He sat taking sanctuary with Vereker—who at his sunny best was making conversation about the trials in store—slightly turned towards him and away from the barred vista across which no doubt, before she came in, his large gaze had comfortably extended; responding now and again with thoughtful groans.
Beside Vereker’s sunburned fairness he was an oiled bronze; heavy good features, heavy well-knit frame. Lethargic, or just a very tired man on a holiday, bemused by his sudden translation. Superficially he was formidable, “strong and silent.” His few remarks, thrown into the talk that Vereker kept up while he waited for his two friends to fraternise and admire each other, came forth upon a voice deliberately cultivated since his undergraduate days, a ponderous monotone, the voice of a man infallible, scorning argument, permanently in the right. Its sound was accompanied by a swaying movement from side to side of his body bent forward from the hips: suggesting some big bovine creature making up its mind to charge.
She recalled other meetings with his kind, instant mutual dislike and avoidance. This time there was no escape. She was linked to him by Vereker, obliged by Vereker to tolerate his presence, sit out his portentousness and be aware, since Vereker found him so very fine, of the qualities hidden within. Courage of course, tenacity, strength to adventure in strange places. Were such things enough to justify this pose of omniscience? With that pose it was forever impossible to make terms; and if this were not a single occasion, if there were further meetings, there would sooner or later be a crossing of swords. She considered his armoury.
Mentally it was a flimsy array; a set of generalisations, born of the experience that had matured him and become now his whole philosophy, simple and tested, immovable; never suspected of holding good only for the way of living upon which it was based.
The fact of the existence of life had either never entered his head or been left behind in the days before he crystallised. He had now become one of those who say “our first parents” and see a happy protégé of an entirely masculine Jehovah duped into age-long misery by the first of the charmers. Homage and contempt for women came equally forth from him, the manifest faces of his fundamental ignorance. The feminine world existed for him as something apart from life as he knew it, and to be kept apart. Within that world “charm” and “wit” drew him like magnets and he never guessed their source; knew nothing of the hinterlands in the minds of women who assumed masks, put him at his ease, appeared not to criticize. And such women were the sum of his social knowledge. One day he would be a wise old man “with an eye for a pretty face,” wise with the wisdom that already was cheating him of life.
There was no hope for him. His youth had left him Vereker, his chum whose sunny simplicity had always disarmed him, who did not resent his portentous manner. From women he would have, till old age, flattery for his strength. From his workers nothing but work, and respect for his English justice and honesty. It was inconceivable that anyone should ever pierce his armour; the ultimate male density backed by “means” and “position.”
His pose had found its bourne in his present position of authority, his state of being bound to present a godlike serenity; and it had become so habitual that even when it was put out of action he could not disencumber himself of it. At this moment, for lack of proper feminine response from across the table, it was actually embarrassing him. To proper feminine response, charming chatter or charming adoring silence he would pay tribute, the half respectful, half condescending interest of the giant in his hours of ease.
Unable any longer to endure silently, she rode across him with speech; pictures, for Vereker, of her yesterday’s adventure. Lively and shapely, inspired by the passage of wrath. Her voice had a bright hard tone, recognisable as the tone of the lively talker.
She was aware of the friend accepting her as the bright hard mondaine; at once attentive, his pose relaxed so far as to be represented only by the eyebrows left a little lifted and still knitting his deliberately contemplative brow. He was looking, poor dear, at the pictures, enjoying them, their mechanism, their allusions. And she, for a weary empty interval, was being a social success. It was a victory for the friend, a bid for his approval.
Vereker was puzzled, meeting a stranger; a little taken aback. But when grown weary of the game of brightly arranged exaggerations, she relapsed into simplicity, he recovered at once and again brought forth his ski-club. The friend sat by while one after another the persuasive arguments came forth, smiling with the slightly lifted brow that was now his apology for smiling at all.
And suddenly he was grave, intent as he had been at the first moment; this time towards the door, outside which sounded Daphne’s eager breathless voice and ceased in the doorway. Her swift slight footsteps crossed the room and brought her to a standstill just in sight, gazing at the stranger.
He remained grave, darkly gazing. Vereker, half-risen, eager to be off, was looking at him in the manner of a hostess arrested in giving
