the more genteel; and there's a better band at Topping's. Floor's about
the same at both. The Queensford's larger."
"Is Topping's _low_?" she sparkled. "Let's be low."
"Right." He called the waiter.
"If it's not far, let's walk there," said Patricia. "It's such a
beautiful night."
The mirror at her side gave back a reflection of what she knew to be
an excited and even slightly flushed face. But she could not fail to
be charmed by her own prettiness as she rose and went towards the door
with Harry. The refined ladies and their escorts abandoned conversation
as Patricia passed, which gave her further satisfaction. She knew that
they could none of them withhold curiosity and perhaps admiration.
Well, wasn't that quite pleasant to Patricia? She had no fault to find
with her situation.
They were in the street, and in the piercing whiteness of electric
light. The air was very crisp, and she welcomed its cold touch upon
her cheeks. There were taxicabs and newspaper sellers and loitering
people; and a huge omnibus went heavily by. Crowds were thinner than
they had been early in the evening, but every face was whitened by the
light, bleached to the colourless gravity of a kinema film. Above, very
distant in the most lovely of blue night skies, was the moon, silver to
the eye, very pure and remote. Patricia looked up at the moon, smiling
her love for it, so much did that silent shape draw wonder from her
heart; and in doing this she unconsciously moved into Harry's path. He
took her arm for an instant's guidance, and, as they approached the
crossing of Piccadilly, he retained his hold. It was all nothing, and
she was free again when they reached the other side of the street; but
the protection had been so natural that it gave her pleasure. She
walked by Harry's side with a thousand beautiful little memories and
emotions and imaginings making what she knew to be happiness in her
heart.
And then they were at Topping's; and she could hear the band. Other
young people stood about on the broad stairs--fluffy-haired girls and
well-groomed young men, all with that curious excited expression in
their eyes which went with late hours and noise and nervous exhaustion.
Patricia felt her feet begin to catch the strongly marked rhythm, and
went quickly to change her shoes and leave her coat. She was out again
upon the stairs before Harry had returned; and stood there listening,
her breast rising and falling rather fast, a piquant figure, both
light and graceful, so fresh in that brilliant light that she drew the
attention of all who were near.
She was still waiting when two people came down the stairs from the
street towards her, both cloaked and muffled against the cold. For an
instant she did not recognise them; but as Monty took off his hat and
moved away to the men's cloak-room Patricia was recalled to memory
with a start. Evidently Monty had not seen her. Swiftly she looked at
the on-coming figure of his companion. A cold greeting was exchanged,
surprise rather than pleasure being obviously the emotion upon both
sides. Patricia followed the newcomer with her eyes until she was
hidden; and her brain was engaged with a problem.
Monty. Monty ... and Blanche Tallentyre. How strange.
v
Patricia was not allowed further time to ponder this singular meeting,
for Harry was once again at her elbow. He had not seen Monty, but was
eager to be dancing. They descended the remaining stairs. There was
a good deal of noise, not only from the band, but from the dancers
and, even more, from those who were still dining in that part of the
very large room which was set apart for the purpose. Patricia could
see that girls and men were at many of the small tables, smoking and
drinking, and that it was the custom for them to leave their places in
order to dance and to resume them when the music stopped. She had a
few moments to examine the throng; for exactly at the instant of their
arrival the band quickened its pace for the end of the dance which she
had heard in progress. Couples dispersed, and there was a crowded and
dishevelled scene which took her breath away. All sorts of girls in
all sorts of dresses and coiffures filled her eyes; all sorts of--no,
there was not such variety in the young men. They did not surprise her,
for they seemed to be men such as she might have known all her life.
The uniformity of costume, also, made many of them indistinguishable.
