*chapter Ix*

*SIR THOMAS ENTERTAINS*

You are invited to follow Franky, and sit with him at his friend Tom Brayham’s circular board, decorated with great silver bowls of marvellous Rayon d’Or roses, that seemed to exhale the harvested sunshine of summer from their fiery golden hearts.

You remember the famous dining-room of the big Paris caravanserai, with its archways supported by slender pillars of creamy pink Carrara marble, wreathed with inlaid fillets of green malachite and lapis lazuli, and its electric illuminants concealed behind an oxidised silver frieze. And possibly you need no introduction to the deity—plain and middle-aged—in whose honour Brayham—the Hon. Sir Thomas Brayham, an ex-Justice of the King’s Bench Division—in the remote mid-Victorian era a famous Q.C.—made oblation of luscious meats and special wines. The clever, sharp-tongued, penniless niece of a famous Minister for Foreign Affairs, she had made a love-match at twenty with Lord Watho Wathe, a handsome and equally impecunious subaltern in a famous Highland regiment, who was killed upon Active Service twenty years later, while travelling upon a special mission to the Front Headquarters during the South African War of 1900.

Two years later his widow conferred her hand upon Mr. Reuben Munts, of Kimberley and South Carfordshire, a diamond-mining magnate who had made his colossal pile before the War. She had never borne her second husband’s name, and when he died, leaving her sole mistress of his millions, Lady Wathe resumed her place in Society, thenceforwards to sparkle as never before.

“The ‘Chronique Scandaleuse’ in a diamond setting” some phrase-maker clever as herself had aptly termed her. Without her riches, stripped of her wonderful diamonds, Society might have found her to be merely a little chattering woman, avid of the reputation of a humorist and raconteuse, unflagging in her relish for stories, not seldom of the broadest, related at her own expense or at the cost of other people, and over-liberally garnished with nods and becks, darting glances, and wreathed smiles.

Upon this night of the Grand Prix—won, you will remember, by Baron M. de Rothschild’s “Sardanapole”—the little lady’s jests fizzled and coruscated like Japanese fireworks. Her gibes buzzed and stung like wasps about a lawn-set tea-table, when new-made jam and fragrant honey tempt the yellow-and-black marauders to the board. And yet from the soup to the entremets, Franky listened in dour and smileless silence, unable to conjure up a grin at the sharpest of the Goblin’s witticisms, or swell the guffaw that invariably followed the naughtiest of her double-entendres.

“Off colour, what? …” his crony Courtley queried in a sympathetic undertone, catching a glimpse of Franky’s cheerless countenance behind the bare, convulsed back and snowy heaving shoulders of Lady Beauvayse, who occupied the intervening chair.

“Putridly off colour… Walked in the Bois, and got a touch of the sun, I fancy!” Franky whispered back too loudly, drawing upon himself the Goblin’s equivoque:

“The sun or the daughter, did you say, Lord Norwater? Dear me!” the Goblin shrilled; “you’re actually blushing! You’ve revived a long-lost Early Victorian art.”

“Was blushing really an art with the ladies of that dim and distant era?” asked the friendly Brayham, not in the least comprehending Franky’s discomfiture, yet desirous of diverting the Goblin’s glittering scrutiny from her victim’s scarlet face.

“It was the art that concealed Heart—or assumed it!” Lady Wathe retorted, with a peal of elfish laughter, turning her tight-skinned, large-eyed, wide-mouthed ugliness upon the speaker, and nodding her little round head until the huge and perfectly matched diamonds of the triple-rayed tiara that crowned her scanty henna-dyed tresses flashed blinding sparks of violet and red and emerald splendour in the mellow-toned radiance of the electric lights.

