Part 45 (2/2)
”Yes,” murmured Mr. Prohack, ”I've been feeling the danger ever since dinner. Will you dance with me,--not of course as a pleasure--I won't flatter myself--but as a means of salvation?”
The dowager bore down with a most definite suggestion for bridge in the card-room. Lady Ma.s.sulam definitely stated that she was engaged to dance....
Well, of course Lady Ma.s.sulam was something of a galleon herself; but she was a beautiful dancer; that is to say, she responded perfectly to the male volition; she needed no pus.h.i.+ng and no pulling; she moved under his will as lightly as a young girl. Her elaborately dressed hair had an agreeable scent; her complexion was a highly successful achievement; everything about her had a quiet and yet a dazzling elegance which had been obtained regard-less of expense. As for her figure, it was on a considerable scale, but its important contours had a soft and delicate charm. And all that was nothing in the estimation of Mr. Prohack compared with her glance. At intervals in the fox-trot he caught the glance. It was arch, flirtatious, eternally youthful, challenging; and it expressed pleasure in the fox-trot. Mr. Prohack was dancing better than ever before in his career as a dancer. She made him dance better.
She was not the same woman whom he had first met at lunch at the Grand Babylon Hotel. She was a new revelation, packed with possibilities. Mr.
Prohack recalled his wife's phrase: ”You know she adores you.” He hadn't known. Honestly such an idea had not occurred to him. But did she adore him? Not ”adore”--naturally--but had she a bit of a fancy for him?
Mr. Prohack became the youngest man in the room,--an extraordinary case of rejuvenescence. He surveyed the room with triumph. He sniffed up the bra.s.sy and clicking music into his vibrating nostrils. He felt no envy of any man in the room. When the band paused he clapped like a child for another dose of fox-trot. At the end of the third dose they were both a little breathless and they had ices. After a waltz they both realised that excess would be imprudent, and returned to the lounge.
”I wish you'd tell me something about my son,” said Mr. Prohack. ”I think you must be the greatest living authority on him.”
”Here?” exclaimed Lady Ma.s.sulam.
”Anywhere. Any time.”
”It would be safer at my house,” said Lady Ma.s.sulam. ”But before I go I must just write a little note to Lord Partick. He will expect it.”
That was how she invited him to The Lone Cedar, the same being her famous bungalow on the Front.
IV
”Your son,” said Lady Ma.s.sulam, in a familiar tone, but most rea.s.suringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful capacity, ”your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now playing a dangerous game--far more dangerous than he imagines, and he will not be warned. He is selling something he hasn't got before he knows what price he will have to pay for it.”
”Ah!” breathed Mr. Prohack.
They were sitting together in the richly ornamented bungalow drawing-room, by the fire. Lady Ma.s.sulam sat up straight Sn her sober and yet daring evening frock. Mr. Prohack lounged with formless grace in a vast easy-chair neighbouring a whiskey-and-soda. She had not asked him to smoke; he did not smoke, and he had no wish to smoke. She was a gorgeously mature specimen of a woman. He imagined her young, and he decided that he preferred the autumn to the spring. She went on talking of finance.
”She is moving in regions that Eve can never know,” he thought. ”But how did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?”
The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him. Her appreciation or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a vehicle for the expression of her personality. He had never met such a woman. He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself. He looked surrept.i.tiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied sumptuosity aptly ill.u.s.trated her mind and heart. His own heart was full of quite new sensations.
”Of course,” she was saying, ”if Charles is to become the really great figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and perhaps it is incurable.”
”I know what that is,” said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.
”What is it?” Her glance met his.
”His confounded reserve, lack of elasticity, lack of adaptability. The old British illusion that everything will come to him who won't budge.
Why, it's a ten-horse-power effort for him even to smile!”
Lady Ma.s.sulam seemed to leap from her chair, and she broke swiftly into French:
”Oh! You comprehend then, you? If you knew what I have suffered in your terrible England! But you do not suspect what I have suffered! I advance myself. They retire before me. I advance myself again. They retire again. I open. They close. Do they begin? Never! It is always I who must begin! Do I make a natural gesture--they say to themselves, 'What a strange woman! How indiscreet! But she is foreign.' They lift their shoulders. Am I frank--they pity me. They give themselves never! They are shut like their lips over their long teeth. Ah, but they have taught me. In twenty years have I not learnt the lesson? There is n.o.body among you who can be more shut-tight than me. I flatter myself that I can be more terrible than any English woman or man. You do not catch me now!
But what a martyrdom!... I might return to France? No! I am become too English. In Paris I should resemble an _emigree_. And people would say: 'What is that? It is like nothing at all. It has no name.' Besides, I like you English. You are terrible, but one can count on you.... _Vous y etes?_”
”_J'y suis_,” replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.
Lady Ma.s.sulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped.
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