Among those attached to the Chedorlahomor expedition was a young—if thirty-five be young—eccentric Englishman from Wales, the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, a son of Lord Intriguer. Attached first to one thing and then another, without ever being attached to any, his life had been a gentle series of attachments all along. But this new attachment was surely something better than a temporary secretaryship to a minister, or “aiding” an ungrateful general, or waiting in through draughts (so affecting to the constitution) in the anterooms of hard-worked royalty, in the purlieus of Pall Mall. Secured by the courtesy of his ex-chief, Sir Somebody Something, an old varsity friend of his father, the billet of “surveyor and occasional help” to the Chedorlahomorian excavation party had been waywardly accepted by the Hon. ‘Eddy’ just as he had been upon the point of attaching himself, to the terror of his relatives and the amusement of his friends, to a monastery of the Jesuit Order, as a likely candidate for the cowl.

Indeed he had already gone so far as to sit to an artist for his portrait in the habit of a monk, gazing ardently at what looked to be the Escurial itself, but in reality was nothing other than an “impression” from the kitchen garden of Intriguer Park. And now this sudden change, this call to the East instead. There had been no time, unfortunately, before setting out to sit again in the picturesque “sombrero” of an explorer, but a ready camera had performed miracles, and the relatives of the Hon. ‘Eddy’ were relieved to behold his smiling countenance in the illustrated-weeklies, pick in hand, or with one foot resting on his spade while examining a broken jar, with just below the various editors’ comments: To join the Expedition to Chedorlahomor—the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, only son of Lord Intriguer; or, Off to Chedorlahomor! or, Bon Voyage...!

Yes, the temptation of the expedition was not to be withstood, and for vows and renunciations there was always time!... And now leaning idly on his window ledge in a spare room of the Embassy, while his man unpacked, he felt, as he surveyed the distant dome of the Blue Jesus above the dwarf-palm trees before the house, half-way to the East already. He was suffering a little in his dignity from the contretemps of his reception, for having arrived at the Embassy among a jobbed troop of serfs engaged for the night, Lady Something had at first mistaken him for one: “The cloak-room will be in the Smoking-room!” she had said, and in spite of her laughing excuses and ample apologies, he could not easily forget it. What was there in his appearance that could conceivably recall a cloak-room attendant—? He who had been assured he had the profile of a “Rameses”! And going to a mirror he scanned, with less perhaps than his habitual contentment, the light, liver-tinted hair, grey narrow eyes, hollow cheeks, and pale mouth like a broken moon. He was looking just a little fatigued he fancied from his journey, and really, it was all his hostess deserved, if he didn’t go down.

“I have a headache, Mario,” he told his man (a Neapolitan who had been attached to almost as many professions as his master). “I shall not leave my room! Give me a kimono: I will take a bath.”

Undressing slowly, he felt as the garments dropped away, he was acting properly in refraining from attending the soirÉe, and only hoped the lesson would not be “lost” on Lady Something, whom he feared must be incurably dense.

Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his man-servant deftly bathed him, he fell into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance. Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed with Kiki, he was St Sebastian, and as the water became cloudier and the crystals evaporated amid the steam, he was Teresa ... and he would have been, most likely, the Blessed Virgin herself, but that the bath grew gradually cold.

“You’re looking a little pale, sir, about the gills!” the valet solicitously observed, as he gently dried him.

The Hon. ‘Eddy’ winced: “I forbid you ever to employ the word gill, Mario,” he exclaimed. “It is inharmonious, and in English it jars; whatever it may do in Italian.”

“Overtired, sir, was what I meant to say.”

“Basta!” his master replied, with all the brilliant glibness of the Berlitz-school.

Swathed in towels, it was delicious to relax his powder-blanched limbs upon a comfy couch, while Mario went for dinner: “I don’t care what it is! So long as it isn’t—”(naming several dishes that he particularly abhorred, or might be “better,” perhaps, without)—” And be sure, fool, not to come back without Champagne.”

He could not choose but pray that the Ambassadress had nothing whatever to do with the Embassy cellar, for from what he had seen of her already, he had only a slight opinion of her discernment.

