“Oh, yes,” agreed Madame Claire. “She’d pride herself on it.”
They talked for nearly half an hour, and Eric was about to go when Dawson opened the door to announce “Master Noel.”
“Hello!” exclaimed Noel. “Two birds with one stone. That’s splendid. Greetings, Claire. I’m bursting with talk. How are you, Eric?”
“We’re bursting to hear you talk,” Madame Claire told him. “Sit down and tell us all about it.”
“Whew!” Noel stretched himself out in a chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “I feel a bit of a rag. Concerts always make me feel like that, but this one was rather more exhausting than usual.”
“Was it a good concert?”
“Well, of course I’m no musician, but it seemed all right to me. Several thousand people had come to hear the lion roar, and they all seemed pleased with his roaring. But first of all, I wish you could have seen Connie, complete with dark shadows under her eyes, large black hat and a bunch of gardenias. Petrovitch saw her at once—we had seats almost under the piano—and they exchanged soul to soul looks. And then he sat down to play. Gosh, the fellow can play! He even had me spellbound. As for Connie—but I leave that to your imagination. I’ll bet Petrovitch played as never before. Sees nephew sitting beside beautiful aunt. Tries to charm aunt away from nephew. Does so—or jolly near it. Connie sat there with her soul in her eyes. I’m sorry to have to mention souls so often, but the narrative seems to require it. Well, I wish you could have heard the applause. People stood up and clapped and clapped and clapped. The gallery yelled and shouted. Illiodor—that’s his unChristian name—tore off two or three encores and bowed and bowed, and then gazed at Connie and bowed some more, and then finally came back and played something very tender—you know the sort of thing—a fragment, a thought, a tear—and then gazed some more at Connie and that was the end of it. I sat there feeling proud all the time. Proprietary, I suppose you’d call it. Something like this: ‘You like it? Good. Oh, yes, in a way he’s one of the family. Fellow my aunt ran off with. Quite one of the family.’”
“How absurd you are, Noel!” laughed Madame Claire.
“And then what happened?” asked Eric.
“Well, we got out finally and headed for home. Connie hung on my arm like a wilted flower, and I can tell you, she’s no light weight. I couldn’t possibly put her in a ’bus in the state she was in—I have some sense of the fitness of things—so we took a taxi and she sat in it with her hands clasped and her eyes fixed before her, murmuring, ‘Wasn’t he divine, divine!’ I felt that the situation was becoming a bit too tense, so I said, ‘Yes, he’s all right, but I think Grock’s more amusing.’ But it didn’t annoy her a bit. She just kept on rocking herself and murmuring, ‘Divine, divine!’”