The ‘met’ or ‘meetee’ for her opening rout in 1925 was the great Italian violinist Luigi Sporza, who had just completed his remarkable tour of the world, having in half the time played more often than any two previous musicians. The prodigious feat had been noted in the Press of all countries with every circumstance – the five violins he had tired out, the invitation he had received to preside over a South American Republic, the special steamer he had chartered to keep an engagement in North America, and his fainting fit in Moscow after the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, the Bach chaconne, and seventeen encores. During the lingering year of his great effort, his fame had been established. As an artist he had been known to a few, as an athlete he was now known to all.
Michael and Fleur, passing up the centre stairway, saw a man ‘not ‘arf like a bull’ – Michael muttered – whose hand people were seizing, one after the other, to move away afterwards with a look of pain.
‘Only Italy can produce men like that,’ said Michael in Fleur’s ear. ‘Give him the go-by. He’ll hurt you.’
But Fleur moved forward.
‘Made of sterner stuff,’ murmured Michael. It was not the part of his beloved to miss the hand of celebrity, however horny! No portion of her charming face quivered as the great athlete’s grip closed on hers, and his eyes, like those of a tired minotaur, traversed her supple body with a gleam of interest.
‘Hulking brute!’ thought Michael, disentangling his own grasp, and drifting with her over shining space. Since yesterday’s ordeal and its subsequent spring-running, he had kept his unacceptable misgivings to himself; he did not even know whether, at this rout, she was deliberately putting their position to the test, or merely, without forethought, indulging her liking to be in the swim. And what a swim! In that great pillared ‘salon’, Members of Parliament, poets, musicians, very dry in the smile, as who should say: ‘I could have done it better,’ or ‘Imagine doing that!’ Peers, physicians, dancers, painters, Labour Leaders, cricketers, lawyers, critics, ladies of fashion, and ladies who ‘couldn’t bear it’ – every mortal person that Michael knew or didn’t know seemed present. He watched Fleur’s eyes quartering them, busy as bees beneath the white lids he had kissed last night. He envied her that social curiosity; to live in London without it was like being at the sea without bathing. She was quietly – he could tell – making up her mind whom she wanted to speak to among those she knew, and whom, among those she didn’t yet know, she wanted to speak to her. ‘I hope to God she’s not in for a snubbing,’ he thought, and when she was engaged in talk, he slipped towards a pillar. A small voice behind him said: ‘Well, young Mont!’ Mr Blythe, looking like a Dover sole above Kew Bridge, was squeezed against the same pillar, his eyes goggling timorously above his beard.
‘Stick to me!’ he said. ‘These bees are too bee busy.’
‘Were you in Court yesterday?’ asked Michael.
‘No; one read about it. You did well.’
‘She did better.’
‘H’m!’ said Mr Blythe. ‘By the way, The Evening Sun was at us again this afternoon. They compared us to kittens playing with their tails. It’s time for your second barrel, Mont.’
‘I thought – on the agricultural estimates.’
‘Good! Governmental purchase and control of wheat. Stress use of the present machinery. No more officials than are absolutely necessary.’
‘Blythe,’ said Michael suddenly, ‘where were you born?’
‘Lincolnshire.’
‘You’re English, then?’
‘Pure,’ said Mr Blythe.
‘So am I; so’s old Foggart – I looked him up in the stud-book. It’s lucky, because we shall-certainly be assailed for lack of patriotism.’
‘We are,’ said Mr Blythe ‘ “People who can see no good in their own country… . Birds who foul their own nest… . Gentry never happy unless running England down in the eyes of the world… . Calamity-mongers… . Pessimists.… ” You don’t mind that sort of gup, I hope?’
‘Unfortunately,’ said Michael, ‘I do; it hurts me inside. It’s so damned unjust. I simply can’t bear the idea of England being in a fix.’
Mr Blythe’s eyes rolled.
‘She’s bee well not going to be, if we can help it.’
‘If only I amounted to something,’ murmured Michael; ‘but I always feel as if I could creep into one of my back teeth.’
‘Have it crowned. What you want is brass, Mont. And talking of brass: There’s your late adversary I She’s got it all right. Look at her!’