As they took their places, falling accidentally into the best distribution for her serenity, herself facing away from the main wall and its unbroken row of diners, Michael on her right giving them his impressive profile, and Densley across the way, his fine easy presence set full towards them, a servant announced the arrival of the Taylors. She left her party begun, with Densley, grave and kindly, set towards Michael to draw from him and cherish, just anything it might occur to him to say.
Dora and George, unbelievably there, brought to the decorous hall its furthest reach of odd experience. They came from so much further than the long distance they had travelled across London to spend an evening in the land that to them was not even Philistia, but just Bedlam. The Bedlam of an illusion so monstrous as to be comic—for all observers but those who toiled helplessly at its provisioning; George’s “underdog.”
They stood face to face, not seeing her. George in the half-light and against the dark ancient furniture, looking more than ever like the young Beethoven, his searching eyes bent beneath a frowning brow upon Dora’s serene face of an intellectual madonna upturned in absentminded protest, while he explained, certainly not for the first time, exactly where, in their passage across London, they had missed their way. For an instant Miriam watched them, the beauty that together they made standing there in perfect physical contrast, a rare pure balance, as rare as their unmistakable equality of spirit. She rejoiced in the thought of them set down with Michael and Densley. Four widely separated worlds met together.
When actually they were so set down, George on her left and Dora all delicately harmonious colour between Michael’s and Densley’s black and white, the enchantment was so strong that she felt it must radiate to the four corners of the room. It served to support her in face of the absence in her thoughts of anything that could form a starting-point for general conversation.
She took refuge with Dora. Dora’s was the mind that could enclose all the others, and gaze over each of their territories in turn. She began at once by accusing Dora. Making her the culprit of the wandering pilgrimage.
Delicately flushing, her limpid absent eyes aware of the presence about her of disturbed people waiting for conversational openings, aware also of the restraining influence of her serene beauty, Dora defended herself in the leisurely dimpling way that showed her armed for no matter what conflict. Dora was at her best. Densley hung towards her delighted at once.
Here in strange garb and unfamiliar bearing was yet, he was assuming, the woman he understood, the woman existing in such numbers in his own set, and vocal, until Miriam had revolted and silenced her, in all his conversation; the woman who professes to be either amused or shocked by sexual allusions, disguised in commonplace remarks, and jests back, or tactfully heads off. How far, she wondered, would Dora, with her hobby of endless cool sampling of humanity, go out to meet this naive masculinity? So far she sat screened, gently glowing, harmless.
If she held to this mood, went on turning upon him her lovely mild eyes, and Densley’s warmhearted worldliness took the field, then it was George, indulgent to Dora’s adventure, who would be the enclosing, contemplating mind. Already, amidst the jests that carried them through the first courses, he was gathering fuel for the sole recreation afforded him by chance social festivities. For mirth over the spectacle of evasions. Tonight the spectacle was all about him, all over the room, rampant and unconscious, distracting him almost completely.
By the time the sweets appeared there were two groups at the table, Dora and Densley, averted towards each other in animated talk. George and Michael responding to everything Miriam offered, usually both at once, refusing to blend. Here, already, at her first party, was the English separation. No general conversation. Not even the English alternative, the duel between two men; the prizefight. The party had fallen to bits. But it was worth while. For on the far side of the table, Dora’s sweet mezzo was dominating Densley’s baritone. She had tackled him. It was his opportunity, perhaps his utmost chance of being lifted outside his complacent dogmas.
It was presently evident that he was remaining impermeable. Though still listening and responding, he had lost interest, discovered that she did not for all her soft appeal, fall into either of the classes he thought he understood, either into the fascinating, the maternal, or the saintly. His mind gave her its ear, but his eyes with their everlasting message went again and again to a far corner of the room. Which of the disdainful club residents had become his chosen companion?
Dora was questioning him now, collecting physiology. Her voice penetrated the subdued, rapidly thinning talk coming from the small tables. Glancing round as if in search of an attendant, Miriam discovered the long row of diners, lingering over their coffee, one and all intent upon the centre table. And in the far corner that was drawing Densley’s glances, Mrs. Wheeler, talking with Miss Holland and her daughter, both with their backs to the room and unable to see the distant bourne of her eyes, dark and gleaming above the heightened flush upon her cheeks as she sat there, mutely wise, telling him a plain tale of gallant endeavour.
The women at the table near the fireside were now openly staring.
As if by arrangement, by some operation of the fascinated attention of these two listeners, there was a sudden silence all over the room.
“Of course,” said Dora’s voice into the midst of it, dreamy as her pose, elbow on table, hand supporting chin, brow lifted in thought above eyes gazing into space: “we shan’t get parthenogenesis until we want it.”
The silence ended in abrupt risings and departures.
“Not in our
