The suffragette and the gardener walked so fast that the smoke from the suffragette’s cigarette lay out along the wind like the smoke behind a railway train. The strong swing of the sea threw their feet along. There was a moon in the sky and phosphorus in the sea.
But there are people who go down to the sea in ships, and yet confine their world to the promenade-deck. The heart of Theresa’s world, for instance, was the shining parallelogram, silvered with chalk, on the sheltered side of the deck. Theresa, looking extremely pretty, was superintending the over-filling of her already full programme.
“Mustn’t walk round like that,” she said in the polite tones that The Generation always used to the suffragette. “Must find partners, because the orchestra will soon begin to orch.”
“We are not dancing,” said the gardener. One always took for granted that the suffragette was not dancing.
“If you will dance,” said Theresa, “I will give you number eight.” She assumed with such confidence that this was an inducement, that somehow it became one.
“Thank you very much,” replied the gardener. “I’ll ask Courtesy Briggs for one, too.”
The suffragette sat down upon an isolated chair.
“May I have a dance?” asked the gardener of Courtesy. “I can’t dart or stagger, only revolve.”
“I was sea-sick only three hours ago,” retorted Courtesy with simplicity. “But I have a lot to talk to you about, so you can have number one. And we’ll begin it now.”
But the orchestra was still idling in the melancholy manner peculiar to orchestras. Why—by the way—is there something so unutterably sad in the expression of an orchestra about to play a jovial onestep?