, you must absolutely look up my friend Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and I am sure she would be very glad to give you German lessons.”

“I am very much indebted to you for this information,” Pilling bowed, “and if you allow me I will make a note of their addresses.” He produced out of his waistcoat pocket a neat leather-bound pocket-book and pencil, and their two heads mingled as he recorded: “Fräulein von Wiesendorf, in the care of Herr Oberst von Wiesendorf, Comptroller of Public Morals, Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria.”

“And what about Tamara Leonidovna?” said Eva.

“Frau König? No, no, she is too fiery; she will consume him.”

As they passed into the dining room, Frank perceived a striking suite of bright polished furniture. As he stood gaping at it, Eva slightly pinched his arm in the doorway, and her look seemed to say: “Now what did I tell you?”

“I congratulate you,” Mrs. Kerr turned to Frank, “on your very good taste.”

“It’s ‘Me-Too’s’ selection,” said Zita.

“But it’s Ferdinand Fyodorovich’s--how shall I say?--inspiration.”

“The Power-behind-the-Throne! Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Pilling--rather like a horse.

“I’ve heard of your prosperity. Very charming and touching.”

“Dam’ fine fibre in this wood,” said Pilling knowingly.

“What did I tell you, darling?” Eva said.

“And not at all expensive,” added Mrs. Kerr. “When I come to think what we paid for our Japanese suite in our Meran Schloss--”

“I told you it’s a bargain,” Eva said.

“Dirt cheap,” said Pilling, “considering,” he explained, “the _finesse_ of the fibre.”

“I suppose it is,” said Frank, bewildered.

“Good value,” Eva said.

“Only the colour is wrong,” said Zita quietly.

They all turned to her enquiringly.

“The wall-paper,” she pointed by way of explanation. “Still, it’s very nice and sweet. And now let us all sit down to tea.”

“There is a Russian saying,” laughed Mrs. Kerr: “‘You don’t look into the mouth of a gift horse.’”

“I wish I knew Russian,” said Pilling.

“You must come and stay with us,” said Mrs. Kerr, “when things mend in Russia.”

The door opened and a lanky, awkward boy on the verge of youth walked timidly into the room.

“Hello, John!” said Zita.

“Is that John?” Frank cried. “To think it’s John, who fiddled with my razor blades way back in the Tyrol! How he’s pushed up!”

John giggled bashfully.

“Come up, John,” from Eva.

“John, say how do you do,” from Zita.

A tremulous leaf of a lad, at that awkward age which borders on adolescence, when one is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, came up lankily and shook hands with a shy grin. And that nervous youth had once been a dare-devil child!

“Hello, John,” from Pilling.

“John is so shy,” from Eva.

“Come and have tea, John,” from his mother.

Pilling looked him over, up and down. “Cheer up, John!”

John giggled bashfully.

“John is so shy,” Zita said.

“You’ll be all right on the farm, John,” from Eva.

“John is going on the farm when we go back to Ireland,” Mrs. Kerr explained.

“To our cousins in Ireland,” said Eva.

“With Daddy,” said Zita.

“Cheer up, John!” from Pilling.

“John is so shy,” from Zita.

“Don’t be shy, John,” from Eva.

“It’s a real family reunion to-day,” observed Mrs. Kerr. Very charming and touching. I am sorry Raymond couldn’t come, or we would have all been together.”

“I have a real feeling for family,” Pilling remarked, “and consider Zita’s people like my own.”

“It’s very delightful and homely. And I hope we will have a rattling good holiday together before Eva starts on her tour with Lord de Jones and John and I return to Ireland.”

“Lord de Jones asked me to come with him as his private secretary because he likes me very much and I remind him, he says, of Mummy. We start for Paris end of this month.”

“My husband can’t hear the name of de Jones,” Mrs. Kerr explained, “without a thirst for violence seizing him. I suppose it is because Lord de Jones came into my life almost immediately on our getting married. And, curiously enough, I loved him for the same sort of thing as I loved my husband. Both had wandered away from their families, seeking something remote and romantic, and both had alighted on me! I called them ‘my lost dogs.’ And Lord de Jones--he was then the Honourable Christopher Mosquito--was also called ‘Werther.’ Only, unlike Werther, he was not a poet, but a scientist, with queer, sombre ideas about the end of the world and his mission. Very romantic and charming. And my husband was Kestner, the fiancé, you know. Only they were not friends, as in _Werther_, but enemies. They used to go out with my father bear shooting on sleighs, but really trying to kill each other. I waited at home, wondering which of them would come back. Very exciting and thrilling.”

