DURING THE TEA-MEETING
In spite of the sincerest intention not to arrive too soon, Henry
reached the Louvre Restaurant a quarter of an hour before the appointed
time. He had meant to come in an omnibus, and descend from it at
Piccadilly Circus, but his attire made him feel self-conscious, and he
had walked on, allowing omnibus after omnibus to pass him, in the hope
of being able to get into an empty one; until at last, afraid that he
was risking his fine reputation for exact promptitude, he had suddenly
yielded to the alluring gesture of a cabman.
The commissionaire of the Louvre, who stood six feet six and a half
inches high, who wore a coat like the side of a blue house divided by
means of pairs of buttons into eighty-five storeys, who had the face of
a poet addicted to blank verse, and who was one of the glories of the
Louvre, stepped across the pavement in one stride and assisted Henry to
alight. Henry had meant to give the cabman eighteenpence, but the occult
influence of the glorious commissionaire mysteriously compelled him,
much against his will, to make it half a crown. He hesitated whether to
await Geraldine within the Louvre or without; he was rather bashful
about entering (hitherto he had never flown higher than Sweeting's). The
commissionaire, however, attributing this indecision to Henry's
unwillingness to open doors for himself, stepped back across the
pavement in another stride, and held the portal ajar. Henry had no
alternative but to pass beneath the commissionaire's bended and
respectful head. Once within the gorgeous twilit hall of the Louvre,
Henry was set upon by two very diminutive and infantile replicas of the
commissionaire, one of whom staggered away with his overcoat, while the
other secured the remainder of the booty in the shape of his hat,
muffler, and stick, and left Henry naked. I say 'naked' purposely.
Anyone who has dreamed the familiar dream of being discovered in a state
of nudity amid a roomful of clothed and haughty strangers may, by
recalling his sensations, realize Henry's feelings as he stood alone and
unfriended there, exposed for the first time in his life in evening
dress to the vulgar gaze. Several minutes passed before Henry could
conquer the delusion that everybody was staring at him in amused
curiosity. Having conquered it, he sank sternly into a chair, and
surreptitiously felt the sovereigns in his pocket.
Soon an official bore down on him, wearing a massive silver necklet
which fell gracefully over his chest. Henry saw and trembled.
'Are you expecting someone, sir?' the man whispered in a velvety and
confidential voice, as who should say: 'Have no secrets from me. I am
discretion itself.'
'Yes,' answered Henry boldly, and he was inclined to add: 'But it's all
right, you know. I've nothing to be ashamed of.'
'Have you booked a table, sir?' the official proceeded with relentless
suavity. As he stooped towards Henry's ear his chain swung in the air
and gently clanked.
'No,' said Henry, and then hastened to assure the official: 'But I want
one.' The idea of booking tables at a restaurant struck him as a
surprising novelty.
'Upstairs or down, sir? Perhaps you'd prefer the balcony? For two, sir?
I'll _see_, sir. We're always rather full. What name, sir?'
'Knight,' said Henry majestically.
He was a bad starter, but once started he could travel fast. Already he
was beginning to feel at home in the princely foyer of the Louvre, and
to stare at new arrivals with a cold and supercilious stare. His
complacency, however, was roughly disturbed by a sudden alarm lest
Geraldine might not come in evening-dress, might not have quite
appreciated what the Louvre was.
'Table No. 16, sir,' said the chain-wearer in his ear, as if depositing
with him a state-secret.
'Right,' said Henry, and at the same instant she irradiated the hall
like a vision.
'Am I not prompt?' she demanded sweetly, as she took a light wrap from
her shoulders.
Henry began to talk very rapidly and rather loudly. 'I thought you'd
prefer the balcony,' he said with a tremendous air of the man about
town; 'so I got a table upstairs. No. 16, I fancy it is.'
She was in evening-dress. There could be no doubt about that; it was a
point upon which opinions could not possibly conflict. She was in
evening-dress.
'Now tell me all about _your_self,' Henry suggested. They were in the
middle of the dinner.
'Oh, you can't be interested in the affairs of poor little me!'
'Can't I!'
He had never been so ecstatically happy in his life before. In fact, he
had not hitherto suspected even the possibility of that rapture. In the
first place, he perceived that in choosing the Louvre he had builded
better than he knew. He saw that the Louvre was perfect. Such napery,
such argent, such crystal, such porcelain, such flowers, such electric
and glowing splendour, such food and so many kinds of it, such men, such
women, such chattering gaiety, such a conspiracy on the part of menials
to persuade him that he was the Shah of Persia, and Geraldine the
peerless Circassian odalisque! The reality left his fancy far behind. In
the second place, owing to his prudence in looking up the subject in
_Chambers' Encyclopaedia_ earlier in the day, he, who was almost a
teetotaler, had cut a more than tolerable figure in handling the
wine-list. He had gathered that champagne was in truth scarcely worthy
of its reputation among the uninitiated, that the greatest of all wines
was burgundy, and that the greatest of all burgundies was Romanee-Conti.
'Got a good Romanee-Conti?' he said casually to the waiter. It was
immense, the look of genuine respect that came into the face of the
waiter. The Louvre had a good Romanee-Conti. Its price, two pounds five
a bottle, staggered Henry, and he thought of his poor mother and aunt at
the tea-meeting, but his impassive features showed no sign of the
internal agitation. And when he had drunk half a glass of the
incomparable fluid, he felt that a hundred and two pounds five a bottle
would not have been too much to pay for it. The physical, moral, and
spiritual effects upon him of that wine were remarkable in the highest
degree. That wine banished instantly all awkwardness, diffidence,
timidity, taciturnity, and meanness. It filled him with generous
emotions and the pride of life. It ennobled him.
