The Toys of Peace | Page 8

to be an individual effort.
Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable
residence in a frame of mind that was moderately complacent. As the
thing was going to be done he was glad to feel that he was going to get
it settled and off his mind that afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a
nice girl like Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not
have a honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life of married
happiness without such preliminary. He wondered what Minorca was
really like as a place to stop in; in his mind's eye it was an island in
perpetual half-mourning, with black or white Minorca hens running all
over it. Probably it would not be a bit like that when one came to
examine it. People who had been in Russia had told him that they did
not remember having seen any Muscovy ducks there, so it was possible
that there would be no Minorca fowls on the island.
His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock
striking the half-hour. Half-past four. A frown of dissatisfaction settled
on his face. He would arrive at the Sebastable mansion just at the hour
of afternoon tea. Joan would be seated at a low table, spread with an

array of silver kettles and cream-jugs and delicate porcelain tea-cups,
behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of little
friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if any, sugar,
milk, cream, and so forth. "Is it one lump? I forgot. You do take milk,
don't you? Would you like some more hot water, if it's too strong?"
Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels, and
hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life.
Thousands of women, at this solemn afternoon hour, were sitting
behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling
pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushat-Prinkly
detested the whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory of
life a woman should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable
charm or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be
looked on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page
should silently bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted
silently, as a matter of course, without drawn-out chatter about cream
and sugar and hot water. If one's soul was really enslaved at one's
mistress's feet how could one talk coherently about weakened tea?
Cushat-Prinkly had never expounded his views on the subject to his
mother; all her life she had been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at
tea-time behind dainty porcelain and silver, and if he had spoken to her
about divans and Nubian pages she would have urged him to take a
week's holiday at the seaside. Now, as he passed through a tangle of
small streets that led indirectly to the elegant Mayfair terrace for which
he was bound, a horror at the idea of confronting Joan Sebastable at her
tea-table seized on him. A momentary deliverance presented itself; on
one floor of a narrow little house at the noisier end of Esquimault Street
lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote cousin, who made a living by
creating hats out of costly materials. The hats really looked as if they
had come from Paris; the cheques she got for them unfortunately never
looked as if they were going to Paris. However, Rhoda appeared to find
life amusing and to have a fairly good time in spite of her straitened
circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to climb up to her floor and
defer by half-an-hour or so the important business which lay before him;
by spinning out his visit he could contrive to reach the Sebastable
mansion after the last vestiges of dainty porcelain had been cleared
away.

Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as workshop,
sitting-room, and kitchen combined, and to be wonderfully clean and
comfortable at the same time.
"I'm having a picnic meal," she announced. "There's caviare in that jar
at your elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut some
more. Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about
hundreds of things."
She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and made her
visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the bread-
and-butter with a masterly skill and produced red pepper and sliced
lemon, where so many women would merely have produced reasons
and regrets for not having any. Cushat-Prinkly found that he was
enjoying an excellent tea without having to answer as many questions
about it as a Minister for Agriculture might be called on to reply to
during