THE EYES OF ICARUS
Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about the fresh _people_ whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuch interest in the _places_ where the party might be held.
She had not yet reached the age when, for information about new acquaintances, one glances first at their background.
To her the well-appointed though slightly "Art"-y Smith establishment where her friend was taking her to dine was merely "a married house."
She took for granted the arrangements thereof. She lumped them all--from the slim, deferential parlour-maid who ushered them through a thickly-carpeted corridor with framed French etchings into a s.p.a.cious bedroom where the girls removed their wraps, down to the ivory, bemonogrammed pin-tray and powder-box in front of the big mirror--she lumped these all together as "things you have when you"re _married_."
It never struck her--it never strikes eight out of ten young girls--that Marriage does not necessarily bring these "things" with their subtle a.s.surance of ease, security, and dignity in its train. She never thought about it. Marriage indeed seemed to her a sort of dullish postscript to what she imagined must be a thrilling letter.
Why _must_ nearly all married people become so stodgy? Gwenna simply couldn"t imagine herself getting stodgy--or fat, like this married sister of Leslie Long"s, who was receiving her guests in the large upstairs drawing-room into which the two girls were now shown.
This room, golden and creamy, seemed softly aglow. There were standard lamps with huge amber crinolines, bead-fringed; and flowers--yellow roses and white lilies--seemed everywhere.
Leslie Long drew one of the lilies out of a Venetian vase and held it out, like an usher"s rod, towards Gwenna as she followed her into the bright, bewildering room, full of people. She announced, "Maudie, here"s the stop-gap. Taffy Williams, your hostess."
Her hostess was a version of Leslie grown incredibly matronly. Her auricula-coloured velvet tea-gown looked as if it had been clutched about her at the last moment. (Which in point of fact it had. Mrs. Smith was quite an old-fashioned mother.) Yet from her eyes smiled the indestructible Girl that is embedded in so many a respectable matron, and she looked down very kindly at Gwenna, the cherub-headed, in her white frock.
Mr. Smith, who had a large smooth face and a bald head, gave Gwenna a less cordial glance. Had the truth been known, he was sulking over the non-appearance of the intelligent young woman (from the Poets" Club) whose place was taken by this vacuous-looking flapper (his summing-up of Miss Gwenna Williams). For Gwenna this bald and wedded patriarch of forty-five scarcely existed. She glanced, nervous and fluttered and interested, towards the group of other guests gathered about the nearer of the two flower-filled fireplaces; a pretty woman in rose-colour and two men of thirty or thereabouts, one of whom (rather stout, with an eye-gla.s.s, a black stock-tie, and a lock of brown hair brought down beside his ear like a tiny side-whisker) made straight for Leslie Long.
"Now _don"t_ attempt to pretend we haven"t met," Gwenna heard him say in a voice of flirtatious yearning. "Last time you cut my dance----"
Here the maid announced, from the door, some name.... Gwenna, standing shyly, as if on the brink of the party, heard the hostess saying: "We hardly hoped you"d come ... we know you people always are besieged by invitations----"
"Dear me! All these people seem dreat-fully grand," thought the Welsh girl hastily to herself. "I wonder if it wouldn"t have been better, now, if Leslie had left that cerise velvet tr.i.m.m.i.n.g as it was on my dress?"
Instinctively she glanced about for the nearest mirror. There was a big oval gilt-framed one over the yellow brocaded Empire couch near which Gwenna stood. Her rather bewildered brown eyes strayed from the stranger faces about her to the reflection of the face and figure that she best knew. In the oval of gilded leaves she beheld herself framed. She looked small and very young with her cherub"s curls and her soft babyish white gown and that heaven-coloured sash. But she looked pretty. She hoped she did....
Then suddenly in that mirror she caught sight of another face, a face she saw for the first time.
She beheld, looking over her white-mirrored shoulder, the reflection of a young man. Clear-featured, sunburnt but blonde, he carried his fair head tilted a little backward, and his eyes--strange eyes!--were looking straight into hers. They were clear and blue and s.p.a.ce-daring eyes, with something about them that Gwenna, not recognising, would have summed up vaguely as "like a sailor"s." ... They were eyes that seemed to have borrowed light and colour from long scanning of far horizons. And now all that keenness of theirs was turned, like a searchlight, to gaze into the wondering, receptive glance of a girl....
Who was this?
Before Gwenna turned to face this stranger who had followed their hostess up to her, his gaze seemed to hold hers, as a hand might have held her own, for longer than a minute....
Afterwards she told herself that it seemed, not a minute, but an age before that first look was loosed, before she had turned round to her hostess"s, "I want to introduce Mr.----"
(Something or other. She did not catch the name.)
"_He"s_ nice!" was the young girl"s pristine and uncoloured first impression.
Then she thought, "Oh, if it"s this one who"s going to take me in to dinner, I _am_ glad!"
It was he who was to take her in.
