“Oh, that’s Marigold. We are fellow-members here. She was in business with me before I married. Isn’t she very good-looking, don’t you think?”
“Beautiful,” I declared.
“Ah, I see,” laughed my partner. “You are like all the other men. They all admire her, and want to dance with her. But Marigold is a queer girl: I can never make her out in these days. Once she was very bright and merry, and always gadding about somewhere with a man named Audley. Now there’s a kink somewhere. She accepts no invitations, keeps herself to herself, and only on rare occasions comes here just to look on. A great change has come over her. Why, I can’t make out. We were the closest of friends before I married, so I’ve asked her the reason of it all, but she will tell me absolutely nothing.”
“Audley,” I gasped. “Where is she at business?”
“At Carille’s, the dressmakers in Dover Street. She’s a mannequin, and I was a typist there,” she replied. “And now Mr. Yelverton, you know what was my business before I married,” she added, with a laugh.
“Pretty boring, I should say, showing off dresses to a pack of unappreciative old cats,” was my remark.
“Boring isn’t the word for it,” Mrs. Powell declared, “I couldn’t have stood her work. You should see our clients—uneducated, fat, coarse, war-rich old hags who look Marigold up and down, and fancy they will appear as smart as she does in one of Monsieur Carille’s latest creations. How Marigold sticks at it so long I can’t make out. She ought to be awarded the prize medal for patience. I could never amble about over that horrid grey carpet and place my neck, my elbows and hands at absurd angles for the benefit of those ugly old tabbies—no matter what salary I was paid!”
At that moment we found ourselves before the table where her husband was seated, smoking and drinking coffee with Sava, the young Serbian who was perhaps the greatest modern caricaturist.
Belgravia is good; Bohemia is better; the combination of both is surely Paradise! Sava’s conversation was as perfect as his caricatures: he had seen life in every capital in Europe and was a born raconteur. For a time he held us engrossed with his witty comments on the men and matters of half-a-dozen countries, all of which he knew to perfection.
Never have I seen so truly fraternal a circle as that little backwater of Bohemianism. Every one was at his ease: there was no such a thing as being a stranger there. The fact that you were there—that some member had introduced you and vouched for you—broke down all barriers and men who had never before met and might never meet again met and chatted as freely as if they were old friends and with an utter disregard of all the vexing problems of wealth, rank, profession and precedence.