The Goblin had meant nothing, Franky assured himself, as the angry blood stopped humming in his ears, and his complexion regained its normal shade. The bad pun that had bowled him over had possibly been uttered without malicious intent… Yet Lady Wathe rented a gorgeous suite upon the floor below the Norwater apartments, and one of her three lady’s-maids might have been pumping Pauline… What was she saying? … Why was everybody cackling? …

The Goblin was launched upon a characteristic story. Its denouement—worked up with skill and related with point—evoked peal upon peal of laughter from the guests at Brayham’s table, with the sole exception of Franky, whom the anecdote found sulky and left glum. He said to himself that if Lady Beauvayse, nee Miss Sadie J. Sculpin of New York, sole child and heiress of a Yankee who had made millions out of Chewing Gum, chose to forget her position as the wife of a British Peer, and mother of his children, by Jove! and scream at such nastiness, it was her look-out. If the big red-blond man who sat on Franky’s right shook with amusement, as he recapitulated the chief points of the story for the benefit of the girl who sat next him, it was his affair. But that the Saxham, an unmarried girl, who oughtn’t to see the bearings of such a tale, should openly revel in its saltness, made Franky feel sick—on this particular night.

He realised that he detested the Saxham girl, one of Margot’s chosen Club intimates, more fervently than even Tota Stannus or Joan Delabrand; more thoroughly than Rhona Helvellyn; only little less heartily than he hated Cynthia Charterhouse. Big, bold, galumphing, provocative—in fact, so much IT that you couldn’t overlook her—he found her more unpleasantly attractive than usual, in a bodice that was no more than a fold of shimmering orange stuff above the waist—tossing the panache of ospreys that startlingly crowned her, offering up her persistant illusion perfumes for the delectation of the appreciative male.

Only look at her, ready to climb into her neighbour’s pocket. Leaning her round white elbows on the guipure table-cloth, half-shutting those long greeny-brown Egyptian eyes of her, wreathing her long thick white neck to send a daring challenge into the face of the laughing man. A big man, bright red-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-chested, showing every shining tooth in his handsome grinning head…

“She’s screaming, isn’t she, dear Lady Beau?” Thus the Saxham to her employer, friend, and ally, across the silver bowls of Rayon d’Or roses, her naked shoulder brushing the coat-sleeve of her neighbour, the big rufous man. And Lady Beau gushed back:

“In marvellous form to-night… Don’t you think so, Count? Do agree with us!” and the big man agreed, with the accent of the German Fatherland:

“She is kolossal… Wunderlich! …”

“Who’s the German next me—big beggar Lady Beau and Miss Saxham are gushing over?” Franky presently telegraphed to Courtley behind the charming American’s accommodating back. And Courtley signalled in reply:

“Von Herrnung. German Count of sorts—Engineer and Flieger officer. Son of an Imperial Councillor, and cousin to Princess Willy of Kiekower Oestern—really rather an interestin’ beast in his way. Made a one-stop flight to Paris from Hanover in April, with an Albatros biplane. Previously won an event in the Prinz Heinrich Circuit Competition.” He added: “We can’t decently blink their progress in military aviation. It’s one o’ them there fax which the brass-hats at the War Office pretend to regard as all my eye. Yet they know the Fatherland—or if they don’t they oughter! Good-lookin’ chap this. Not over thirty, I should guess him. Always dodging in and out of the German Embassy. The Goblin frightful nuts on him… Goin’ to steer him through the next London Season—suppose he’s lookin’ out for a moneyed wife!”

“Hope he gets her!” Franky mentally commented. But he looked with new interest at his big blond German neighbour, mentally calculating that with all that bone, brawn, and muscle, von Herrnung couldn’t tip the scale at less than sixteen stone.

Small-boned himself and of stature not above the medium, Franky appreciated height and size in other men. And von Herrnung was undeniably a son of Anak. The noiseless, demure waiters who paused beside his chair to refill his glass or offer him dishes were dwarfed by his seated presence to the proportions of little boys.