Everywhere there was an atmosphere of excitement such as she herself
was feeling. She was dazzled and delighted. A new ichor seemed to run
in her veins. It was some weeks since she had danced, and this place
was so much more attractive than the suburban halls and rooms she had
known that the surroundings appeared to Patricia ideal. For a moment
she was almost timid in the face of such terrific energy, such fizz
and glitter; but as soon as the band began to blare out a favourite
fox-trot Patricia lost all timidity. New elasticity ran through her
body: she was thrilling to the finger-tips. She was aware of Harry's
hands--one clasping her own, the other lightly and firmly at her waist;
of the ease of his step, the certainty of his command; and she yielded
herself completely to the dance.
"It's all right," Harry murmured in Patricia's ear. "Perfect. Knew it
would be."
He was able at last to hold Patricia within his arm, to be conscious of
her dangerously charming proximity, to speak close to her radiant eyes,
to employ the tone and glance which could no longer mar or frighten
away the prospect of this manœuvred evening. He was in a familiar land,
dealing with familiar emotions and opportunities, supremely content.
Patricia's face lighted up with a mischievous and unsuspecting smile.
She could not read his more sophisticated satisfaction, but she was
wholly spirited in her own.
"You're not such a bad dancer," she impudently informed him.
"Considering."
vi
A slightly increased pressure of the hand was Harry's only response. He
had rapidly fallen into that mood of enjoyment which gave his nature
its fullest play. His energy was being employed; he was being charmed
and gratified; his senses were all being titillated. Half a hundred
women would have given him most of his present pleasure, but the
novelty no less than the beauty of Patricia supplied just that added
spice which any indulged appetite presently demands in its exercise.
They danced three times, and then sat down, watching the other dancers
and comparing their styles. Here they could see a pair pedantically
apart, correctness itself; there a couple buried in each other, the
young man's face lost to view in his partner's hair. Every degree of
absorption in the dance or in physical sensation was to be observed.
The one thing absent from all faces was love; but since Harry and
Patricia were not looking for this rare emotion in others they did not
observe its absence.
Patricia was the first to catch sight of Monty, for whose figure she
had been searching in the crowd. As she could have foretold, he was
dancing perfectly. Blanche was rather stiff, she was pleased to notice.
Monty's expression was that of one who was bored: a line of white
showed beneath the iris of his eyes. His manner was almost too easy,
as though his thoughts were engaged otherwise than with his partner or
the dance. Nevertheless, he was obviously at home. His clothes fitted
and suited him. He was far beyond most of his neighbours in appearance;
for in too many of these Patricia cruelly discerned mediocrity. She
shook her head at the spectacle of so much that was to her fresh eye
uninspired and uninspiring.
"You see Monty?" she said to Harry.
He was about to answer when a swarm of people seemed to rise up about
them. All greeted Harry. It was a large party, newly arrived, all
the members of which appeared to be his friends. Young men, some of
them fair, with toothbrush moustaches and curly hair, some of them
dark and clean-shaven and very like Jack Penton in appearance; young
women of all colours and all varieties of noisiness, clamoured for
his attention. All the young men were combed and brushed to resemble
tailors' dummies; all the young women were freshly powdered and freshly
adorned with rouge and belladonna and those aids to lashes and brows
and hair which heighten the attractiveness of women already attractive.
Patricia listened laughingly while each was introduced to her; but she
heard none of their names, and only knew that she was in the midst of a
lively party. She could not analyse them, although she tried to do so
in a hurry; and so she accepted them simply as Harry's perhaps ever so
slightly peculiar friends. Only when it became clear that they proposed
to settle in this place and spoil her evening with Harry did Patricia
take alarm. She was moving very quietly, preparing for the first notes
of the next dance, when she saw the liveliest of the girls--a brunette
who was beautiful enough to be dangerous, and obviously adept at this
practice--seize Harry, pull him in step towards the dancing space, and
thus forcibly kidnap him.
"Well!" ejaculated Patricia, wholly to herself. Harry cast a laughing,
appealing glance at her. He was captured, and by a ruthless and rather
boisterous victor. Patricia followed the two indignantly with her
eyes. Swift anger gripped her. She had never been so angry as at this
trifling folly. It was a direct challenge to her. It was a thing she
could not have done herself--this impudent appropriation of a man who
was confessedly present as the escort of another girl. She disliked the
interloper. She was instantly suspicious of her. Although impulsive
herself, Patricia had no interest in the impulsiveness of others,
especially if the others were girls. Her anger blazed silently for a
full minute. Slowly it diminished. She found herself almost deserted
by the party of intruders, all of whom, with great freedom of gesture,
were now dancing. Only one rueful young man remained; a young man with
unoccupied blue eyes and flaxen hair, who looked painfully surprised at
everything, and was in appearance so almost excessively juvenile as to
make Patricia suppose him fresh from school.
"Er ..." said the young man, with great feebleness of intellect.
"Yes!" cried Patricia. "I never saw anything like it. It's shameful.
It's cradle-snatching. Was she _your_ partner? Never mind; come along!"
She swept him into the arena, as indomitably unmoved in appearance as
she could have desired. Though her heart was burning, Patricia's pride
was beyond reproach. Nevertheless, she was desperately wounded.
vii
She was still aching from the injury to her pride when the dance came
to an end. By that time the anonymous young man with the sheep-like
blue eyes had exchanged an expression of helpless vacancy for one of
helpless admiration. Once, during the dance, he had stammered: "I ...
I say, ... you _do_ ... d-dance well"; but Patricia had ignored his
speech. She could not compliment him in return. Her one curiosity was
to know the name of the girl who had stolen Harry from her. Several
times during the dance they had encountered the other pair; and
Patricia had not failed to observe the voluptuous abandonment of the
girl to a posture more nearly approaching immodesty than anything to be
seen elsewhere.
"What was that girl's name?" she asked, as the young man proudly led
her back.
"Bella?" he queried. "That's ... that's Bella Verreker. That's not her
name really: it's her stage name."
Stage! Generations of puritanism caused a shiver to run through
Patricia. She was instantly apprehensive. Bella was dangerous to Harry,
to the evening, to ... her own happiness. Stricken with horror as she
was, Patricia's distress was poignant. She was really afraid. This was
something beyond her depth and her understanding. Her mood of fear
was thereafter succeeded by one in which this curbing of spontaneous
enjoyment was resented by her vanity. She was elaborately indifferent.
At that moment they met Monty, who had come towards her through the
pressing crowd, with a politeness oriental in its quality, in its
subtly encroaching familiarity towards herself.
"Hullo!" cried Patricia, in joyous greeting. She was all unconscious of
anything but her own feelings. At this juncture the appearance of Monty
was welcome, not for her interest in him, but for his opportuneness as
a diversion. "I caught sight of you before."
"Come and dance," demanded Monty.
"Where's ... Mrs. Tallentyre?"
"Resting, and talking to a friend."
Patricia's teeth were firmly together. That impetuous mouth had become
hard. Monty could read her as though she had spoken aloud. He knew she
had been hurt, that she was in reaction. He knew that he had presented
himself to Patricia as an opportunity. She was tempted; she was
falling. He smiled comfortably.
"No you don't, Monty!" came Harry's voice: "No bagging my partner!"
There was a singular little scene; the three of them standing together,
all ruffled and all good-humouredly smiling. Monty was not as tall
as Harry, who accordingly towered over both of the others. He was
very much the well-groomed man of the world in this place, and yet
his smile was faintly ugly. It had changed within an instant, had
deepened and become set. Not a wrinkle showed upon his unreadable face.
Harry's cheerful grin, which displayed all his big white teeth, held
combativeness. Patricia, thoroughly exasperated at the general bad
manners, and not least at her own impulse to naughtiness, resented the
feeling that she was a mere partner to be claimed by either. She was
both exasperated and wisely alarmed.
"I saw you dancing with Bella," suavely explained Monty.
"She's with a party here ...." Harry was grim. There was definite
conflict between the two men, spoiling, but controlled, so that while
all three of them knew the conflict to be there no others near by could
have guessed its presence. "But Patricia's with me."
Something--she did not realise what it was--cleared Patricia's vision.
It was necessary that she should act with decision. She turned to
Harry, no longer ill-tempered, but paler and almost deliberately
patient in her manner to him.
