Читать книгу The Parts Men Play - Beverley Baxter - Страница 38

London is a stage that is always set. The youthful Dickens watching the murky Thames found the setting for his moments of horror, just as surely as cheery coach-houses, many of them but little changed to this day, bespoke the entrance of Wellers senior and junior. London gave to Wilde's exotic genius the scenes wherein his brilliantly futile characters played their wordy dramas; then, turning on the author, London's own vileness called to his. Thackeray the satirist needed no further inspiration than the nicely drawn distinction between Belgravia and Mayfair. Generous London refused nothing to the seeking mind. Nor is it more sparing to-day than it was in the past; it yields its inspiration to the gloom of Galsworthy, the pedagogic utterances of Mr. Wells, the brilliant restlessness of Arnold Bennett, and the ever-delightful humour of Punch.

On this morning in November London was in a gracious mood, and Hyde Park, coloured with autumn's pensive melancholy, sparkled in the sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the grass, stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams into their lives and their lives into dreams. Invalids in chairs leaned back upon their pillows and smiled. Something in the laughter of the children or the spirit of the wind had recalled their own careless moments of full-lived youth.

Paris, despite your Bois de Boulogne; New York, for all the beauties of your Central Park and Riverside Drive—what have you to compare with London's parks on a sun-strewn morning in November?

Reaching the tan-bark surface of Rotten Row, Selwyn and the English girl eased the reins and let the horses into a canter. With the motion of the strong-limbed chestnut the American felt a wave of exultation, and chuckled from no better cause than sheer enjoyment in the morning's mood of emancipation. He glanced at Elise Durwent, and saw that her eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and that the self-conscious bay was shaking his head and cantering so lightly that he seemed to be borne on the wings of the wind. Selwyn wished that he were a sculptor that he might make her image in bronze: he would call it 'Recalcitrant Autumn.' He even felt that he could burst into poetry. He wished——

But then he was in the glorious twenties; and, after all, what has the gorged millionaire, rolling along in his beflowered, bewarmed, becushioned limousine, that can give one-tenth the pleasure of the grip on the withers of a spirited horse?

Sometimes they walked their beasts, and chatted on such subjects as young people choose when spirits are high and care is on a vacation. They were experiencing that keenest of pleasures—joy in the present.

They watched London Society equestrianising for the admiration of the less washed, who were gazing from chairs and benches, trying to tell from their appearance which was a duke and which merely 'mister'—and usually guessing quite wrongly. Ladies of title, some of them riding so badly that their steeds were goaded into foam by the incessant pull of the curb bit, trotted past young ladies and gentlemen with note-books, who had been sent by an eager Press to record the activities of the truly great. Handsome women rode in the Row with their children mounted on wiry ponies (always a charming sight); and middle-aged, angular females, wearing the customary riding-hat which reduces beauty to plainness and plainness to caricature, rode melancholy quadrupeds, determined to do that which is done by those who are of consequence in the world.

But pleasures born of the passing hour, unlike those of the past or of

anticipation, end with the striking of the clock. It seemed to Austin

Selwyn that they had been riding only for the space of minutes, when

Elise asked him the time.

'It is twenty minutes to one,' he said. 'I had no idea time had passed so quickly.'

'Nor I,' she answered. 'Just one more canter, and then we'll go.'

The eager horses chafed at their bits, and pleaded, after the manner of their kind, to be allowed one mad gallop with heaving flanks and snorting triumph at the end; but decorum forbade, and contenting themselves with the agreeable counterfeit, Selwyn and the girl reluctantly turned from the Park towards home.

The expressionless Smith was waiting for them, and looked at the two horses with that peculiar intolerance towards their riders which the very best groom in the world cannot refrain from showing.

'Won't you come in and take the chance of what there is for lunch?' she said as Selwyn helped her to dismount.

'N-no, thanks,' he said.

She pouted, or pretended to. 'Now, why?' she said as Smith mounted the chestnut, and touching his hat, walked the horses away.

'There is no reason,' he said, smiling, 'except—— Look here; will you come downtown and have dinner with me to-night?'

'You Americans are refreshing,' she said, burrowing the toe of her riding-boot with the point of the crop, 'As a matter of fact, I have to go to dinner to-night at Lady Chisworth's.'

'Then have a headache,' he persisted.

'Please,' as her lips proceeded to form a negative.

'Some one would see us, and Lady Chisworth would declare war.'

'Then let us dine in some obscure restaurant in Soho.'

'There's no such thing, old dear. Soho is always full of the best people dining incog. Almost the only place where you are free from your friends is Claridge's.'

'Well'—his nose crinkled at her remark—'then let us go to Claridge's. Miss Durwent, I know I'm too persistent, but it would be a wonderful ending to a bully day. You know you'll be bored at Lady Chisworth's, and I shall be if you don't come.'

'Humph!' She stood on the first of the stone steps, her agile gracefulness lending itself to the picture of healthy, roseate youth.

'Where could we meet?'

'Let me call for you.'

'N-no. That wouldn't do.'

'Would your mother object?'

'Heavens, no!—but the servants would. You see, English morality is largely living up to your servants—and we met only last night.'

'But you will come?' He crossed his hands behind his back and swung the crop against his boots.

'Mr. Selwyn,' she said, 'your books should be very interesting.'

'From now on they will be,' he said, 'if'——

'All right,' she interrupted him with something of the staccato mannerism of the evening before. 'I'll motor down in my little car, and we'll go to the Café Rouge.'

'Good—wherever that may be.'

'No one has discovered it yet but me,' she said. 'Then I shall have a headache at four, and meet you outside Oxford Circus Tube at seven.'

'You're a real sport, Miss Durwent.'

'Ah, monsieur'—she smiled with a roguishness that completely unsettled him for the remainder of the day—'have you no sympathy for my headache?'