IV
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
On Board the Boat, half-Channel over,
July 6th. Night
Mother Dear: The dragon-ness doesn't show at all on the outside.
I expected to meet a creature of almost heraldic grimness—rampant, disregardant, gules. What I did meet—but I'm afraid that isn't the right way to begin. Please consider that I haven't begun. I'll go back to the time when Ellaline and her chaperon (me) started away from school together in a discreet and very hot cab with her trunks.
She was jumpy and on edge with excitement, and got on my nerves so that it was the greatest relief when I'd seen her off in her train for St. Cloud. Just at this point I find another break in my narrative, made by a silly, not at all interesting, adventure.
I'd been waving my hand for the twenty-fifth time to Ellaline, in response to the same number of waves from her. When at last she drew in her head, as the train steamed away, I turned round in a hurry lest she should pop it out again, and bumped into a man, or what will be a man in a few years if it lives. I said, "Pardon, monsieur," as gravely as if it were a man already, and it said in French made in England that 'twas entirely its fault. It was such a young youth, and looked so utterly English, that I smiled a motherly smile, and breathed, "Not at all," as I passed on, fondly thinking to pass forever out of its life at the same time. But, dearest, the absurd little thing didn't recognize the smile as motherly. Perhaps it never had a mother. I had hardly observed it as an individual, I assure you, except as one's sub-conscious self takes notes without permission from headquarters. I was vaguely aware that the creature with whom I had collided was quite nice-looking, though bullet-headed, freckled, light-blue-eyed, crop-haired, and possessing the shadow of a coming event in the shape (I can't call it more) of a moustache. I had also an impression of a Panama hat, which came off in compliment to me, a gray flannel suit, the latest kind of collar (you know "Sissy Williams says, 'the feeling is for low ones this year'!") and mustard-coloured boots. All that sounds hideous, I know, yet it wasn't. At first sight it was rather attractive, but it lost its attractiveness in a flash when it mistook the nature of my smile.
You wouldn't believe that a nice, clean little British face could change so much for the worse in about the eighth part of a second! It couldn't have taken longer, or I shouldn't have seen, because it happened between my smile and my walking on. But I did see. A disagreeable kind of lighting up in the eyes, which instantly made them look full of—consciousness of sex, is the only way I can express it. And instead of being inoffensive, boyish, blue beads, they were suddenly transformed into the sharp, whitey-gray sort that the Neapolitans "make horns" at.