He was still reeling from the spiritual impact with this female tidal wave when he became aware, as one who, coming out of a swoon, hears voices faintly, that he was being addressed by Miss Leonard. To turn from Miss Leonard’s friend to Miss Leonard herself was like hearing the falling of gentle rain after a thunderstorm. For a moment he revelled in the sense of being soothed; then, as he realized what she was saying, he started violently. Miss Leonard was looking at him curiously.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Bill.
‘I’m sure I’ve met you before, Mr Chalmers.’
‘Er–really?’
‘But I can’t think where.’
‘I’m sure,’ said the Good Sport, languishingly, like a sentimental siege-gun, ‘that if I had ever met Mr Chalmers before I shouldn’t have forgotten him.’
‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ asked Miss Leonard.
‘Yes.’
The Good Sport said she was crazy about Englishmen.
‘I thought so from your voice.’
The Good Sport said that she was crazy about the English accent.
‘It must have been in London that I met you. I was in the revue at the Alhambra last year.’
‘By George, I wish I had seen you!’ interjected the infatuated Nutty.
The Good Sport said that she was crazy about London.
‘I seem to remember,’ went on Miss Leonard, ‘meeting you out at supper. Do you know a man named Delaney in the Coldstream Guards?’
Bill would have liked to deny all knowledge of Delaney, though the latter was one of his best friends, but his natural honesty prevented him.
‘I’m sure I met you at a supper he gave at Oddy’s one Friday night. We all went on to Covent Garden. Don’t you remember?’
‘Talking of supper,’ broke in Nutty, earning Bill’s hearty gratitude thereby, ‘where’s the dashed head-waiter? I want to find my table.’
He surveyed the restaurant with a melancholy eye.
‘Everything changed!’ He spoke sadly, as Ulysses might have done when his boat put in at Ithaca. ‘Every darned thing different since I was here last. New waiter, head-waiter I never saw before in my life, different-coloured carpet–‘
‘Cheer up, Nutty, old thing!’ said Miss Leonard. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat. I hope you had the sense to tip the head-waiter, or there won’t be any table. Funny how these places go up and down in New York. A year ago the whole management would turn out and kiss you if you looked like spending a couple of dollars here. Now it costs the earth to get in at all.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Nutty.
‘Lady Pauline Wetherby, of course. Didn’t you know this was where she danced?’
‘Never heard of her,’ said Nutty, in a sort of ecstasy of wistful gloom. ‘That will show you how long I’ve been away. Who is she?’
Miss Leonard invoked the name of Mike.
‘Don’t you ever get the papers in your village, Nutty?’
‘I never read the papers. I don’t suppose I’ve read a paper for years. I can’t stand ’em. Who is Lady Pauline Wetherby?’
‘She does Greek dances–at least, I suppose they’re Greek. They all are nowadays, unless they’re Russian. She’s an English peeress.’
Miss Leonard’s friend said she was crazy about these picturesque old English families; and they went in to supper.
. . . . .
Looking back on the evening later and reviewing its leading features, Lord Dawlish came to the conclusion that he never completely recovered from the first shock of the Good Sport. He was conscious all the time of a dream-like feeling, as if he were watching himself from somewhere outside himself. From some conning-tower in this fourth dimension he perceived himself eating broiled lobster and drinking champagne and heard himself bearing an adequate part in the conversation; but his movements were largely automatic.
Time passed. It seemed to Lord Dawlish, watching from without, that things were livening up. He seemed to perceive a quickening of the -tempo- of the revels, an added abandon. Nutty was getting quite bright. He had the air of one who recalls the good old days, of one who in familiar scenes re-enacts the joys of his vanished youth. The chastened melancholy induced by many months of fetching of pails of water, of scrubbing floors with a mop, and of jumping like a firecracker to avoid excited bees had been purged from him by the lights and the music and the wine. He was telling a long anecdote, laughing at it, throwing a crust of bread at an adjacent waiter, and refilling his glass at the same time. It is not easy to do all these things simultaneously, and the fact that Nutty did them with notable success was proof that he was picking up.