Gilbert and Rita said hardly anything to each other as the motor-cab drove them to the restaurant where they were to dine.
There was a sort of constraint between them. It was not awkwardness, it was not shyness. Nevertheless, they had little to say to each other--yet.
They had become extraordinarily intimate during the last weeks by means of the letters that had pa.s.sed between them. In all his life Lothian had never written anything like these letters. Those already written, and those that were to be written before the end, would catch the imagination of Europe and America could they ever be published. In prose of a subtle beauty, which was at the same time virile and with the organ-note of a big, revealing mind, he had poured his thoughts upon the girl.
She was the inspiration, the _raison d"etre_, of these letters. That "friendship" which his heated brain had created and imposed upon hers, he had set up before him like a picture and had woven fervent and critical rhapsodies about it. The joy that he had experienced in the making of these letters was more real and utterly satisfying than any he had ever known. He was filled and exalted by a sense of high power as he wrote the lovely words. He knew how she would read, understand and be thrilled by them. Paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, were designed to play upon some part of the girl"s mind and temperament--to flatter her own opinion at a definite point, and to flatter it with a flattery so subtle and delicate, so instinct with knowledge, that it came to her as a discovery of herself. He would please her--since she was steeped in books and their appeal, utterly ignorant of Life itself--with a pleasure that he alone could give. He would wrap her round with the force and power of his mind, make her his utterly in the bonds of a high intellectual friendship, dominate her, achieve her--through the mind.
He had set himself to do this thing and he had done it.
Her letters to him, in their innocent, unskilful, but real and vivid response had shown him everything. From each one he gathered new material for his reply.
He had lived of late in a new world, where, neglecting everything else, he sat Jove-like upon the Olympus of his own erection and drew a young and supremely beautiful girl nearer and nearer to him by his pen.
He had fallen into many mortal sins during his life. Until now he had not known the one by which the angels fell, the last sin of Pride which burns with a fierce, white consuming flame.
All these wonderful letters had been wrought under the influence of alcohol. He would go to his study tired in body and so wearied in brain that he felt as if his skull were literally packed with grey wool.
"I must write to Rita," he would think, and sit down with the blank sheet before him. There would not be an idea. The books upon the walls called to him to lose himself in n.o.ble company. The Dog Trust gambolling with Tumpany in the garden invited him to play. The sight of Mary with her basket on her arm setting out upon some errand of mercy in the village, spoke of the pleasant, gracious hours he might spend with her, watching how sweet and wise she was with the poor people and how she was beloved.
But no, he must write to Rita. He felt chained by the necessity. And then the fat cut-gla.s.s bottle from the tantalus would make an appearance, the syphon of soda-water in its holder of silver filigree.
The first drink would have little or no effect--a faint stirring of the pulses, a sort of dull opening of tired mental eyes, perhaps. Yet even that was enough to create the desire for the moment when the brain should leap up to full power. Another drink--the letter begun. Another, and images, sentences which rang and chimed, gossamer points of view, mosaics and vignettes glowing with color, merry sunlight laughter, compliments and _devoirs_ of exquisite grace and refinement, all flowed from him with steady, uninterrupted progress.
... But now, as he sat beside Rita, touching her, with the fragrance of her hair athwart his face, all ideas and thoughts had to be readjusted.
The dream was over. The dream personality, created and worshipped by his Art in those long, drugged reveries, was a thing of the past.
He had never realised Rita to himself as being quite a human girl. No grossness had ever entered into his thoughts about her. He was not gross. The temper of his mind was refined and high. The steady progress of the Fiend Alcohol had not progressed thus far as yet. s.e.x was a live fact in this strangely-coloured "friendship" which he had created, but, as yet, in his wildest imaginings it had always been chivalrous, abstract and pure. Pa.s.sion had never soiled it even in thought. It had all been mystical, not Swinburnian.
And the fact had been as a salve to his Conscience. His Conscience told him from the first--when, after the excursion to Brighton he had taken up his pen to continue the a.s.sociation--that he was doing wrong. He knew it with all the more poignancy because he had never done sweet Mary a treachery in allegiance before. She had always been the perfect and utterly satisfying woman to him. His "fountain was blessed; and he rejoiced with the wife of his youth."
But the inhabiting Devil had found a speedy answer. It had told him that such a man as he was might well have a pure and intellectual friendship with such a girl as Rita was. It harmed none, it was of mutual and uplifting benefit.
