The little room was gaudily decorated and redolent with the lingering
odors of many dinners. Yet Louise, who had dined on the preceding
evening at the Ritz and been bored, whose taste in food and environment
was almost hypercritical, was perfectly happy. She found the cuisine and
the Chianti excellent.
"We are outstaying every one else," she declared; "and I don't even mind
their awful legacy of tobacco-smoke. Do you see that the waiter has
brought you the bill, Mr. Strangewey? Prepare for a shock. It is
fortunate that you are a millionaire!"
John laughed as he paid the bill and ludicrously overtipped the waiter.
"London must be a paradise to the poor man!" he exclaimed. "I have never
dined better."
"Don't overdo it," Sophy begged.
"I can only judge by results," John insisted. "I have dined, and I am
happy; therefore, the dinner must have been good."
"You are so convincing!" Sophy murmured. "There is such a finality about
your statements that I would not venture to dispute them. But remember
that your future entertainment is in the hands of two women, one of whom
is a deserving but struggling young artist without the means of
gratifying her expensive tastes. There are heaps of places we are going
to take you to which even Louise pretends she cannot afford. It is so
fortunate, Mr. Strangewey, that you are rich!"
"I believe you would be just as nice to me if I weren't," John ventured.
"I am so susceptible!" Sophy sighed, looking into her empty coffee-cup;
"much more susceptible than Louise."
"I won't have Mr. Strangewey spoiled," Louise put in. "And don't build
too much upon his being content with us as entertainers-in-chief.
Remember the halfpenny papers. In a few days he will be
interviewed--'Millionaire Farmer Come to London to Spend His Fortune.'
He will become famous. He will buy a green morocco engagement-book, and
perhaps employ a secretary. We shall probably have to ask ourselves to
luncheon three weeks ahead."
"I feel these things coming," John declared.
"My children," said Louise, rising, "we must remember that we are going
to the Palace. It is quite time we started."
They made their way down two flights of narrow stairs into the street.
The commissionnaire raised his whistle to his lips, but Louise stopped
him.
"We will walk," she suggested. "This way, Mr. Strangewey!"
They passed down the long, narrow street, with its dingy foreign cafes
and shops scarcely one of which seemed to be English. The people who
thronged the pavements were of a new race to John, swarthy, a little
furtive, a class of foreigner seldom seen except in alien lands. Men and
women in all stages of dishabille were leaning out of the windows or
standing on the doorsteps. The girls whom they met occasionally--young
women of all ages, walking arm in arm, with shawls on their heads in
place of hats--laughed openly in John's face.
"Conquests everywhere he goes!" Louise sighed. "We shall never keep him,
Sophy!"
"We have him for this evening, at any rate," Sophy replied contentedly;
"and he hasn't spent all his fortune yet. I am not at all sure that I
shall not hint at supper when we come out of the Palace."
"No hint will be necessary," John promised. "I feel the gnawings of
hunger already."
"A millionaire's first night in London!" Sophy exclaimed. "I think I
shall write it up for the _Daily Mail_."
"A pity he fell into bad hands so quickly," Louise laughed. "Here we
are! Stalls, please, Mr. Millionaire. I wouldn't be seen to-night in the
seats of the mighty."
John risked a reproof, however, and was fortunate enough to find a
disengaged box.
"The tone of the evening," Louise grumbled, as she settled herself down
comfortably, "is lost. This is the most expensive box in the place."
"You could restore it by eating an orange," Sophy suggested.
"Or even chocolates," John ventured, sweeping most of the contents of an
attendant's tray onto the ledge of the box.
"After this," Sophy declared, falling upon them, "supper will be a
farce."
"Make you thirsty," John reminded her.
They devoted their attention to the show, Louise and Sophy at first with
only a moderate amount of interest, John with the real enthusiasm of one
to whom everything is new. His laughter was so hearty, his appreciation
so sincere, that his companions found it infectious, and began to
applaud everything.
"What children we are!" Louise exclaimed. "Fancy shrieking with laughter
at a ventriloquist whom I have seen at every music-hall I have been to
during the last five or six years!"
"He was wonderfully clever, all the same," John insisted.
"The bioscope," Louise decided firmly, "I refuse to have anything to do
with. You have had all the entertainment you are going to have this
evening, Mr. Countryman."
"Now for supper, then," he proposed.
Sophy sighed as she collected the half-empty chocolate-boxes.
"What a pity I've eaten so many! They'd have saved me a luncheon
to-morrow."
"Greedy child," Louise laughed, "sighing for want of an appetite! I
think we'll insist upon a taxi this time. I don't like overcrowded
streets. Where shall we take him to, Sophy? You know the supper places
better than I do."
"Luigi's," Sophy declared firmly. "The only place in London."
They drove toward the Strand. John looked around him with interest as
they entered the restaurant.
"I've been here before," he said, as they passed through the doors.
"Explain yourself at once," Louise insisted.
"It was eight years ago, when I was at Oxford," he told them. "We were
here on the boat-race night. I remember," he added reminiscently, "that
some of us were turned out. Then we went on to--"
"Stop!" Louise interrupted sternly. "I am horrified! The one thing I did
not suspect you of, Mr. Strangewey, was a past."
"Well, it isn't a very lurid one," he assured them. "That was very
nearly the only evening about town I have ever been guilty of."
