Part 16 (1/2)
”Oh, he's blus.h.i.+ng!” Chrystie t.i.ttered as she returned the bow. ”How perfectly sweet!”
The first sight of them had given Mark a shock as violent as if he had met them in an exploration of the South Pole or the heart of a tropical forest. It took him some minutes to recover, during which he stood rooted, only his head moving as he watched them borne into the foyer, there caught in merging side currents and carried toward the main entrance. It was not till they were almost at the door, Chrystie's high blonde crest glistening above lower and less splendid ones, that he came to life. He did it suddenly, with a sharp reaction, and started in impetuous pursuit. His first movement--a spirited rush--carried him into a family, a compact phalanx moving solidly upon the exit. He ran into someone, a child, stammered apologies, placated an irate mother, then craning his neck for his quarry, saw the high blonde head in the distance against the darkness of the street.
The check was more than physical. It caused a sudden uprush of his old timidity and he stood irresolute, in everybody's way, spying at the distant golden head. It seemed as if they had wanted to avoid him, they had gone so quickly, just bowed and been carried on--if only Chrystie would look back and smile. Standing on his toes, jostled and elbowed, he caught a glimpse of them, all three, outside the door. They appeared preoccupied, the two girls talking across Aunt Ellen, with no backward glances for a young man struggling to reach them--anyone could have seen they had forgotten his existence. With a set face he turned and made for the side exit. They had no use for him; he would go home to the place where he belonged.
The bitterness of this thought carried him through the side exit and there left him. Whatever they felt and however they acted, it was his duty to see them on the car. Boor! clod! goat! He could still catch them if he went round to the front, and he started to do it, facing the emerging throng, battling his way through. That was too slow; he backed out, turned into the street and ran, charging through streams that had broken from the main torrent and were trickling away in various directions. Rounding the corner he saw he was not too late. There, standing on the curb, were Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, conspicuous in their ornamental clothes, looking in the opposite direction up the street's animated vista. He followed their eyes and saw a sight that made him halt--Lorry, her satin-slippered feet stepping delicately along the grimy pavements, her pale skirts emerging from the rich sheath of her cloak. Beside her, responding to a beckoning hand, a carriage rattled down upon Chrystie and Aunt Ellen. They had a carriage and she had had to go and find it!
With a heart seared by flaming self-scorn, Mark turned and slunk away. He slid into the crowd's enveloping darkness as into a friendly shelter. He wanted to hide from them, crawl off unseen like the worm he was. This was the least violent term he applied to himself as he walked home, cursing under his breath, wondering if in the length and breadth of the land there lived a greater fool than he. There _was_ a mitigating circ.u.mstance--he had never dreamed of their having a carriage. In his experience carriages, like clergymen, were only a.s.sociated with weddings and funerals. He thought of it afterward in his room, but it didn't help much--in fact it only accentuated the difference between them. Girls who had carriages when they went to the Albion were not the kind for lawyers'
clerks to dream of.
Inside the carriage, Aunt Ellen insisted on an understanding with the livery stable man:
”Running about in the mud in the middle of the night--it's ridiculous!
Lorry, are your slippers spoiled?”
”No, Aunt Ellen. There isn't any mud.”
”There might just as well have been. Any time in the winter there's liable to be mud. Will you see Crowley tomorrow and tell him we won't have any more drivers who go away and hide in side streets?”
”Yes, I'll tell him, but he wasn't hiding, he was only a little way from the entrance.”
”Having no man in the family certainly _is_ inconvenient,” came from Chrystie, and then with sudden recollection: ”What happened to Marquis de Lafayette? Why didn't he come and get it?”
”I don't know, I'm sure.” Lorry was looking out of the window.
”Well, I must say if we ask him to our parties the least he can do is to find our hacks.”
”I think so, too,” said Aunt Ellen. ”The young men of today seem to have forgotten their manners.”
”Forgotten them!” echoed Chrystie. ”You can't forget what you never had.”
”Oh, do keep quiet,” came unexpectedly from Lorry. ”The heat in that place has given me a headache.”
Then they were contrite, for Lorry almost never had anything, and their attentions and inquiries had to be endured most of the way home.
Crowder, contrary to his expectations, found Pancha in high good spirits.
When a piece failed she was wont to display that exaggerated discouragement peculiar to the artist. Tonight, sitting in front of her mirror, she was as confident and smiling as she had been in the first week of ”The Zingara.”
”I'm glad to see you're taking it so well,” he said. ”It's pretty hard following on a big success.”
”Oh, it's all in the day's work. You can't hit the bull's eye every time.
The management are going to dig down into their barrel next week, hunting for another gypsy role. They want me again in my braids and my spangles.
They liked my red and orange--Spanish colors for the Spanish girl.”
She flashed her gleaming smile at him and he thought how remarkably well she was looking, getting handsomer every day. Her words recalled something he had wanted to ask her and had forgotten.
”Talking of red and orange, how about that anonymous guy that sent you the flowers? You remember, back in the autumn--a lot of roses with a motto he got out of a Christmas cracker?”
She had her comb in her hand and dropped it, leaning down to scratch round for it on the floor.