“Lord de Jones telephoned to me,” said Eva, “to come and see him on business, and as he was ill in bed he asked me to sit down beside him and hold his hand, as he said it did him good as I reminded him of Mummy.”

“When I was a young girl like Eva,” Mrs. Kerr pursued with a look of tender reminiscence, “I used to visit a young student, who lived in an attic and who was terribly in love with me, and sit on his bed, while he looked into my eyes and wept....”

“But Mr. Bumphill thinks it’s he who got me a secretarial post--but I said to him: ‘Confound your impudence!’” from Eva. “‘We want no introductions to anybody,’ I said, ‘We are well known. My fiancé--’”

“Who’s your fiancé?” asked Zita eagerly.

“Him,” said Eva, with a casual nod at Frank. “‘My fiancé,’ I said, ‘secured admission to Lord Ottercove by merely putting us into a story.’”

Pilling looked at Frank enquiringly.

“That’s true,” said Frank.

“I congratulate you,” Pilling said. And then, not without emotion: “I sincerely congratulate you. You are a made man.”

“‘And as for Lord de Jones,’ I said, ‘he’s Mummy’s friend,’ I said, ‘and no admirer of yours.’ So Mr. Bumphill looked very thoughtfully at the goldfishes and said at last: ‘Come, let us kiss and be friends.’”

“Now I was thinking,” said Pilling as he shifted his look from Eva to Frank, “of starting”--he looked for approval to his paramour--“with the expert assistance of my dear Zita, a West End dancing establishment of my own, if Lord Ottercove saw fit to finance the project.”

Eva sat facing Frank across the long tea table, staring at him with her large violet eyes, as if to take him in properly and now, as Pilling spoke, a faint look of irony came into them that made them ripple with light. As Frank passed her in a narrow passage she pinched his arm.

“What’s all this nonsense about your going away with de Jones?” he asked, and saw that she appreciated in the briskness of his tone the nervous jealousy that prompted it. “You’re not going, really, are you?”

“No.”

“Will you, darling, dine with me to-night? and we might go to the theatre afterwards.”

“If Zita lets me.”

“She surely will.”

“If Pilling lets her.”

“Oh, hang Pilling!”

“Hang Pilling!” she echoed.

“I do want you to come to the theatre with me to-night.”

“To something funny,” she said.

“We’ll go to the Opera. I want you to hear _Die Walküre_.”

“Is it a funny thing?”

“Oh, screamingly funny!”

But she missed his intonation. “We saw, Baby and I when she was here last month, _The Constant Nymph_. Rather good.”

“Who is Baby?”

“My little Irish cousin. She is back again in County Clare. And there was a man on my right who said I was like Tony. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘but you are just like my conception of Antonia.’ ‘I have a nobler soul,’ I said: ‘I am more like Tessa.’ And he called me ‘The Nymph.’ Quite amusing.”

But she did not find it very amusing; she sat still, listening with an attentive but unreceiving look, like a good little girl in church.

In the taxi she sighed and said, “Another three weeks, and you won’t see me any more. Perhaps never again.”

“But what do you mean?”

“De Jones,” she said and nodded gravely.

“But you said No. I asked you this afternoon and you said No, you weren’t going.”

“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she said.

On nearing home she asked the taxi-driver to make a noise--and the obliging man pressed the accelerator--“to make Zita jealous,” she explained. “Now that they live together, Pilling never takes her out, and if he does, once in a blue moon, they go by bus; never in a taxi.”

“I’ve noticed she has grown bitter.”

“Bitter. Bitter. That’s the right word for her. You have hit on the right word, darling. Bitter. I must tell her.--Louder!” she called to the taxi-driver.

The man was forcing his machine to convey the illusion of machine-gun fire.

“Still louder!” said Eva.

At last a window raised itself at the top and a head, dim and nebulous in the gloom, thrust out under it. “Oh, it’s you, Eva?” came Zita’s voice.

“Arrived,” answered Eva.