Luigi, who had come forward to welcome Sophy, escorted them to one of
the best tables.
"You must be very nice to this gentleman, Luigi," she said. "He is a
very great friend of mine, just arrived in London. He has come up on
purpose to see me, and we shall probably decide to make this our
favorite restaurant."
"I shall be vairy happy," Luigi declared, with a bow.
"I am beginning to regret, Mr. Strangewey, that I ever introduced you to
Sophy," Louise remarked, as she sank back into her chair. "You won't
believe that all my friends are as frivolous as this, will you?"
"They aren't," Sophy proclaimed confidently. "I am the one person who
succeeds in keeping Louise with her feet upon the earth. She has never
had supper here before. Dry biscuits, hot milk, and a volume of poems
are her relaxation after the theater. She takes herself too seriously."
"I wonder if I do!" Louise murmured, as she helped herself to caviar.
She was suddenly pensive. Her eyes seemed to be looking out of the
restaurant. Sophy was exchanging amenities with a little party of
friends at the next table.
"One must sometimes be serious," John remarked, "or life would have no
poise at all."
"I have a friend who scolds me," she confided. "Sometimes he almost
loses patience with me. He declares that my attitude toward life is too
analytical. When happiness comes my way, I shrink back. I keep my
emotions in the background, while my brain works, dissecting, wondering,
speculating. Perhaps what he says is true. I believe that if one gets
into the habit of analyzing too much, one loses all elasticity of
emotion, the capacity to recognize and embrace the great things when
they come."
"I think you have been right," John declared earnestly. "If the great
things come as they should come, they are overwhelming, they will carry
you off your feet. You will forget to speculate and to analyze.
Therefore, I think you have been wise and right to wait. You have run no
risk of having to put up with the lesser things."
She leaned toward him across the rose-shaded table. For those few
seconds they seemed to have been brought into a wonderfully intimate
communion of thought. A wave of her hair almost touched his forehead.
His hand boldly rested upon her fingers.
"You talk," she whispered, "as if we were back upon your hilltops once
more!"
He turned his head toward the little orchestra, which was playing a low
and tremulous waltz tune.
"I want to believe," he said, "that you can listen to the music here and
yet live upon the hilltops."
"You believe that it is possible?"
"I do indeed," he assured her. "Although my heart was almost sick with
loneliness, I do not think that I should be here if I did not believe
it. I have not come for anything else, for any lesser things, but to
find--"
For once his courage failed him. For once, too, he failed to understand
her expression. She had drawn back a little, her lips were quivering.
Sophy broke suddenly in upon that moment of suspended speech.
"I knew how it would be!" she exclaimed. "I leave you both alone for
less than a minute, and there you sit, as grave as two owls. I ask you,
now, is this the place to wander off into the clouds? When two people
sit looking at each other as you were doing a minute ago, here in
Luigi's, at midnight, with champagne in their glasses, and a supper,
ordered regardless of expense, on the table before them, they are either
without the least sense of the fitness of things, or else--"
"Or else what?" Louise asked.
"Or else they are head over heels in love with each other!" Sophy
concluded.
"Perhaps the child is right," Louise assented tolerantly, taking a peach
from the basket by her side. "Evidently it is our duty to abandon
ourselves to the frivolity of the moment. What shall we do to bring
ourselves into accord with it? Everybody seems to be behaving most
disgracefully. Do you think it would contribute to the gaiety of the
evening if I were to join in the chorus of 'You Made Me Love You,' and
Mr. Strangewey were to imitate the young gentleman at the next table and
throw a roll, say, at that portly old gentleman with the highly polished
shirt-front?"
"There is no need to go to extremes," Sophy protested. "Besides, we
should get into trouble. The portly old gentleman happens to be one of
the directors."
"Then we will just talk nonsense," Louise suggested.
"I am not very good at it," John sighed; "and there is so much I want to
say that isn't nonsense."
"You ought to be thankful all your life that you have met me and that I
am disposed to take an interest in you," Sophy remarked, as she moved
her chair a little nearer to John's. "I am quite sure that in a very
short time you would have become--well, almost a prig. Providence has
selected me to work out your salvation."
"Providence has been very kind, then," John told her.
"I hope you mean it," she returned. "You ought to, if you only
understood the importance of light-heartedness."
The lights were lowered a few minutes later, and John paid the bill.
"We've enjoyed our supper," Louise whispered, as they passed down the
room. "The whole evening has been delightful!"
"May I drive you home alone?" he asked bluntly.
"I am afraid we can't desert Sophy," she replied, avoiding his eyes.
"She nearly always goes home with me. You see, although she seems quite
a frivolous little person, she is really very useful to me--keeps my
accounts, and all that sort of thing."
"And does her best," Sophy joined in, "to protect you against your
ruinously extravagant habits!"
Louise laughed. They were standing in the little hall, and the
commissionnaire was blowing his whistle for a taxi.
"I won't be scolded to-night," she declared. "Come, you shall both of
you drive home with me, and then Mr. Strangewey can drop you at your
rooms on his way back."
Sophy made a little grimace and glanced up at John anxiously. He was
looking very big and very grim.
"Shall you mind that?" she asked.
A slight plaintiveness in her tone dispelled his first disappointment.
After all, it was Louise's decision.
"I will try to bear it cheerfully," he promised, smiling, as he handed
them into the cab.