Part 15 (1/2)
She thought it almost certain that Lord Mackworth would be somewhere in the rooms; she desired above everything to avoid the danger incident to meeting him face to face; but she walked away. All the tables were the same as the table at which she had left Felix--crowded, entranced, self-concentrated and perfectly unintelligible; and at every table the croupier was continually dropping counters into a little hole, and tearing up tickets and throwing the fragments behind him on to the crimson carpet. The sole difference between the tables was that some held more banknotes than others. The heaps of blue thousand-franc notes piled about one table caused Lilian to halt and gaze.
”Some ready there!” said a very young man to a fierce old woman.
”Ah! But you should have seen it in the days of gold plaques before the war. You could call a hundred-franc gold piece 'ready,' then, if you like.” The old woman sighed grimly.
Lilian pa.s.sed on under their combined stare. She glimpsed herself in mirrors, as once she used to glimpse herself in the shop windows of Bond Street, and was satisfied with the vision. Her walk was as remarkable as her beauty. Yes, she knew how to put her feet on the ground and how to make her body float smoothly and evenly above the moving limbs. Her spirit rose as she began to suspect that no woman in the rooms was getting more notice than herself. Fancy Felix being absorbed in his gambling! She had forgotten Lord Mackworth; she had decided that he was not in the rooms; and then suddenly, sprung from nothingness like a ghost, he stood in her path between the wall and the end of a table.
She was disposed to retreat; besides, his attention was fixed on the table and she might get by him unperceived. But just as she approached he turned. Although she might have ignored him, and in the circ.u.mstances was indeed ent.i.tled to do so, she did not because she could not. She blushed, only slightly, acknowledged their acquaintance with a faint smile, then stopped, but did not advance her hand to meet his.
”Ought I to have shaken hands?” she thought anxiously. All her quickly acquired worldliness of manner left her in an instant. She was the typewriting girl again, wearing the wristlets. He had all the physical splendour that she remembered, and the style, and the benignant large-hearted tolerance of an extensive sinner. As he looked at her he drew back his chin and made several chins of it in just the old way. He was enormous, superb, and perfect. And if not a boy he had real youth; once more she had to contrast his youth with Felix's specious sprightliness. She fought on behalf of Felix in her mind, and on points Felix won; but in her mind Lord Mackworth had supporters which derided all reasoning. And as she fronted him the old frightful apprehension was powerfully revived, and it seemed to be building a wall between her and the young man, and she was intensely dejected beneath the brightness of her demeanour.
”Very hot here, isn't it?” she was saying. (”A stupid typewriting girl remark,” she reflected as it slipped out.)
”A great change since I was here last just before the war,” said Lord Mackworth gaily.
”Warmer, do you mean?”
”No! Much more cheery now. Jollier!” He waved a hand towards the company in general.
”Oh, _that_!” said Lilian, marshalling all her forces in a determined effort to lose the typewriting girl in the woman of the world. ”You mean the company.” She shrugged her shoulders, borrowing some of his tolerance, ”Of course, you know they've been brought here on purpose.
It's all part of a great battle for the command of the coast.”
The effort succeeded beyond her hopes. Lord Mackworth was clearly impressed; he put questions which Lilian answered out of the mouth of Felix. Strange that this man should be he who had inexcusably omitted to pay his trumpery bill at Clifford Street, the man through whose unconscious agency she had been unjustly cast into the street! However, the past did not in the least affect her feeling for him. What she most vividly recalled was that she had striven to serve him and had served him. He made no reference--doubtless from delicacy--to the night of their meeting; nor did he betray even the very smallest surprise at seeing her, the typewriting girl, exquisitely and expensively dressed, in the finest baccarat rooms on the Riviera. (Of course, she might be married, or have inherited a fortune--he could think as he chose.)
They went on talking and then a pause came, and Lord Mackworth said bluntly:
”I saw you from the yacht this afternoon.”
”Oh! What yacht?”
”The _Qita_.”
”The big one? Is it yours?”
”Oh lord, no! She belongs to my friend Macmusson--we dined together here to-night.”
”It must be terribly big. I suppose you have an enormous party on board?”
”Not a bit. Only Macmusson and his three old aunts, and his niece--adopted daughter. n.o.body else.”
”That's the girl you were making love to,” Lilian's heart accused him.
”She's going to be very rich and she'll pay all your family debts.
That's what it is. But what difference does it make?” her heart added, ”You are you.” And aloud: ”I heard the yacht was leaving to-night.”
”She was. But I persuaded old Macmusson to stop another day.”
”Really!”
”And do you know why?”