Why did Lola say: “Your Eleanor Faversham?”
I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for the first time love that was not light had come into my life.
CHAPTER XXI
“The Lord will find a way out of the dilemma,” said I confidently to myself as I neared Cadogan Gardens two days after the revelatory drive. “Lola is in love with me and I am in love with Lola, and there is nothing to keep us apart but my pride over a matter of a few ha'-pence.” I felt peculiarly jaunty. I had just posted to Finch the last of the articles I had agreed to write for his reactionary review, and only a couple of articles for another journal remained to be written in order to complete my literary engagements. Soon I should be out of the House of Bondage in which I had been a slave, at first willingly and now rebelliously, from my cradle. The great wide world with its infinite opportunities for development received my liberated spirit. I had broken the shackles of caste. I had thrown off the perfumed garments of epicureanism, the vesture of my servitude. My emotions, once stifled in the enervating atmosphere, now awake fresh and strong in the free air. I was elemental—the man wanting the woman; and I was happy because I knew I was going to get her. Such must be the state of being of a dragonfly on a sunny day. And—shall I confess it?—I had obeyed the dragon-fly's instinct and attired myself in the most resplendent raiment in my wardrobe. My morning coat was still irreproachable, my patent leather boots still gleamed, and having had some business in Piccadilly I had stepped into my hatter's and emerged with my silk hat newly ironed. I positively strutted along the pavement.
For two days I had not seen her or heard from her or written to her. I had scrupulously respected her wishes, foolish though they were. Now I was on my way to convince her that my love was not a moment's surge of the blood on a spring afternoon. I would take her into my arms at once, after the way of men, and she, after the way of women, would yield adorably. I had no doubt of it. I tasted in anticipation the bliss of that first embrace as if I had never kissed a woman in my life. And, indeed, what woman had I kissed with the passion that now ran through my veins? In that embrace all the ghosts of the past women would be laid for ever and a big and lusty future would make glorious beginning. “By Heaven,” I cried, almost articulately, “with the splendour of the world at my command why should I not write plays, novels, poems, rhapsodies, so as to tell the blind, groping, loveless people what it is like?
“Take me up to Madame Brandt!” said I to the lift-porter. “Madame Brandt is not in town, sir,” said the man.
I looked at him open-mouthed. “Not in town?”
“I think she has gone abroad, sir. She left with a lot of luggage yesterday, and her maid, and now the flat is shut up.”
“Impossible!” I cried aghast.