Strange that such a meeting should have marked the day for him as great. Not strange that it should be so for you and me: for us it has inner meanings, implications of success; it marks the grandeur of our flight; it has high possibilities. Who knows but we may catch the fancy of the lovely creature, be admitted freely to her familiar fellowship; penetrate thereby to the very innermost arcana of the Social Mystery?
But for him—a monster of the forest, an elemental being—that happiness should date from his first meeting with a woman whom we must call after all frail, the fine flower of all that is most artificial and decadent in England: that was strange. But so it was.
He had studied; he had seen; he knew the human question to the bottom. But what to make of it? Was this all? Discontentment gnawed him. He suffered a deprivation, as once in the forest, when he lacked Man. Now he had had Man, to the full; he was sated. What more?
Lady Wyse understood his want, and helped him to supply it. He must reduce himself, limit his range to the human scale; he must put off his elemental largeness and himself be Man; be less—an Englishman, a Londoner.
XVIII
Lady Lillico’s evening was crowded. ‘This is quite an intellectual party to-day,’ she said, shaking hands with Dwala and Huxtable, and leading them down the avenue which opened of its own accord in the forest of men and women. ‘Such a number of literary people. How do you do, Mr. MacAllister? It’s an age since we’ve seen you; and this is your wife, isn’t it? To be sure. Let me introduce you to Prince Dwala.... That was Sandy MacAllister, the author of “The Auld Licht that Failit”—all about those dear primitive Ayrshire people; everybody’s so interested nowadays in their fidelity and simplicity and religiousness and all that. The Kirkyard School, they call it. It’s a pity his wife’s so Scotch. Lord Glendover is here....’
‘Cabinet Ministers, Oho!’ said Huxtable.
‘And Lady Violet Huggins, and the Duke of Dover, and Sir Peter Parchmin, the great biologist, and Sir Benet Smyth, and both the Miss Dillwaters. And who else do you think I’ve “bagged,” Mr. Huxtable?’
‘I can’t guess.’
‘Lady Wyse!’