“You have ‘queered’ me, Van,” she had said, in pure jest.
Whereupon, he had returned to the platform to give his enthusiastically demanded encore, and, to the disappointment of the audience, had sung the most villainous drawing-room ballad he could think of, without an attempt at expression. The applause had been perfunctory, and Yvonne’s appearance had created a quickening of interest. Vandeleur’s unnecessary quixotism put Yvonne into a false position. So she thanked him shyly.
“Let me just have ten minutes of a cigarette at home with you,” he pleaded.
Yvonne was tired. It was very hot; she had been running hither and thither about London since the morning, and was longing in a feminine way to free herself of hampering garments, and to lie down with a French novel for an hour before going to bed. But when a man spoke to her with that note of entreaty in his voice she did not know how to refuse. She nodded assent. Vandeleur called a cab and they drove together to her flat.
It was up many flights of stairs—the passage was very narrow, the drawing-room very tiny. The big Irishman standing on the hearthrug seemed to fill all the space left by the grand piano. How this article of furniture was ever brought into the flat puzzled Yvonne’s friends as much as the entrance of the apples into the dumplings puzzled George III., until some one suggested the same solution of the problem—the flat had been built round the piano. Everything else in the room was small, like Yvonne herself, the armchairs, the couch, the three occasional tables. A few water-colours hung around the walls. The curtains and draperies were fresh and tasteful. All the room, with its dainty furniture and pretty feminine knick-knacks, was impressed with Yvonne’s graceful individuality—all except the immense grand piano, which asserted itself loudly, a polished rosewood solecism. It seemed such a very big instrument for so small a person as Yvonne.
She threw herself into an armchair by the fire, with a little sigh. She had been unusually quiet during the drive home.
“And what’s making you miserable?” asked Vandeleur, in a tone of concern.
“I wish you had n’t done that, Van,” she said, with a wistful puckering of her forehead.
“Ah, there! now you’re vexed with me. There never was an animal like me for treading on my dearest friends. I’m like the elephant you may have heard of, that squashed the mother of a brood of chickens by mistake, and, taking it to heart, just like me, gathered the little ones under his wing, and, sitting down upon them, said: ‘Ah, be aisy now, I’ll be a mother to you’; he did n’t hurt the chickens’ feelings exactly—but it was mistaken kindness. Was it your feelings I trampled on?”
“Ah, no, Van,” said Yvonne, smiling. “But don’t you see, it was doing a thing I can never pay you back for.”