They would be amazed at his improved repose and savoir faire. His conversation would not be brilliant, he would try very hard to listen, yet Mrs. Belamy would have a full chance to appreciate his implied admiration, he would acknowledge to Colonel Belamy that he knew nothing of country life, yet he would be neither brazen nor cringing in such a confession, he would be deferential yet independent, attentive yet witty.
“Can you really manage all that?”
“What wouldn’t I, couldn’t I manage at such a moment?”
The fog of three days ago, for by an extraordinary series of mischances two whole days had gone by without their meeting, had been broken up by thunderstorms, and the weather had turned fine again and much hotter. Celia and Dicky were going to have dinner together to commemorate the payment of the most expensive story he had yet sold, and after dinner he would show her something he had got for her long ago but had kept for just the perfect moment to give it her, it was a present instead of an engagement ring, since she could not or would not wear one, and it was more romantic, more charming, more exactly and exquisitely and exclusively hers than any engagement ring could ever be ; but no, he would not show it to her now, the moment had not yet come.
“You see, I knew it was all going to come right or I wouldn’t have known that I must keep it for just this particular evening.”
“Oh, but do let me see it now, Dicky. Why isn’t it the moment for it? It seems just perfect and it mightn’t be later on.”
But he insisted on repose for her acceptance of his offering, and now they were hurried, they were going before dinner to see this flat in Birdcage Lane he thought of taking. It wasn’t really a flat, it was the top part of a tiny house with a beauty shop below, but the telephone exchange would be Mayfair, and just think what a difference that would make to his work!
If only he got this option on his play he would have a hundred pounds in his pocket and be able to take it to-morrow. Or perhaps some of Mrs. Hopjoy’s promises would really come off ; she had every belief in his play and she had been back in New York a week by now and anything might happen any moment.
“Who is Mrs. Hopjoy?”
“I told you ages ago about Mrs. Hopjoy. Or didn’t I? There never is time to tell you anything, there’s so much else to talk about. But I know I told you about Mrs. Hopjoy, all floating veils and a slow Southern drawl and enormously rich ; she used to be a famous New York hostess until she gave up people for plays because they are more life-like. She’s got no end of influence, and she was going to read my play on the voyage.”
Celia hid her disappointment that Mrs. Hopjoy’s every belief in Dicky’s play had been formed before she read it. She had grown increasingly tactful with Dicky, for somehow it was much more easy to hurt him now he was beginning to have success.
They left the dignified sobriety of Farm Street and Hill Street and Hay Hill, streets of tall flat dun-coloured houses of unobtrusive fronts that had formed the town residences of eighteenth century country squires and still had at their corners the coaching inns that had stabled their horses.
They came suddenly into a sunlit street of dolls’ houses. Birdcage Lane had been built for retired ladies’ maids of doubtful reputation in the Earliest Victorian days. Now it was a row of feminine shops retaining something of that character. Diminutive but self-assertive, their gaily painted fronts swelled into bow windows as bright as soap bubbles with their many-coloured wares, they sprouted into tiny bulging balconies whose shapes, suitable for crinolines, made them look like birdcages. Baskets hung from them full of growing flowers, shop signs of sparkling brilliance dangled above the doors.
“Oh, Dicky, what a street! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this street, at any rate not like this. Just look at the shops ; they sell nothing but grown-up toys.”
They sold flowers that were really shells, fruits that were really lampshades, dolls that were really powder-puffs. The street was a masquerade. Celia and Dicky ran to and fro across it, looking at one window and then another. “But nothing here,” said Dicky, “is as lovely as what I’ve got for you.”
He caught at her hand and pressed something hard and cold and smooth into it, but before she could see what it was he had snatched it away and thrust it down into his pocket again. “You mustn’t see it yet. The moment hasn’t come.” But she was not quite as much aggravated as she ought to have been because she was so much interested in a shop painted red and green which catered entirely for dogs’ baths with special attention to Pekingese and dangled a sign of a spotted dog in white and scarlet on a green ground.
“I believe that’s where Damaris hangs out,” said Dicky. “I know she’s got a flat somewhere here because Berkeley Square bores her so. Her people live there, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I didn’t know she lived here too.”
“It was through her I met Lady Scorhill, you know.”
“I thought it was through Leila?”
“Oh no, I think she only told me about her. She works with her, that’s all. Here we are. Wouldn’t you love to live behind a yellow door?”
They had stopped under a sign depicting in black lacquer a single half shut almond eye and an eyebrow like the first thread of the new moon against a background of shining gold. In the corner, fantastic letters of black lacquer announced “Lady Scorhill. Eyebrow Specialist.”
The yellow door was opened by Leila in a green frock.
“What fun!” she cried. “I never knew you were coming along to-day. I’ve been staying late at the shop and Scorhill’s got quite a party.”
That was bound to happen, Celia thought, if Leila were there. They went up a flight of narrow stairs between yellow walls hung with black and white posters and into a small glowing golden room full of sunshine and smoke and tall black forms talking loudly.
