We went into the hotel. The long, narrow, crimson lounge was crowded with tea-drinkers. “But what a crowd of women!” said my sister. But there were quite a few people in men’s clothes. Au Réception.
“I-want-a-room-and-bathroom-please,” my sister said.
“Madame?” The dark-suited gentlemen of the Réception looked up from their desks at my sister, saw that her clothes were not bad and that she was in a hurry, and looked away again.
My sister repeated herself, in that dead and faintly aggressive tone in which women ask for what is very probably going to be denied them. “I wired,” she added. Liar.
I went towards the concierge’s box. He was a nice man, and had a white imperial.
“Is Mrs. Storm staying in the hotel?”
“Sir?”
“Could you tell me if Mrs. Storm is—”
“No, sir, no, sir. Not at present, sir.”
“I thought that, as her car was outside. … A yellow Hispano.”
“That is so, sir. Parfaitement. L’Hispano jaune.”
“But Mrs. Storm, you say, is not in the hotel?”
“No, sir. Not at present, sir.”
“Then, perhaps you may know, she has sold or lent her car to someone?”
“That is so, sir. Madame a prêté l’Hispano. Merci, monsieur.”
“You couldn’t possibly give me any idea of Mrs. Storm’s present address?”
“Pardon, monsieur. … Timbre, monseigneur? De quinze centimes, un. Merci, monseigneur. L’automobile à huit heures moins quart? Parfaitement, monseigneur. … I have no instructions, sir. That was the gentleman to whom madame has lent her motor. Le duc de Valaucourt.”
“Thank you. But Mrs. Storm, you say, is in Paris?”
“Sir? Je suis sans instructions, monsieur. Madame?”
“What is it, what is it?” asked my sister.
“Nothing,” I said. “Got a room? Good. I am going to the Westminster, and I’ll come at half-past eight, shall I, and take you out to dinner?”
“Yes, but not here. It’s crowded with minor royalties that you can’t stand with your back to anyone except the orchestra. Larue?”
She had no sooner turned towards the lift than my name was cried in an agony of exultation. My sister says that my face as I started round was a face of fear.
“Only the other day,” cried Mr. Cherry-Marvel, exercising, with incredible perfection of gesture, his eyes, shoulders, hands, wrist, beautiful teeth, tiepin and handkerchief, “we were talking about you. …” But it was ever one of Mr. Cherry-Marvel’s many social charms that, the instant he saw you after an absence, he would make it his business to give you the impression that people had been interested in nothing else but you during your absence. Not, of course, that he stopped there; he had other things to say, too. “Of course what I really must tell you first of all, is that Henri Daverelle, whom, of course, you know as well as I do, was saying to me only the other day, apropos of something which I am positive that you, with your sort of mind, will appreciate at its full value. …”
Cherry-Marvel was an artist enslaved by his art: he could not see you but he and you must instantly fall under its dominion; for it was an art too perfectly modulated to admit of hurry, it was an art too sensitive to admit of interruption. Indeed, a wicked little gleam would flash across his wicked old eyes if you so much as made to interrupt him. Pitiless to himself, he was only the less pitiless to you in so far as you were not himself; and, should you be a boor and leave him suddenly, you might hear the dry, clear voice dying in the distance, but dying hard, rising and falling to the fullest and most pregnant sense of each period; for his, you understand, was an art not of selection but of detail, and must always and be continually expending itself. …
“Ava Mainwaring, whom, of course, you know as well as I do, was saying to me only the other day, apropos of something which I am positive that you, with your sort of mind. …”
Essentially an aristocrat, in person dainty, neat, fastidious, Cherry-Marvel’s art was essentially democratic, for it abhorred all limitations and exacted from him its complete display on every occasion, whether lofty, literary, or plebeian, which came before his relentlessly alert eyes; and you can hear, through the last sixty years of English social history, the rise and fall of Cherry-Marvel’s voice, each word dropping on a stunned silence like a long-polished jewel. Eager, exquisite, always prepared, always with a handkerchief fluttering between his breast-pocket and the corner of his eye, you must imagine him against the tapestry of wasted time, a figure of ancient, aesthetic dandysme, on immaculate lawns, in drawing-rooms, up and down terraces of palazzos, in clubs and cabarets. You might enter a spacious drawing-room in Rome, a museum in Naples, a friend’s villa in Capri, you might stray from your boat in a South Sea lagoon into the smoking-room of the hotel, you might steal a moment from your companions to see the moonlight on the Pyramid. … Oh, you might be anywhere, and suddenly you would hear that voice, rising and falling, relentless, ageless, enchanting even lions to silence, with here and there a sudden, profound drawl on one word, any word, “de‑ar,” and you would, fascinated, be compelled to face him—there, with full pale lips drawn wide apart, wicked blue eyes absorbed with cunning ecstasy in your stunned attention, the while, infinite as fate, he