Really he might have been excused had he taken her to be the cook instead of the social representative of the Court of St James, and he was unable to repress a caustic smile on recollecting her appearance that afternoon, with her hat awry, crammed with MarÉchal Niel roses, hot, and decoiffed, flourishing a pair of garden-gauntlets as she issued her commands. What a contrast to his own Mamma—“so different,” ... and his thoughts returned to Intriguer—“dear Intriguer, ...” that if only to vex his father’s ghost, he would one day turn into a Jesuit college! The Confessional should be fitted in the paternal study, and engravings of the Inquisition, or the sweet faces of Lippi and Fra Angelico, replace the Agrarian certificates and tiresome trophies of the chase; while the crack of the discipline in Lent would echo throughout the house! How “useful” his friend Robbie Renard would have been; but alas poor Robbie. He had passed through life at a rapid canter, having died at nineteen....

Musingly he lit a cigarette.

Through the open window a bee droned in on the blue air of evening and closing his eyes he fell to considering whether the bee of one country would understand the remarks of that of another. The effect of the soil of a nation, had it consequences upon its Flora? Were plants influenced at their roots? People sometimes spoke (and especially ladies) of the language of flowers ... the pollen therefore of an English rose would probably vary, not inconsiderably, from that of a French, and a bee born and bred at home (at Intriguer for instance) would be at a loss to understand (it clearly followed) the conversation of one born and bred, here, abroad. A bee’s idiom varied then, as did man’s! And he wondered, this being proved the case, where the best bees’ accents were generally acquired....

Opening his eyes, he perceived his former school chum, Lionel Limpness—Lord Tiredstock’s third (and perhaps most gifted) son, who was an honorary attachÉ at the Embassy, standing over him, his spare figure already arrayed in an evening suit.

“Sorry to hear you’re off colour, Old Dear!” he exclaimed, sinking down upon the couch beside his friend.

“I’m only a little shaken, Lionel...: have a cigarette.”

“And so you’re off to Chedorlahomor, Old Darling?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said.

“I suppose so ...” the only son of Lord Intriguer replied.

“Well, I wish I was going too!”

“It would be charming, Lionel, of course to have you: but they might appoint you Vice-Consul at Sodom, or something?”

“Why Vice? Besides...! There’s no consulate there yet,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said, examining the objects upon the portable altar, draped in prelatial purple of his friend.

“Turn over, Old Dear, while I chastise you!” he exclaimed, waving what looked to be a tortoiseshell lorgnon to which had been attached three threads of “cerulean” floss silk.

“Put it down, Lionel, and don’t be absurd.”

“Over we go. Come on.”

“Really, Lionel.”

“Penitence! To thy knees, Sir!”

And just as it seemed that the only son of Lord Intriguer was to be deprived of all his towels, the Ambassadress mercifully entered.

“Poor Mr Monteith!” she exclaimed in tones of concern bustling forward with a tablespoon and a bottle containing physic, “so unfortunate.... Taken ill at the moment you arrive! But Life is like that!”

Clad in the flowing circumstance of an oyster satin ball dress, and all a-glitter like a Christmas tree (with jewels), her arrival perhaps saved her guest a “whipping.”

“Had I known, Lady Something, I was going to be ill, I would have gone to the Ritz!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ gasped.

“And you’d have been bitten all over!” Lady Something replied.

“Bitten all over?”

“The other evening we were dining at the Palace, and I heard the dear King say—but I oughtn’t to talk and excite you——”

“By the way, Lady Something,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked: “what is the etiquette for the Queen of Dateland’s eunuch?”

“It’s all according; but you had better ask Sir Somebody, Air Limpness,” Lady Something replied, glancing with interest at the portable altar.

“I’ve done so, and he declared he’d be jiggered!”

“I recollect in Pera when we occupied the Porte, they seemed (those of the old Grand Vizier—oh what a good-looking man he was—! such eyes—! and such a way with him—! Despot!!) only too thankful to crouch in corners.”

“Attention with that castor-oil...!”

“It’s not castor-oil; it’s a little decoction of my own,—aloes, gregory, a dash of liquorice. And the rest is buckthorn!”

“Euh!”

“It’s not so bad, though it mayn’t be very nice.... Toss it off like a brave man, Mr Monteith (nip his nostrils, Mr Limpness), and while he takes it, I’ll offer a silent prayer for him at that duck of an altar,” and as good as her word, the Ambassadress made towards it.

