Read Ebook: The Twelfth Hour by Leverson Ada

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Ebook has 1380 lines and 45113 words, and 28 pages

ve had to speak to you about this before.... Is Miss Crofton dressed yet?"

"Yes, Sir James. Miss Crofton is quite ready. Lady Chetwode is with her."

"Oh! then tell her it doesn't matter. She needn't trouble."

"Yes, Sir James."

"Hardly, dear. Put it on to go and meet him at the station," said Sylvia, rather unpractically. "No, you're not too last-century. I think you look more like the next."

"Well, I hope so," said Felicity, fluttering a tiny Pompadour fan; "and if De Valdez says I look like a Marquise of the olden times, as he once did, I simply won't stand it. Let's go down. But first tell me what you will say when Mr. Rid ... Oh, bother, I can't say all that. Let us call him the man. 'Miss Crofton, might I respectfully venture to presume to propose to hope to ask to have a word with you? You are like a grey rose', or something or other."

"Oh, don't be absurd. Sometimes I think the whole thing is all your fancy, and Savile's."

"My fancy! Then what was that enormous, immense thing in the hall I fell over--a sort of tin jewelled bath, crammed with orchids and carnations? Frank Woodville was helping Price to cart it away, and trying to break some of the flowers by accident."

"Oh, was Mr. Woodville taking it away?" Sylvia smiled.

At that moment a firm knock at the door, and the words, "I say, Sylvia," announced Savile's entrance. He walked in slowly, brushed his sisters aside like flies, and stood looking at himself in the long mirror, which reached nearly from the ceiling to the floor. It was a solemn moment. He was wearing his very first evening-dress suit.

They watched him breathlessly. He carefully kept every trace of expression out of his face. Then he sat down, and said seriously to himself--

Suddenly remembering his broken heart, Savile paused at the door, caught Felicity's eye, and sighed with an effort, heavily. Then, with his usual air of polite self-restraint, out of proportion to the occasion, he left the room.

Soon the White Viennese Band was tuning up, and the house, which was built like a large bungalow, decorated all over with crimson rambler rosebuds, looked very gay and charming. Sir James beamed as various names, more or less well known in various worlds, were incorrectly announced. Felicity went into a small room that had been arranged for conversation to see through the window that the garden had been artistically darkened for the occasion.

In the room were several men. Roy Beaumont the young inventor with his calm face and inscrutable air was looking up as he spoke to De Valdez, the famous composer. Roy Beaumont wore minute boot-buttons on his cuffs and shirt front.

De Valdez was a very handsome, unaffected, genial man who, though an Englishman, had much of the Spanish grandee in his manner and bearing. He had a great contempt for the smaller amenities of dress, and his thick curling hair made more noticeable his likeness to the portraits of Byron.

Felicity at once said, as if in great anxiety--

Comparatively early, and quite suddenly, the rooms were crowded on the usual principle that no one will arrive till every one is there. They were filled with that inaudible yet loud chatter and the uncomfortable throng which is the one certain sign that a party is a success. The incorrect labelling of celebrities seemed to be an even more entrancing occupation than flirting to the strains of the Viennese Band. A young girl with red hair and eager eye-glasses, who had never in her life left Kensington, except to go to Earl's Court, entreated a dark animated young man who had just been introduced to her, but whose name she did not catch, to "sit down quietly and tell her all about everybody."

He amiably complied.

"That," he said, "that man with the white beard is Henry Arthur James. He writes all those books that no one can understand--and those clever plays, you know, that every one goes to see."

"Does he really? Fancy! Can you point me out the man who wrote, 'Oh the Little Crimson Pansies' and 'The Garden of Alice'? I love his work. It's so weird. F. J. Rivers, you know."

"My dear Miss Winter, what a dreadful thing! I'm afraid you'll be very disappointed. As a matter of fact, I am F. J. Rivers myself. Isn't it a pity? I'm so sorry. And I'm afraid I am not weird. Do forgive me. I'd be weird in a minute if I could. You know that, I'm sure. Don't you?"