Who of the world could point an accusing finger, utter a word of censure upon this delightful meeting of minds and temperaments through the medium of paper and pen?
"No one at all," came the satisfactory answer.
Lothian at the prompting of Alcohol was content to entertain and welcome a low material standard of conduct, a debased ideal, which he would have scorned in any other department of life.
And as for Rita, she hadn"t thought about such things at all. She had been content with the music which irradiated everything.
It was only now, with a flesh and blood man by her side in the little box of the taxi-cab, that she glanced curiously at the Musician and felt--also--that revision and re-statement were at hand.
So they said very little until they were seated at the table which had been reserved for them at a celebrated restaurant in the Strand.
Rita looked round her and gave a deep sigh of pleasure. They sat in a long high hall with a painted ceiling. At the side opposite to them and at the end were galleries with gilded latticework. At the other end, in the gilded cage which hid the performers from view, was an orchestra which discoursed sweet music--a little orchestra of artists. The walls of the white and gold hall were covered with brilliantly painted frescoes of scenes in that Italy from where the first proprietor had come. The blue seas, the little white towns cl.u.s.tering round the base of some volcanic mountain, the sunlight and gaiety of Italy were there, in these paintings so cunningly drawn and coloured by a great scenic artist. A soft, white and bright light pervaded everything. There was not a sound of service as the waiters moved over the thick carpets.
The innumerable tables, for two or four, set with finest crystal and silver and fair linen had little electric lamps of silver with red shades upon them. Beautiful, radiant women with white arms and shining jewels sat with perfectly dressed men at the tables covered with flowers. It was a succession of little dinner parties; it seemed as if no one could come here without election or choice. The ordinary world did not exist in this kingdom of luxury, ease and wealth.
She leant over the little table against the wall. "It"s marvellous,"
she said. "The whole atmosphere is new. I did not think such a place as this existed."
"And the Metropole at Brighton?"
"It was like a bathing machine is to Buckingham Palace, compared to this. How exquisite the band is! Oh, I am so happy!"
"That makes me happy, Cupid. This is the night of your initiation. Our wonderful weeks have begun. I have thought out a whole series of delights and contrasts. Every night shall be a surprise. You will never know what we are going to do. London is a magic city and you have known nothing of it."
"How could the "Girl from Podley"s" know?--That"s what I am, the Girl from Podley"s. I feel like Cinderella must have felt when she went to the ball. Oh, I am so happy!"
He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night.
Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come back. "Lalage!" he murmured, more to himself than to her--"dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem!"
"What--Gilbert?"
"I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear."
"And it was all Greek to me!" she said in a flash. "Oh! who _ever_ saw so many hors d"oeuvres all at one time! I love hors d"oeuvres, advise me, don"t let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I shan"t be able to eat anything afterwards."
How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong a side of his own temperament.
She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the gay and stately minuet.
For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair.
Yes, she was marvellously fresh! He had never met any one like her. And it _was_ innocence, it _must_ be. Yet she was very conscious of the power of her beauty and her s.e.x--over him at any rate. She obviously knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the nave and innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness.
She was amazed and half frightened at herself--he could see that.
Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a s.p.a.ce, to join hands and tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance.
It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half the elaborate dinner was over.
She had called him "Gilbert" at once, as if he were her brother, her lover even. He could have found or forged no words to describe the extraordinary intimacy that had sprung up between them. It almost seemed unreal, he had to wonder if this were not a dream.
She became girlishly imperious. When they brought the golden plovers--king and skipper, as good epicures know, of all birds that fly--she leant over the table till her perfect face was close to his.
"Oh, Gilbert dear! what is it now!"
He told her how these little birds, with their "trail" upon the toast and their accompaniment of tiny mushrooms stewed in Sillery, were said to be the rarest flower in the gourmet"s garden, one of the supreme pleasures that the cycle of the seasons bring to those who love and live to eat.
"How _perfectly_ sweet! Like the little roast pigling was to Elia!
Gilbert, I"m so happy."
She chattered away to him, as he sat and watched her, with an entire freedom. She told him all about her life in the flat with Ethel Harrison. Her brown eyes shone with happiness, he heard the silver ripple of her voice in a mist of pleasure.
Once he caught a man whom he knew watching them furtively. It was a very well-known actor, who at the moment was rehearsing his autumn play.
This celebrated person was, as Gilbert well knew, a monster. He lived his life with a dreadful callousness which made him capable of every b.e.s.t.i.a.l habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity.