Idle talk of this kind passed between Jim and Helen Grote; she bid him admire the twinkle of lights, waveringly reflected on the damp pavements, for a little rain had fallen earlier in the evening, and still made a mirror of clouded surface. And all the time she was seeing herself drive westwards alone from her rendez-vous at Covent Garden, claiming, or at least acknowledging, kinship with the loitering and neglected. Yet, vivid though the memory was, it resembled rather the vividness of some arresting book that she had read, or of some enthralling play that she had seen acted. With her boy and his friend filling up the motor, these memories lacked the bite of personal experience. She remembered it, remembered with the intensest keenness, but remembered it as something apart from herself. Was it she, the body and bones of her, that had sat with a letter in her hands, which she had read once and did not need to read again? She could recall every word of that even now, she could have quoted from it, and yet it was all like something learned by heart, memorable only owing to some unforgettable style in its writing.
All went through her mind with the rapidity of some picture momentarily thrown on to it by a magic lantern. She made no effort to recollect; the recollection was flashed on her from outside. Robin, fearing for the security of the carriage door, had just suggested his falling out into the roadway, and “the body of a well-nourished young man” being debated upon at the inquest next day, when, even as she laughed, the image of those happenings that had occurred to someone else made their instantaneous photograph.
Then Jim, merely by way of polite conversation, said to her:
“I suppose you’re awfully busy, aren’t you, with some sort of war-work?”
Upon which Robin stamped heavily and designedly on her foot, clearly under the impression that it was Jim’s.
And that was all, for the present. The moment afterwards they stopped at the door of the Ritz, where a low-bowing porter inserted her in a circular cage that revolved. But the fact that Robin meant to stamp on Jim’s foot by way of some kind of warning or silencer had the vividness of personal experience, which her recollections lacked.
The dining-room was already crowded with post-theatre suppers, but the head-waiter, clearly perjuring himself, gave her a table where chairs were already turned down in token of future occupation. There were a dozen people she knew, and her entrance with those two very smart young Guardsmen somehow pleased her enormously. Robin and Jim also threw greetings about; they were popular and well-looked-on in this new seething life which she had done her best to avoid. At this hour, in the house of refuge to which she had resorted only a week or two ago, Aline and Hermann would be playing a last rubber of Bridge, if they had guests, or would be refraining from rising to say good-night to Mr. and Mrs. Tempest, in case they were engaged on a game of picquet, which they played, so Aline told her, when they were alone and, presumably therefore, when there were guests who did not matter.
To-morrow Sir Hermann would go out shooting again or playing golf in his betasselled stockings, and Aline, in her sables, would distribute rabbits to bereaved station masters. They would go up to bed in the lift that exuded German chorales, and no doubt by now Aline would have got a new nurse for her children, who would refrain from calling them Huns, while the children would have learned to refrain from singing the “Watch by the Rhine.” It was to that house she had gone to escape from evenings like this.... She could not help wondering what would have been the Gurtners’ attitude towards the bloody and glorious affair at Ypres.
But Ypres and Aline were about equally remote from the spirit of the present moment. Robin, who scarcely knew claret from port, was, out of the depths of his wisdom, consulting the head-waiter as to the particular brand of champagne which would be suitable, and in the middle of his consultation he caught sight of someone entering, and trod, this time correctly, on Jim’s foot, to bid him observe the epiphany of Miss Diana Coombe, who swept into the room, and proceeded to occupy a table immediately adjoining theirs. There were two young men with her, both in civilian clothes, and a remarkable old lady whom she addressed as Mommer. When asked what she wanted to order, Mommer said in a strong American accent: “Just give us of your best, and be quick about it.” Round her neck, thin as that of a plucked bird, she wore a string of stones that rather resembled rubies, from which depended a huge copper badge. Helen recognized that, for Gracie always wore one when she waded about among patched trousers.
The two boys had to go back to barracks, when supper was over, and as they all stood together for a moment on the pavement outside, making plans for another theatre evening as soon as possible, a private, as he passed, saluted, and most unmistakably grinned also.