“Good evening, Mrs Gordon. Good evening, sir. Delia, please! Don’t let me interrupt.”
Delia smiled absently, and crossed the room to a deep chair which was supplied with an admirable foil for white shoulders in the shape of a black satin cushion. She had the air of being only partially aware of Lessing’s presence, but in reality she was acutely conscious of everything concerning him, even to a certain air of impatience which was due to the importance of the news which he had to communicate. Delia was in love with Val Lessing, and was uncomfortably aware of the fact. Val was in love with Delia, but remained as yet in comfortable ignorance. Delia had always planned that it should be the other way about. She had pictured herself being wooed with assiduous devotion by a lover who refused to be daunted by a dozen noes. It was ignominious to realise that she was now waiting impatiently for the chance to cry, “Yes, please!”
Val seated himself, nodding carelessly at Terence, who greeted him by a brilliant example of slipper catching, and cried genially:
“Well, old Tomkins, what’s the matter with you? You look as if something was sitting pretty heavy on your chest!”
“It is!” said Val, and Delia’s heart went a little excursion on its own accord. Was he going to say that he was engaged?
“Good news, I hope, eh, Lessing?” cried Mr Gordon, and for the fraction of a second Val hesitated.
“Er—yes. I suppose—that is, of course, it is very good indeed. I’ve been made a director.”
Everybody exclaimed, everybody enthused, everybody congratulated, with the exception of Delia, who asked lazily: “What is a director?” and yawned when she was told. Mr Gordon showed the sympathy of understanding, but after putting many questions, and listening to halfhearted replies, he frowned, and delivered himself of an honest criticism.
“You’re not half as pleased as you ought to be, Lessing! A man of your age ought to be thankful to be in such a position. A start of fifteen hundred a year—in such a firm too. Good, safe, solid people. No fear of them going in for speculation and landing you in the bankruptcy court. Humanly speaking you’re safe from anxiety for the rest of your life.”
“Er—yes. That’s just it.” Lessing said vaguely, but his friends understood. It was not the first time that he had rebelled in their hearing; not the first time by many that he had sighed for the vagrant’s lot.