“But you said you’d have to,—that night.”
“Did I? I forget.” And he put his hand over her heart and held it there.
And again there came that thunder shudder, and she eyed the gate with fear. “Did he want you to go back to-night? Tell me; I’ve got to know.” And she drew away a little—a very little—in order to force her point.
But he drew her back and kissed her eyes. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “What’s it matter? Let him want. I’m not going back. I’m never going back. If George Lytham were multiplied by a hundred thousand and they all landed on my island with grappling irons, I’d laugh them back to sea. They shan’t have me. I’ve given them all I had. I’ve found my youth and I’ll enjoy it, here, anywhere, with you.” He stretched out and opened the gate. “And now, I must let you go, my sweet. But don’t be longer than you can help. Get dinner over quickly and come back to me again. Wear that silver frock and I’ll wait for you on the terrace, as I did before. I want to be surprised again as you shimmer among those cold stones.” He let her go.
And she went through the gate and stood irresolute, as the shudder came again. With a little cry she turned and flung her arms round his neck as though she were saying, “Good-by.”
And yet there was only a cloud as big as a man’s hand in that clear sky.
IX
No one, it might be thought, could hear to think at the narrow table in Lady Cheyne’s house. Those natural, childlike creatures who, if they had ever learned the artificialities forget them, talked, argued, sang and screamed each other down all at the same time. They could not really be musicians if they didn’t.
Zalouhou, whose only preparations for dinner consisted in bushing out his tie and hair, sat at his hostess’ left; Willy Pouff, in an evening suit borrowed from a waiter friend who had gone to a hospital with a poisoned hand, on her right. Lola, at the end of the table, sat between Valdemar Varvascho and Max Wachevsky, who had remembered, oddly enough, to wash their faces, though Varvascho’s beard had grown darkly during the day. Both the women had changed and made up for artificial light. The result of Anna Stezzel’s hour was remarkable, as well, perhaps, as somewhat disconcerting. A voluptuous person, with hair as black as a wet starling, she had plastered her face with a thick coating of white stuff on which her lips resembled blood stains in the snow. Her beaded evening gown saved the company from panic merely by an accident and disclosed also the whole wide expanse of a rather yellow back. Regina Spatz was built on Zuluesque lines, too, but more by luck than judgment a white blouse tempered her amazing ampleness. She had used henna on her hair so that it might have been fungus in a tropic sea and sat in a perpetual blush of indiscriminate rouge. Salo Impf was wedged against her side and looked like a Hudson River tugboat under the lee of the Aquitania.
Like all fat women, Lady Cheyne was devoted to eating and had long since decided to let herself go. “One can only live once,” she said, in self-defense; “and how does one know that there’ll be peas and potatoes in the next world.” The dinner, to the loudly expressed satisfaction of the musicians, was substantial and excellent. Each course was received with a volley of welcome, expressed in several languages. The hard exercise of singing, playing, gesticulating, praising and breathing deeply gave these children of the exuberant Muse the best of appetites. It was a shattering meal.