“David Redbury is calling for his sister.” Samson stationed himself in an uncomfortable attitude beside the lounging intimate pair, and remained there unbudgingly on guard, declining to be drawn into their conversation; nor yet to be beguiled away by any inducement of refreshment or music.
Meanwhile, La llorraine was making Nell welcome.
“My dee-urr, you are that friend I have been wanting always for my Manon ... she grows too old, too staid—She is with me and the Countess and Stella Marcus and Mrs Verity—she hears us talk—it is not always well that she should hear us talk. The Countess has a most tragic business on the carpet, my dee-urr ... wait, I will tell you—or when we have more time, perhaps. But my Manon—you shall see her every day—all day—so she will grow a child again—healthy, romping children, you and she.... You can eat your déjeuner here, and she her dinner with you—ideal!—it shall be planned ... for listen:” She sank her voice to the confidential pitch, holding Nell inexorably captive with one hand, and with the other sweeping wide descriptive circles. “At present she muses too much of marriage and what it brings. She sleeps badly. She put me questions—soch questions.... Wait, I will tell you my plans.... That marriage, when it koms—ah, it will be somesing! superb! you see. But it is essential she shall be fresh and unconscious and blooming.... Those girls, Antonia, Deb, they are no more early-morning, ... They dream not ... they laugh at love. My dee-urr, it vos vonderful you should been brought here for my Manon!
“Now tell me, my dee-urr, are you trobbled inside about that question of a hosband? Or your mother?”
“I don’t know ... I mean—I haven’t any....” And then, from the midst of confusion, Nell pushed out a courageous: “I think it’s horrid to talk about husbands and that sort of thing.”
La llorraine was switched off at the main. And Antonia, overhearing, smiled at Nell encouragingly. She and Deb agreed that it took weeks of hard labour to pierce young Nell’s creamy layers of impenetrability. As one put out a tamer’s hand, swiftly her fugitive spirit darted away, in a tremor of shadows and dreams; thoughts that frightened her, so like couchant, half-slumbering beasts they seemed. Sweeter thoughts that slipped from chill grey to silvery sheen—aspen-leaves stirred by a wind from nowhere, and hushed again. It amused Antonia not a little that La llorraine should in public and within the first five minutes of meeting, demand an outburst of articulate confidence on the subject of Nell’s troubled inside on that question of a husband.
Nell and Manon, swept imperiously together by the opera-singer’s enthusiasm, and expected to begin romping without delay, eyed each other in furtive dislike ... till Manon’s demure sang-froid relieved the situation.
“Would you like to see my canary?”
“No,” said Nell, in a passion of pity for the artificial life any bird must lead, in that hectic twilight atmosphere.