“It will be a brilliant success!” Street exclaimed.
“Success,” said Ordith, “depends less upon genius than upon an adequate appreciation of the platitudes.”
This faith, so authoritatively expressed by a successful young man, was put to the test soon after the dance had begun. He saw Margaret dancing with John—her eyes shining with happiness in a manner that might have caused another lover a little uneasiness. But Ordith did not for a moment feel insecure. He could see that John had gained ground, that the first ramparts of reserve had been overpassed; but he had no fear. “Unlike poles attract,” he repeated, choosing his platitude, and confident of his power to carry attack upon that line to a successful issue. So, before seeking out the important lady he had seen among the crowd and had chosen for his immediate favour, he stood gazing at Margaret’s neck and shoulders and admiring her movement with the eye of an anatomist.
He did not know that John had advanced farther than the first ramparts. In the morning, when he and Hugh had gone together to buy their China equipment, Margaret had come to offer feminine advice on materials. She had watched them turning over shirts, and hesitating, and retracting decisions in the manner of men at the counter. Women and their shopping? Oh, but men were infinitely worse! They had so small a field of choice, and yet they got lost in it. She laughed at this and a thousand trifles, and laughter is the truest ranging-arrow in love’s quiver. London, too, with its bright sun and sky, and the cool wind that stirred up the sweet scent of her furs, had conspired to bring them together. Hugh joined the conspiracy by accepting an invitation to lunch with an old friend whom he met in Mr. Reeve’s shop. John and Margaret came home by way of Marble Arch and a diagonal cut through the Park. The dying winter was old and weak—so weak that he could not gather up and hide away in his dark box the coins of gold scattered beneath the trees by the sunshine or the strands woven among the grasses. And, as they went, they talked of all the things on earth they held most dear—their nurseries and old toys, terra-cotta flower-pots, the summer sound of lawns being mown, firelight in mirrors, books, the silky touch of dogs’ ears—each as the centre of some tale which seemed peculiar to their own autobiographies, though, at that moment, it was being remembered afresh, in one form or another, by every young creature—and every old one, too, who wasn’t too stupid to value such things—from Kensington Palace to the western pavement of Park Lane.
John and Margaret, like all the other young creatures, had no idea of this. They felt as if they were telling each other secrets—which is the best known of love’s tricks. In truth, they were but beginning to discover the secrets of themselves, and had not yet had time to become so confused as the rest of us in life’s attempt to draw a boundary between the soul and the body. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes! There was no dust, there were no ashes, their hearts argued; therefore all—her lips and the colour the wind had whipped into her cheeks, his frank eyes, and brown, fine-cut hands—all must have something of the soul in them. What reason had they to doubt? They were not afraid, and fear goes hand in hand with the Devil. Their happiness was of the clean kind they would have liked to sing about to all the world.
So it happened that they danced together that evening with all the memories of daylight and keen air to lend magic to the flowers and the sparkling lamps and the murmur of stringed instruments.
“I love the little pointed shadows under everybody’s feet,” she said, “and the vague pools of light in the polished floor. It’s better than fairies on the village green.”
“That’s not an absolute opinion,” he answered, laughing. “Shouldn’t we be on the side of the fairies if we were dancing on green grass now?”
To him it mattered only that they were dancing together, and her silence acquiesced in his mood.
“There’s any number of people,” he exclaimed, “who are wishing the music would stop. It’s strange to think of other people being tired and bored.”