PART I (continued 3)

And yet he started at a more humorous level than anybody else could have attained. In the first place (he said) he must apologize for speaking at all. It was all Mrs. W.’s fault. As everybody knew, he was not allowed to get a word in edgeways at home (smiles)—led a dog’s life, in fact (more smiles)—indeed, as he had said to his old friend Charlie Cutbush only the other day, Charlie Cutbush, who used to travel for Dwu Mawr Whisky and now kept “The Silent Woman” in the Borough, “Charlie,” he had said, “you ought to get that sign o’ yours altered—it ought to be a man with his head cut off, not a woman!” (A little more laughter, and a gallant remark from Cosimo to the speaker’s wife that at any rate Mr. Wellcome looked well on it). But to get on (Mr. Wellcome continued). As they all knew, there was a good deal of giving in connexion with weddings. In his own time at Glenerne it had always been a bit of a puzzle where Miss Addams put ’em all to sleep; but they all knew now where Mrs. Deschamps slept, and a pretty little room it was, and its occupant lots of time before her yet (quite a sudden outburst of mirth at this, and confusion and a cry of “Wretch!” from Mrs. Deschamps). Tut-tut!—What Mr. Wellcome meant to say, if they’d be quiet a bit and not jump down his throat like that, was that they’d all been into Mrs. Deschamps’ room to see the wedding-presents. (Laughter.) Now Mr. Wellcome wasn’t going to say they weren’t, one and all, very handsome wedding-presents, especially Miss Addams’s oak-and-silver biscuit-box and the embroidered quilt given by Mrs. Deschamps herself (but Mr. Wellcome would have a word to say to his old friend George Massey, about the comparative inefficacy of embroidered quilts when your feet were really cold, by and by.) (More laughter.) But what Mr. Wellcome was going to say, and he’d say it twice if anybody didn’t hear it the first time, was that he’d been giving something away that morning that he hoped and trusted his old friend George would find worth more than all the rest put together—a bonny bride. (Loud applause, and an instant recognition of their error on the part of those who had thought that a humorist couldn’t on occasion be serious too.) Mr. Wellcome repeated: a bonnie bride. Mr. Wellcome didn’t mean that they didn’t all joke about these things sometimes. He did himself, and so would George Massey be doing by and by. But he did say this about marriage, and he spoke as a man who had been married more years than he cared to remember: that there was nothing like it. (Cries of “Hear, hear!” from married and unmarried alike, and a noisy drumming of knives and hands on the table.) And while Mr. Wellcome was about it he was going to say something else. There seemed to be people about who thought themselves very wise nowadays. They wanted this changed and that changed; Mr. Wellcome didn’t know what they did want, and he didn’t think they themselves did either; sometimes it seemed to him that they just wanted something different—good or bad, but different. In fact he, Mr. Wellcome, called ’em grousers and grizzlers—a pack o’ frosty-faces. Now nobody expected the world to stand still. No doubt there was lots of things could be improved on. There was off-licences, for instance. Likewise Clubs. But (here Mr. Wellcome shook a fat forefinger warningly and impressively) Marriage wasn’t one of ’em. If an Englishman’s house was his castle, Marriage was what Mr. Wellcome might call the front-door key of it! (Applause far more loud and sustained than any mere humorous sally could have called forth.) Now he kept his front-door key on the bunch. (A “Go on with you!” from Mrs. Wellcome.) If the law allowed him two or three wives (and he had only to look round that table to wish ... but that was neither here nor there, and no doubt if he could he’d soon be wishing he hadn’t—much laughter)—what he was going to say was that if he had twenty wives he’d keep ’em all on the bunch too.... “But instead o’ that one of ’em keeps me on a bit of string,” said Mr. Wellcome, dropping his voice so comically and despondingly that the whole table roared with laughter....

“And now,” said Mr. Wellcome, beginning to pat his pockets in search of something, “let’s cut the cackle and come to the horses.... Where is the dashed thing? Ah, here it is!...”

And, as if his gift of champagne had not been enough, from the bottom of his breeches-pocket he drew forth a gold wrist-watch, ordered Aunt Jerry to hold out her hand, and snapped the chain about her wrist.

It was, too, a “coming to the horses” in a sense quite other than the figurative one in which Mr. Wellcome used the expression. They were real horses to which he came. What else (Mr. Wellcome wanted to know) could be expected of him when Toreador had come in at twelve to one yesterday, and all the money on the favourite, and the bookies’ pockets simply spilling gold and notes?... Nay, Mr. Wellcome described the scene. He set himself in an attitude, and his voice dropped to a hush. “I don’t know how ever Sammy did it!” he confided to them. “He seemed to pick her together, then ... hoooosh!—Short head, and a hundred-and-twenty o’ the best for W.W.!... ‘Who give you the office?’ Dick Marks says to me when I goes to touch; ‘if it hadn’t been for you, Old Knowall, it’ld ha’ been grand slam; you know a bit, you do’ ... So now, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Wellcome concluded, raising his glass, “in asking you all to drink the health of Mr. and Mrs. George Massey, I’ll do so in the words of the poet:

I ask you to join me, ladies and gentlemen....”

