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Di
“I wanted that. Fancy a country where you couldn’t get a drink!”
“But they can, of course, and do.”
“You bet. But they say some of the liquor’s awful.”
Di
“Pardon me,” said the woman, suddenly: “You got a date?”
“No, I’m going home after this.”
The woman sighed. “Wish she’d bring those bl-inkin’ cigarettes.”
The waitress reappeared with a bottle of stout and the cigarettes. Staring at Di
“Coo!” said the woman, taking a long draw at her ‘Gasper,’ “I wanted that.”
“I’ll bring you the other things in a minute,” said the waitress.
“I haven’t seen you on the stage, have I?” said the woman.
“No, I’m not on the stage.”
The advent of food broke the ensuing hush. The coffee was better than Di
“D’you live in London?”
“No. In Oxfordshire.”
“Well, I like the country, too; but I never see it now. I was brought up near Maidstone—pretty round there.” She heaved a sigh with a flavouring of stout. “They say the Communists in Russia have done away with vice—isn’t that a scream? An American journalist told me. Well! I never knew a budget make such a difference before,” she continued, expelling smoke as if liberating her soul: “Dreadful lot of unemployment.”
“It does seem to affect everybody.”
“Affects me, I know,” and she stared stonily. “I suppose you’re shocked at that.”
“It takes a lot to shock people nowadays, don’t you find?”
“Well, I don’t mix as a rule with bishops.”
Di
“All the same,” said the woman, defiantly, “I came across a parson who talked the best sense to me I ever heard; of course, I couldn’t follow it.”
“I’ll make you a bet,” said Di
“In once,” said the woman, and her eyes grew round.
“He’s my uncle.”
“Coo! Well, well! It’s a fu
“Still is.”
“One of the best.”
Di
The woman uttered a sigh of repletion.
“I’ve enjoyed that,” she said, and rose. “Thank you ever so. I must be getting on now, or I’ll be late for business.”
Di
“The bill, please, and can you get me THAT changed?”
The waitress took the note with a certain caution.
“I’ll just go and fix myself,” said the woman; “see you in a minute.” She passed through a door.
Di
“Well,” said the woman’s voice behind her, “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again. But I’d like to say I think you’re a jolly good sort.”
Di
“When you said you’d come out without anything, did you mean you hadn’t anything to come out with?”
“Sure thing,” said the woman.
“Then would you mind taking this change? It’s horrid to have no money in London.”
The woman bit her lips, and Di
“I wouldn’t like to take your money,” she said, “after you’ve been so kind.”
“Oh! bosh! Please!” And, catching her hand, she pressed the money into it. To her horror, the woman uttered a loud sniff. She was preparing to make a run for the door, when the woman said:
“D’you know what I’m going to do? I’m going home to have a sleep. My God, I am! I’m going home to have a sleep.”
Di
She came to the gate by the ‘jibbing barrel,’ and suddenly, as though all that evening had been a dream, she saw Wilfrid standing beside it. She choked and ran forward. He put out his arms and caught her to him.
The moment could hardly be prolonged, for cars and pedestrians were passing in and out; so arm-inarm they moved towards Mount Street. Di
They escorted each other back and forth past the house, like some footman and housemaid for a quarter of an hour off duty. Class and country, custom and creed, all were forgotten. And, perhaps, no two people in all its seven millions were in those few minutes more moved and at one in the whole of London.
At last the comic instinct woke.
“We can’t see each other home all night, darling. So one kiss—and yet—one kiss—and yet—one kiss!”
She ran up the steps, and turned the key.
CHAPTER 21
Wilfred’s mood when he left his publisher at ‘The Jessamine’ was angry and confused. Without penetrating to the depths of Compson Grice’s mental anatomy, he felt that he had been manipulated; and the whole of that restless afternoon he wandered, swung between relief at having burnt his boats and resentment at the irrevocable. Thus preoccupied, he did not really feel the shock his note would be to Di
“I’ve never seen the Derby,” said Di
There was the more reason why they should go because there seemed to be no reasonable chance of not going.
Di
When, at last, they had ‘parked’ on the Downs, eaten their sandwiches and moved into the crowd, they turned instinctively toward the chance of seeing a horse.
Frith’s “Derby Day” seemed no longer true, if it ever was. In that picture people seemed to have lives and to be living them; in this crowd everybody seemed trying to get somewhere else.
In the paddock, which at first sight still seemed all people and no horses, Wilfrid said suddenly:
“This is foolish, Di
“And if we are? Look, there’s a horse!”
Quite a number of horses, indeed, were being led round in a ring. Di
“They all look beautiful to me,” she said in a hushed voice, “and just as good one as the other—except this one; I don’t like his back.”