Once, when there was a momentary bustle at the principal entrance to the now crowded restaurant, and a party of men, ceremoniously ushered by M. Spitz in person, passed up the central gangway between the rows of glittering tables, shielded by glass-panelled screens framed in oxidised silver, and crowded now with gossiping, laughing, gobbling patrons—men and women of varied nationalities, representing the elite of the fashionable world, von Herrnung rose and remained imperturbably standing at the salute, his eyes set and fixed, his head turned rigidly towards the personage, semi-bald, stout, with a prominent under jaw and a hard official stare rendered glassier by a frameless square monocle, and showing beneath the open front of a loose military mantle a star upon the left side of his evening dress-coat, and the glitter of an Order suspended from a yellow riband about his thick bull-neck.

“The German Ambassador, Baron von Giesnau,” Lady Wathe returned to a question from Lady Beauvayse, as the portly official figure creaked by, leaving a whiff of choice cigars and a taint of parfum tres persistant, lifting three fingers of a white-gloved hand in acknowledgment of his countryman’s salute, and von Herrnung unstiffened and dropped back into his chair. “No! … I’m not sure where the Emperor is…” She added, with one of her laughs and a shrug of her thin vivacious shoulders: “Ask Count von Herrnung—he’s sure to know!”

“Gnaedige Graefin,” von Herrnung returned when interrogated, “I am not able to answer your question.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and showed his white teeth. “Unser Kaiser is—who shall say where? At the Hof … possibly at Homburg… Stop! … Now I remember! Seine Majestaet is at Kiel…” He continued, arranging with a big white hand displaying a preposterously long thumb-nail a corner of his glittering, tightly rolled moustache: “At Kiel … ach, yes! he has been there since the 25th of June. Entertaining the British and American Ambassadors, visiting the Commander-in-Chief of your British Squadron, superintending the armament of one of our own new battle-cruisers,—seeing put into her those great big Krupp guns that are to sink your super-Dreadnoughts by-and-by!”

The deliberately-uttered words of the last sentence dropped into a little pool of chilly silence. He had spoken with perfect gravity, and the Englishmen who heard him stared before they grinned. Then the women shrieked in ecstasies of amusement—the Goblin’s laugh overtopping all.

“For he hates us! … You can’t think how he hates us! …” she crowed, writhing her lean little throat, clasped by seven rows of shimmering stones, wagging her Kobold’s head, crowned by its diadem of multi-coloured fire. “Tell us how you hate us, Tido! … Do—pray do!”

“I hate you, ach yes! … All German officers are like that—particularly the officers of our Field Flying Service,” gravely corroborated von Herrnung. “We have many pleasant acquaintanceships with men and women of British nationality, but your race—the Anglo-Saxon branch of the great Teutonic oak-tree, it is natural that we should hate! For that Germany must expand upon the west and north-west as well as south and east, or suffocate, is certain. She must wield the trident of Sea Power; she must transform the map of Europe. She must exploit and disseminate German trade and German Kultur; therefore, as the British, more than any other nation, stands in the way of German development, we look forward to the Day when we shall exterminate you and take our right position as masters of the world!”

The women screamed anew at this. The men were now laughing in good earnest. Franky found it impossible to restrain the convulsions that shook him in his chair. Purple-faced Brayham tried to speak, but broke down wheezing and spluttering. The Goblin shrilled:

“Tell them, Tido… Please tell them! … Do—ha! ha! tell them how you’re spoiling for a scrimmage with us! Show them your thumb-nail, pray do!”

Thus adjured, the big German solemnly extended his left hand for general inspection. The pointed, carefully-manicured thumb-nail was at least two inches long. Its owner said with perfect gravity:

“This is the badge of a Society of England-haters, chiefly Prussian military officers, young men of noble birth, bound by an oath of blood. This mark we carry to distinguish us. It is a sign of our dedication, to remind us of the purpose for which we are set apart.” He added: “Count Zeppelin himself set the fashion of the uncut thumb-nail. It will be cut when the Day comes, and it has been dipped in blood!”

“In blood—how beastly!” said the Saxham girl, curling the corners of her wide red mouth contemptuously. “What a horrid crowd your noble young Prussian officers must be! And when is the dipping to come off?” Her voice was deep and resonant as a masculine baritone, and of so carrying a quality that Franky started as though the words had been spoken at his ear.