Then was begun the writing of a page unparalleled for brightness in the annals of Glenerne. Health after health was drunk, and it was Mr. Rainbow who proposed that of the youngest bachelor present—the infant Wellcome. Yesterday, he said, had been a fine day for Toreador’s race, but no finer than to-day was for another race—the Human Race!... Such a roar as went up! Nobody had supposed Rainbow had it in him. Aunt Jerry blushed; Mrs. Deschamps, who was sipping champagne at the time, had to have her back slapped by M. Criqui, and did not recover for several minutes; Cosimo’s laugh rivalled that of Mr. Wellcome himself. And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on Cosimo likewise.... For nothing succeeds like success, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, immediately scored again. If little birds were to be believed, he said, giving the discreetest of glances at Cosimo and Amory, they might be having another jollification before long. He mentioned no names. He would merely say that one of them was not unknown to fame, fame of what he might call an artistic sort; and all he would say, in the words of a song that used to be sung when he was a good many years younger, was, “That’s the time to do it—while you’re young!”

Then Mr. Rainbow made his best hit of all—he sat down in the perfect moment of his triumph.

“The cake, the cake!” everybody shouted; and one of Bunters’ waiters handed Aunt Jerry a knife.

Then there were fresh shrieks of merriment, for when Aunt Jerry tried to cut that formidable cake it was discovered to be of solid plaster-of-Paris—a white grindstone tricked out with silver-paper cupids and spurious sugar-work.

“Beats Mrs. Deschamps and the Kissing Bee hollow!” roared the authors of the imposture.

And so the real cake had to be brought and cut.

They rose from the table and ascended to the drawing-room, and there the merriment became more furious still. For Mr. Wellcome’s eyes fell on the whatnot with the photographs of Miss Addams’s “grandchildren,” and the seed of an idea sprang into being in his mind. It grew; it blossomed; it spread into the Rose of Eugenics itself. Mr. Wellcome approached Amory and Cosimo. He was perhaps just slightly drunk. His fingers moved lovingly on Cosimo’s biceps, and passed to his pectoral muscles: his other hand was out, almost as if he would have done the same to Amory: and then he gave them, so to speak, their certificate of physical fitness. Noisily he bade Cosimo kiss Amory there and then.

“Be a man ... kiss her, damme!” he cried, a forcible hand on each; and Amory dropped her lids....

But Cosimo, who was there to see others make exhibitions of themselves but not to make one of himself, hung reluctantly back. But the irresistible Wellcome dragged them both forward again. There was no help for it, and so, knocking his head against Amory’s, he gave her a stage kiss only, which, of course, in this tale of Two Kisses, does not count.

“That’s the style!” cried Mr. Wellcome heartily, deceived by appearances. “Hoooosh!... Short head!—Hi, Bonzoline ... what’s your name ... Lorenzo! Hurry up with them liqueurs, and then go downstairs, and feel in the right-hand pocket of my overcoat, and you’ll find a bundle of toothpicks—and hi!—see whether my Missis has changed the boy yet ... I want to show ’em his legs, tell her.... Talk about ‘legs’!... But you’ll see....”

They had seemed to be merry up to then; but all agreed afterwards that only with the bringing up of the coffee and liqueurs and toothpicks did what might be called the real merriment begin.

At six o’clock that evening Amory and Cosimo took tea in the studio in Cheyne Walk and compared notes of the events of the day. Cosimo was ecstatic. He had not believed such things existed. Amory’s utterances, too, were as breathless and explosive as his own, but seemed somehow to lack ring. A close observer might have supposed her to be acting a brightness. Then for the twentieth time Cosimo guffawed.

“But you lost your bet, Amory—he didn’t say, ‘May all your troubles be little ones!’”

“But he showed us the baby’s legs.”

“I admit he did that. That was rather beyond rubies.”

“And he handed the toothpicks round.”

“So he did. I shall keep mine—die in defence of it. And you’ll find that horse’s name written on my heart. A horse-race at a wedding!—Oh, oh, I’m not complaining! It was all you promised, and more!”

“I thought perhaps you were disappointed,” Amory remarked.

“Good heavens, no! I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds! (But, of course, your aunt was charming.)... Isn’t Mr. Massey fond of the police sergeant!”

“Sickly sentiment, I call it,” said Amory abruptly.

“Oh no, not if you take it as part of the general show,” Cosimo explained. “Damon and Pythias, I suppose; not having a brother, can’t say. But the thing can’t be taken to bits. It was a perfect whole. I wonder what there is about a perfect whole that makes it far more than the sum of the parts?”

“Eh?... Oh yes, it is more,” said Amory.

“More?... Rather! Why, take it in art....”

“Don’t talk about art to-night, Cosimo, please,” she said. “You always give me so much to think of when you talk about art.”

“Tired?” said Cosimo solicitously, bending over the back of her chair.

“A little.”

Amory could not have told why she was tired. She only knew that, to-night somehow, Cosimo did not seem as intuitive as he usually was.