"Fancy! Just fancy!" She blushed crimson. "I was being so natural. I had no idea I was talking to a clever person."

"No wonder!"

"Should you say the atmosphere was really so intellectual here?" said Rivers a little doubtfully.

"I'm afraid--I mean, I suppose--you take what they call an intelligent interest in the subjects of the day, Miss Winter?"

"I should think so, indeed!" she answered.

"Oh dear!" Rivers looked depressed as he tried to remember what he knew about Radium and Russia.

He escorted her downstairs, endeavouring to make up for any disappointment she might feel by pointing out with reckless lavishness Mr. Chamberlain, Beerbohm Tree, Arthur Balfour, Madame Melba, Filsen Young, George Alexander, and Winston Churchill, none of whom, by a curious coincidence, happened to be present.

"Surely I may talk to you a moment," Woodville murmured to Sylvia. "Every one's happy eating, and you needn't bother. Just come out, one second--on the verandah through the little room. After all, I'm a friend of the family!"

"Why, so you are!"

She fluttered out with him through the French window of the little conversation room to a part of the garden that had been boarded and enclosed, forming with its striped awning and Japanese lanterns a kind of verandah. No one was in sight.

"This is the first second to-night I haven't been utterly wretched," said Woodville firmly.

"Oh, Frank! How kind of you to talk like that!"

"How beautiful of you to look like that!--And this is the sort of thing I have to stand--utterly ignored--I suppose you know I worship you? Do you really belong to me, Sylvia?"

"Do you really?"

"Of course. Look here, don't tell any one--not even yourself--but I'm wearing the little locket after all."

The kiss was short but disturbing. As they came down to earth with a shock, they saw, looking at them steadily through the half-open window, Mr. Ridokanaki. He seemed interested.

At a look from Sylvia Mr. Woodville faded away, feeling as if he were sneaking off. Sylvia went indoors.

"Good evening, Miss Crofton," said the harsh yet sympathetic pleasant voice; "I have been seeking you since this half-hour.... I was coming to ask if I might have the great honour of taking you to supper. Of course, it is an immense privilege--far more than I might expect. Still, may I venture to hope?"

"With pleasure," said Sylvia. She took his arm.

"It is very kind of you, Miss Crofton. What a very interesting face that young man has!"

"Which young man?" Sylvia asked innocently.

"His name is Mr. Woodville. Yes, I think he is clever. Quite an old friend, you know," Sylvia added rather lamely.

One could see no difference in the Greek, since he talked on in his usual urbane way, and made no allusion of any sort the whole evening, either to the floral tribute he had sent, to his letter to Sir James, or to the little scene he had interrupted.

In the supper-room all was gaiety and laughter.

"How hollow all this sort of thing is, isn't it?" said De Valdez, presenting Felicity with a plover's egg, as he passed carrying a plate laden with them to some one else.

"They do seem rather hungry, don't they? But why aren't you eating any supper, Mr. Wilton?"

Having done her duty to all her old friends, Felicity was occupying herself very congenially by steadily bowling over a completely new young man. It was Bertie Wilton, whom Mrs. Ogilvie had brought on the grounds that he could have danced if it had been a dance, and that he was the son of Lady Nora Wilton. Felicity was very much pleased with his condition. It seemed most promising, considering she had known him about a quarter of an hour.

"Supper! I should think two hot plates, one strawberry, and a sip of champagne more than enough for a person who is falling every moment more and more--Don't take that plover's egg, Lady Chetwode! It isn't fair! You have given me the sole right to provide for you this evening, and that man has no business to come interfering. Let him attend to his own affairs."

"He only dropped one plover's egg on my plate, as an old friend--out of kindness! He meant no harm," pleaded Felicity.

"Yes, that's all very well, but it was a liberty. It implies that I cannot provide you with all that you require. He must learn better." Mr. Wilton firmly removed the plover's egg and placed it on the next table, at which Rivers and the red-haired girl were still chattering volubly. Rivers immediately brought it back as lost property, courteously presenting it to Felicity on a silver salver.

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