DINING

Lady Alison Charwell, born Heathfield, daughter of the first Earl of Campden, and wife to Lionel Charwell, K.C., Michael’s somewhat young uncle, was a delightful Englishwoman brought up in a set accepted as the soul of society. Full of brains, energy, taste, money, and tinctured in its politico-legal ancestry by blue blood, this set was linked to, but apart from ‘Snooks’ and the duller haunts of birth and privilege. It was gay, charming, free-and-easy, and, according to Michael, “Snobbish, old thing, aesthetically and intellectually, but they’ll never see it. They think they’re the top notch—quick, healthy, up-to-date, well-bred, intelligent; they simply can’t imagine their equals. But you see their imagination is deficient. Their really creative energy would go into a pint pot. Look at their books—they’re always ON something—philosophy, spiritualism, poetry, fishing, themselves; why, even their sonnets dry up before they’re twenty-five. They know everything—except mankind outside their own set. Oh! they work—they run the show—they have to; there’s no one else with their brains, and energy, and taste. But they run it round and round in their own blooming circle. It’s the world to them—and it might be worse. They’ve patented their own golden age; but it’s a trifle flyblown since the war.”

Alison Charwell—in and of this world, so spryly soulful, debonnaire, free, and cosy—lived within a stone’s throw of Fleur, in a house pleasant, architecturally, as any in London. Forty years old, she had three children and considerable beauty, wearing a little fine from mental and bodily activity. Something of an enthusiast, she was fond of Michael, in spite of his strange criticisms, so that his matrimonial venture had piqued her from the start. Fleur was dainty, had quick natural intelligence—this new niece was worth cultivation. But, though adaptable and assimilative, Fleur had remained curiously unassimilated; she continued to whet the curiosity of Lady Alison, accustomed to the close borough of choice spirits, and finding a certain poignancy in contact with the New Age on Fleur’s copper floor. She met with an irreverence there, which, not taken too seriously, flipped her mind. On that floor she almost felt a back number. It was stimulating.