The door at which they paused showed a room crowded, bright, and full of a lawn of tobacco-smoke. It was not a large room, but it must have held twenty men and as many women, and you could have seen their like on any summer Sunday at Tagg's Island, or any day in Regent Street, or on Brighton Front. They sat in chairs of saddlebag or leather, and the fingers of the men were poised over the large cigar-boxes the waiters held before them, or else made little circular gestures about the circumference of the little round tables, as much as to say "Same again" or "Mine." Little but champagne, liqueurs, or brandies-and-soda seemed to be to their taste, and John Pritchard might indeed have thought them "very ritss whatever"; gold seemed to come from them at a touch, notes at little more. Just within the door a very brown man sat with a plump little lady about whose short fingers gems seemed to have candied, as sugar candies about a string; and next to them another man admired as much of his companion's shoes as could be seen for the champagne cooler on the floor. There was not much noise. There was a good deal of whispering about horses.
A ring was widened for the new-comers about one of the larger tables—"Arthur!" Percy called as he passed one of the waiters. "Bag o' beer, and Mr. P. Briggs's compliments to Miss Price and will she please come at once." They settled down.
This was Percy's present humour—to drink pints of beer from a silver tankard that resembled a tun among the gem-like liqueur-glasses, and to make love to Miss Price, the fat and creasy and unapproachable hotel-manageress. Perhaps he intended to convey that few other new sensations remained to him at the end of his three-and-twenty hard-lived years. Sometimes John Willie laughed at this posture of his friend's, but to-night he thought it merely stupid and idiotic. He had come here because he had thought he might as well be having a drink as fruitlessly searching; now he thought he might as well be searching as having a drink he didn't want. Percy was ordering the drinks now—"Vermouth, Val? Cissie, your's is avocat, I know. Now, Johannes Guglielmus, what will you imbibe?" Presently John Willie sat glowering at a whiskey-and-soda. The girl on his left, whom Percy had addressed as Cissie, made an arch attempt to talk to him, and then gave up the laborious task and turned her back. Miss Price, the manageress, appeared, and Percy began his stupid and facetious love-making. John Willie wondered whether he had searched the Dancing-Hall thoroughly after all.
The table grew noisy, and there were appreciative grins from other tables; Percy was trying to draw that disgustingly fat manageress on to his knee. And, with the pace thus set by Percy, the whole room woke up. The waiters began to move about more quickly and to call for assistance, and there was applause as somebody opened the lid of the piano....
John Willie sat before his untouched whiskey-and-soda. He was once more wondering whether it would be worth while to return to the Dancing-Hall, or whether she might not by this time be on the Pier. And again, and ever again, he wondered when and where he had seen her before....
Again Percy's silly joyous voice broke in. He was expostulating with Miss Price.
"Look, Cissie's sitting on Val's——"
"Let be, Mr. Briggs—indeed I will not be pulled about like that!—--"
"Then sit on Mr. Garden's—cheer him up—he's looking for Gertie, the Double-Blank from Blackburn, and can't find her——"
"There, now, Mr. Briggs!—Now I shall have to go and get a needle and thread!—--"