“A bit chilly ... flying....” Edward was suddenly understood to murmur into his cocktail glass.
“Explain yourself, Edward,” said Rhoda Romero maternally.
Edward had just finished his fourth cocktail on an empty stomach. The blaze of Emily’s eyes seemed like searchlights on his lips. “Ou, I dunno....” he said, delighted, “I often used to think ... Elijah must have regretted dropping his coat like that.... Probably quite inadvertent.... Of course ... central heating in the machine and all that.... Still....”
“Aeronauts say there’s nothing so warm as leather,” said Mrs. Melsie Stone Ponting. “An old beau of mine....”
But Emily still looked kindly at Edward. He had rarely been so fortunate. Everything in the room seemed to him to be brightly outlined and, though his hearing and his wit seemed to him happily alert, he could not remember from one moment to another the subject of the remarks he heard. Mr. Banner Hope was laughing almost continuously. His laughter was like something running helplessly down a slope, stumbling at every breath. Emily’s saint was spoken of in the same breath as mushrooms. A miracle in connection with mushrooms at once seemed to Edward quite inevitable. Mushrooms were not logical; in fact they were made by fairies. Fairies were little saints.
“I mayn’t be able to say much,” thought Edward. “But I do have beautiful thoughts.”
But it appeared that Emily was now talking about ducks. How enchantingly confusing.
“It was caught in the break of the waves,” said Emily. “We saw it crash on the sand and struggle. They are, after a storm. So awful to have your own world turn against you like that. Usen’t you to have nightmares that your mother had turned into a lion and bit you when you ran to her? I was far behind, finding out how much alike the edges of all seas are—if you pat the wet sand with your bare foot at Clacton-on-Sea or at Monte Carlo or at Bombay, it turns into a sort of trembling junket and here it was the same in the wake of a Pacific roller. Anyway when I caught up with Tam he was sitting by a broken duck. He had made it a little pillow of sand. He was holding its poor throbbing web in his hand. We waited till it died. You would never have thought a duck’s beak could have assumed an expression of such utter peace.”
“Say, listen,” said Mrs. Ponting, “are all these tales true?”
“Not particularly,” replied Emily. She added after a moment, “Well, to change the subject, what do you think of the Haiti question, the negro question, and the question of the Philippines?” There was no immediate answer to her question, so she went on rather hastily, “Well, well, fiction is much more fun than truth, isn’t it? Atrocities are delicious to make up. And everyone with a great enthusiasm or a grievance lies. I met a negro called Erle Takka, who said that United States Marines strip the houses of Haitian widows and orphans and then, while they starve, stand around and prick them with bayonets to make them dance. Too frightful, don’t you think, and too interesting, but—at least to a prosaic European ear—hardly likely. Up to now not a single deputation to Washington on the subject of Haiti has crossed my lips. Perhaps all this is rather superfluous....”