Part 13 (1/2)

Elfrida paused and threw back her cloak. ”How is it?”

she asked, posing for him with its folds gathered in either hand.

Ticke scanned her with leisurely appreciation. ”It is exquisite,” he articulated.

Elfrida gave him a look that might have intoxicated nerves less accustomed to dramatic effects.

”Then whistle me a cab,” she said.

Mr. Ticke whistled her a cab and put her into it. There was the least pressure of his long fingers as he took her hand, and Elfrida forbade herself to resent it. She felt her own beauty so much that night that she could not complain of an enthusiasm for it in such a _belle ame_ as Golightly.

They went up to tie drawing-room together, if Elfrida and the Cardiffs, and Lady Halifax immediately introduced to Miss Bell a hollow-cheeked gentleman with a long gray beard and bushy eyebrows as a fellow-countryman. ”You can compare your impressions of Hyde Park and St. Paul's,”

said Lady Halifax, ”but _don't_ call us 'Britishers.' It really isn't pretty of you.”

Elfrida discovered that the bearded gentleman was princ.i.p.al of a college in Florida, and corresponded regularly at one time with the late Sir William. ”It is to that,” said he ornately, ”that I owe the honor of joining this brilliant company to-night.” He went on to state that he was over there princ.i.p.ally on account of his health--acute dyspepsia he had, it seemed he'd got out of running order generally, regularly off the track. ”But I've just about concluded,” he continued, with a pathetic twinkle under his bushy brows, ”that I might have a worse reason for going back. What do you think of the meals in Victoria's country, Miss Bell? It seems to me sometimes that I'd give the whole British Museum for a piece of Johnny-cake.”

Elfrida reflected that this was not precisely what she expected to experience, and presently the hollow-cheeked Floridian was again at Lady Halifax's elbow for disposal, while the young lady whose appearance and nationality had given him so much room for hope smilingly drifted away from him. The Cardiffs were talking to a rosy and smooth-faced round-waistcoated gentleman just returned from Siberia about the unfortunate combination of accidents by which he lost the mail-train twice in three days, and Janet had just shaken hands with a short and cheerful-looking lady astrologist.

”Behind that large person in the heliotrope brocade--she's the wife of the _Daily Mercury_--there's a small sofa,”

Janet said in an undertone. ”I don't think she'll, occupy it, the-brocade looks so much, better standing--no, there she goes! Let us sit down.” As they crossed the room Janet added: ”In another minute we should have been shut up in a Russian prison. Daddy's incarcerated already.

And the man told all he knew about them in the public prints a month ago.” They sat down luxuriously together, and made ready, in their palm-shaded corner, to wreak the whole of their irresponsible youth upon Lady Halifax's often venerable and always considerable guests. The warm atmosphere of the room had the perceptible charge of personalities. People in almost every part of it were trying to look unconscious as they pointed out other people.

”Tell me about everybody--everybody,” said Elfrida.

”H'm! I don't see anybody, that _is_ anybody, at this moment. Oh, there's Sir Bradford Barker. Regard him well, for a brave soul is Sir Bradford, Frida mine.”

”A soldier? At this end of the century one can't feel an enthusiasm for killing.”

”Not in the least. A member of Parliament who writes verses and won't be intimidated by Punch into not publis.h.i.+ng them. And the man he is talking to has just done a history of the Semitic nations. He took me down to dinner last night, and we talked in the most intelligent manner about the various ways of preparing crabs. He liked them in five styles; I wouldn't subscribe to more than three.

That little man with the orchid that daddy has just seized is the author of the last of the 'Rulers of India'

series--Sir Somebody Something, K.C.S.I. My unconscionable humbug of a parent probably wants to get something approaching a fact out of him. Daddy's writing a thing for one of the reviews on the elective principle for India this week. He says he's the only writer on Indian subjects who isn't disqualified by ever having been there, and is consequently quite free of prejudice.”

”Ah!” said Elfrida, ”how _ba.n.a.l!_ I thought you said there would be something real here--somebody in whose garment's hem there would be virtue.”

”And I suggest the dress-coat of the historian of the Semitic nations!” Janet laughed. ”Well, if nearly all our poets are dead and our novelists in the colonies, I can't help it, can I! Here is Mr. Kendal, at all events.”

Kendal came up, with his perfect manners, and immediately it seemed to Elfrida that their little group became distinct from the rest, more important, more worthy of observation. Kendal never added anything to the unities of their conversation when he joined these two; he seemed rather to break up what they had to say to each other and attract it to himself. He always gave an accent to the life and energy of their talk; but he made them both self-conscious and watchful--seemed to put them, as it were, upon their guard against one another, in a way which Janet found vaguely distressing. It was invariably as if Kendal turned their intercourse into a joust by his mere presence as spectator; as if--Janet put it plainly to herself, reddening--they mutely asked him to bestow the wreath on one of them. She almost made up her mind to ask Elfrida where their understanding went to when John Kendal came up, but she had not found it possible yet. There was an embarra.s.sing chance that Elfrida did not feel their change of att.i.tude, which would entail nameless surmises.

”You ought to be at work,” Janet said severely to Kendal, ”back at Barbizon or in the fields somewhere. It won't be always June.”

”Ah, would you banish him!” Elfrida exclaimed daintily.

”Surely Hyde Park is rustic enough--in June.”

Kendal smiled into her face. ”It combines all the charm of the country,” he began.

”And the chic of the town,” Elfrida finished for him gaily. ”I know--I've seen the Boot Show.”

”Extremely frivolous,” Janet commented.