That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is immaterial; wherever we went we found—or so it seemed to our over-sensitive, suspicious nerves—a slight hush, a movement of turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled, indifferent—best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some superiority over man....
We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....
When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister; and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct underlying such a belief.
At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill—and swore a private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts, and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out—an unexpected party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.
The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed, and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia. Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight curve. Every one bowed to every one—Robin with his irrepressible, instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and parted.
The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.
"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said. "You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere presence of one was distasteful to the other."
"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me, they've got to know my friends."
"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right, aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather uncomfortable."
The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of embarrassment to a private gathering.