By the time Mr. Sydney Butterwick had been relieved of his hat and coat, and sped on his way up the stairs to where Thrimby waited to announce hiss name, other guests were arriving. Mrs. Haddington had stationed herself just within the doorway to the front half of the drawing-room. This, since the room was L-shaped, faced the stairs, and stood at rightangles to the door leading into the back half of the room. Eight card-tables were set out in the drawing-room, the remaining three being relegated to the library on the ground floor.
Sydney Butterwick was a pretty youth, with fair, curly locks, a too-sensitive mouth, and an asthmatic constitution which had wrecked his early ambition to excel at games, and had later made him unacceptable to the authorities for military service. Very few people knew how deeply a canker of frustration had bitten into his soul, most of his acquaintances considering that he was that most fortunate of created beings: a rich man's son, with a flourishing business to step into. But Sydney, realising at an age when life could be blighted by a broken ambition, that lack of physical stamina set his First Fifteen colours and the Drysdale Cup beyond his reach, could not be content to play Rugby football or squash for the mere pleasure these games afforded him. He abandoned sport for headier amusements; drifted at school into a precious set, thence into company even more dangerous for a youth of his unbalanced temperament; and, by the time he had attained his majority, had forgotten earlier and healthier ambitions, and reserved his enthusiasm for Surrealism, the Ballet, racing motor-cars, and several exotic pursuits denied to young men of more limited means. He was neurotic, passionate, and easily influenced, spoilt by parents and circumstance, and morbidly self-conscious. He would respond like a shy girl to flattery, but he was quick to imagine slights, and could fly in an instant from the extreme of affection to the opposite pole of wounded hatred. As a child he had revelled in being the focal point of his mother's life; and he had never outgrown his desire of being petted, and admired. This led him to dislike girls, with whom he felt himself to stand in a relationship alien to his temperament, and to be happiest in the company either of elderly women who mothered him, or of such men as Dan Seaton-Carew.
There was no motherliness in Mrs. Haddington's manner towards him. She accorded him no more than a chilly smile, and two fingers to shake, her eyes going beyond him to the portly figure of that noted sportsman and bon viveur, Sir Roderick Vickerstown, who was heavily ascending the stairs in his wake. This immediately clouded Sydney's pleasure. He mistook his hostess's indifference for dislike, and was at once hurt and ill-at-ease. That he had no liking for her, and no particular desire to be invited to her house, weighed with him not at all: he could not be happy if he was not approved of. He lingered beside her for a moment, fidgeting with his tie, fancied that he could detect hostility in Sir Roderick's choleric blue eye, and flung away to join Timothy and Guisborough, who were standing before the fire in the front drawing-room.
Guisborough, never one to disguise his sentiments, responded to his greetings with an ungracious nod; but Timothy was more civil, and even, since he was just about to light a cigarette, offered his case to him. Sydney was momentarily soothed, but as he stretched out his hand to take a cigarette, he most unfortunately caught sight of Dan Seaton-Carew, talking to Cynthia at the far end of the drawing-room.
That damsel, not to be baulked in her determination to get Seaton-Carew to herself, had dragged him into the back drawing-room, and- appeared to be pouring some confidence into his ear. In her artless fashion, she had acquired a grip on the lapel of his coat. His attitude might have been described as fatherly by the charitablyminded. He stroked her shining head in a soothing way, and seemed to be uttering such words as a man might use to reassure an unreasonably troubled child.
Sydney uttered an exclamation, and hurried into the back drawing-room. "Dan!" he said eagerly.
"Bloody little pansy!" remarked Lord Guisborough, drawn into brief fellowship with Mr. Harte.
"Dan!" Sydney repeated. "I wondered if you'd be here! I've been trying to get hold of you all day!" He glanced at Cynthia, jealousy in his face, and said curtly: "How do you do? Dan, I rang you up five times, but your man said you were out!"
Seaton-Carew, like many before him, had grown tired of the exigencies of intimacy with his young friend. Moreover, he disliked having his tete-a-tetes interrupted. He said, rather brutally: "Yes, that's what I told him to say. What the hell's the matter anyway?"
Sydney flushed vividly, and stammered: "I haven't seen anything of you for days! I was afraid you were ill, or something!"
"Well, I'm not. Do, for God's sake, stop barging in where you ought to be able to see you're not wanted!"
