A Wreath for Rivera

“… in my country, Miss Wayne… no, I cannot call you Miss Wayne. Car-r-r-lisle! What a strange name… Strange and captivating.”

“Carlos!”

“Forgive me. You spoke?”

“About those umbrellas, Breezy.”

“Yes, I did speak.”

“A thousand pardons, I was talking to Carlisle.”

“I’ve engaged a table for three, Fée. You and Carlisle and Ned. Don’t be late.”

“My music to-night shall be for you.”

“I am coming also, George.”

“What!”

“Kindly see that it is a table for four.”

“Maman! But I thought…”

“You won’t like it, C.”

“I propose to come.”

“Damn it, you’ll sit and glare at me and make me nervous.”

“Nonsense, George,” Lady Pastern said crisply. “Be good enough to order the table.”

Her husband glowered at her, seemed to contemplate giving further battle, appeared suddenly to change his mind and launched an unexpected attack at Rivera.

“About your being carried out, Carlos,” he said importantly. “It seems a pity I can’t be carried out too. Why can’t the stretcher party come back for me?”

“Now, now, now,” Mr. Bellairs interrupted in a great hurry. “We’ve got everything fixed, Lord Pastern, now, haven’t we? The first routine. You shoot Carlos. Carlos falls. Carlos is carried out. You take the show away. Big climax. Finish. Now don’t you get me bustled,” he added playfully. “It’s good and it’s fixed. Fine. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“It is what has been decided,” Mr. Rivera conceded grandly. “For myself, I am perhaps a little dubious. Under other circumstances I would undoubtedly insist upon the second routine. I am shot at but I do not fall. Lord Pastern misses me. The others fall. Breezy fires at Lord Pastern and nothing happens. Lord Pastern plays, faints, is removed. I finish the number. Upon this routine under other circumstances, I should insist.” He executed a sort of comprehensive bow, taking in Lord Pastern, Félicité, Carlisle and Lady Pastern. “But under these exclusive and most charming circumstances, I yield. I am shot. I fall. Possibly I hurt myself. No matter.”

Bellairs eyed him. “Good old Carlos,” he said uneasily.

“I still don’t see why I can’t be carried out too,” said Lord Pastern fretfully.

Carlisle heard Mr. Bellairs whisper under his breath: “For the love of Pete!” Rivera said loudly: “No, no, no, no. Unless we adopt completely the second routine, we perform the first as we rehearse. It is settled.”

“Carlisle,” said Lady Pastern rising, “shall we…?”

She swept her ladies into the drawing-room,

Félicité was puzzled, resentful and uneasy. She moved restlessly about the room, eyeing her mother and Carlisle. Lady Pastern paid no attention to her daughter. She questioned Carlisle about her experiences in Greece and received her somewhat distracted answers with perfect equanimity. Miss Henderson, who had taken up Lady Pastern’s box of embroidery threads, sorted them with quiet movements of her hands and seemed to listen with interest.

Suddenly Félicité said: “I don’t see much future in us all behaving as if we’d had the Archbishop of Canterbury to dinner. If you’ve got anything to say about Carlos, all of you, I’d be very much obliged if you’d say it.”

Miss Henderson, her hands still for a moment, glanced up at Félicité and then bent again over her task. Lady Pastern, having crossed her ankles and wrists, slightly moved her shoulders and said: “I do not consider this a suitable occasion, my dear child, for any such discussion.”

“Why?” Félicité demanded.

“It would make a scene, and under the circumstances,” said Lady Pastern with an air of reasonableness, “there’s no time for a scene.”

“If you think the men are coming in, Maman, they are not. George has arranged to go over the programme again in the ballroom.”

A servant came in and collected the coffee cups. Lady Pastern made conversation with Carlisle until the door had closed behind him.

“So I repeat,”‘ Félicité said loudly, “I want to hear, Maman, what you’ve got to say against Carlos.”

Lady Pastern slightly raised her eyes and lifted her shoulders. Her daughter stamped. “Blast and hell!” she said.

“Félicité!” said Miss Henderson. It was neither a remonstrance nor a warning. The name fell like an unstressed comment. Miss Henderson held an embroidery stiletto firmly between finger and thumb and examined it placidly. Félicité made an impatient movement. “If you think,” she said violently, “anybody’s going to be at their best in a strange house with a hostess who looks at them as if they smelt!”

“If it comes to that, dearest child, he does smell. Of a particularly heavy kind of scent, I fancy,” Lady Pastern added thoughtfully.

From the ballroom came a distant syncopated roll of drums ending in a crash of cymbals and a loud report. Carlisle jumped nervously. The stiletto fell from Miss Henderson’s fingers to the carpet. Félicité, bearing witness in her agitation to the efficacy of her governess’s long training, stooped and picked it up.

“It is your uncle, merely,” said Lady Pastern.