Yes, she knew it, there was Ronny getting slowly out of a chair and shaking hands with her—how absurd it was—and behind and above it all, somehow giving point to the scene, was a pink paper opera hat stuck sideways on top of a yellow airball on which someone had inked a feebly grinning face.
Lady Scorhill wore black silk and bleached hair, and it was quite true, her eyebrows were lacquered threads, just like the one on the sign. She greeted Dicky with rapturous affection and presented them both with cocktails in spiral golden glasses, mixed by Leila and a Balkan prince who had hay-fever. His sister, a tragic queen, said majestically that she preferred gin neat and did not speak again. Someone on the floor stuck out a long slim ankle from a heap of green cushions and a gold chain bracelet glittered beneath the transparent stocking.
Celia could not think where she had seen an ankle bracelet before, she stared at it quite rudely, it was so desperately important that she should remember where she had seen one.
She gave a sudden low exclamation. Dicky asked her what was the matter. She said, “Nothing ; I’ve just remembered something,” but it was not the bracelet she had remembered, it was the eyes of the man she had met in the fog and she had suddenly known that she had seen him before and at the same time as the girl with the anklet, or at any rate a girl with an anklet. But she still could not remember where that was, and she had to attend to the rather excitable conversation, though she could not join in it ; it was as though it were pitched a key higher than she could reach.
Ronny looked rather weary and out of it ; perhaps it was because the Prince was devoting to Leila all the attention he could spare from his hay-fever. He looked at Celia in a melancholy and reminiscent fashion, but then he always wore his memories on his sleeve.
He said to her, “This is a funny way for us to meet,” and she said, “Why don’t you laugh at it then?”
Leila said, “Don’t crick the back of your neck, Dicky, getting that last drop ;” and Lady Scorhill said, “Give the poor boy some more.”
It was found that the Princess had finished the gin, and the Prince said, “Please do not mind. We seldom drink anything before dinner.”
Lady Scorhill showed Celi
a and Dicky the rest of the flat and asked them in the bathroom why they didn’t take a chance and move in together ; it was absolutely made for them both. Dicky denied to Celia on the stairs that he had told her they were engaged, and she thought it must be very petty of her to feel self-conscious that it should have been so obvious.
She finished her cocktail when they returned to the sitting-room and saw that the secret of life was to take everything lightly and laugh a great deal. There was the Prince, who had lost his chance of a kingdom and had to borrow pocket-handkerchiefs from Lady Scorhill, laughing away as happily as a child.
He took the lead in spite of his sneezes. He made absurd mistakes with his English. He complained of their country visits ; his sister had been much troubled by barristers, she had found several in her bed. On strict inquiry it was discovered he meant harvesters, but Lady Scorhill did not know the term and considered that the drop in the social scale only made matters worse.
Dicky was restless, uneasy. One of his stories had been interrupted and he had said a really witty thing which no one heard. He examined a sprawling Chinese dragon embroidered in gold thread on green silk which made faces at them from the back of a high carved chair. It diverted attention. Lady Scorhill and Leila and the girl with the anklet all adored Chinese things. The Prince talked to Celia alone, she did not notice what the others were saying. Dicky was showing them something, she heard them exclaim :
“How quaint!”
“Charming!”
“Ducky!”
“So that’s Chinese too. Aren’t they wonderful?” and then in a rather different tone :
“But why is it that colour?”
and then :
“Oh, but what a pity!”
Suddenly she knew that Dicky was showing them the present he had got for her. He did not say it was her present, but she saw that it was of the same size and shape as the object he had pressed into her hand in the street. It was a small bluish bottle with a pink stopper ; she could not make out why they were arguing about it; some more people were coming in and prevented her hearing what was said ; and then it was all broken up, they stopped talking about the bottle, it was hidden away again, the tiny room was crammed with Counts, and one of them was telling her that she looked as though she had been dropped there by accident from somebody’s buttonhole. She did not answer, she was thinking, “I hate these people. They’re all made of sawdust and paint. I hate Dicky. How could he show them my present before he showed it to me? I shall hate it, whatever it is. I shan’t take it. I’m glad I hate him. I could never stand these people and they are what he likes. Ronny can’t stand them either ; yes, he can though, because he likes Leila and she’s one of them. How can he like Leila? It can’t last. But I thought I liked Dicky. What a muddle it all is!”
That was Ronny’s acquiescent phrase, it was her father’s, it was her own. It was arrogance to imagine that each is oneself alone. The same few hack phrases might be used by all humanity in all occasions, tragic, comic, or everyday, and mean as much to each.
“We shout in chorus and think we whisper what no one else has said.”
She thought for a second that she had said it and better than she had meant, but it was Dicky who had been drawn into a philosophic discussion and was saying what she had thought. What a fool she had been to imagine there was nothing there between them.
“Doesn’t that just show——” she began, and realized that what it showed was only to herself. She had better not talk while the cocktail was making her think so much.
But now they were going. Everyone was going and Lady Scorhill was protesting. She asked of the air why they couldn’t all go along somewhere and do something, but a lady who had formerly declared she had no sense of time said that her dinner would be ruined if she were late.
