“That’s a pity. Mishtries should never be explained. Who would have the veil lifted from the immortal mishtry of love? Or would I seek now to know intimately why the gods are so good to me, in giving me my heart’s desire, and all my other desires, and a match for my cigarette into the bargain? Unquestioningly I accept their—benign—partiality——” Sebastian lingered slowly and carefully over the last words, and, safely completed, stretched grateful arms towards the heavens. Then, looking at these same arms rather amazedly, as if in doubt as to what they were doing in that eccentric position, let them drop again. “I love you, Letty!” he murmured to some vision of his radiant imaginings; then brought his gaze earthwards, back to Stuart: “Thanks for the match,” pleasantly.
Stuart shrugged his shoulders: “Lacking the match, there might have been some hope for you; as it is,” he turned away, “—good night.”
“Don’t go,” pleaded Sebastian, unruffled by the other’s abrupt censure. “It was only my nonsense just now; I was working off steam. But I can talk quite soberly if you’ll stop to hear me.”
“You’re not in a fit state to talk at all. You’re thick; plastered with honey and treacle. Your grin is seraphic; your rhapsodies are fatuous. You don’t even resent my abominable rudeness. Why don’t you?”
“Why should I? I like you tremendously. And of course I’m s’raphic. ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest but in his motion like an angel sings still choiring to the young-eyed cherubims!’ That’s what my father was to-night—a young-eyed cherubim. So was her father. So was Letty. She’s accepted me. Her father has accepted me. My father has accepted her. Everybody has accepted everybody, and everybody has gulped down an enormous amount of champagne. Hence Mrs. Johnson’s headache. But I’m glad Letty couldn’t come out to-night—I’ve had too much—I couldn’t stand any more—I’m dizzy. When I say I couldn’t stand any more, I mean it meta—meta——” Sebastian lost the thread of his discourse, repeated solemnly “meta——” ... and then re-found it in a different but equally satisfactory direction: “I met her on the hill between Boscombe and Bournemouth. Our fathers had been neighbours years ago, and fell into each other’s arms. So there’s no family opposition; we needn’t wait interminably for the wedding. My father,—he’s Levi, the big Universal Stores in Holborn—you know—he’s taking me into partnership with a tremendous screw. Which will leave me plenty of time for writing——”
“Writing?”
“I’m a poet,” modestly.
“And what thin trickle of curds-and-whey verse do you imagine can be born in leisure hours, while in unctuous enjoyment of a tremendous screw?”
“Better verse than if I were a starving rhymester, peddling my sweated wares, with chilblains on all my toes. I don’t believe in the uses of adversity?”
“No?”