The Dawn of Love

Chapter One ~ 1913-2

“If you think Molly is extravagant, you have no idea what I am expected to provide.”

“You can afford it.”

“Yes, but it is decidedly irritating when you know that a woman’s real interest in you is that you are a bottomless cornucopia.”

The Duke spoke bitterly and Perry laughed as he said,

“I remember an old uncle of mine saying to me once, ‘at my age I expect to pay’. By altering the text a little, I can tell you that as a Duke you cannot expect anything for nothing.”

The Duke did not reply and Perry went on,

“Stop thinking like an idealist and wanting to be loved for yourself. Just accept what the Gods have given you and be grateful for it. Incidentally, if any of the Gang heard this conversation between us, they would not believe it!”

The Duke chuckled.

“If it will please you, Perry, I will admit that you are right. I am making a fool of myself. We had better go and join the others. I expect they will have arrived by now.”

As he spoke, he looked at the clock over the mantelpiece and saw that it was a quarter-to-eight.

“Why do we not go out after dinner?” Perry suggested. “There are masses of parties that I expect we have all been invited to. Or what about seeing the last act at the Gaiety?”

“I have already seen it three times,” the Duke muttered.

“There are other theatres.”

“We are dining too late for that, but if you like we could drop in at Romano’s later and see if there is anybody there worth looking at.”

“All right,” Perry agreed, “but I should not mention it in front of Archie and the rest or they will all want to come too.”

“No, we will go alone,” the Duke promised.

He put down his empty glass and they walked along the lofty passage from the library to the Blue Drawing Room, where the Duke’s friends congregated before dinner.

Tonight it was to be a stag party for a number of the guests had come from the races and they wanted to talk about horses, which invariably bored the opposite s*x.

There were six men in the Blue Drawing Room and they all had glasses in their hands as the Duke and Perry came into the room.

“Hello, Alstone,” they all chorused, lifting their glasses. “We were beginning to think you had forgotten us.”

“No, I have not,” the Duke replied to them amiably. “Did you have a good day?”

A babble of voices answered him and he learnt that as far as the betting went, it had been a disaster, the favourites having been beaten at the post by outsiders, which nobody had thought to back.

“I am prepared to drown my sorrows,” Lord Carnforth said. “But before I do so, I want your opinion, Alstone, on an argument I was having with Hugo when you came into the room.”

The Duke took another glass of champagne and, seating himself in a chair, answered,

“I am prepared to adjudicate. What is the subject that you disagree on?”

“We were talking about this new play by George Bernard Shaw,” Sir Hugo Benson said. “It’s called Pygmalion. Have you seen it?”

“No,” the Duke replied. “What is it about?”

“It is about a phonetician who trains a flower girl from Covent Garden so cleverly that when she can speak correctly and is well-dressed, he introduces her into Society without anyone being suspicious of her.”

“Anything more ridiculous I have never heard!” Lord Carnforth expostulated. “I have rather admired Shaw in the past, because at least he has some interesting ideas, but this is sheer fantasy and an insult to the public’s intelligence.”

“That is your opinion,” Hugo Benson replied. “I say that given a brilliant teacher, a girl young enough to be pliable could possibly, if she had enough intelligence, deceive at any rate a large number of people.”

“They would have to be half-witted or morons!” Archie Carnforth exclaimed. “Do you imagine for one moment that any of us could be taken in by an outsider? No, of course not.”

“I suppose it might depend on how good-looking the girl was and how well-dressed,” Perry suggested.

“We are not talking about prostitutes,” Archie Carnforth replied. “We are talking about making a young girl from the gutter deceive intelligent people into believing that she is a Lady of Quality. That is the plot of Shaw’s play and I think it’s ridiculous!”

“I rather agree with you,” one of the other guests remarked. “You know as well as I do that in any Society it is easy to make gaffes that are exceedingly revealing to those in the know.”

“What do you mean by that?” someone enquired.

“Well, take a for instance,” Archie Carnforth interposed. “Supposing anybody tried to foist some outsider onto us, we would know immediately whether she was genuine or not. It would be like pretending that a paste necklace came from Cartier’s. We would recognise it as false at once. What do you think, Alstone?”

“I am inclined to agree with you,” the Duke replied. “At the same time I can understand that Shaw’s play could be interesting and I must go and see it sometime.”

“I should not waste your money,” Archie Carnforth said. “The whole thing is rubbish from start to finish!”

“I disagree with you,” Hugo Benson said sharply, “for apart from anything else, I think women are so adaptable that like a chameleon they can take their colour from whomever they are with.”

“That again is sheer nonsense,” Lord Carnforth said aggressively. “Women have to stick, as they always have, to their own environment, to the people with whom they have ties of blood and brain. Outside that they are helpless and they stand out as obviously as a pimple on the nose.”

Hugo rose to his feet.

“That is the most damned silly statement I have ever heard!” he boomed. “All through history women have acclimatised themselves and adjusted themselves into Societies that they have been introduced into by circumstances. What is more they have been successful in queening it, literally in some cases, over those who they have associated with,”

“I rather agree with Hugo on that,” the Duke remarked.

“I doubt if he can substantiate such a statement,” Archie Carnforth said.

“But can you?” another man asked.