They all made a great many plans for no particular date. It seemed that nobody could bear to leave the rest; they held each other’s hands a long, long time, and a Count who had only had a little vermouth quoted” Partir, c’est toujours mourir un peu.”
They went calling and laughing downstairs and out into the street, and there stood a tall woman in a golden shawl, blinking up at the sunshine with a blank white sleepily smiling face.
“Hullo! “they called. “Hullo, darling!”
“Can’t get a taxi,” she said.
They ran up to her ; they called up to the window above the yellow door, “Come down, Leila. Here’s Damaris.”
Leila stepped out on the toy balcony, her short green skirts blew out in the breeze, her polished head gleamed like a Dutch doll’s in the sunlight, she looked like a Columbine coming out for her serenade. She cried, “Hullo, Damaris! Why didn’t you come in to our party?”
“Yes, why didn’t you? “said the others.
“It’s been so jolly.”
“We’ve been talking philosophy.”
“Masha finished the gin.”
“How are the dogs’ baths?”
“How are the dogs?”
“How’s yourself?”
Damaris looked as though she had lost her face ; it had been blotted out with thick white powder. It was no longer of much importance to her but her figure, closely swathed in the golden shawl, was magnificent. Celia, looking up at that blind, obliterated face, thought, “Why ever was I afraid of her?”
The gaiety of the others suddenly infected her ; she had never met such a light-hearted, happy-go-lucky, vivid, and charming crowd ; she envied their hilarious good-fellowship even if it depended on drink to see the world in this slightly unreal golden light.
A gipsy woman came down the street with a basket, singing, “Won’t you buy-ee my swee-eet laven— der?” Her long and melancholy cry was like a lament for the London summer, for that cry is only heard in the streets when it is nearly over and everyone is planning holidays and packing up and going away and soon the trees will look prematurely yellow and the parks be full of street children, and shutters and blank blue boards stare like blind eyes from many of the houses and theatres. Celia thought she cried, “Will you lea-eave my swee-eet Lo-on-don? “but nobody else noticed, they were too busy saying good-bye to each other to hear it said to their summer.
Damaris was so good-natured, she offered them both and two others a lift as far as the park. Off they drove in an open taxi towards the sun, with that farewell cry streeling after them and people waving to them from the pavement and Leila waving from the balcony. She looked as though she might blow away and the street with her like a streamered ribbon attached to her ballet-skirt, it was so lightly, so insecurely balanced in this solid town, a street of painted dolls’ houses and grown-up toys and highly coloured, evanescent emotions.
Someone stepped out from behind her, it was Ronny. He bent his head to speak to her, Leila looked back at him laughing, they hung up there above the glittering street like the figures of the Transfiguration caught up above the clouds. For one moment Celia saw them like that, rapt, adoring. She thought, “It is true then” ; she wished she could thank them ; the taxi turned the corner, and the street and all the people and the transfiguring moment vanished together.
Dicky felt for her hand in the taxi and she did not mind if Damaris did see ; she was not going to be stupid and suburban any more, nor would she mind when Damaris asked him to join a party at the Tadpole later on to-night. Why should she mind? There was nothing in the world to mind or fear or worry about, especially now they were alone together again in the Park, a single couple among thousands and thousands of couples all drifting down the gleaming asphalt paths like motes down sunbeams.
They drifted to the edge of the Serpentine ; it was a lake of liquid fire. From the boats that floated dark on its surface came the far-carried sounds of laughter and little cries as if of inarticulate joy, a joy as ephemeral and therefore as exquisite as the dance of the mayflies on the water.
Chapter XXI
“Oh,” said Celia.
“Venice,” said Dicky.
“Why go to Venice?”<
br />
“Or the Italian Lakes?”
“Or Constantinople?”
“Or least of all, Paris?”
They spoke because the moment they were trying to express had just passed, a moment of poignant ecstasy like a long drawn out note on the violin that had already ceased to vibrate through the stillness of the summer evening ; for they were on the brink of discovering that they were hungry. In another instant they discovered it. But it was a crime to go indoors.
They turned away disconsolate at the thought of crowded restaurants where by this time all the tables by the windows would be taken and electric fans would whirr in poor imitation of an evening breeze. Dicky damned Venice ; he would give all his chances of it for a dinner at Ranelagh or Roehampton out on the terrace while music played and the shining shapes of women in evening dress moved under the trees.
They saw through the railings of Kensington Gardens a host of little green tables with white cloths on the grass. There of course was the place to dine. Why had they never thought of it? In innocent confidence they seated themselves at a table and hailed a furtive waiter who was aimlessly flitting among the trees and at their call promptly vanished, apparently under the earth.
But they did not mind. They found a menu card and decided that chicken mayonnaise and Russian salad was the nicest thing they could possibly have this evening, and perhaps they had better start with some hot tomato soup.
“Isn’t this lovely?” they said and congratulated themselves on their taste in choice of a table complete with a view of the sunset and the Serpentine. And Dicky said, “You didn’t mind my accepting that invitation to the Tadpole, did you? It won’t be till just midnight, and of course it all helps to get me known if I’m seen about with that crowd.”
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