And, in the third place, Geraldine at once furnished him with a new
ideal of the feminine and satisfied it. He saw that the women of Munster
Park were not real women; they were afraid to be real women, afraid to
be joyous, afraid to be pretty, afraid to attract; they held themselves
in instead of letting themselves go; they assumed that every pleasure
was guilty until it was proved innocent, thus transgressing the
fundamental principle of English justice; their watchful eyes seemed to
be continually saying: 'Touch me--and I shall scream for help!' In
costume, any elegance, any elaboration, any coquetry, was eschewed by
them as akin to wantonness. Now Geraldine reversed all that. Her frock
was candidly ornate. She told him she had made it herself, but it
appeared to him that there were more stitches in it than ten women could
have accomplished in ten years. She openly revelled in her charms; she
openly made the most of them. She did not attempt to disguise her wish
to please, to flatter, to intoxicate. Her eyes said nothing about
screaming for help. Her eyes said: 'I'm a woman; you're a man. How
jolly!' Her eyes said: 'I was born to do what I'm doing now.' Her eyes
said: 'Touch me--and we shall see'. But what chiefly enchanted Henry
was her intellectual courage and her freedom from cant. In conversing
with her you hadn't got to tread lightly and warily, lest at any moment
you might put your foot through the thin crust of a false modesty, and
tumble into eternal disgrace. You could talk to her about anything; and
she did not pretend to be blind to the obvious facts of existence, to
the obvious facts of the Louvre Restaurant, for example. Moreover, she
had a way of being suddenly and deliciously serious, and of indicating
by an earnest glance that of course she was very ignorant really, and
only too glad to learn from a man like him.
'Can't I!' he replied, after she had gazed at him in silence over the
yellow roses and the fowl.
So she told him that she was an orphan, and had a brother who was a
solicitor in Leicester. Why Henry should have immediately thought that
her brother was a somewhat dull and tedious person cannot easily be
explained; but he did think so.
She went on to tell him that she had been in London five years, and had
begun in a milliner's shop, had then learnt typewriting and shorthand,
advertised for a post, and obtained her present situation with Mark
Snyder.
'I was determined to earn my own living,' she said, with a charming
smile. 'My brother would have looked after me, but I preferred to look
after myself.' A bangle slipped down her arm.
'She's perfectly wonderful!' Henry thought.
And then she informed him that she was doing fairly well in journalism,
and had attempted sensational fiction, but that none saw more clearly
than she how worthless and contemptible her sort of work was, and none
longed more sincerely than she to produce good work, serious work....
However, she knew she couldn't.
'Will you do me a favour?' she coaxed.
'What is it?' he said.
'Oh! No! You must promise.'
'Of course, if I can.'
'Well, you can. I want to know what your next book's about. I won't
breathe a word to a soul. But I would like you to tell me. I would like
to feel that it was you that had told me. You can't imagine how keen I
am.'
'Ask me a little later,' he said. 'Will you?'
'To-night?'
She put her head on one side.
And he replied audaciously: 'Yes.'
'Very well,' she agreed. 'And I shan't forget. I shall hold you to your
promise.'
Just then two men passed the table, and one of them caught Geraldine's
eye, and Geraldine bowed.
'Well, Mr. Doxey,' she exclaimed. 'What ages since I saw you!'
'Yes, isn't it?' said Mr. Doxey.
They shook hands and talked a moment.
'Let me introduce you to Mr. Henry Knight,' said Geraldine. 'Mr.
Knight--Mr. Doxey, of the P.A.'
'_Love in Babylon?_' murmured Mr. Doxey inquiringly. 'Very pleased to
meet you, sir.'
Henry was not favourably impressed by Mr. Doxey's personal appearance,
which was attenuated and riggish. He wondered what 'P.A.' meant. Not
till later in the evening did he learn that it stood for Press
Association, and had no connection with Pleasant Sunday Afternoons. Mr.
Doxey stated that he was going on to the Alhambra to 'do' the celebrated
Toscato, the inventor of the new vanishing trick, who made his first
public appearance in England at nine forty-five that night.
'You didn't mind my introducing him to you? He's a decent little man in
some ways,' said Geraldine humbly, when they were alone again.
'Oh, of course not!' Henry assured her. 'By the way, what would you like
to do to-night?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'It's awfully late, isn't it? Time flies so
when you're interested.'
'It's a quarter to nine. What about the Alhambra?' he suggested.
(He who had never been inside a theatre, not to mention a music-hall!)
'Oh!' she burst out. 'I adore the Alhambra. What an instinct you have! I
was just hoping you'd say the Alhambra!'
They had Turkish coffee. He succeeded very well in pretending that he
had been thoroughly accustomed all his life to the spectacle of women
smoking--that, indeed, he was rather discomposed than otherwise when
they did not smoke. He paid the bill, and the waiter brought him half a
crown concealed on a plate in the folds of the receipt; it was the
change out of a five-pound note.
Being in a hansom with her, though only for two minutes, surpassed even
the rapture of the restaurant. It was the quintessence of Life.