Lilian Part 12

She had trembled at the reception office of the great hotel, but Felix, laughing at her fears, accomplished all formalities for her quite openly, and indeed the discreet incuriosity of the hotel officials fully confirmed the soundness of his att.i.tude. Ignoring the description on the pa.s.sport, he had told her to sign as "Madame," and he threw out negligently that she was his cousin. This was his sole guile. Before going upstairs he had written out a telegram and shown it to her. It was to his sister, to say that he had arrived safely and sent his love.

"She has to be deceived," he murmured, "but she's got to be treated decently. It was all I could do to keep her from coming to see me off at Victoria!" He smiled. Lilian was impressed. When Lilian found that Felix's bedroom stood next to her bathroom her anxieties were renewed.

Felix laughed again, and rang, for the door between the bathroom and his bedroom was locked. In a few minutes a dark and stoutish chambermaid entered with a pleasant, indulgent, comprehending gravity, and unlocked the door. "What is your name?" he asked. "Jacqueline, monsieur," she replied, and cordially accepted a twenty-franc note from him. It was all so simple, so natural, so un-English, so enheartening. In two hours they had settled down. All the embarra.s.sing preludes to the closest intimacy had been amply achieved in London.

Lilian stretched herself voluptuously, murmured with a magnificent yawn, "Ah! How I have slept!" and, slipping out of bed, padded unshod up the room to Felix, who sat pa.s.sive in the easy chair. She took the bearings of his shape in the gloom, and dropped lightly on to his knees.

"What am I sitting on?" she exclaimed, startled.

"My newspapers."

Touched by the fact that he had been waiting to read his beloved papers until she should be ready to rise, she threw her arms pa.s.sionately round his neck and crushed her face into his. Daily it became clearer to her that he adored her; and yet she could scarcely believe it, because she felt so young--even childish--and so crude and insipid. She determined with a whole-souled resolve that renewed itself every hour to stop at nothing to please him.

"Do I make you happy?" she whispered almost inarticulately, her lips being buried in his cheek.

"You do."

After a moment she sprang up, seized her thin, loose, b.u.t.tonless dressing-gown, and having somehow got into it, opened the window and violently pushed back the shutters. Strong sunlight rushed blazing into the room like an army into a city long besieged and at last fallen.

Millions of buoyant motes were revealed, and all the minutest details of the chamber. Lilian looked out. There were the shady gardens of the hotel, the white promenade with strolling visitors in pale costumes, the calm ultramarine Mediterranean, the bandstand far to the right emitting inaudible music, the yellow casino, beyond the casino the jetty with its group of white yachts, and, distant on either side, n.o.ble and jagged mountains, some of them snow-capped. Incredible! She heard Felix moving within the room, and turned her head.

"Darling, what are you doing?"

"Ringing for your coffee."

"What time is it?"

"Haven't the least."

"But your watch?"

"Haven't got it on."

"But you're all dressed."

"Haven't put my things in my pockets."

She clasped his arm and led him silently through the bathroom into his own bedroom, and up to the night-table, the drawer of which she pulled open. All his "things" were arranged carefully therein.

"Oh! Men are funny!" she laughed.

The number and the variety of the articles they carried in their innumerable pockets!

"_I_ will put your things in your pockets," she said, and began to do so.

"Wrong!" he would protest from time to time; but he would give no positive direction, and she had to discover the proper pocket by experiment. It was a most wonderful operation, and it deliciously ill.u.s.trated the exotic, incomprehensible, exquisite curiousness of men.

She was proud of having thought of it, and proud of the pleasure in his face. As she glanced at the watch her brow puckered.

"I shall be frightfully late!"

"It is impossible to be late where time does not exist."

"Is that Jacqueline with my coffee?" she said, listening, and ran back to her room, pulling him after her.

Yes, she admitted she was a perfect child, but she could not help it.

While she drank the coffee he put on his eyegla.s.ses and opened the newspapers, one English, one French. She went into the bathroom.

"Felix! Felix!" she called presently from the bathroom. "Bring me in that soft towel I've left on the chair by the writing-table."

Then she returned to the bedroom and did her abundant glossy chestnut hair, and by innumerable small stages dressed. He was reading his papers, but she knew that he was also watching her, and she loved him to watch her dress, from the first stage to the last. She was too young to have anything to conceal, and his pleasure, which he tried to mask, was so obvious. He dropped _The Times_ and turned to the French paper.

"Felix, do you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm frightfully ashamed of not being able to speak French. If I could only speak it a quarter as well as you do."

"That's nothing. I couldn't say two words without a Frenchman knowing instantly that I wasn't French."

"But you can talk it so quickly. Couldn't I have someone in here every morning to teach me for an hour? People do. I could get up earlier."

"Certainly not," Felix replied. "If you did you'd have something to be late for. You'd bring time into existence and spoil everything.

Besides, learning French is hard work. You wouldn't learn it by instinct, as you learn clothes. And you aren't here for hard work.

Learn French by all means, but not in this place. London's the place for hard work. Exercise your sense of the fitness of things, my clever girl."

She did not fully understand this philosophy, but she accepted it admiringly.

"What dress would you like me to wear, darling?" She was at the wardrobe.

"That white one."

"Then I shall have to change my stockings."

"Well, the yellow one, then. It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," she said with earnestness, sitting down religiously, fanatically, to change her stockings. "Don't you know that I don't want anything in the world except to please you? I only wanted to learn French so you shouldn't have to be ashamed of me."

II

The Big Yacht

After lunching to music beneath a vast parasol in the hotel garden, which looked like a tented field, they were bowed away by servitors in black and white, and bowed into the hotel by servitors in blue and gold, and bowed along the central artery of the hotel by apprentice-servitors in scarlet, and bowed out of the hotel again on to the promenade by servitors in blue and gold. It was half-past two; the glorious sun was already slipping down; they had done absolutely nothing, and yet they had not wasted a moment; and on the faces of all the many-coloured servitors there was the smiling a.s.surance that they had been admirably exerting themselves in full correctness, and had not a moment to waste if they honestly desired to pursue idleness as idleness ought to be pursued. Indeed, the winter day was too short for the truly conscientious.

"Your little fur?" exclaimed Felix, who was wearing his overcoat; he stopped.

"But, darling, I'm far too hot as it is!"

"In an hour the day will be gone," said he, and insisted on the treachery of the climate.