Part 19 (1/2)
And, not waiting for an answer, she stood and recited, with a surprisingly correct and sure p.r.o.nunciation of difficult words to show that she had, in fact, received some training:
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently o'er a perfumed sea The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native sh.o.r.e.
On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy cla.s.sic face, Thy naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, To the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! In your brilliant window niche, How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche from the regions which Are Holy Land!
The uncomprehended marvellous poem, having startled the whole room, ceased, and the rag-time resumed its sway. A drunken ”Bravo!”
came from one table, a cheer from another. Young Alice nodded an acknowledgment and sank loosely into her chair, exhausted by her last effort against the spell of champagne and liqueurs. And the naive, big Major, bewitched by the child, subsided into soft contact with her, and they almost tearfully embraced. A waiter sedately replaced a gla.s.s which Alice's drooping, negligent hand had over-turned, and wiped the cloth. G.J. was silent. The whole table was silent.
”_Est-ce de la grande poesie_?” asked Christine of G.J., who did not reply. Christine, though she condemned Alice as now disgusting, had been taken aback and, in spite of herself, much impressed by the surprising display of elocution.
”_Oui_,” said Molder, in his clipped, self-conscious Oxford French.
Two couples from other tables were dancing in the middle of the room.
Molder demanded, leaning towards her:
”I say, do you dance?”
”But certainly,” said Christine. ”I learnt at the convent.” And she spoke of her convent education, a triumphant subject with her, though she had actually spent less than a year in the convent.
After a few moments they both rose, and Christine, bending over G.J., whispered lovingly in his ear:
”Dear, thou wilt not be jealous if I dance one turn with thy young friend?”
She was addressing the wrong person. Already throughout the supper Aida, ignoring the fact that the whole structure of civilised society is based on the rule that at a meal a man must talk first to the lady on his right and then to the lady on his left and so on infinitely, had secretly taken exception to the periodic intercourse--and particularly the intercourse in French--between Christine and Molder, who was officially ”hers”. That these two should go off and dance together was the supreme insult to her. By ill-chance she had not sufficient physical command of herself.
Christine felt that Molder would have danced better two hours earlier; but still he danced beautifully. Their bodies fitted like two parts of a jigsaw puzzle that have discovered each other. She realised that G.J. was middle-aged, and regret tinctured the ecstasy of the dance.
Then suddenly she heard a loud, imploring cry in her ear:
”Christine!”
She looked round, pale, still dancing, but only by inertia.
n.o.body was near her. The four people at the Major's table gave no sign of agitation or even of interest. The Major still had Alice more or less in his arms.
”What was that?” she asked wildly.
”What was what?” said Molder, at a loss to understand her extraordinary demeanour.
And she heard the cry again, and then again:
”Christine! Christine!”
She recognised the voice. It was the voice of the officer whom she had taken to Victoria Station one Sunday night months and months ago.
”Excuse me!” she said, slipping from Molder's hold, and she hurried out of the room to the ladies' cloak-room, got her wraps, and ran past the watchful guardian, through the dark, dubious portico of the club into the street. The thing was done in a moment, and why she did it she could not tell. She knew simply that she must do it, and that she was under the dominion of those unseen powers in whom she had always believed. She forgot the Guinea-Fowl as completely as though it had been a pre-natal phenomenon with her.