"And will you, my heart, always love me, love me?"
"S'welp me! old gell, I will!"
"Then another, Ted." There was a noise as of machine guns barking at a blue distance. Emma seemed satisfied.
Bim was pleased. He had not been looking for words in purple, and so was unable to feel disappointed. But as he worked from chair to chair he could not help accumulating the wish that more of the minor poet had been born in the common people. The prose that came was better than a mere bald narrative of time; but, surely, was not worthy of Aphrodite's doves.
Gradually the better came. It was the work of unconscious imitation.
Examples were being quickly followed in many directions. Several cabmen, having earned their day's requirements and a little over, were now using their cabs and still unwearied horses to convey for short distances fares too poor to pay for a ride. Motor-cabs and private cars actually buzzed with philanthropy. Policemen, carrying out and carrying on the inspector's orders, were urgently helping down-at-heel gentlefolk to be as comfortable as out-of-door conditions permitted.
So, too, lovers on that blessed evening, influenced by Bim, began to be worthy of Juliet, and their fellows of the Heaven-kissed company to whom passion has become sanctified, and the possession of love is a joy crowned, a power enthroned, making of its votaries queens and princes---- Ah me, and so on! The series of lovers multitudinous gradually became ashamed of their ungracefulness. They walked now, or sat with some better sense of picturesque propriety. Sprawling and hugging were postponed for the armchairs at home. The parks became tolerable to the married.
Here and there a joyful swain reclined at his lady's feet. The methods of musical comedy were fittingly applied to the prose of life. Ernie Jenkins was one of these recumbent swains. It was his weekly evening with Emily, who sat on a chair under a chestnut-tree steadily absorbing acid-drops. His red hair was stubbly, but he brushed his brow as if it were thick with love-locks.
"Emily! Emily!" he murmured repeatedly. Never had his feeling for her been so romantic as it now seemed. His narrow chest expanded with rapture and contracted with sighs. He knew himself fortunate. Bim had nearly prevailed on him to make the plunge. Though unable to go that length, Ernie mentally vowed to reduce his weekly allowance of bitter beer, the better to provide a nest-egg for furniture--which sounds like a mixed metaphor, but isn't; and if it were, can be put down to the fairies, who may do anything grammatical they please, even to the extent of splitting infinitives, which mortal authors may never do.
Hyde Park grew more and more delightful to Bim during that evening of bliss. He flitted about as if wings were on his feet, and with June's wand helped flowers, birds, grasses and winds to become more fairylike. Those blessed existences behaved as if they realized and enjoyed the change; and, to their credit be it said, no leafy, green space in crowded London had so much in accord with Falkland as the flowers, birds, grasses, winds, in Hyde Park then. Nature is, after all, a jolly good poet.