“You’re altogether too kind,” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ murmured seeking refuge in a book—a volume of Juvenalia published for him by “Blackwood of Oxford,” and becoming absorbed in its contents: “Ah Doris”—“Lines to Doris”—“Lines to Doris: written under the influence of wine, sun and fever”—“Ode to Swinburne”—“Sad Tamarisks”—“Rejection”—“Doigts ObscÈnes”—“They Call me Lily!”—“Land of Titian! Land of Verdi! Oh Italy!”—“I heard the Clock: I heard the clock strike seven,
Seven strokes I heard it strike!
His Lordship’s gone to London
And won’t be back to-night.”
He had written it at Intriguer, after a poignant domestic disagreement, his Papa,—the “his lordship” of the poem—had stayed away however considerably longer.... And here was a sweet thing suggested by an old Nursery Rhyme, “Loves, have you Heard”: “Loves, have you heard about the rabbits??
They have such odd fantastic habits....
Oh, Children...! I daren’t disclose to You
The licentious things some rabbits do.”
It had “come to him” quite suddenly out ferreting one day with the footman....

But a loud crash as the portable altar collapsed beneath the weight of the Ambassadress aroused him unpleasantly from his thoughts.

“Horrid dangerous thing!” she exclaimed as Lord Tiredstock’s third son assisted her to rise from her “Silent” prayer: “I had no idea it wasn’t solid! But Life is like that ...” she added somewhat wildly.

“Pity oh my God! Deliver me!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ breathed, but the hour of deliverance it seemed was not just yet; for at that instant the Hon. Mrs Chilleywater, the “literary” wife of the first attachÉ, thrust her head in at the door.

“How are you?” she asked. “I thought perhaps I might find Harold....”

“He’s with Sir Somebody.”

“Such mysteries!” Lady Something said.

“This betrothal of Princess Elsie’s is simply wearing him out,” Mrs Chilleywater declared, sweeping the room with half-closed, expressionless eyes.

“It’s a pity you can’t pull the strings for us,” Lady Something ventured: “I was saying so lately to Sir Somebody.”

“I wish I could, dear Lady Something: I wouldn’t mind wagering I’d soon bring it off!”

“Have you fixed up Grace Gillstow yet, Mrs Chilleywater?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked.

“She shall marry Baldwin: but not before she has been seduced first by Barnaby....”

“What are you talking about?” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ queried.

“Of Mrs Chilleywater’s forthcoming book.”

“Why should Barnaby get Grace—? Why not Tex!”

But Mrs Chilleywater refused to enter into reasons.

“She is looking for cowslips,” she said, “and oh I’ve such a wonderful description of a field of cowslips.... They make quite a darling setting for a powerful scene of lust.”

“So Grace loses her virtue!..!” Lord Tiredstock’s third son exclaimed.

“Even so she’s far too good for Baldwin: after the underhand shabby way he behaved to Charlotte, Kate, and Millicent!”

“Life is like that, dear,” the Ambassadress blandly observed.

“It ought not to be, Lady Something!” Mrs Chilleywater looked vindictive.

NÉe Victoria Gellybore Frinton, and the sole heir of Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms, Kent, Mrs Harold Chilleywater, since her marriage “for Love,” had developed a disconcerting taste for fiction—a taste that was regarded at the Foreign Office with disapproving forbearance.... So far her efforts (written under her maiden name in full with her husband’s as well appended) had been confined to lurid studies of low life (of which she knew nothing at all), but the Hon. Harold Chilleywater had been gently warned, that if he was not to remain at Kairoulla until the close of his career, the style of his wife must really grow less virile.

“I agree with V.G.F.,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness murmured fondling meditatively his “Charlie Chaplin” moustache—“Life ought not to be.”

“It’s a mistake to bother oneself over matters that can’t be remedied.”

Mrs Chilleywater acquiesced: “You’re right indeed, Lady Something,” she said, “but I’m so sensitive.... I seem to know when I talk to a man, the colour of his braces...! I say to myself: ‘Yours are violet....’ ‘Yours are blue....’ ‘His are red....’”

“I’ll bet you anything, Mrs Chilleywater, you like, you won’t guess what mine are,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness said.

“I should say, Mr Limpness, that they were multihued—like Jacob’s,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, as she withdrew her head.

The Ambassadress prepared to follow:

“Come, Mr Limpness,” she exclaimed, “we’ve exhausted the poor fellow quite enough—and besides, here comes his dinner.”

“Open the champagne, Mario,” his master commanded immediately they were alone.

