Part 11 (1/2)

”You don't want me to?”

Lilian shook her head slowly.

”All right, then. I won't. Now I'll tell you the whole business in a nutsh.e.l.l. My sister's a great woman. She's perfectly mad, but she's a great woman. Only where I'm concerned she's always most monstrously unscrupulous. I'm her religion--always was, but more than ever since I bought that amusing business. She was dying of boredom. It saved her.

When I got myself divorced she was absolutely delighted. She had me to herself again. Her jealousy where I'm concerned is ferocious. She can't help it, but it's ferocious. Tigresses aren't in it with her. She was jealous of you, and she'd determined to clear you out. I've perceived that for a long time.”

”But why should she be jealous of me? I'm sure I've never----”

”Well, she's d.a.m.ned clever, Isabel is, and she's seen that I'm in love with you. Gone--far gone!”

He spoke with strange detachment, as of another person.

The thud-thud of Lilian's heart appalled her. She blushed down to her neck. Her hand shook. The restaurant and all its inhabitants vanished in a cloud and then slowly reappeared. Her confusion of mind was terrible. She was shocked, outraged, by the negligently brutal candour of the avowal; and at the same time she was thinking: ”I'd no idea that any man was as marvellous as this man is, and I don't think there can possibly be another man quite as marvellous anywhere. And his being in love with me is the most ravis.h.i.+ng, lovely, tender--tender--tender thing that ever happened to any girl. And, of course, he is in love with me.

He's not pretending. _He_ would never pretend....”

She wanted to be unconscious for a little while. She did not know it, but her beautiful face was transfigured by the interplay of shyness, modesty, soft resentment, grat.i.tude, ecstasy and determination. Her head was bowed and she could not raise it. Neither could she utter a single word. She looked divine, and thought she looked either silly or sulky.

Mr. Grig glanced aside. A glimpse of paradise had dazzled the eternal youth in him. The waiter bore away the soup-plates.

”Perhaps that's enough about business for the present,” said Mr. Grig at length. ”Let's talk about something else. But before we start I must just tell you you're the most stylish creature in this restaurant. I was staggered when I came in and saw you. Staggered!”

She did raise her head.

”Why?” she asked with exquisite gentleness.

Mr. Grig, overwhelmed, offered no response.

As for her determination, it amounted to this: ”I will be as marvellous as he is. I will be more marvellous. I will be queen, slave, everything. He doesn't guess what is in store for him.” She did not think about the difference in their ages, nor about marriage; nor did she even consider whether or not she was in love with him. Chiefly, she was grateful. And what she saw in front of her was a sublime vocation.

Her mood was ever so faintly tinged with regret because they were not both in evening dress.

VIII

Philosophy of the Grey-haired

The evening and all Lilian's emotions seemed to start afresh. The look of the restaurant was changed. The tables had been cleared of the grosser apparatus of eating, and showed white cloths with only white plates, fruit, small gla.s.ses, small cups, ash-trays. Most of the waiters had vanished; the remainder stood aside, moveless, in.o.btrusive, watchful. The diners had abandoned themselves to intimacy or the sweet coma of digestion. Some talked rather loudly, others in a murmur.

Women leaned back, or put their elbows on the table, letting cigarette smoke float upwards across their eyes. A few tables were already deserted, and the purity of their emptiness seemed bafflingly to demonstrate that events may happen and leave behind absolutely no trace.

Without consulting Lilian Mr. Grig gave an order and two small gla.s.ses were slowly filled to the brim with a green liquid. Lilian recognized it for the very symbol of delicate licence. She was afraid to sip, lest she might be disillusioned concerning it, and also lest the drinking of it might malignly hasten the moment of departure of the last train for Brighton.

Mr. Grig was of those who murmured. His wrists lay one over the other on the table and his face was over the table; and it seemed strange, so low and even was his speech, that Lilian could catch every word, as she did. The people at the next table could have heard nothing. All the animation and variety were in his features, none in his tone. He had been telling her about Brighton. He saw the town of Brighton as a living, developing whole, discussing it as a single organism, showing how its evolution was still in active process, and making the small group of men who were exploiting it and directing it appear like creative giants and the ma.s.s of inhabitants like midgets utterly unconscious of their own manipulation. And in his account of the vast affair there was no right and no wrong; there were merely the dark aims and the resolution of the giants determined to wax in power and to imprint themselves on the munic.i.p.ality. Lilian had never heard such revealing talk; she could not follow all of it, but she was fascinated, wonderstruck; profoundly impressed by the quality of the brain opposite to her and the contemptibleness of her own ignorance of life; amazed and enraptured that this brain could be interested in herself. Mr. Grig related the story of the middle-aged proprietor of one of the chief hotels who had married a young wife.

”He had broken up his family, and the family is the real unit of society--and there was no need for it! No need at all! But then, you see, he'd never had time in his existence to understand that a middle-aged man who has already had experience of marriage and marries a girl young enough to be his daughter is either a coward or a fool or without taste. He would only do it because he's mad for her, and that's the very reason for not doing it. When romance comes in that way it wants the sauce of secrecy and plotting--the double life, and so on.

The feeling of naughtiness--naughtiness is simply a marvellous feeling; you must sometimes have guessed that, haven't you?--perversity, doing society in the eye. It's a continual excitement. Of course, it needs cleverness on both sides. You haven't got to be clumsy over it. The woman runs risks, but nothing to the risks she'd run in marriage. And if the thing dies out in her, and they haven't been clumsy, she's free as air to start again. She's got her experience gratis, and there's a mysterious flavour about her that's nearly the most enticing flavour on earth. Naturally people will talk. Let 'em. No harm in rumour. In fact, the more rumour the better.” He went on with no pause. ”You've not looked at me for about five hours. Look at me now and tell me you're disgusted. Tell me you're frightened.”

She lifted her eyes and gazed at him for a few seconds, not smiling.