The flush died, leaving Sydney's face very white. "I see!" he said, in a low, shaking voice. "That's how it is, is it? When Cynthia's around you've no use for me!"
"Oh, shut up!" Seaton-Carew said roughly. "I've had enough of your scenes! Either behave like a reasonable being or get out! Making a damned exhibition of yourself - I'm fed up with it!"
"You mean you're fed up with me!"
"All right, I mean that!" Seaton-Carew said, exasperated.
Cynthia gave a nervous giggle, glancing towards the front drawing-room, where people were beginning to assemble. "For goodness' sake!" she whispered. "Mummy will have a fit!"
For a perilous moment it looked as though Sydney might so far forget himself as to strike Seaton-Carew. He stood staring at him, his eyes burning in his white face, and his fists clenching involuntarily. His chest heaved with something like a sob; he began to say something, in a trembling, almost inaudible voice, and was mercifully interrupted.
"Cynthia darling! How sweet you look! Oh, Dan! How lovely!"
Lady Nest Poulton, a little wisp of a woman, with great eyes in a heart-shaped, haggard face, came up to the group in a cloud of chiffon; and Sydney, recollecting his surroundings, turned rather blindly away.
"Charming frock! Dreadful young man!" murmured Lady Nest, with her fleeting, appealing smile. "You know Godfrey, don't you? Yes, of course you do!" She hesitated for the fraction of a second, and added: "And Mr. Seaton-Carew, Godfrey, whom you've met."
Her husband, a stockily-built man, with a square, impassive countenance, favoured Seaton-Carew with an unsmiling stare, bowed infinitesimally, and turned from him to speak to Cynthia. The smile wavered pathetically on Lady Nest's face; for a moment she looked nervous, her eyes shifting from him to Seaton-Carew, and away again; then she gave her empty tinkle of laughter, and flitted off to exchange over-affectionate greetings with a raddled brunette in petunia satin.
Sydney Butterwick, plunging away from the group like a stampeded mustang, startled several persons by his mien, which they afterwards described as distraught. He seemed to be making for the door, but fortunately for the smooth conduct of the Bridge-party he encountered a fellow balletomane, who hailed him with delight, exclaiming: "Sydney! I saw you last night. What did you think? Will she be a ballerina assoluta? Did you count her fouettes? Though I thought she was definitely at her best in the pas de quatre."
These words had the happy effect of checking Sydney in mid-career. He responded automatically to them, and in an impassioned discussion on arabesques, elevations, enchainements, ballerinas, and danseurs nobles, managed to recover himself. His eyes, and his twitching fingers, showed him to be still very much upset, but by the time his ecstatic acquaintance had deserted him for a middleaged diplomat who could well remember the stars of the Maryinsky Theatre, he had apparently recollected the impropriety of incontinently rushing from the house; and went up to Sir Roderick Vickerstown instead, to discover from him who was to be his partner.
Sir Roderick, and that fashionable consultant, Dr Theodore Westruther, had consented to be the scorers and general managers of the party, dual roles which bade fair to reduce both gentlemen to a state of nervous prostration. The difficulties attendant upon persuading a chattering crowd of guests to postpone the exchange of confidences, and to take their places at the various tables were enormous; and when twelve persons had at last been singled out from the crowd and driven downstairs to the library, and those who were to remain in the drawing-room shepherded to their tables, it was still some time before play could begin. Earnest players, itching to inspect the hands stuck into the slots of the duplicate-boards, in vain suggested that Bridge and not conversation was the order of the evening. A babel of voices made play impossible, for besides the inveterate recounters of anecdotes, there was a strong faction of persons bent on making known the systems which governed their play; a still stronger one of those who were willing to play any convention, but who required to be reminded of the rules governing all but their particular choice; several nervous people who had never played duplicate Bridge before and had to have the procedure explained to them; one or two ladies of terrifying aspect, who warned their partners in menacing accents that they expected to be taken out of a No Trump call; and a small clique of fanatics who filled in the time before play started by describing in a very boring way the interesting hands they had held recently, and the skill with which they had made their contracts.
However, the united and patient efforts of the two scorers, Mrs. Haddington and Miss Birtley, at last prevailed, and a sudden silence fell.
Timothy, who had been paired with Cynthia, resigned himself to an unsuccessful evening, for a very few minutes sufficed to convince him that her Bridge was of a dashing variety that took little account of part scores. She had a certain aptitude for the game, and since her social education had included a course of lessons from an expert, she was familiar with most of the conventions. But the gambling instinct was alarmingly strong in her; and an inability to concentrate her mind for any sustained period led her largely to ignore her partner's discards, and frequently to forget that an important card still lurked in one of her opponents' hands.
Timothy, who was dummy during the first hand, had leisure, while Cynthia struggled to make her contract, to look round the room, and study the assembled company. For the most part, his fellow-guests seemed to be an innocuous set of persons, hovering on the fringes of Society; but there were one or two people, like Lady Nest Poulton and Sir Roderick Vickerstown, and the Kenelm Guisboroughs, who had been born into a world the rest aspired to adorn. There were also some unplaceable specimens, such as Seaton-Carew, who fell into no easily definable class.
The Kenelm Guisboroughs were seated at the next table to Timothy's, playing, in this first hand, against Lord Guisborough, and Mrs. Criddon, a stout matron wearing a profusion of diamonds and an air of stern concentration. Possibly Mrs. Haddington had felt that the sooner the cousins met, and were parted, the better it would be: certainly an atmosphere of dangerous restraint hung over their table. No greater contrast could have been imagined than that which existed between the cousins. Lord Guisborough, wearing a soft shirt, a tie askew, and with a lock of unruly hair drooping over one eyebrow, slouched in his chair, and, having told his partner she could play any convention she liked, declared on some undisclosed system of his own, and played his cards with a careless acumen and an air of boredom which made nearly every man in the room wish to kick him. Kenelm, on the other hand, who, in spite of springing from a younger branch of the family, was some years his cousin's senior, looked like a Guardsman, which he was not, and might have served as a model of good, if rather pompous, form. He had a round and florid face, with a tooth-brush moustache, and slightly protuberant eyes, and whenever his noble relative succeeded in enraging him, which was often, his colour rose, his moustache bristled, and he looked very much as though he would burst. His wife, Irene, was a bloodless blonde, who habitually spoke in a complaining voice, and maintained a running fire of criticism of her husband's bidding and subsequent play. Lord Guisborough she largely ignored.
Beulah was not in the drawing-room during the first hand, but she came in as the cards were being restored to the boards, and the various couples changed their tables, and began mechanically to empty ashtrays, and remove glasses. Supper would presently be served in the diningroom, but Mrs. Haddington was well aware of the beneficial results of keeping her guests supplied with stimulating liquid refreshment, and had instructed Beulah to lose no time in asking if she might not get some harassed player a drink. This was, in fact, no more than a daughter of the house might have been expected to do, but nevertheless it annoyed Timothy to watch his beloved waiting on everyone, and looking more and more weary as the evening progressed. He tried several times to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him; once he saw Seaton-Carew address some remark to her which brought a flash into her eyes, and caused her to move away from that table at once; and although this was better than seeing her submit to that. dashing gentleman's familiarities, it did nothing to add to Timothy's enjoyment of the party. He began to think rather badly of a state of civilisation that made it impossible for him to pick a quarrel with Seaton-Carew upon frivolous grounds, and then inform him that his friends would wait upon him in the morning; and to derive what satisfaction he could from the realisation that no more inimical partner could have been selected for Mr. Seaton-Carew than Miss Beatrice Guisborough, who visibly despised him, and audibly condemned his card-play. The knowledge that Seaton-Carew would have liked to have had Cynthia for his partner, and was extremely bored, was poor comfort, however: Mr. Harte was glad to see him and Miss Guisborough vanish from the room, and sorry to be obliged, a quarter of an hour later, to follow them to one of the tables set out in the library.
Beulah was well aware that Mr. Harte had tried to catch her eye, and equally well aware that he had observed her brief encounter with Seaton-Carew. She hoped that he would make no attempt to single her out during the supper-interval, and made up her mind to keep as much out of his way as was possible. She was conscious of being kept under observation by Mrs. Haddington, whose double-edged remark earlier in the evening had not been lost on her.
She was on her way upstairs, bearing a whisky-andsoda for Colonel Cartmel, when the intermittent ringing of the telephone-bell informed her that Mr. Seaton-Carew's call had at last come through. In expectation of it, she had informed him that it would be best for him to take it in Mrs. Haddington's sitting-room, and she now set down the little silver tray she carried, and went into this apartment. She emerged a moment later to see her employer upon the landing outside the drawing-room.
"If that is for me, I hope you told whoever it is that I can't possibly come to the telephone now!" said Mrs. Haddington.
"It isn't. It's a long-distance call for Mr. Seaton-Carew," replied Beulah.
Mrs. Haddington uttered an impatient exclamation. "I'd forgotten. Really, I do think - Well, it can't be helped! He's in the library: you'd better go down and tell him at once. He can take it in my boudoir."
"I've already told him so," said Beulah, departing on her errand.
"And just keep your eye on things for a minute or two!" added Mrs. Haddington, carefully gathering up her long skirt, preparatory to ascending the flight that led to her bedroom. "I'm going to powder my face." She became aware of Sydney Butterwick at her elbow, and stared at him. "Dear me! Is anything wrong, Mr. Butterwick?"
"No - oh, no!" he said, stammering a little. "I just thought I'd get myself a drink - we've finished at our table!"
"Of course!" she said, with a graciousness he found even more quelling than her asperity. "You know your way to the dining-room, don't you?"
At the table he had deserted, in the front drawingroom, Lady Nest sighed: "I can't imagine what induces him even to try to play Bridge. Darling Jennifer, too cruel to have saddled you with him! My heart bleeds for you! Why do you suppose he took you out of your heart call?"
"God knows!" responded Miss Cheadle, a raw-boned lady with the indefinable look of a horsewoman. "Feel a bit sorry for the boy: got something on his mind."
"I don't want to depress you, Jenny," remarked Mr. Charles Ashbourne, "but, according to Roddy, you've been fobbed off with a stop-gap. Jack Doveridge stood Lilias up at the last moment."
"Oh, well!" said Miss Cheadle largemindedly. "That's all right: somebody had to have him!"
At this moment, two redoubtable ladies at a table in the middle of the room created a diversion by arguing with steadily mounting choler on the correct play of the hand which one of them had just (according to the other) mismanaged. It was a cardinal rule that these devoted friends should be kept apart at any Bridge-party, for each had a voice like the screech of a macaw, and neither had the smallest control over her temper. It was of course impossible to keep them apart throughout a duplicate contest, but it had been hoped that since one was North and the other West no cause for dissension would arise. Unfortunately, North saw fit to criticise West's play, which, considering she and her partner had benefited by it to the tune of five hundred points above the line, was unhandsome of her. An altercation arose which showed every sign of developing into a brawl; and Mrs. Haddington came back into the room to find play at all tables at a standstill. It said much for her tact that she was speedily able to soothe both ruffled ladies; and still more for her admirable command over herself that she did not betray her annoyance by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Only Beulah, entering the room a moment later, knew that she was at all put out. Mrs. Haddington, smiling with determination, said to her in an acid undertone: "I thought I told you to keep an eye on things for me!"
Play was resumed, but another hitch soon occurred, which was explained by Dr Westruther, who came up from the library to say that they were held up there by Seaton-Carew's absence. "Called away to the telephone in the middle of a hand," he said. "They're waiting to finish it."
"Still telephoning?" said Mrs. Haddington. "Nonsense! He can't be. Or, if he is, he oughtn't to be!" she added, with a perfunctory laugh. "It's really very naughty and inconsiderate of him, and I shall scold him severely! Roddy, do go and remind him that he's holding everyone up! In my boudoir: you know where it is!"
"I'll soon have him out of it," said Sir Roderick, who disliked him, and had already confided to Dr Westruther that the fellow was a bounder.
He then stumped out of the room, colliding in the doorway with Sydney Butterwick. He glared, his sapient eye taking in the fact that this weakheaded young man had been fortifying himself a little too liberally. "Now then, now then, look where you're goin', young fellow!" he growled, and went off down the stairs to the boudoir.
A minute later he came back into the drawing-room, breathing rather hard, and looking very much shaken. He seemed to find some difficulty in speaking, and it was seen that his hand was trembling. Everyone stared at him; and Lady Nest, perceiving his pallor, jumped up from her chair, exclaiming: 'Roddy, are you feeling ill?"
He gulped, and made a gesture waving her aside. "Westruther!" he said. Job for you! Go down there! That fellow - Seaton-Carew!"
"What is it?" Mrs. Haddington demanded sharply. "Roddy, what's the matter? Where's Dan?"
Sir Roderick tottered to a chair, and sat down. "He's dead," he said bluntly. "Turned me up a bit. Nasty shock. No, no, Lilias, you stay where you are! Job for Westruther, not you. The fellow's been strangled!"