“‘Small’ beer is all the butler would allow, sir.”

“Damn the b... butler!”

“What he calls a demi-brune, sir. In Naples we say spumenti!”

“To —— with it.”

“Non É tanto amarro, sir; it’s more sharp, as you’d say, than bitter....”

“......!!!!!!”

And language unmonastic far into the night reigned supreme.

Standing beneath the portraits of King Geo and Queen Glory, Lady Something, behind a large sheaf of mauve malmaisons, was growing stiff. Already, for the most part, the guests were welcomed, and it was only the Archduchess now, who as usual was late, that kept their Excellencies lingering at the head of the stairs. Her Majesty Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates had just arrived, but seemed loath to leave the stairs, while her hostess, whom she addressed affectionately as her dear gazelle, remained upon them— “Let us go away by and by, my dear gazelle,” she exclaimed with a primitive smile, “and remove our corsets and talk.”

“Unhappily Pisuerga is not the East, ma’am!” Lady Something replied.

“Never mind, my dear; we will introduce this innovation....”

But the arrival of the Archduchess Elizabeth spared the Ambassadress from what might too easily have become an “incident.”

In the beautiful chandeliered apartments several young couples were pirouetting to the inevitable waltz from the Blue Banana, but most of the guests seemed to prefer exploring the conservatories and Winter Garden, or elbowing their way into a little room where a new portrait of Princess Elsie had been discreetly placed....

“One feels, of course, there was a sitting—; but still, it isn’t like her!” those that had seen her said.

“The artist has attributed to her at least the pale spent eyes of her father!” the Duchess of Cavaljos remarked to her niece, who was standing quite silent against a rose-red curtain.

Mademoiselle de Nazianzi made no reply. Attaching not the faintest importance to the rumours afloat, still, she could not but feel, at times, a little heartshaken....

The duchess plied her fan.

“She will become florid in time like her mother!” she cheerfully predicted turning away just as the Archduchess approached herself to inspect the painting.

Swathed in furs, on account of a troublesome cough contracted paddling, she seemed nevertheless in charming spirits.

“Have you been to my new Pipi?” she asked.

“Not yet——”

“Oh but you must!”

“I’m told it’s even finer than the one at the Railway Station. Ah, from musing too long on that Hellenic frieze, how often I’ve missed my train!” the Duchess of Cavaljos murmured, with a little fat deep laugh.

“I have a heavenly idea for another—Yellow tiles with Thistles....”

“Your Royal Highness never repeats herself!”

“Nothing will satisfy me this time,” the Archduchess declared, “but files of state-documents in all the dear little boxes: In secret, secrets!” she added archly fixing her eyes on the assembly.

“It’s positively pitiable,” the Duchess of Cavaljos commented, “how the Countess of Tolga is losing her good-looks: She has the air to-night of a tired business-woman!”

“She looks at other women as though she would inhale them,” the Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was scribbling busily away behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the head. For noblesse oblige the correspondent of the Jaw-Waw, the illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied.

“Among the many balls of a brilliant season,” the diarist, with her accustomed fluency, wrote: “none surpassed that which I witnessed at the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and jewels. The Ambassadress Lady Something was looking really regal in dawn-white draperies, holding a bouquet of the new mauve malmaisons (which are all the vogue just now), but no one, I thought, looked better than the Archduchess, etc.... Helping the hostess, I noticed Mrs Harold Chilleywater, in an ‘Æsthetic’ gown of flame-hued Kanitra silk edged with Armousky fur (to possess a dear woolly Armousk as a pet, is considered chic this season), while over her brain—an intellectual caprice, I wonder?—I saw a tinsel bow.... She is a daughter of the fortieth Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms-Park (so famous for its treasures) and is very artistic and literary having written several novels of English life under her maiden name of Victoria Gellybore-Frinton:—She inherits considerable cleverness also from her Mother. Dancing indefatigably (as she always does!) Miss Ivy Something seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her Father’s ball: I hear on excellent authority there is no foundation in the story of her engagement to a certain young Englishman, said to be bound ere long for the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Among the late arrivals were the Duke and Duchess of Varna—she all in golden tissues: they came together with Madame Wetme, who is one of the new hostesses of the season you know, and they say has bought the Duke of Varna’s palatial town-house in Samaden Square——”

“There,” the Archduchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a sneeze: “she has said quite enough now I think about my toilette!”

But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire.