The Seraph lifted himself a little, with a sort of pitying, sympathizing curiosity toward a fellow-sufferer.
“Well, I'll tell you,” said Bertie, with a sigh as of a man who hated long sentences, and who was about to plunge into a painful past. “It's ages ago; day I was at a Drawing room; year Blue Ruin won the Clearwell for Royal, I think. Wedged up there, in that poking place, I saw such a face—the deuce, it almost makes me feel enthusiastic now. She was just out—an angel with a train! She had delicious eyes—like a spaniel's you know—a cheek like this peach, and lips like that strawberry there, on the top of your ice. She looked at me, and I was in love! I knew who she was—Irish lord's daughter—girl I could have had for the asking; and I vow that I thought I would ask her—I actually was as far gone as that; I actually said to myself, I'd hang about her a week or two, and then propose. You'll hardly believe it, but I did. Watched her presented; such grace, such a smile, such a divine lift of the lashes. I was really in love, and with a girl who would marry me! I was never so near a fatal thing in my life——”
“Well?” asked the Seraph, pausing to listen till he let the ice in his sherry-cobbler melt away. When you have been so near breaking your neck down the Matrimonial Matterhorn, it is painfully interesting to hear how your friend escaped the same risks of descent.
“Well,” resumed Bertie, “I was very near it. I did nothing but watch her; she saw me, and I felt she was as flattered and as touched as she ought to be. She blushed most enchantingly; just enough, you know; she was conscious I followed her; I contrived to get close to her as she passed out, so close that I could see those exquisite eyes lighten and gleam, those exquisite lips part with a sigh, that beautiful face beam with the sunshine of a radiant smile. It was the dawn of love I had taught her! I pressed nearer and nearer, and I caught her soft whisper as she leaned to her mother: 'Mamma, I'm so hungry! I could eat a whole chicken!' The sigh, the smile, the blush, the light, were for her dinner—not for me! The spell was broken forever. A girl whom I had looked at could think of wings and merry-thoughts and white sauce! I have never been near a proposal again.”
The Seraph, with the clarion roll of his gay laughter, flung a hautboy at him.
“Hang you, Beauty! If I didn't think you were going to tell one how you really got out of a serious thing; it is so awfully difficult to keep clear of them nowadays. Those before-dinner teas are only just so many new traps! What became of her—eh?”
“She married a Scotch laird and became socially extinct, somewhere among the Hebrides. Served her right,” murmured Cecil sententiously. “Only think what she lost just through hungering for a chicken; if I hadn't proposed for her,—for one hardly keeps the screw up to such self-sacrifice as that when one is cool the next morning,—I would have made her the fashion!”
With which masterly description in one phrase of all he could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party—a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her sisters for the Naiads and the Household for their Tritons.
A water-party whose water element apparently consisted in driving down to Richmond, dining at nine, being three hours over the courses, contributing seven guineas apiece for the repast, listening to the songs of the Café Alcazar, reproduced with matchless elan by a pretty French actress, being pelted with brandy cherries by the Zu-Zu, seeing their best cigars thrown away half-smoked by pretty pillagers, and driving back again to town in the soft, starry night, with the gay rhythms ringing from the box-seat as the leaders dashed along in a stretching gallop down the Kew Road. It certainly had no other more aquatic feature in it save a little drifting about for twenty minutes before dining, in toy boats and punts, as the sun was setting, while Laura Lelas, the brunette actress, sang a barcarolle.
“Venice, and her people, only born to bloom and droop.”