"I'll dance once with Monty," she said. "And then come back to you."
And as the music began, she fell into step with Monty, leaving Harry
chagrined and reddening. There was still a little temper in her
emotion; but her chief thought as she danced was: "Two great babies!"
Patricia might have considered herself a third; but she did not do this.
viii
During the rest of the evening the relation between Harry and Patricia,
although it was gay and friendly, never quite recovered the fluency it
had attained during dinner. They danced together; but Patricia, warned
by what she had seen, shunned anything more cordial than the merest
partnership in the dance. Harry tried to hold her more closely, but he
found that it was at the cost of enjoyable dancing, and he therefore
abandoned the attempt. He discovered that Patricia, while she was as
agreeable as ever, had no intention of letting him make love to her.
It was contrary to his practice to explain or to apologise, and he did
not refer to Bella. Patricia, upon her side, showed no disposition to
forsake or despise the interloping party; and so gradually the two of
them drifted apart. She danced with two or three of the other men,
and he with Bella and another girl. The noise of the room, and the
crowd of people, seemed to increase. It became late. The party showed
signs of an inclination for the evening's end. Drinks had long been
done with; new arrivals, fresher and more eager than those who had been
dancing for some time, took the floor. The evening was collapsing.
Quite definitely it was petering out. At a quarter-to-twelve there was
a signal for closing the place; and then, as part of a general shoal of
departing merry-makers, a very sleepy party pressed out into the night
air. Monty and Blanche had left long before.
As they thus emerged, Patricia, in evading Harry's attempt at
segregation, found herself with two of the other girls, who both said
they lived at Chelsea. The journey homeward was therefore made in a
crowd, which separated Harry and Patricia. They all came to the end of
the street in which Patricia lived, and then to the house itself; so
that she was not for an instant alone with Harry. Even at the parting,
he was but the last of the group to bid farewell, and she walked slowly
upstairs to her rooms with cheery voices still ringing in her ears.
CHAPTER SEVEN: SECOND EVENING
i
From that evening Patricia had no lack of companionship. She had fallen
into a whole group of new friends and new Christian names. There was
no end to the Dorises, the Bills, the Owens, the Hildas, and the
Normans whom she met at every dance and every party. She sat on floors
and talked with assurance; she danced with a score of men. During the
daytime she did more dress-making than bread-work. In the evenings,
carried away by the sense of new experience and new power, she added a
veneer of alluring sophistication to her nature. Never had the face of
life been so quickly altered.
At first it seemed to Patricia that these young men and women whom
she now so constantly met belonged to a different species from
herself. She had been brought up in a suburban atmosphere in which
anything not perfectly respectable was done in secret. It had been a
disagreeable atmosphere to her, because she was both impetuous and
innocent, a combination of characteristics which always raises trouble
for the owner. Regarding herself as a free spirit, she had received
rebuffs from those more strict; and her candour had given rise to
wrong impressions about herself in her own mind as well as in the
minds of others. She had supposed that Patricia alone was in a state
of rebellion against suburban laws. She had even exaggerated her own
importance as a rebel. Now she found that these laws did not apply;
and that in fact defiance of them was unnecessary. The young people
of her fresh pleasure did not defy: they had forgotten. She became
aware of a whole new code. A free spirit she still felt herself; but
one in a world of free spirits. Along with the exaggerated sense of
her own personality common to clever girls of our day she had also
the good sense to realise the improvement in her own circumstances.
Patricia rejoiced. She delighted in the feeling of wide acquaintance,
of new liberty. It pleased her to meet cordial young people who were no
cleverer and no more concerned with strait-laced morals than herself
and whom she did not despise. She began at last to feel at home. They
were young, free-and-easy, less mentally ingenious than she was,
admiring, unaffected. It was as though she belonged to the same family
as themselves, but was of a naturally brighter plumage. Her vanity was
sensibly fortified.
And through all this new experimenting with her own strength there ran
for Patricia something more precious still. The added significance
which had been given to her days was due only in small part to this
increased circle. The friends she made were a background; they filled
in the picture; but no more. Every day was coloured and moulded for
Patricia by happiness, the happiness of young half-love. It warmed her
heart through the gloomy winter days; made her laugh, sparkle, sigh,
with a new tenderness; and gave fresh life to all her perceptions and
understandings. Occasionally she even glimpsed her own happiness, when
the excitement of it was past and she sat more thoughtfully alone. And
then the precariousness of it, the sense of insecurity, of withheld
culmination, gave to the vision a fresh colour and zest of danger.
That one evening with Harry, which had begun so splendidly and ended
in such dissonance, was but the beginning. The mixed crowd of people
had resolved itself into two separate portions--the theatrical and the
non-theatrical; and even the theatrical portion proved shortly to be
a welcoming band. Bella Verreker was appearing in musical comedy, and
she did not again encroach. Only the less aggressive girls continued
to join the parties; and Patricia found that several of these, and
some of the young men, were so far without regular paying engagements.
They appeared in private or semi-private shows, for experience and
reputation; and she had the first consciousness of forming a part
of her generation. All were lively people to know slightly, and the
non-theatricals, some of whom were Civil Servants and others of
moderately independent means or of various artistic or semi-artistic
occupations, were immense talkers and eager, but not expert, dancers.
Beside them all, Harry was as distinguished in his way as was Patricia
in hers. They were both welcomed, even sought.
Patricia felt herself alive at last. Letters came for her in the
mornings and at night. Harry called for her. She herself gave a little
party in her small rooms at the top of the house. It was fun to have
seven or eight guests sitting with difficulty in the crowded space,
and talking to their hearts' content. But more than that she enjoyed
going to yet larger parties in more capacious studios, where the
floor was sometimes cleared for impromptu dancing, where there was
dressing-up, and where the games made them all laugh and talk nonsense
together. She loved to swing into one of the brasseries of West End
restaurants, to meet other talkative youngsters, to smoke cigarettes
and sip little strange drinks. It made her feel very bold and modern
and authoritative. And most of all did she enjoy the evenings which
she and Harry spent together, dining at Paggolino's or some smaller
Italian restaurant, and going together to a theatre or to Topping's or
the Queensford or even to more popular halls where the bands were good
and the floors better.
"If only," breathed Patricia. "If only one could never grow up! Always,
always this beautiful...."
ii
And then sometimes she longed to grow up. As the variety began to stir
her blood, and an odd unoccupied evening became a restless horror,
she knew that one day she would want to be different--to do different
things. She tried to tell Harry how she felt. They were sitting at
dinner together one evening, when she had telephoned to him in fear
of a solitary time, and they had gone to the Chat Blanc. Patricia
was smoking one of her own cigarettes over coffee, and was blowing
the smoke slowly from between pursed lips. She was fully conscious
of the extraordinary intimacy between them, and at the same time of
the constraint that underlay the intimacy and gave it an attractive
excitement. Harry was so very much her friend, and yet her feeling
for him was so entirely different from that which she had for the
other young men of her acquaintance. He was cleverer than they--with
his constant sparkle of lively expression,--and more handsome. He
was himself, where the others were almost indistinguishable both in
themselves in their rather immature and shallow and admiringly friendly
attitude to herself. His admiration was that of a man. She responded to
it.
Around Patricia rose the white walls of the restaurant, daubed with
the strange sick fancies of eccentric artists; and from their table
she could command the whole of the long narrow room filled with other,
similar tables, all with orange and white check tablecloths and black
cruet stands and pewter knives and forks and spoons. Patricia could
see other guests departing at the approach of theatre times, and
waiters bowing and flicking the tables clear of crumbs, and folding
fresh napkins and standing the menus upright again. In a few moments
they would be the only people left in the restaurant, except for one
suburban couple who had strayed into Soho under the impression that
theirs was a very bold experiment in night life, and who were waiting
for the sensations to begin. It was just then that Patricia had this
notion, which was new, and therefore irrepressibly vehement, about the
desirability of growing up.