Jaffery | Page 8

Elemental; but
whether of Earth, Air, Fire or Water, I shall spend my life trying to
discover."
The faintest flush possible mounted to that pure ivory-white cheek of
hers. She laughed and caught me by the arm.
"I must carry you to Lady Bagshawe--you're taking her in to dinner.
Her husband is Master of the Organ-Grinders' Company--"
"No, no, Doria," said I.
"--Well, it's some city company--I don't know--and she is a museum of
diseases and a gazetteer of cure places. Now you know where you are."
She led me to Lady Bagshawe. Soon afterwards we trooped down to
dinner, during which I learned more of my inside than I knew before,
and more of that of Lady Bagshawe than any of her most fervent
adorers in their wildest dreams could have ever hoped to ascertain;
during which, also, I endeavoured to convince an unknown, but
agreeable lady on my left that I did not play polo, whereat, it seemed,
her eight brothers were experts; and that Omar Khayyam was a
contemporary not of the Prophet Isaiah, but of William the Conqueror.
As for the setting--I am not an observant man--but I had an impression
of much gold and silver and rare flora on the table, great gold frames
enclosing (I doubt not) costly pictures on the walls, many desirable
jewels on undesirable bosoms, strong though unsympathetic masculine
faces, and such food and drink as Lucullus, poor fellow, did not live

long enough to discover.
When the ladies retired, and we moved up towards our host, I found
myself between two groups; one discussing the mercantile depravity of
a gentleman called Wilmot, of whom I had never heard, the other
arguing on dark dilemmas connected with an Abyssinian loan. A
vacant chair happening to be by my side, Adrian, glass in hand, came
round the table and sat down.
"How are you getting on?"
"Well," said I. "Very well." I sipped my port. I recognised Cockburn
1870.
"You seemed rather at a loose end."
"When one has 1870 port to drink," said I, "why fritter away its flavour
in vain words?"
"It is damned good port," Adrian admitted.
"Earth holds nothing better," said I.
We lapsed into silence amid the talk on each side of us. I confess that I
rather surrendered myself to the wine. A little taper for cigarettes
happened to be in front of me; I held my glass in its light and lost
myself in the wine's pure depths of mystery and colour; and my mind
wandered to the lusty sunshine of "Lusitanian summers" that was there
imprisoned. I inhaled its fragrance, I accepted its exquisite and spacious
generosity. Wine, like bread and oil--"God's three chief words"--is a
thing of itself--a thing of earth and air and sun--one of the great natural
things, such as the stars and the flowers and the eyes of a dog. Even the
most mouth-twisting new wine of Northern Italy has its fascination for
me, in that it is essentially something apart from the dust and empty
racket of the world; how much more then this radiant vintage suddenly
awakened from its slumber in the darkness of forty years. So I mused,
as I think an honest man is justified in musing, soberly, over a great
wine, when suddenly my left eye caught Adrian's face. He too was

musing; but musing on unhappy things, for a hand seemed to have
swept his face and wiped the joy from it. He was gazing at his
half-emptied glass, with the short stem of which his fingers were
nervously toying. There was a quick snap. The stem broke and the wine
flowed over the cloth. He started, and with a flash the old Adrian came
back, manifesting itself in his smiling dismay, his boyish apology to Mr.
Jornicroft for smashing a rare glass, spoiling the tablecloth and wasting
precious wine. The incident served to disequilibrate, as one might say,
the two discussions on Wilmot and Abyssinia. Coffee came and
liqueurs. I bade farewell to Lusitanian dreams and found myself in
heart to heart conversation with my neighbour on the right, a florid,
simple-minded sugar-broker, a certain next-year's Sheriff of the City of
London, whose consuming ambition was to become a member of the
Athenæum Club. When I informed him that I was privileged to enter
that Valley of Dry Bones--my late father, an eminent Assyriologist and
a disastrous Master of Fox hounds, had put me up for all sorts of weird
institutions, I think, before I was born--my sugar broker almost fell at
my feet and worshipped me. Although I told him that the premises
were overrun with Bishops and that we had laid down all kinds of
episcopicide to no avail, he refused to be disillusioned. I told him that
on the occasion of my