Part 46 (2/2)
”And the Metropole at Brighton?”
”It was like a bathing machine is to Buckingham Palace, compared to this. How exquisite the band is! Oh, I am so happy!”
”That makes me happy, Cupid. This is the night of your initiation. Our wonderful weeks have begun. I have thought out a whole series of delights and contrasts. Every night shall be a surprise. You will never know what we are going to do. London is a magic city and you have known nothing of it.”
”How could the 'Girl from Podley's' know?--That's what I am, the Girl from Podley's. I feel like Cinderella must have felt when she went to the ball. Oh, I am so happy!”
He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night.
Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come back. ”Lalage!” he murmured, more to himself than to her--”dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem!”
”What--Gilbert?”
”I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear.”
”And it was all Greek to me!” she said in a flash. ”Oh! who _ever_ saw so many hors d'oeuvres all at one time! I love hors d'oeuvres, advise me, don't let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I shan't be able to eat anything afterwards.”
How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong a side of his own temperament.
She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the gay and stately minuet.
For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair.
Yes, she was marvellously fres.h.!.+ He had never met any one like her. And it _was_ innocence, it _must_ be. Yet she was very conscious of the power of her beauty and her s.e.x--over him at any rate. She obviously knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the nave and innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness.
She was amazed and half frightened at herself--he could see that.
Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a s.p.a.ce, to join hands and tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance.
It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half the elaborate dinner was over.
She had called him ”Gilbert” at once, as if he were her brother, her lover even. He could have found or forged no words to describe the extraordinary intimacy that had sprung up between them. It almost seemed unreal, he had to wonder if this were not a dream.
She became girlishly imperious. When they brought the golden plovers--king and skipper, as good epicures know, of all birds that fly--she leant over the table till her perfect face was close to his.
”Oh, Gilbert dear! what is it now!”
He told her how these little birds, with their ”trail” upon the toast and their accompaniment of tiny mushrooms stewed in Sillery, were said to be the rarest flower in the gourmet's garden, one of the supreme pleasures that the cycle of the seasons bring to those who love and live to eat.
”How _perfectly_ sweet! Like the little roast pigling was to Elia!
Gilbert, I'm so happy.”
She chattered away to him, as he sat and watched her, with an entire freedom. She told him all about her life in the flat with Ethel Harrison. Her brown eyes shone with happiness, he heard the silver ripple of her voice in a mist of pleasure.
Once he caught a man whom he knew watching them furtively. It was a very well-known actor, who at the moment was rehearsing his autumn play.
This celebrated person was, as Gilbert well knew, a monster. He lived his life with a dreadful callousness which made him capable of every b.e.s.t.i.a.l habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity.
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