It could only be so extraordinary, her meaning, whatever it was, that the need in him that wouldwhatever it was again!meet it most absolutely formed the syllables on his lips as: Will you be very, very kind to me?
Ah kind, dear Mr. Berridge? Kind, she splendidly laughed, is nothing to what! But she pulled herself up again an instant. Well, to what I want to be! Just see, she said, how I want to be! It was exactly, he felt, what he couldnt but seein spite of books and publics and pen-names, in spite of the really decadent perversity, recalling that of the most irresponsibly insolent of the old Romans and Byzantines, that could lead a creature so formed for living and breathing her Romance, and so committed, up to the eyes, to the constant fact of her personal immersion in it and genius for it, the dreadful amateurish dance of ungrammatically scribbling it, with editions and advertisements and reviews and royalties and every other futile item: since what was more of the deep essence of throbbing intercourse itself than this very act of her having broken away from people, in the other room, to whom he was as nought, of her having, with her crânerie of audacity and indifference, just turned her back on them all as soon as she had begun to miss him? What was more of it than her having forbidden them, by a sufficient curt ring of her own supremely silver tone, to attempt to check or criticise her freedom, than her having looked him up, at his distance, under all the noses he had put out of joint, so as to let them think whatever they mightnot of herself (much she troubled to care!) but of the new champion to be reckoned with, the invincible young lion of the day? What was more of it in short than her having perhaps even positively snubbed for him the great mystified Sculptor and the great bewildered Dramatist, treated to this queer experience for the first time of their lives?
It all came back again to the really great ease of really great ladies, and to the perfect facility of everything when once they were great enough. That might become the delicious thing to him, he more and more felt, as soon as it should be supremely attested; it was ground he had ventured on, scenically, representation-ally, in the artistic sphere, but without ever dreaming he should realise it thus in the social. Handsomely, gallantly just now, moreover, he didnt so much as let it occur to him that the social experience would perhaps on some future occasion richly profit further scenic efforts; he only lost himself in the consciousness of all she invited him to believe. It took licence, this consciousness, the next moment, for a tremendous further throb, from what she had gone on to say to him in so many wordsthough indeed the words were nothing and it was all a matter but of the implication that glimmered through them: Do you want very much your supper here? And then while he felt himself glare, for charmed response, almost to the point of his tears rising with it: Because if you dont!
Because if I dont? She had paused, not from the faintest shade of timidity, but clearly for the pleasure of making him press.
Why shouldnt we go together, letting me drive you home?
Youll come home with me? gasped John Berridge while the perspiration on his brow might have been the morning dew on a high lawn of Mount Ida.
Noyou had better come with me. Thats what I mean; but I certainly will come to you with pleasure some time if youll let me.
She made no more than that of the most fatuous of freedoms, as he felt directly he had spoken that it might have seemed to her; and before he had even time to welcome the relief of not having then himself, for beastly contrition, to make more of it, she had simply mentioned, with her affectionate ease, that she wanted to get away, that of the bores there she might easily, after a little, have too much, and that if hed but say the word theyd nip straight out together by an independent door and be sure to find her motor in the court. What word he had found to say, he was afterward to reflect, must have little enough mattered; for he was to have kept, of what then occurred, but a single other impression, that of her great fragrant rustle beside him over the rest of the ample room and toward their nearest and friendliest resource, the door by which he had come in and which gave directly upon a staircase. This independent image was just that of the only other of his fellow-guests with whom he had been closely concerned; he had thought of him rather indeed, up to that moment, as the Princesss fellow-Olympianbut a new momentary vision of him seemed now to qualify it.
The young Lord had reappeared within a minute on the threshold, that of the passage from the supper-room, lately crossed by the Princess herself, and Berridge felt him there, saw him there, wondered about him there, all, for the first minute, without so much as a straight look at him. He would have come to learn the reason of his friends extraordinary public demonstrationhaving more right to his curiosity, or his anxiety or whatever, than any one else; he would be taking in the remarkable appearances that thus completed it, and would perhaps be showing quite a different face for them, at the point they had reached, than any that would have hitherto consorted with the beautiful security of his own position. So much, on our own young mans part, for this first flush of a presumption that he might have stirred the germs of ire in a celestial breast; so much for the moment during which nothing would have induced him to betray, to a possibly rueful member of an old aristocracy, a vulgar elation or a tickled, unaccustomed glee. His inevitable second thought was, however, it has to be confessed, another matter, which took a different turnfor, frankly, all the conscious conqueror in him, as Amy Evans would again have said, couldnt forego a probably supreme consecration. He treated himself to no prolonged reach of vision, but there was something he nevertheless fully measured for five secondsthe sharp truth of the fact, namely, of how the interested observer in the doorway must really have felt about him. Rather disconcertingly, hereupon, the sharp truth proved to be that the most amused, quite the most encouraging and the least invidious of smiles graced the young Lords handsome countenanceforming, in short, his final contribution to a display of high social candour unprecedented in our heros experience. No, he wasnt jealous, didnt do John Berridge the honour to be, to the extent of the least glimmer of a spark of it, but was so happy to see his immortal mistress do what she liked that he could positively beam at the odd circumstance of her almost lavishing public caresses on a gentleman not, after all, of negligible importance.
III
Well, it was all confounding enough, but this indication in particular would have jostled our friends grasp of the presented cup had he had, during the next ten minutes, more independence of thought. That, however, was out of the question when one positively felt, as with a pang somewhere deep within, or even with a smothered cry for alarm, ones whole sense of proportion shattered at a blow and ceasing to serve. Not straight, and not too fast, shall we? was the ineffable young womans appeal to him, a few minutes later, beneath the wide glass porch-cover that sheltered their brief wait for their chariot of fire. It was there even as she spoke; the capped charioteer, with a great clean curve, drew up at the steps of the porch, and the Princesss footman, before rejoining him in front, held open the door of the car. She got in, and Berridge was the next instant beside her; he could only say: As you like, Princesswhere you will; certainly let us prolong it; let us prolong everything; dont let us have it overstrange and beautiful as it can only be!a moment sooner than we must. So he spoke, in the security of their intimate English, while the perpendicular imperturbable valet-de-pied, white-faced in the electric light, closed them in and then took his place on the box where the rigid liveried backs of the two men, presented through the glass, were like a protecting wall; such a guarantee of privacy as might comeit occurred to Berridges inexpugnable fancyfrom a vision of tall guards erect round Eastern seraglios.