Otto, groping after what was complimentary in this outburst, came to the conclusion that the clang of the gates had obliterated its part meaning.
“Besides,” Cliffe ran on, in a rapid confidential undertone, “why be for ever bound by the conventions?—Look at all the jaded joyless faces——” A rubicund Jack Tar opposite grinned broadly, thrust his tongue in his cheek, his arm round his girl beside him, and rolled an expressive eye in Cliffe’s direction. “The day’s routine, and the jolting train, and a dreary little home in Camden Town, and the evening paper, and another day—and another, and yet another.... What those faces want, Mr Redbury, and I see you agree with me, is Paganism—joie de vivre—a gallop with the centaurs!”
His companion, who would have turned peevish and retired into his bathroom stronghold at the very first encounter with a centaur, nodded sagely....
“O glorious Life!” rhapsodized Cliffe, stretching forth his arms, oblivious of his neighbours’ discomfort and astonishment.
“Wass-vot? who vere you viz last night?” chuckled Otto, his eyes mere slits of lewd curiosity.
“Last night ... last night ...” ecstatically—then came an imperceptible halt, as Cliffe discarded a comparatively innocent evening spent at home with Philip Gibbs’ “Soul of the War,” in favour of his almost equally harmless adventure with Deb at Seaview the week-end before. This would serve, touched up with scarlet and purple; it was additionally spiced by the reflection of how Otto’s whetted tongue would loll out, metaphorically speaking, if he knew that the heroine of this presented drama of Real Life as it isn’t, was Deb Marcus, his late partner’s daughter, and a friend of his own daughter Nell.
“Two of us—and the great scented common rolling away from our doors to a star-stabbed sky. Two of us—for when the little Dryad so long immersed in the oak-tree of tradition, sprang out at last into my arms, her hair wildly ablow, and with lips red as blood, then all the pettier issues of the Philistines were trampled, I say trampled, Mr Redbury, under the wings which sprang godlike from our exultant shoulder blades!... (Oh God! what a sentence!...)”
“Camden Town!”
The morbidly interested school-girl on Cliffe’s left was reluctant to alight—but that happened to be her station, and she dared not be late for supper.