“I can’t help that. I still stick to it that I wrote it.”

“You aren’t George Bevan!”

“I am!”

“But—” Miss Plummer’s voice almost failed here—”But I’ve been dancing to your music for years! I’ve got about fifty of your records on the Victrola at home.”

George blushed. However successful a man may be he can never get used to Fame at close range.

“Why, that tricky thing—you know, in the second act—is the darlingest thing I ever heard. I’m mad about it.”

“Do you mean the one that goes lumty-lumty-tum, tumty-tumty-tum?”

“No the one that goes ta-rumty-tum-tum, ta-rumty-tum. You know! The one about Granny dancing the shimmy.”

“I’m not responsible for the words, you know,” urged George hastily. “Those are wished on me by the lyrist.”

“I think the words are splendid. Although poor popper thinks its improper, Granny’s always doing it and nobody can stop her! I loved it.” Miss Plummer leaned forward excitedly. She was an impulsive girl. “Lady Caroline.”

Conversation stopped. Lady Caroline turned.

“Yes, Millie?”

“Did you know that Mr. Bevan was THE Mr. Bevan?”

Everybody was listening now. George huddled pinkly in his chair. He had not foreseen this bally-hooing. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego combined had never felt a tithe of the warmth that consumed him. He was essentially a modest young man.

“THE Mr. Bevan?” echoed Lady Caroline coldly. It was painful to her to have to recognize George’s existence on the same planet as herself. To admire him, as Miss Plummer apparently expected her to do, was a loathsome task. She cast one glance, fresh from the refrigerator, at the shrinking George, and elevated her aristocratic eyebrows.

Miss Plummer was not damped. She was at the hero-worshipping age, and George shared with the Messrs. Fairbanks, Francis X. Bushman, and one or two tennis champions an imposing pedestal in her Hall of Fame.

“You know! George Bevan, who wrote the music of ‘Follow the Girl’.”

Lady Caroline showed no signs of thawing. She had not heard of ‘Follow the Girl’. Her attitude suggested that, while she admitted the possibility of George having disgraced himself in the manner indicated, it was nothing to her.

“And all those other things,” pursued Miss Plummer indefatigably. “You must have heard his music on the Victrola.”

“Why, of course!”

It was not Lady Caroline who spoke, but a man further down the table. He spoke with enthusiasm.

“Of course, by Jove!” he said. “The Schenectady Shimmy, by Jove, and all that! Ripping!”

Everybody seemed pleased and interested. Everybody, that is to say, except Lady Caroline and Lord Belpher. Percy was feeling that he had been tricked. He cursed the imbecility of Keggs in suggesting that this man should be invited to dinner. Everything had gone wrong. George was an undoubted success. The majority of the company were solid for him. As far as exposing his unworthiness in the eyes of Maud was concerned, the dinner had been a ghastly failure. Much better to have left him to lurk in his infernal cottage. Lord Belpher drained his glass moodily. He was seriously upset.

But his discomfort at that moment was as nothing to the agony which rent his tortured soul a moment later. Lord Marshmoreton, who had been listening with growing excitement to the chorus of approval, rose from his seat. He cleared his throat. It was plain that Lord Marshmoreton had something on his mind.

“Er….” he said.

The clatter of conversation ceased once more—stunned, as it always is at dinner parties when one of the gathering is seen to have assumed an upright position. Lord Marshmoreton cleared his throat again. His tanned face had taken on a deeper hue, and there was a look in his eyes which seemed to suggest that he was defying something or somebody. It was the look which Ajax had in his eyes when he defied the lightning, the look which nervous husbands have when they announce their intention of going round the corner to bowl a few games with the boys. One could not say definitely that Lord Marshmoreton looked pop-eyed. On the other hand, one could not assert truthfully that he did not. At any rate, he was manifestly embarrassed. He had made up his mind to a certain course of action on the spur of the moment, taking advantage, as others have done, of the trend of popular enthusiasm: and his state of mind was nervous but resolute, like that of a soldier going over the top. He cleared his throat for the third time, took one swift glance at his sister Caroline, then gazed glassily into the emptiness above her head.

“Take this opportunity,” he said rapidly, clutching at the table-cloth for support, “take this opportunity of announcing the engagement of my daughter Maud to Mr. Bevan. And,” he concluded with a rush, pouring back into his chair, “I should like you all to drink their health!”

There was a silence that hurt. It was broken by two sounds, occurring simultaneously in different parts of the room. One was a gasp from Lady Caroline. The other was a crash of glass.

For the first time in a long unblemished career Keggs the butler had dropped a tray.

Chapter 24

Out on the terrace the night was very still. From a steel-blue sky the stars looked down as calmly as they had looked on the night of the ball, when George had waited by the shrubbery listening to the wailing of the music and thinking long thoughts. From the dark meadows by the brook came the cry of a corncrake, its harsh note softened by distance.

“What shall we do?” said Maud. She was sitting on the stone seat where Reggie Byng had sat and meditated on his love for Alice Faraday and his unfortunate habit of slicing his approach-shots. To George, as he stood beside her, she was a white blur in the darkness. He could not see her face.

“I don’t know!” he said frankly.

Nor did he. Like Lady Caroline and Lord Belpher and Keggs, the butler, he had been completely overwhelmed by Lord Marshmoreton’s dramatic announcement. The situation had come upon him unheralded by any warning, and had found him unequal to it.

A choking sound suddenly proceeded from the whiteness that was Maud. In the stillness it sounded like some loud noise. It jarred on George’s disturbed nerves.

“Please!”

“I c-can’t help it!”

“There’s nothing to cry about, really! If we think long enough, we shall find some way out all right. Please don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying!” The choking sound became an unmistakable ripple of mirth. “It’s so absurd! Poor father getting up like that in front of everyone! Did you see Aunt Caroline’s face?”

“It haunts me still,” said George. “I shall never forget it. Your brother didn’t seem any too pleased, either.”

Maud stopped laughing.

“It’s an awful position,” she said soberly. “The announcement will be in the Morning Post the day after tomorrow. And then the letters of congratulation will begin to pour in. And after that the presents. And I simply can’t see how we can convince them all that there has been a mistake.” Another aspect of the matter struck her. “It’s so hard on you, too.”

“Don’t think about me,” urged George. “Heaven knows I’d give the whole world if we could just let the thing go on, but there’s no use discussing impossibilities.” He lowered his voice. “There’s no use, either, in my pretending that I’m not going to have a pretty bad time. But we won’t discuss that. It was my own fault. I came butting in on your life of my own free will, and, whatever happens, it’s been worth it to have known you and tried to be of service to you.”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“I’m glad you think that.”

“The best and kindest friend any girl ever had. I wish …” She broke off. “Oh, well…”

There was a silence. In the castle somebody had begun to play the piano. Then a man’s voice began to sing.