T had been the most wonderful autumn for Mrs. Amy Bondham: never before had she lived so exclusively in the society of the great and the ennobled. She had spent October in a round (you might call it a merry-go-round) of visits; for though she had originally planned only four week-ends, she had made herself so popular at each of them that some member of the party had insisted, or at least consented, that she should spend the intervening days before her next engagement at a Castle or a Grange or something very moated and hereditary. Then, when the world began to stream back to London again in November, it was her turn, and every day the hospitable table in her house in Mount Street was laid for intimate and high-born little parties. Though still fond of professional distinction, she had dropped, but only temporarily, her literary, artistic and histrionic friends, whom she meant to pick up again in the close time for the high-born circle which flocked to the Riviera after Christmas.
Just now her aim and ambition was the high-born, and the pages of her "Peerage," in which she put a little cross in the margin opposite the names of those who had entertained her or been entertained by her, became full of these discreet little pencil-marks, and pleasantly swollen became the album of picture postcards into which she gummed, with absolutely scrupulous honesty, only the photographs of mansions which she had actually visited, inscribed with the appropriate date. The rumour, therefore, that she bought these in indiscriminate packets, as illustrating the houses at which she would like to stay, was an unfounded fabrication, devised by the jealousy of less fortunate competitors.
Her circular and devoted little husband Christopher had accompanied her on her progress in October, but he was not so strong as she, and also was quite unable to resist the pleasures cf the table. Throughout November, in spite of the obedient walks he took daily round and round the park, he remained very liverish and gouty; and when, early in December, Amy was about to set forth on the visit which really was the crown of all her social attainments, he was persuaded by her to go off to Bath, and try to get fit again for the Christmas Campaign. This crowning visit was to the Duke of Whitby, and though it was certainly now coming off, it had required all Amy's tact and perseverance to effect it, for the Duchess had continued to be impervious to her hints for an unusually long time. But finally doggedness carried the day, the Duchess had yielded, and had asked her to Doncaster Castle while she was entertaining a bevy of distinguished savants from the Psychological Conference in York. It was not precisely the sort of party which Amy would have chosen, but if it had been a party of chimney-sweeps and chiropodists she would have eagerly accepted. She could murmur her "Nunc Dimittis" now, and see about all the clever people she had dropped.
She and Christopher dined alone for the first time since September, as Amy delightedly remembered, on the evening before he went to Bath and she to Doncaster. For once she had broken her rule about the picture-postcard album, and had allowed herself to buy four striking views of the magnificent Norman pile in which she would be dining next night, and subsequently sleeping, if excitement would allow her to do so.
"I may as well put them in now," she said, "because they will just fill up the last page in my book. I must get a new one when I come back, for we're going to Eagles for Christmas and Tenterden Grange for the New Year."
"Better not, Posie," he said. "It may bring bad luck. The Duchess may put you off to-morrow morning. You've not got there yet."
She laughed.
"You superstitious old man!" she said. "That's gout. It's just acidity. Morbid ideas like that are purely physical.—Where's the gum-pot?—My dear, what a wonderful autumn it has been. Look, the book was nearly new in September."
She turned over the rich pages.
"All those!" she said. "I think I shall have it bound in a manner more worthy of its contents. I wonder what we shall have in the next volume?"
She came and sat on the hearth-rug, propped her back against the arm of his chair, and stretched her feet out to the blaze.
"Perhaps there won't be a next volume," she said, "for really, Christopher, I feel I've been very frivolous all the autumn."
The words "perhaps there won't be a next" gave Christopher a queer little shudder, but that probably was acidity too.
"You bet there will, Posie," he said, "if there are enough fine houses left in England to fill it. You have become a fashionable little dame."
She sighed.