The Missing Angel - Erle Cox (whitelam books .TXT) 📗

from their glasses. One and all re-echoed

the praise of Mrs. Blomb. Edwin Muskat and the vicar were drinking

barley-water. But the vicar, after half emptying his glass, replaced it

on the table and remarked, that, though he was, alas, unable to drink

sweet beverages because of his digestion, he had never tasted

barley-water that was so “comforting,” if he might use the term. Again

Tydvil’s eye sought that of Nicholas, from whom he received a confirming

but almost imperceptible flicker of his eyelashes.

 

Amy sipped bird-like from her goblet and smilingly accepted the applause

of her guests. Although she ‘Was really at a loss to account for the

attractive flavour, she said, “I’m delighted you like it. It is just a

little idea of my own.”

 

“Please, Amy, tell us?” pleaded Mrs. Caton Ridgegay, for the moment

forgetting her niece. As she spoke, Tydvil noticed with a fearful joy

that Arthur Muskat had nodded to the maid to refill his goblet.

 

Amy shook her head at both Mrs. Ridgegay and Mrs. Blomb. “No, my dears,”

she smiled, “you must let me keep my little secrets.”

 

For the moment the conversation was resumed. Warned, Tydvil dealt

circumspectly with what he suspected was something more potent than his

brief experience of bottled joy producers had encountered. He recognised

its effects in the rising voices. Mrs. Blomb warmed to her denunciation

of the Arbitration Act. She held all Tydvil’s attention that he could

spare from the others.

 

“You have met Mr. Garside, have you not?” she asked Tydvil, naming the

Federal Attorney-General.

 

Tydvil disclaimed the honour.

 

“Well, believe it or not, that man’s a pig,” Mrs. Blomb affirmed. “I’ve

talked to him about clause four till I was sick…”

 

“Till he was sick, you mean,” came surprisingly from Arthur Muskat as he

paused in his operations on a cut from a saddle of lamb.

 

Mrs. Blomb gazed at him thoughtfully a moment as though she had not heard

aright. Then she laughed loudly and patted Tydvil’s arm. “Listen to him.

He thinks I said Mr. Garside was sick.”

 

“No, I didn’t.” Muskat put down his knife and fork and replied

argumentatively. “What I meant was you must both have been sick. You’d

make anyone sick,” he grunted.

 

“I think that is very rude of you, Mr. Muskat,” protested Mrs. Blomb

loudly.

 

Entirely disregarding the protest, Arthur Muskat hiccoughed violently,

and resumed his knife and fork. So far as he was concerned, Mrs. Blomb

had ceased to exist.

 

Tydvil, struggling with an urge to laugh, noticed the working of an

agitated Adam’s apple in Mrs. Blomb’s stringy throat. Lowering his voice,

he said soothingly, “I don’t think he understood what you were saying.”

Then, to distract her attention, he went on, “You were saying you did not

like Garside.”

 

“You’re right, Tydvil, I don’t—Oo—I called you Tydvil.” She laughed

loudly again, and slapped his shoulder. “I tell you this, when Julia

Blomb says a man’s a pig, he is a pig. Do you understand what I mean?”

 

“Did you call me a pig?” Again Arthur Muskat rumbled into the

conversation. His face was flushed and he eyed her malevolently.

 

“I did not,” she returned with spirit. “But since you ask, I do think

you’re a pig, Arthur Muskat.”

 

Her platform voice rose high over the now lively noise from the other end

of the table and momentarily stilled it. Then, very distinctly in the

silence, came the voice of Mrs. Claire. Her face was flushed and her eyes

were bright. Addressing her husband, she said, “George, you preach the

worst sermons and talk the worst nonsense I ever heard.”

 

There was a general gasp of surprise and Mrs. Ridgegay giggled

hysterically.

 

Then Mrs. Claire observed, apparently unaware of the sensation she had

caused, “I’ve been wanning tell you that for years, an’ now I’ve tol’

you!” She turned away and lapsed into silence.

 

It was not until later when he learned from Nicholas that that gentleman

had, by his own peculiar methods, introduced a charge of fifty per cent.

benedictine into the fruit cup, and a similar proportion of proof gin

into the barley-water, that Tydvil fully, understood the unusual

demeanour of Amy’s guests. Under the genial influence of the fruit cup,

inhibitions, that had congested the brain of Mrs. Claire over twenty

years of married life, melted like ice.

 

Even had he understood the psychological cause of his wife’s untimely

candour, the shock to the vicar’s amour-propre would not have been

mitigated to any great extent. His face, already flushed, became

suffused. He endeavoured, however, to pass it off as a not too successful

effort at humour on the part of his partner. His laugh was rather hollow

as, addressing the table generally, he said, “A man is fortunate who can

find a frank and sincere critic in his home. It is, I feel, a salutary

moral tonic.”

 

Mrs. Ridgegay, who had continued to giggle, succeeded in emitting, “Well,

if it is a tonic, vicar, you should of eel much better after that dose.”

 

But, indeed, the expression on the vicar’s face was such that it

indicated if his wife’s intention had been benevolent, she had prescribed

the wrong mixture. He, however, muttered that fortunately it was his

nature to accept all criticism meekly.

 

Here, reminiscence awoke in Miss Merrywood. Expressing regret that all

men were not endowed with the vicar’s saintly philosophy, which was a

product of education and environment, she related how, only on the

previous day, she had assisted in dressing the injuries of a wharf

labourer’s wife. She specified their nature and locality so explicitly

that Mrs. Blomb exclaimed a scandalised “Oh! Eva!” and Amy flushed

crimson. Whereat, Miss Merrywood asserted that it was false shame not to

treat these affairs from a detached sociological aspect. The woman had

done no more than call her husband a so-and-so loafing son of a

such-and-such, which Miss Merrywood felt sure he was.

