“Danford, are you not, like me, struck by the incongruity of all this?”
“My lord, to-morrow, after breakfast, I shall submit to you some of my observations on the subject of entertainments. Look at these women seated on chairs, these men bending over them. Their movements are without grace and their hair badly dressed; we cannot have any more of the Patrick Campbell style in our modern mythology. Besides, there are too many people here, and in this Edenic attire the less people you group together, the better the effect.”
“I agree with you, Dan; but for God’s sake let us leave this room—I see someone approaching the piano. Let us be off, I am dying with thirst.” They edged their way down the staircase, not without trouble, for the crowd was coming back from partaking of refreshment, and climbing up the stairs with the renewed vigour that champagne and sandwiches give to drawing-room visitors. As they jammed sideways through the dining-room door, Lionel frowned at the discomfort, and Dan, finding himself breast to breast with his pupil, murmured to him,—
“I should abolish this barbarous fashion of going downstairs to feed at the altar of the tea-urn and bread-and-butter. Ah! at last we are through!”
“The buffet system has always revolted me”—a shiver ran down Lionel’s back. “That kind of social bar at which both sexes voraciously satisfy their internal craving has, to my mind, been a proof of the uncivilised state of Society.”
“But the whole thing is based on false pretences, my lord. Can I get you a glass of champagne?” and he ducked his head between two women who were talking loudly and munching incessantly. “Parties like these are Zoo entertainments at which the pranks of some animal are to be viewed; it is either a foreign prince, a cowboy, or a monkey.”
“Very often,” added Lionel, sipping his champagne, “it is not so original, and only consists of personal interests; this one is going to be introduced to a member of Parliament; a woman is going to meet her lover; a man to see his future bride. There is very little sociability in our social bazaars, I assure you.”
“Do you see that man leaning against the marble mantelpiece, my lord? That is old Watson telling a funny story to Lord Petersham.”