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something will turn up that you would much sooner do and so long a
notice presages a large and formal party. But what help is there? The
date has been fixed thus far away so that the guests bidden may be
certainly disengaged and it needs a very adequate excuse to prevent
your refusal from seeming churlish. You accept, and for a month the
engagement hangs over you with gloomy menace. It interferes with
your cherished plans. It disorganizes your life. There is really only
one way to cope with the situation and that is
to put yourself off at the last moment. But it is one that I have never
had the courage or the want of scruple to adopt.
It was with a faint sense of resentment then that one June
evening towards half past eight I left my lodging in Half Moon Street
to walk round the corner to dine with the Macdonalds... It was a
relief to me when I saw Thomas and Mary Warton come in and an
unexpected pleasure when I found on going in to dinner that I had
been placed next to Mary.
Thomas Warton was a portrait-painter who at one time had
had considerable success, but he had never fulfilled the promise of his
youth and had long ceased to be taken seriously by the critics. He
made an adequate income, but at the Private View of the Royal
Academy no one gave more than a passing glance at the dull but
conscientious portraits of foxhunting squires and prosperous
merchants which with unfailing regularity he sent to the annual
exhibition. One would have liked to admire his work because he was
an amiable and kindly man. If you happened to be a writer he was so
genuinely enthusiastic over anything you had done, so charmed with
any success you might have had, that you wished your conscience
would allow you to speak with decent warmth of his own
productions. It was impossible and you were driven to the last refuge
of the portrait painter's friend.
"It looks as if it were a marvellous likeness," you said. Mary
Warton had been in her day a well-known concert singer and she had
still the remains of a lovely voice. She must in her youth have been
very handsome. Now, at fifty-three, she had a haggard look. Her
features were rather mannish and her skin was weather-beaten; but
her short grey hair was thick and curly and her fine eyes were bright
with intelligence. She dressed picturesquely rather than fashionably
and she had a weakness for a string of beads and fantastic earrings.

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