 

Inspired perhaps by the fruit cup, Eva had quoted the injured lady

verbatim, in both adjective and noun, to an audience that gasped.

 

Mrs. Ridgegay, quite unable to adjust her mind to the relative value of

words, protested in a shocked voice, that Mrs. Claire had said nothing

like that to the vicar.

 

But Eva would have none of her. She insisted that, judged from their

respective environments, the two criticisms were comparative equivalents.

 

Then, as Eva was apparently about to enlarge on the topic and fearing the

worst, Edwin Muskat broke in. “Did you read that account of an appalling

fracas in the city last night, Tydvil?”

 

Welcoming the diversion, Amy, who by this time was wondering what had

happened to her party, seconded his endeavours by saying that she was

afraid Mr. Senior would receive a shocking impression of the city from

such terrible episodes.

 

“But,” Edwin put in, “we can assure Mr. Senior that the very unsavoury

episode at St. Kilda, followed by the deplorable evidences of iniquity of

last night can not be taken as altogether normal. I appeal to you,

Tydvil.”

 

Responded Tydvil piously, “I can assure you, Mr. Senior, that in all my

experience I have never seen anything like them.”

 

“No doubt they all were caused by drink,” Amy suggested.

 

“Spaghetti,” put in Tydvil absently. Though he had been careful of the

fruit cup, he was feeling its influence.

 

“Tydvil dear,” Amy admonished down the table, “do you think it is wise to

treat these things lightly?”

 

Arthur Muskat turned his small eyes on Tydvil. “I think, Jones, the

ruffians who were involved in that dreadful affair will have some

difficulty in proving to the bench that spaghetti was the cause of it.”

He emphasised his observation with a hiccough that seemed to disconcert

him, as much as it surprised the table.

 

“On the contrary, Mr. Muskat,” Nicholas replied, “Mr. Jones’s suggestion

has grounds in fact. I, myself, have seen serious and most distressing

effects from a plateful of spaghetti after alcohol.”

 

“What I say, is…” began Arthur argumentatively, but was cut short

with another resounding, “Wurroop!”

 

This was too much for Mrs. Blomb, who was seized with almost hysterical

laughter. “Oh!” she gasped, pointing a shaking finger at the heavy,

perplexed face. “He’s been—he’s been—eating spaghetti, too!”

 

Arthur Muskat’s face grew purple. “You shut up, you old hen!”

 

“Muskat! Muskat, I really must protest!” exclaimed Tydvil, placing a

restraining hand on Arthur’s arm. But his heart sang with unregenerate

joy. He had often wanted to tell Mrs. Blomb she was an old hen himself.

 

But Arthur would not be pacified. The fruit cup was in full command.

“I’ll not stand it, Jones! I’ll not—wurroop! She’s been picking on me

all the time. She called me a—wurroop—pig.”

 

“I’m ashamed of you, Arthur!” came a brotherly rebuke from Edwin.

 

Arthur turned on him fiercely. “Go and bag your dashed head, and mind

your own dashed business,” he shouted.

 

Rather more than half a large goblet of proof gin had loosed some of

Edwin’s inhibitions. He came back with a pugnacious chin stuck out. “You

talk to me again like that, Arthur, and I’ll slam you one on the jaw!”

 

The only one among the company who was not staggered by the outbreak of

hostilities was Mrs. Claire, who, having drained a second glass of fruit

cup, sat with her face in her hands, and her hands in a plate full of

asparagus, in happy oblivion.

 

Amy, her face red and white by turns uttered a despairing, “Oh, Tydvil!

Stop them!”

 

“It’s all Julia’s fault!” was Mrs. Ridgegay’s contribution.

 

Julia Blomb took up the challenge with enthusiasm. “If you think I’m

going to let that fat idiot call me a hen, you’re mistaken. I said Arthur

Muskat was a pig—and he is.” Here she pointed a derisive finger across

the table, and babbled, “Pig—pig—pig!”

 

“My dear Mrs. Blomb…” began the vicar in a deep clerical voice of

protest.

 

“I’m not your dear Mrs. Blomb,” she retorted with spirit. Then she added

as an afterthought, “That’s one thing I have been spared.”

 

Before the vicar could speak again, Eva Merrywood’s voice cut in. “I’m

sorry to have to say it, Julia, but your speech is more like Fitzroy than

St. Kilda Road.”

 

“And yours is more like a muck heap than anything else, and I’m not sorry

to say it.” Mrs. Blomb’s voice had a ring of battle.

 

At this juncture, Tydvil alone noticed that Amy had scowled the two maids

out of the room. Then she turned bewildered but appealing eyes on

Nicholas. In a moment he responded by rising. But in the brief interval

the voices round the table were blended in vociferous turmoil. The vicar

was trying vainly to thump the gathering to order. The two brothers were

glaring at one another, exchanging unbrotherly amenities. Mrs. Blomb’s

platform experience gave her a considerable advantage over Mrs. Caton

Ridgegay, drowning her ineffectual retorts with vigorous, and not

exaggerated, reflections on Mrs. Ridgegay’s lack of intelligence and

inane conversation. Eva Merrywood was saying things to Mrs. Blomb that it

was just as well that that lady was too busy at the moment to assimilate.

With the bonds of convention relaxed, the mutual exchanges were sincere,

but primitive in verbiage and entirely lacking in subtlety.

 

Then the clear voice of Nicholas cut into the riot. He did not raise it,

but his, “My friends! My friends!” stilled the riot as water drenches a.

fire. The last distinguishable word was “nitwit,” from Mr. Edwin Muskat

to his purple-faced brother.

 

“My friends!” continued Nicholas calmly to the faces turned towards him.

“I am afraid we have all become a little overwrought.