Possibly the words of Rivers may have affected her more than she was willing to admit; but she certainly was not as self-composed as usual during that first dinner. Her wit flashed vivaciously; the Dictator thought her brilliant, and even rather bewildering. If anyone had said to him that Helena Langley was not absolutely at her ease with him, he would have stared in amazement. For himself, he was not at all dismayed by the brilliant, beautiful girl who sat next to him. The long habit of intercourse with all kinds of people, under all kinds of conditions, had given him the experience which enabled him to be at his ease under any circumstances, even the most unfamiliar, and certainly talking to Helena Langley was an experience that had no precedent in the Dictator's life. But he talked to her readily, with great pleasure; he felt a little surprise at her obvious willingness to talk to him and accept his judgment upon many things; but he set this down as one of the few agreeable conditions attendant upon being lionised, and accepted it gratefully. 'I am the newest thing,' he thought to himself, 'and so this child is interested in me and consequently civil to me. Probably she will have forgotten all about me the next time we meet; in the meanwhile she is very charming.' The Dictator had even been about to suggest to himself that he might possibly forget all about her; but somehow this did not seem very likely, and he dismissed it.
He did not see very much of Helena that night after the dinner. Many people came in, and Helena was surrounded by a little court of adorers, men of all ages and occupations, statesmen, soldiers, men of letters, all eagerly talking a kind of talk which was almost unintelligible to the Dictator. In that bright Babel of voices, in that conversation which was full of allusions to things of which he knew nothing, and for which, if he had known, he would have cared less, the Dictator felt his sense of exile suddenly come strongly upon him like a great chill wave. It was not that he could feel neglected. A great statesman was talking to him, talking at much length confidentially, paying him the compliment of repeatedly inviting his opinion, and of deferring to his judgment. There was not a man or woman in the room who was not anxious to be introduced to Ericson, who was not delighted when the introduction was accorded, and when he or she had taken his hand and exchanged a few words with him. But somehow it was Helena's voice that seemed to thrill in the Dictator's ears; it was Helena's face that his eyes wandered to through all that brilliant crowd, and it was with something like a sense of serious regret that he found himself at last taking her hand and wishing her good-night. Her bright eyes grew brighter as she expressed the hope that they should meet soon again. The Dictator bowed and withdrew. He felt in his heart that he shared the hope very strongly.
The hope was certainly realised. So notable a lion as the Dictator was asked everywhere, and everywhere that he went he met the Langleys. In the high political and social life in which the Dictator, to his entertainment, found himself, the hostilities of warring parties had little or no effect. In that rarefied air it was hard to draw the breath of party passion, and the Dictator came across the Langleys as often in the houses of the Opposition as in Ministerial mansions. So it came to pass that something almost approaching to an intimacy sprang up between John Ericson on the one part and Sir Rupert and Helena Langley on the other. Sir Rupert felt a real interest in the adventurous man with the eccentric ideas; perhaps his presence recalled something of Sir Rupert's own hot youth when he had had eccentric ideas and was looked upon with alarm by the steady-going. Helena made no concealment of her interest in the exile. She was always so frank in her friendships, so off-hand and boyish in her air of comradeship with many people, that her attitude towards the Dictator did not strike any one, except Soame Rivers, as being in the least marked—for her. Indeed, most of her admirers would have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little court, and he smiled cynically and pretended to be amused.
Ericson's acquaintance with the Langleys ripened into that rapid intimacy which is sometimes possible in London. At the end of a week he had met them many times and had been twice to their house. Helena had always insisted that a friendship which was worth anything should declare itself at once, should blossom quickly into being, and not grow by slow stages. She offered the Dictator her friendship very frankly and very graciously, and Ericson accepted very frankly the gracious gift. For it delighted him, tired as he was of all the strife and struggle of the last few years, to find rest and sympathy in the friendship of so charming a girl; the cordial sympathy she showed him came like a balm to the humiliation of his overthrow. He liked Helena, he liked her father; though he had known them but for a handful of days, it always delighted him to meet them; he always felt in their society that he was in the society of friends.
One evening, when Ericson had been little more than a month in London, he found himself at an evening party given by Lady Seagraves. Lady Seagraves was a wonderful woman—'the fine flower of our modern civilisation,' Soame Rivers called her. Everybody came to her house; she delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It was an astonishing amalgam.
Ericson arrived at Lady Seagraves' house rather late; the rooms were very full—he found it difficult to get up the great staircase. There had been some great Ministerial function, and the dresses of many of the men in the crowd were as bright as the women's. Court suits, ribands, and orders lent additional colour to a richly coloured scene. But even in a crowd where everybody bore some claim to distinction the arrival of the Dictator aroused general attention. Ericson was not yet sufficiently hardened to the experience to be altogether indifferent to the fact that everyone was looking at him; that people were whispering his name to each other as he slowly made his way from stair to stair; that pretty women paused in their upward or downward progress to look at him, and invariably with a look of admiration for his grave, handsome face.
When he got to the top of the stairs Ericson found his hostess, and shook hands with her. Lady Seagraves was an effusive woman, who was always delighted to see any of her friends; but she felt a special delight at seeing the Dictator, and she greeted him with a special effusiveness. Her party was choking with celebrities of all kinds, social, political, artistic, legal, clerical, dramatic; but it would not have been entirely triumphant if it had not included the Dictator. Lady Seagraves was very glad to see him indeed, and said so in her warm, enthusiastic way.
'I'm so glad to see you,' Lady Seagraves murmured. 'It was so nice of you to come. I was beginning to be desperately afraid that you had forgotten all about me and my poor little party.'
It was one of Lady Seagraves' graceful little affectations to pretend that all her parties were small parties, almost partaking of the nature of impromptu festivities. Ericson glanced around over the great room crammed to overflowing with a crowd of men and women who could hardly move, men and women most of whose faces were famous or beautiful, men and women all of whom, as Soame Rivers said, had their names in the play-bill; there was a smile on his face as he turned his eyes from the brilliant mass to Lady Seagraves' face.
'How could I forget a promise which it gives me so much pleasure to fulfil?' he asked. Lady Seagraves gave a little cry of delight.