"Well, after all, we don't know that she isn't happy," I said cheerfully. "Anyway, she pleased herself, and—it's four years ago.... Just listen to the row!"
I was glad of the diversion that came just then. Led by a Jew's harp, the party at the next table had broken into "Soldiers of the Queen," and for the five hundredth time that day the song had "caught on" instantly. The whole garden was now vociferating it, standing on seats, dancing between the tables, their rising and falling heads a dark and bizarre tumult in the conflicting lights. At the gate of the garden a barrel-organ stopped and took up the same song in another key, but they drowned it:—
"Who've b—ee—een—my lads!
And s—ee—een—my lads!"
Talk in that uproar was impossible, and again there enwrapped us that strong sense of rich and rough and abundant life. As we leaned over our little table to watch, Evie's finger was moving in time to the song, and even the thought of the little house a few hundred yards away disappeared for a moment from my own mind. A chair with a couple of girls upon it broke, and there were shrieks and applause and whistles and laughter; and then the song began to die away. Cheers followed it, and cheers again, for throats cheered readily then; and then our neighbours of the next table formed themselves into single file, and, with a last shrill
"Who've b—ee—een—my lads!
And s—ee—een—my lads!"
marched round the garden and out into the crowds beyond. I seized my opportunity. Evie and I followed them, I with her tucked safely away under my arm; and we joined the dense stream that was already pouring southwards. And as I struggled for places on a bus at Hampstead Heath Station, my heart was grateful for that illusion of the day that had banished, first, the remnant of Evie's sorrow, and had afterwards cut short that impossible course of unmeasured confidences to which that moodiness had given rise.