How beautiful she was he realized after a dinner which figured in
his memory as one of those dinners which he had not enjoyed, though
as a matter of fact he _had_ enjoyed it or the mere distraction of
it. By way of distraction he had taken the table next to hers,
facing her where she sat between her two men.
She was an American; that fact had at first made his doubt itself a
little dubious. And she was probably from the South (they were
different there). Hence her softness, her full tone, her richness
and her glow. Hence her exotic strain that went so well with the
false tropics of the scene. But whether she were a provincial or an
urban, or, as she seemed, a cosmopolitan splendor, Thesiger was not
cosmopolitan enough to tell. She might have been the supreme flower
of her astounding country. She might have been, for all he knew,
unique.
She was tall, and her body, large and massive, achieved the grace of
slenderness from the sheer perfection of its lines. Her attire,
within the bounds of its subservience to Paris, was certainly
unique. It was wonderful the amount of decoration she could carry
without being the worse for it. Her head alone, over and above its
bronze hair, coil on coil and curl on curl, sustained several large
tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear.
It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl.
Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes
of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice and
from the dusk of her bared neck. There was a fine dusk in her
whiteness and in the rose of her face, and in the purplish streaks
under her eyes, and deeper dusks about the roots of her hair. And
gold sprang out of her darkness there; gold and bronze and copper
gleamed and glowed and flamed on every coil and curl. Her eyes held
the light gloriously; they were of a luminous, tawny brown, wide
apart, and slightly round, with a sudden fineness at the corners.
The lids had thick black lashes, so short that when they drooped
they had the effect of narrowing her eyes without darkening them.
Her nose, small and straight, was a shade too broadly rounded at the
tip, but that defect gave a sort of softness to her splendor. Of her
mouth Thesiger could not judge; he hadn't seen it at rest; and when
she talked her white teeth flashed at him and disturbed him.
As he looked at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he
thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her
small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud,
of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of
her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught
himself frowning at it over the _mousse de volaille_ he was eating;
and just then he thought that the other woman who was looking at him
smiled. Most certainly she gazed.
The gaze was condoned and allowed by the two men who followed it.
She was superb; but the men, the men were awful. To begin with, they
were American, altogether too American for Thesiger. One, whom the
lady addressed with some ceremony as Mr. Tarbuck, was the big, full
type, florid, rough-hewn, civilized by the cut of his clothes and
the excessive cleanness of his shaving. From the first he had
oppressed and offended Thesiger by his large and intolerably genial
presence. The other, whom she familiarly and caressingly called
Binky, was small and lean and yellow; he had a young face with old,
nervous lines in it, the twitching, tortured lines of the victim of
premature high pressure, effete in one generation. The small man
drank, most distinctly and disagreeably he drank. He might have been
the wreck of saloon bars, or of the frequent convivial cocktail, or
of savage, solitary drinking.
The lady seemed to be traveling under Tarbuck's awful wing, while
the outrageous Binky wandered conspicuously and somewhat
mysteriously under hers. She was attentive to the small man and
peeled his peaches for him, while the large man, smiling largely and
with irrepressible affection, peeled hers. The large man (flagrantly
opulent) had ordered peaches. He supposed they'd be the one thing
that durned hotel hadn't got.
Thesiger conceived a violent hatred for him and for the small man,
too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked
on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature
of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those
things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his
betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and
mutilator of the language, of his, Oscar Thesiger's, language.
The two were murdering it now, the large man with a terrible slow
assurance in the operation; the small man, as it were, worrying it
between his teeth, disposing of it in little savage snaps and jerks
and nasal snarlings. He would stop eating to do it. That was when
his beautiful and hypothetical companion left him to himself.
For the lady had a curiously soothing and subduing effect on the
small man. Sometimes, when his snarls were too obtrusive, she would
put out her hand, her small, perfect hand, and touch his sleeve, and
he would cease snarling and begin to peck feebly at the things
before him, or at the things before her, as the case might be.
Thesiger actually saw her transferring the _entree_ she had just
tasted from her own plate to his; he heard her coaxing and cajoling
him, calling on him by his offensive name of Binky. "Eat, little
Binky! Little Binky, eat!"
There seemed to be some rule in a game they had, by which, if she
first touched or tasted anything, Binky could not honorably refuse
it.
It was clear that she had a hold on the small man. Thesiger had
noticed that when she cancelled his orders for drinks he made no
resistance, while he bitterly resented Mr. Tarbuck's efforts at
control. She would then inquire gaily of Mr. Tarbuck whether he was
in command of this expedition or was she?
To-night, her fine eyes being considerably occupied with Thesiger,
the small man asserted his independence and was served,
surreptitiously as it were, with a brimming whisky and soda.
He had got his hand on it when the lady shot out a sudden arm across
the table, and with a staggering dexterity and impudence possessed
herself of his glass. Over the rim of it she kept her eyes on him,
narrowed eyes, darting mockery of Binky under half-closed lids; and,
with her head tilted back, she drank; she drank daintily, about an
inch down, and then she gave the glass to the large man, and he, as
if honor and chivalry compelled him also, emptied it.
"Did you that time, Binky," she murmured.
Thesiger heard her. She was looking at him, obviously to see how his
fastidiousness had taken it. She leaned forward, her elbows on the
table, and her head, propped on her hands, tilted slightly backward,
and she gazed at him under her lowered eyelids with her narrowed,
darting eyes. Then suddenly she lowered her chin and opened her
eyes, and he met them full.
Her gaze, which had first fascinated, now excited him; very
curiously it excited him, seeing that he was thinking about Vera
Walters all the time. So unabashed it was, and so alluring, it sent
such challenge and encouragement to the adventurous blood, that
under it the passion that Vera would have none of detached itself
from Vera with a fierce revulsion, and was drawn and driven, driven
and drawn toward that luminous and invincible gaze. And Thesiger
began to say to himself that the world was all before him, although
for him Vera had walked out of it; that he was a man of the world;
and that he didn't care.
It seemed to him that the beautiful American smiled again at him.
Then she got up, and swept down the dining-hall, swinging her rosy
draperies. The two men followed her, and Thesiger was left alone in
that vast place, seated at his table, and staring into a half-empty
wineglass, to the embarrassment of the waiter who hovered by his
chair.
After all, she left him an ultimate scruple; he could not altogether
trust his doubt.