The "most distressin'" old gentleman was sighted under a large white umbrella, moving slowly up the path a little below them, and Dodo insisted on inviting him to lunch, as it was certain that he had just left the table d'hôte. "He thought it simply charming of me," she said, as she came back. "He's quite forgiven Jack for shouting. Besides, I took him the Princess's compliments. He's English, you know."
Chapter Eighteen
Edith had stayed on with the Granthams till nearly the end of August. She declined to have breakfast with the family, after she had been there about a week, because she said it spoiled her mornings, and used to breakfast by herself at seven or half-past, which gave her extra' two hours at her music; and Lady Grantham complained of being wakened in the middle of the night by funeral marches. So Edith promised to play with the soft pedal down, which she never did.
At lunch Sir Robert used to make a point of asking her how she had got on, and described to her the admirable band in the Casino at Monte Carlo. He was always extremely genial to her, and, when she played to them in the evening, he would beat time with one hand. Now and then he even told her that she was not playing staccato enough, or that he heard it taken rather quicker at Bayreuth.
Dodo had written to Edith saying that she was coming to stay with her in September, and that Edith must be at home by the second, because she would probably come that day or the third. Edith happened to mention this one night in the hearing of Lady Grantham, who had been firing off home-truths at her husband and son like a minute gun, in a low, scornful voice. This habit of hers was rather embarrassing at times. At dinner, for instance, that evening, when he had been airing his musical views to Edith as usual, she had suddenly said,—
"You don't know how silly you're making yourself, Bob. Everyone knows that you can't distinguish one note from another!"
Though Edith felt on fairly intimate terms with the family, there were occasions when she didn't quite know how to behave. She attempted to continue her conversation with the Baronet, but Lady Grantham would not allow it.
"Edith, you know he doesn't know 'God save the Queen' when he hears it. You'll only make him conceited."
"She's only like this when she's here, Miss Staines," remarked Frank, alluding to his mother in the third person. "She's awfully polite when she's in London; she was to you the first week you were here, you know, but she can't keep it up. She's had a bad education. Poor dear!"
"Oh, you are a queer family," said Edith sometimes. "You really ought to have no faults left, any of you, you are so wonderfully candid to each other."
"Some people think mother so charming," continued Frank. "I never yet found out what her particular charm is."
On this occasion, when Edith mentioned that Dodo was coming to stay with her, Lady Grantham sounded truce at once, and left her unnatural offspring alone.
"I wish you'd ask me to come and stay with you, too," said she presently. "Bob and Frank will be going off partridge shooting all day, and Nora and I will be all alone, and they'll be sleepy in the evening, and snore in the drawing-room."
"I'd make her promise to be polite, Miss Staines," remarked Frank.
"I want to meet Lady Chesterford very much," she continued. "I hear she is so charming. She's a friend of yours; isn't she, Nora? Why have you never asked her to stay here? What's the good of having friends if you don't trot them out?"
"Oh, I've asked her more than once, mother," said Miss Grantham, "but she couldn't ever come."
"She's heard about ma at home," said Frank.
"I'm backing you, Frank," remarked the Baronet, who was still rather sore after his recent drubbing. "Go in and win, my boy."
"Bob, you shouldn't encourage Frank to be rude," said Lady Grantham. "He's bad enough without that."
"That's what comes of having a mamma with foreign manners. There's no word for 'thank you' in Spanish, is there, mother? Were you here with Charlie Broxton, Miss Staines? She told him he didn't brush his hair, or his teeth, and she hated little men. Charlie's five feet three. He was here as my friend."
"Do come," said Edith, when this skirmishing was over. "Nora will come with you, of course. We shall be only four. I don't suppose there will be anyone else at home."
"Hurrah," said Frank, "we'll have a real good time, father. No nagging in the evenings. We won't dress, and we'll smoke in the drawing-room."
"I long to see Dodo again," remarked Miss Grantham. "She's one of the few people I never get at all tired of."
"I know her by sight," said Lady Grantham. "She was talking very loud to Prince Waldenech when I saw her. It was at the Brettons'."
"Dodo can talk loud when she wants," remarked Miss Grantham. "Did you see her dance that night, mother? I believe she was splendid."
"She was doing nothing else," replied Lady Grantham.
"Oh, but by herself," said Edith. "She took a select party away, and tucked up her skirts and sent them all into raptures."
"That's so like Dodo," said Miss Grantham. "She never does anything badly. If she does it at all, it's good of its kind."
"I should like to know her," said Lady Grantham. The remark was characteristic.
Lady Grantham returned to the subject of Dodo in the course of the evening.
"Everyone says she is so supremely successful," she said to Edith. "What's her method?"
All successful people, according to Lady Grantham, had a method. They found out by experience what rôle suited them best, and they played it assiduously. To do her justice, there was a good deal of truth in it with regard to the people among whom she moved.
"Her method is purely to be dramatic, in the most unmistakable way," said Edith, after some consideration. "She is almost always picturesque. To all appearance her only method is to have no method. She seems to say and do anything that comes into her head, but all she says and does is rather striking. She can accommodate herself to nearly any circumstances. She is never colourless; and she is not quite like anybody else I ever met. She has an immense amount of vitality, and she is almost always doing something. It's hopeless to try and describe her; you will see. She is beautiful, unscrupulous, dramatic, warm-hearted, cold-blooded, and a hundred other things."
"Oh, you don't do her justice, Edith," remarked Miss Grantham. "She's much more than all that. She has got genius, or something very like it. I think Dodo gives me a better idea of the divine fire than anyone else."
"Then the divine fire resembles something not at all divine on occasions," observed Edith. "I don't think that the divine fire talks so much nonsense either."
Lady Grantham got up.
"I expect to be disappointed," she said. "Geniuses are nearly always badly dressed, or they wear spectacles, or they are very short. However, I shall come. Come, Nora, it's time to go to bed."
Lady Grantham never said "good-night" or "good-morning" to the members of her family. "They all sleep like hogs," she said, "and they
