Conversation does not flourish at Simpson's. Only two of all those present on this occasion showed any disposition toward chattiness. They were Aline Peters and her escort.
"The girl you ought to marry," Aline was saying, "is Joan Valentine."
"The girl I am going to marry," said George Emerson, "is Aline Peters."
For answer, Aline picked up from the floor beside her an illustrated paper and, having opened it at a page toward the end, handed it across the table.
George Emerson glanced at it disdainfully. There were two photographs on the page. One was of Aline; the other of a heavy, loutish-looking youth, who wore that expression of pained glassiness which Young England always adopts in the face of a camera.
Under one photograph were printed the words: "Miss Aline Peters, who is to marry the Honorable Frederick Threepwood in June"; under the other: "The Honorable Frederick Threepwood, who is to marry Miss Aline Peters in June." Above the photographs was the legend: "Forthcoming International Wedding. Son of the Earl of Emsworth to marry American heiress." In one corner of the picture a Cupid, draped in the Stars and Stripes, aimed his bow at the gentleman; in the other another Cupid, clad in a natty Union Jack, was drawing a bead on the lady.
The subeditor had done his work well. He had not been ambiguous. What he intended to convey to the reader was that Miss Aline Peters, of America, was going to marry the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, son of the Earl of Emsworth; and that was exactly the impression the average reader got.
George Emerson, however, was not an average reader. The subeditor's work did not impress him.
"You mustn't believe everything you see in the papers," he said. "What are the stout children in the one-piece bathing suits supposed to be doing?"
"Those are Cupids, George, aiming at us with their little bow— a pretty and original idea."
"Why Cupids?"
"Cupid is the god of love."
"What has the god of love got to do with it?"
Aline placidly devoured a fried potato. "You're simply trying to make me angry," she said; "and I call it very mean of you. You know perfectly well how fatal it is to get angry at meals. It was eating while he was in a bad temper that ruined father's digestion. George, that nice, fat carver is wheeling his truck this way. Flag him and make him give me some more of that mutton."
George looked round him morosely.
"This," he said, "is England—this restaurant, I mean. You don't need to go any farther. Just take a good look at this place and you have seen the whole country and can go home again. You may judge a country by its meals. A people with imagination will eat with imagination. Look at the French; look at ourselves, The Englishman loathes imagination. He goes to a place like this and says: 'Don't bother me to think. Here's half a dollar. Give me food—any sort of food—until I tell you to stop.' And that's the principle on which he lives his life. 'Give me anything, and don't bother me!' That's his motto."
"If that was meant to apply to Freddie and me, I think you're very rude. Do you mean that any girl would have done for him, so long as it was a girl?"
George Emerson showed a trace of confusion. Being honest with himself, he had to admit that he did not exactly know what he did mean—if he meant anything. That, he felt rather bitterly, was the worst of Aline. She would never let a fellow's good things go purely as good things; she probed and questioned and spoiled the whole effect. He was quite sure that when he began to speak he had meant something, but what it was escaped him for the moment. He had been urged to the homily by the fact that at a neighboring table he had caught sight of a stout young Briton, with a red face, who reminded him of the Honorable Frederick Threepwood. He mentioned this to Aline.
"Do you see that fellow in the gray suit—I think he has been sleeping in it—at the table on your right? Look at the stodgy face. See the glassy eye. If that man sandbagged your Freddie and tied him up somewhere, and turned up at the church instead of him, can you honestly tell me you would know the difference? Come, now, wouldn't you simply say, 'Why, Freddie, how natural you look!' and go through the ceremony without a suspicion?"
"He isn't a bit like Freddie."
"My dear girl, there isn't a man in this restaurant under the age of thirty who isn't just like Freddie. All Englishmen look exactly alike, talk exactly alike, and think exactly alike."
"And you oughtn't to speak of him as Freddie. You don't know him."
"Yes, I do. And, what is more, he expressly asked me to call him Freddie. 'Oh, dash it, old top, don't keep on calling me Threepwood! Freddie to pals!' Those were his very words."
"George, you're making this up."
"Not at all. We met last night at the National Sporting Club. Porky Jones was going twenty rounds with Eddie Flynn. I offered to give three to one on Eddie. Freddie, who was sitting next to me, took me in fivers. And if you want any further proof of your young man's pin-headedness; mark that! A child could have seen that Eddie had him going. Eddie comes from Pittsburgh—God bless it! My own home town!"
"Did your Eddie win?"
"You don't listen—I told you he was from Pittsburgh. And afterward Threepwood chummed up with me and told me that to real pals like me he was Freddie. I was a real pal, as I understood it, because I would have to wait for my money. The fact was, he explained, his old governor had cut off his bally allowance."
"You're simply trying to poison my mind against him; and I don't think it's very nice of you, George."
"What do you mean—poison your mind? I'm not poisoning your mind; I'm simply telling you a few things about him. You know perfectly well that you don't love him, and that you aren't going to marry him—and that you are going to marry me."
"How do you know I don't love my Freddie?"
"If you can look me straight in the eyes and tell me you do, I will drop the whole thing and put on a little page's dress and carry your train up the aisle. Now, then!"
"And all the while you're talking you're letting my carver get away," said Aline.
George called to the willing priest, who steered his truck toward them. Aline directed his dissection of the shoulder of mutton by word and gesture.
"Enjoy yourself!" said Emerson coldly.
"So I do, George; so I do. What excellent meat they have in England!"
"It all comes from America," said George patriotically. "And, anyway, can't you be a bit more spiritual? I don't want to sit here discussing food products."
"If you were in my position, George, you wouldn't want to talk about anything else. It's doing him a world of good, poor dear; but there are times when I'm sorry Father ever started this food-reform thing. You don't know what it means for a healthy young girl to try and support life on nuts and grasses."
"And why should you?" broke out Emerson. "I'll tell you what it is, Aline—you are perfectly absurd about your father. I don't want to say anything against him to you, naturally; but—"
"Go ahead, George. Why this diffidence? Say what you like."
"Very well, then, I will. I'll give it to you straight. You know quite well that you have let your father bully you since you were in short frocks. I don't say it is your fault or his fault, or anybody's fault; I just state it as a fact. It's temperament, I suppose. You are yielding and he is aggressive; and he has taken advantage of it.
"We now come to this idiotic Freddie-marriage business. Your father has forced you into that. It's all very well to say that you are a free agent and that fathers don't coerce their daughters nowadays. The trouble is that your father does. You let him do what he likes with you. He has got you hypnotized; and you won't break away from this Freddie foolishness because you can't find the nerve. I'm going to help you find the nerve. I'm coming down to Blandings Castle when you go there on Friday."