“Gnaedige Fraeulein,” von Herrnung answered, “I have already told you. When the Day comes for which we are preparing. When the great German nation shall abandon Christianity—cast off the rusty fetters of Morality and Virtue—call on the Ancient God of Battles—and beat out the iron sceptre of World Power with sword-blows upon the anvil of War.”

“When we’re all to be exterminated, he means!” Lady Wathe gasped behind her filmy handkerchief. “Tido, you’re too absolutely screaming! Do say why your noble young Prussians keep us waiting? …” And von Herrnung answered composedly:

“Because we are not yet ready. We shall not be perfectly ready before the spring of 1916.”

His hard, bright glance encountered Franky’s, and he lifted his full glass of champagne and drank to him, smiling pleasantly.

Of course the German was rotting, reflected Franky. If he wasn’t, the combined insolence and brutality of such a menace, uttered at the table of one of the Britons in whose gore von Herrnung and his comrades yearned to dip their preposterous two-inch thumb-nails, took the bun, by the Great Brass Hat! He was perfectly cool, as his muscular white hands—for the dinner had arrived at the dessert stage—manipulated the silver knife that peeled a blood-red nectarine. What a splendid ring, a black-and-white pearl, large as a starling’s egg, and set in platinum, the fellow sported on the little finger of that clawed left hand. What was he asking, in the suave voice with the guttural Teutonic accent?

“You were in the Bois, I believe, Lord Norwater, early in the midday. Did you see any avions of the Service Aeronautique? Did the invention they were testing come up to expectations? … Did the English aerial stabiliser answer well? …”

Franky knew, as he encountered the compelling stare of the hard blue eyes, that he objected to their owner. He returned, in a tone more huffy and less dignified than he would have liked it to be:

“Can’t say… I was merely walking in the Bois with a lady. Wasn’t on the ground as—an investigator of the professional sort.”

“So!” Von Herrnung’s face was set in a smile of easy amiability. The shot might have missed the bull for anything that was betrayed there. “And the name of the inventor? It has escaped my memory. Possibly you could tell me, eh?”

“Certainly,” said Franky, planting one with pleasure. “He happens to be a cousin of mine. Would you like me to write down his address?”

“Gewiss—thanks so very much. But I will not trouble you!”

Nobody had heard the verbal encounter. Lady Wathe was holding the table with another anecdote punctuated with staccato peals of laughter, tinkling like the brazen bells of a beaten tambourine. Mademoiselle Nou-Nou, a Paris celebrity, belonging to the most ancient if not the most venerable of professions, had promenaded under the chestnuts at Longchamps that morning, attired, as to the upper portion of her body, in a sheath of spotted black gauze veiling, unlined—save with her own charms. And a witty Paris journalist had said that “the costume was designed to represent Eve, not before nor after, but behind the fall”; and Paillette, who was there, working up her “Modes” letter for Le Style, had answered—

Everybody at table was leaning forward and listening, as the Goblin quoted the riposte of Paillette.

Von Herrnung, showing his big white teeth in a smile, chose another nectarine from the piled-up dish before him, seeming to admire the contrast between his own muscular white fingers and the glowing fruit they held. But Franky saw that he was angry as he neatly peeled the fruit, split the odorous yellow flesh, tore the stone out crimson and dripping like a little human heart, and swallowed both halves of the fruit in rapid succession, dabbing his mouth with the fine serviette held up before him in both hands. Then, with an air of arrogant self-confidence peculiar to him, he said loudly, addressing the whole company:

“Madame Paillette certainly deserves the Croix d’Honneur for so excellent a bon-mot. As for Mademoiselle Nou-Nou, I do not myself admire her, but my brother Ludwig, when he was alive, paid intermittent tribute to her charms.” He added: “He was killed in the charge by a fall with his horse in the Autumn Manoeuvres of last year, while the Emperor was being entertained by command at a shooting-party upon a forest property of my father’s that is about fifty kilometres from Berlin.”