For Mr. Smith took the pretty lady whose name, as far as Gwenna was concerned, remained "Mrs. Rose-colour." Her husband, a neutral-tinted being, went in with Mrs. Smith. The man with the side-whisker (who, if he"d been thinner, certainly might have looked rather like the portrait of Chopin) laughed and chattered to Leslie as they went downstairs together. Gwenna, falling to the lot of the blue-eyed young man as a dinner-partner, altered her mind about her "gladness" almost before she came to her third spoonful of clear soup.
For it seemed as if this young man whose name she hadn"t caught were not really "nice" after all! That is, of course, he wasn"t "_not_ nice." But he seemed stupid! Nothing in him! Nothing to say! Or else very absent-minded, which is just as bad as far as the other people at a party are concerned. Or worse, because it"s rude.
Gwenna, taking in every detail of the pretty round table and the lights under the enormous parasol of a pink shade, approving the banked flowers, the silver, the gla.s.s, those delicious-looking chocolates in the filigree dishes, the tiny "Steinlen-kitten" menu-holders, Gwenna, dazed yet stimulated by the soft glitter in her eyes, the subdued buzz of talk in her ears, stole a glance at Leslie (who was looking her best and probably behaving her worst) and felt that every prospect was pleasing--except that of spending all this time beside that silent, stodgy young man.
"Perhaps he thinks it"s me that"s too silly to talk to. I knew Leslie"d made me look too young with this sash! Yes! _indeed_ I look like some advertis.e.m.e.nt for Baby"s Outfitting Department," thought Gwenna, vexed.
"Or is it because he"s the kind of young man that just sits and eats and never really sees or thinks about anything at all?"
Now, had she known it at the time, the thoughts of the blonde and blue-eyed youth beside her were, with certain modifications, something on these lines.
"Dash that stud! Dash the thing. This pin"s going into the back of my neck directly. I know it is. That beastly stud must have gone through a crack in the boards.... I shall buy a bushel of "em to-morrow. Why a man"s such a fool as to depend upon one stud.... I know this pin"s going into the back of my neck when I"m not thinking about it. I shall squawk blue murder and terrify "em into fits.... What have we here?" (with a glance from those waking eyes at the menu). "Good. Smiths always do themselves thundering well.... Now, who are all these frocks? The Pink "Un. That"s a Mrs.... Damsel in the bright yellow lampshade affair about six foot high, that old Hugo"s giving the glad eye to. Old Hugo weighs about a stone and a half too much. Does _him_self a lot _too_ well. Revolting sight. I wonder if I can work the blood-is-thicker-than-water touch on him for a fiver afterwards?...
This little girl I"ve got to talk to, this little thing with the neck and the curly hair. Pretty. _Very_ pretty. Knocks the shine out of the others. I know if I turn my head to speak to her, though, that dashed pin will cut adrift and run into the back of my neck. _Dash_ that stud.
Here goes, though----"
And, stiffly and cautiously moving his head in a piece with his shoulders, he turned, remarking at last to Gwenna in a voice that, though deep-toned and boyish, was almost womanishly gentle, "You don"t live in town, I suppose?"
The girl from that remote Welsh valley straightened her back a little.
"Yes, I do live in town, indeed!" she returned a trifle defensively.
"What made you think I lived in the country?"
"Came up yesterday, I s"pose," the young man told himself as the soup-plates were whisked away.
Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next, "_Haven"t_ you lived in Wales, though?"
"Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaint accent, "but how did you know?"
"Oh, I guessed. I"ve stayed there myself, fishing, one time and another," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there, sort of place that"s all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakes for tea; ages ago, with my cousin. _That_ cousin," and he gave a little jerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskered young man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to--Ah! _Dash!_"
he broke off suddenly and violently. "It"s gone down my back now."
Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look at and so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply could not help asking, "What has?"
"That pin," he answered ruefully.
Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasing his sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between his care-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised that after all she"d been right. He _was_ "nice." He began to laugh outright, adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I"d better tell you what it"s all about----"
He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-stud when I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had to fasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It"s been getting on my nerves. Has, really. I"ve been waiting for it to run into the back of my neck----"
"So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feeling quite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I _thought_ you turned as if you"d got a stiff neck! I thought you"d been sitting in a draught."
He made another puzzling remark.
"Draught, by Jove!" he laughed. "It"s always fairly _draughty_ where I have to sit!"
He went on again to mourn over his collar. "Worse than before, now," he said. "It"s going to hitch up to the back of my head, and I shall have to keep wiggling my shoulder-blades about as if I"d got St. Vitus"s dance!"
Gwenna felt she would have liked to have taken a tiny safety-pin that there was hidden away under her sky-blue sash, and to have given it to him to fasten that collar securely and without danger of p.r.i.c.king.
Leslie, she knew, would have done that. She, Gwenna, would have been too shy, with a perfect stranger--only, now that he"d broken the ice with that collar-stud, so to speak, she couldn"t feel as if this keen-eyed, deep-voiced young man were any longer quite a stranger. In her own dialect, he seemed, now, "so homely, like----"
And over the next course he was talking to her about home, about the places where he"d fished in Wales.