"You must kindly stand up," said Mr. Dolbiac. "I can"t hear."
Miss Marchrose glanced at Mrs. Ashton Portway, and Mrs. Ashton Portway told Mr. Dolbiac that he was on no account to be silly.
Then Mr. Ashton Portway and Geraldine both began to speak at once, and then insisted on being silent at once, and in the end Mr. Ashton Portway was induced to say something about Dulcinea.
"He"s chosen Don Quixote," his wife informed Henry behind her hand.
"It"s his favourite novel."
The discussion proceeded under difficulties, for no one was loquacious except Mr. Dolbiac, and all Mr. Dolbiac"s utterances were staccato and senseless. The game had had several narrow escapes of extinction, when Miss Marchrose galvanized it by means of a long and serious monologue treating of the sorts of man with whom a self-respecting woman will never fall in love. There appeared to be about a hundred and thirty-three sorts of that man.
"There is one sort of man with whom no woman, self-respecting or otherwise, will fall in love," said Mr. Dolbiac, "and that is the sort of man she can"t kiss without having to stand on the mantelpiece.
Alas!"--he hid his face in his handkerchief--"I am that sort."
"Without having to stand on the mantelpiece?" Mrs. Ashton Portway repeated. "What can he mean? Mr. Dolbiac, you aren"t playing the game."
"Yes, I am, gracious lady," he contradicted her.
"Well, what character are you, then?" demanded Miss Marchrose, irritated by his grotesque pendant to her oration.
"I"m Gerald in _A Question of Cubits_."
The company felt extremely awkward. Henry blushed.
"I said cla.s.sical fiction," Mrs. Ashton Portway corrected Mr. Dolbiac stiffly. "Of course I don"t mean to insinuate that it isn"t----" She turned to Henry.
"Oh! did you?" observed Dolbiac calmly. "So sorry. I knew it was a silly and nincomp.o.o.pish book, but I thought you wouldn"t mind so long as----"
"_Mr._ Dolbiac!"
That particular Wednesday of Mrs. Ashton Portway"s came to an end in hurried confusion. Mr. Dolbiac professed to be entirely ignorant of Henry"s ident.i.ty, and went out into the night. Henry a.s.sured his hostess that really it was nothing, except a good joke. But everyone felt that the less said, the better. Of such creases in the web of social life Time is the best smoother.
CHAPTER XXII
HE LEARNS MORE ABOUT WOMEN
When Henry had rendered up his ticket and recovered his garments, he found Geraldine in the hall, and a servant asking her if she wanted a four-wheeler or a hansom. He was not quite sure whether she had descended before him or after him: things were rather misty.
"I am going your way," he said. "Can"t I see you home?"
He was going her way: the idea of going her way had occurred to him suddenly as a beautiful idea.
Instead of replying, she looked at him. She looked at him sadly out of the white shawl which enveloped her head and her golden hair, and nodded.
There was a four-wheeler at the kerb, and they entered it and sat down side by side in that restricted compartment, and the fat old driver, with his red face popping up out of a barrel consisting of scores of overcoats and ap.r.o.ns, drove off. It was very foggy, but one could see the lamp-posts.
Geraldine coughed.
"These fogs are simply awful, aren"t they?" he remarked.
She made no answer.
"It isn"t often they begin as early as this," he proceeded; "I suppose it means a bad winter."
But she made no answer.
And then a sort of throb communicated itself to him, and then another, and then he heard a smothered sound. This magnificent creature, this independent, experienced, strong-minded, superior, dazzling creature was crying--was, indeed, sobbing. And cabs are so small, and she was so close. Pleasure may be so keen as to be agonizing: Henry discovered this profound truth in that moment. In that moment he learnt more about women than he had learnt during the whole of his previous life. He knew that her sobbing had some connection with _A Question of Cubits_, but he could not exactly determine the connection.
"What"s the matter?" the blundering fool inquired nervously. "You aren"t well."
"I"m so--so ashamed," she stammered out, when she had patted her eyes with a fragment of lace.
"Why? What of?"
"I introduced her to you. It"s my fault."
"But what"s your fault?"
"This horrible thing that happened."
She sobbed again frequently.
"Oh, that was nothing!" said Henry kindly. "You mustn"t think about it."
"You don"t know how I feel," she managed to tell him.
"I wish you"d forget it," he urged her. "He didn"t mean to be rude."
"It isn"t so much his rudeness," she wept. "It"s--anyone saying a thing--like that--about your book. You don"t know how I feel."
"Oh, come!" Henry enjoined her. "What"s my book, anyhow?"
"It"s yours," she said, and began to cry gently, resignedly, femininely.
It had grown dark. The cab had plunged into an opaque sea of blackest fog. No sound could be heard save the footfalls of the horse, which was now walking very slowly. They were cut off absolutely from the rest of the universe. There was no such thing as society, the state, traditions, etiquette; nothing existed, ever had existed, or ever would exist, except themselves, twain, in that lost four-wheeler.
Henry had a box of matches in his overcoat pocket. He struck one, illuminating their tiny chamber, and he saw her face once more, as though after long years. And there were little black marks round her eyes, due to her tears and the fog and the fragment of lace. And those little black marks appeared to him to be the most delicious, enchanting, and wonderful little black marks that the mind of man could possibly conceive. And there was an exquisite, timid, confiding, surrendering look in her eyes, which said: "I"m only a weak, foolish, fanciful woman, and you are a big, strong, wise, great man; my one merit is that I know _how_ great, _how_ chivalrous, you are!" And mixed up with the timidity in that look there was something else--something that made him almost shudder. All this by the light of one match....
Good-bye world! Good-bye mother! Good-bye Aunt Annie! Good-bye the natural course of events! Good-bye correctness, prudence, precedents!
Good-bye all! Good-bye everything! He dropped the match and kissed her.
And his knowledge of women was still further increased.
Oh, the unique ecstasy of such propinquity!