“Well, look at it this way,” Lord Carnforth replied, “we know one another very well and so do the women whom Alstone entertains as he so generously entertains us. Do you imagine that a stranger with an entirely different background, suddenly thrown in amongst us, would not stand out isolated in a most embarrassing manner and be a crashing bore as far as we were concerned?”

“I see what you mean,” someone commented, “they would be out of it. They would not understand our jokes or be able to follow the conversation and it might in fact be as embarrassing for us as for them.”

“Exactly,” Archie continued. “And Hugo can have no answer to that.”

“Of course I have an answer,” Sir Hugo snapped. “No social set is static. New people enter it, both men and women, and, although at first they may feel slightly strange, they are very quickly absorbed.”

“I still say it’s not easy, unless they were born into the same social world and have the same interests as those they are associating with,” Archie Carnforth retorted.

He looked round the room before he added,

“Can you imagine if we had a man here tonight who had never been racing, never played bridge, not been to a Public School and had never met any of us before? Well, all I can say is that I would feel sorry for the poor devil.”

“But suppose he was a woman?” someone asked laughingly.

“Even if she was pretty,” Lord Carnforth replied, “or beautiful, if you like, she would still find herself at a loss if she did not know anyone we know and had never been to any of the places we go to and did not appreciate that Alstone is the best-looking Duke in the whole of Debrett’s Peerage!”

“She would be blind if she did not realise that,” Perry said and there was a roar of laughter.

“Where women are concerned it’s obviously easier than in the case of a man,” Hugo Benson said when the laughter subsided, “and that’s why I say that Shaw’s contention in Pygmalion is perfectly possible.”

He paused for a moment and then resumed,

“The Professor took much time and trouble to teach Eliza Doolittle to speak correctly, but after all he was a phonetician. Supposing we started with someone who was not born a lady, do you not suppose that very quickly she would feel at home with all of us? And we would accept her without any more questioning?”

“Impossible, completely and absolutely impossible!” Archie Carnforth thundered. “You are talking through your hat, Hugo! Can you see the type of woman you suggest being able to talk to Daisy or Kitty without them seeing through her and having her in tears within ten minutes of her appearance?”

“If she was pretentious, of course,” Hugo Benson said. “But if she was very young, like Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle, then I think that they would accept her.”

“Very young?” Archie Carnforth queried. “Good God, have you ever seen a debutante when she first leaves the schoolroom, gauche, inarticulate, hopelessly shy? It always astounds me how the mere act of marriage turns them into the witty charming creatures we all find so alluring.”

“I suppose marriage has somewhat the same effect as Shaw’s phonetician,” Hugo conceded. “Equally we are straying from the point. I am saying that it would be possible to train a complete outsider, like that damned horse that won this afternoon, to beat the favourite if it was put into the right race.”

The Duke was listening and it was obvious that he was becoming interested in what Sir Hugo was suggesting.

“What you are saying,” he said after a moment, “is that if a young girl was introduced into our particular circle, she would not remain gauche and tongue-tied as Archie suggests, but would soon be as polished and assured as we think ourselves to be.”

“As indeed we are!” Perry averred.

“Very well. As we are,” the Duke accepted.

“That is right,” Hugo said. “You have put it very well, Alstone, and what has Archie to say to that?”

“I say you are off your head and such a thing is completely impossible except on the stage. If you are so sure of yourself, Hugo, you had better prove it, as no one will believe you otherwise.”

There was a surprised silence.

Then the Duke said in an amused voice,

“That is a challenge, Hugo, and I for one am prepared to put a bet on it!”

“So am I,” a man exclaimed. “Who will make a book on it?”

“I will,” Perry announced.

He had seen that the idea interested the Duke and he thought it could be an excellent way to rouse him from his introspective mood.

‘At least this is something new,’ he thought to himself, ‘but Heaven knows if we can make it last.’

He walked across the room to an elegant Louis XIV writing table, took a piece of heavily embossed crested writing paper from the velvet box where it was kept and picked up a quill pen.

“Now then, Hugo,” he began, “you are not going to rat on us, I hope?”

“I have no intention of doing that,” Sir Hugo replied sharply, “but give me a moment to think.”

“What we are asking you to do,” the Duke said, as if he felt it should all be put clearly, “is to produce a girl, to save time she can be a lady by birth, who has had no contact with the Social world and no experience of anything that is familiar to us. Then in a very short space of time she has to become so much at home in our company that we accept her as one of ourselves. Is that right?”

Hugo Benson nodded.

Lord Carnforth declared with a smile,

“I am prepared to bet one thousand to one that Hugo fails dismally in his extremely speculative aspirations.”

“I am prepared to back you in that,” the man sitting next to him stated. “All right then, Hugo, I will bet a ‘monkey’ that the whole experiment fails utterly.”

“I accept your bets,” Sir Hugo smiled. “What about you, Alstone?”

“I intend to be the Judge,” the Duke replied, “and I think we must make it clear from the very beginning, Perry, that the Judge’s decision is final.”

“Yes, of course,” Perry agreed. “Any more bets? I personally intend to support Hugo.”

“Thank you, Perry, I have a feeling I shall need a friend.”

“You can count on me too,” another man came in.

But three other guests bet small sums against Sir Hugo.

“This is going to cost you rather a lot of money,” Perry said as he totted it up.

“I am not going to lose,” Sir Hugo said, “because, although I swear to you I had not thought of it when this argument started, I think I know exactly the right girl to take part in this experiment.”