“O, O dear, how much, what’s his fare? I don’t want him again and—gracious! I haven’t a cent on me—what, what—O, please tell him to call at my house to-morrow. Pay him then I will. Please!”
“Righto, my lord!” said the big policeman, saluting—he was a regular joker that fellow. Then Bugloss, trembling in every limb, almost leapt towards one of the dark walks, away from those grinning eyes. The shrubs and trees concealed him, though even here an odd paper lantern or two consorted with a few coloured bulbs of light. Shortly he began his observations.
The cloak rooms, he found, could be approached only by crossing the lawn. In a mackintosh, goloshes, and a bowler hat, that was too terrific an ordeal; the trembling Israelite during that affrighting passage of the Red Sea had all the incitements of escape and the comfort of friends, but this more violent ordeal led into captivity, and Bugloss was alone. What was to be done? The music began again and it was agreeable, the illuminations were lustrous and pretty, the dancers gay, but Bugloss was neither agreeable nor gay, and his prettiness was not yet on the surface. He was in a highly wrought condition, he was limp, and he remained in what seclusion he could find in the garden, peering like a sinner at some assembly of the blest. At last he snatched off his goloshes and stuffed them in his pocket. “So far,” he murmured, “so good. I will hide the mackintosh among the bushes, I can’t face that dressing room.” Just then the band gave a heightened blare, drum and cymbals were rapidly beaten and the music ceased amid clapping and polite halloing. “Dash it, I must wait till the next dance,” said Bugloss, “and, O lord, there’s a lot of them coming this way.” He turned to retreat into deeper darkness when suddenly, near the musicians, he saw a fascinating girl, a dainty but startling figure skimming across the lawn as if to overtake a friend. Why—yes—she had a wig of bright green hair, green; a short-waisted cherry silk jacket and harlequin pantaloons, full at the hips but narrowing to the ankles, where white stockings slipped into a pair of gilded leather shoes with heels of scarlet. Delicately charming were her face and figure, entrancing were her movements, and she tinkled all over with hidden bells.
“Sweet God, what beauty!” thought Bugloss, “this is She, the Woman to know, I must, I must ... but how?”
She disappeared. For the moment he could not rid himself of the bowler hat and mackintosh, so many couples roamed in the dark glades; wherever he went he could see the glow of cigarettes, generally in twos, and there were whispering or silent couples standing about in unexpected places. Retiring to the darkest corner he had previously found he was about to discard his mackintosh when he was startled by a cry at his elbow: “Lena, where are you, what’s that?” and a girl scuttled away, calling “Lena! Lena!” Her terror dismayed him, the little shock itself brought the sweat to his brow, but the music beginning again drew all the stragglers back to the lawn. There, from his gloomy retreat, he beheld the green-haired beauty in the arms of a pirate king who was adorned with an admiral’s hat and a dangerous moustache. “If,” thought Bugloss, still in his mufti, “I couldn’t have discovered a better get-up than that fellow, I’d have stayed away. There’s no picture in it, it’s just silly, I couldn’t wear a thing like that, I couldn’t wear it, I’d have perished rather than come.” And indeed there was an absence of imagination about all the male adornment; many of the ladies were right enough, but some were horrors, and most of the men were horrors; there was justification for Bugloss’s subsequent reflection: “I’ll show them, a little later on, what can be done when an artist takes the thing in hand; now after this dance is over.... etc., etc.”
Two lovers startled him by beginning to quarrel. They were passing among the trees behind him and talking quite loudly, both with a slight foreign accent. “But I shall not let you go, Johannes,” said the lady with a fierce little cry. Bugloss turned and could just discern a lady costumed as a vivandière; her companion was in the uniform Of a Danish soldier.
“If you forced me to stop I would kill you,” retorted the man.
“O, you would kill me!”
“If you forced me to stop.”
“You would kill me ... so!”