The Beetle Part 19

Jamming his fists into his pockets, and puffing like a grampus in distress, he took himself away,-and it was time he did, for his words were as audible as they were pointed, and already people were wondering what the matter was. Woodville came up as Lindon was going,-just as sorely distressed as ever.

'She went away with Lessingham,-did you see her?'

'Of course I saw her. When a man makes a speech like Lessingham's any girl would go away with him,-and be proud to. When you are endowed with such great powers as he is, and use them for such lofty purposes, she'll walk away with you,-but, till then, never.'

He was at his old trick of polishing his eyegla.s.s.

'It's bitter hard. When I knew that she was there, I'd half a mind to make a speech myself, upon my word I had, only I didn't know what to speak about, and I can't speak anyhow,-how can a fellow speak when he's shoved into the gallery?'

'As you say, how can he?-he can't stand on the railing and shout,-even with a friend holding him behind.'

'I know I shall speak one day,-bound to; and then she won't be there.'

'It'll be better for you if she isn't.'

'Think so?-Perhaps you're right. I'd be safe to make a mess of it, and then, if she were to see me at it, it'd be the devil! 'Pon my word, I've been wishing, lately, I was clever.'

He rubbed his nose with the rim of his eyegla.s.s, looking the most comically disconsolate figure.

'Put black care behind you, Percy!-buck up, my boy! The division's over-you are free-now we'll go "on the fly."'

And we did 'go on the fly.'

CHAPTER XVI

ATHERTON'S MAGIC VAPOUR

I bore him off to supper at the Helicon. All the way in the cab he was trying to tell me the story of how he proposed to Marjorie,- and he was very far from being through with it when we reached the club. There was the usual crowd of supperites, but we got a little table to ourselves, in a corner of the room, and before anything was brought for us to eat he was at it again. A good many of the people were pretty near to shouting, and as they seemed to be all speaking at once, and the band was playing, and as the Helicon supper band is not piano, Percy did not have it quite all to himself, but, considering the delicacy of his subject, he talked as loudly as was decent,-getting more so as he went on. But Percy is peculiar.

'I don't know how many times I've tried to tell her,-over and over again.'

'Have you now?'

'Yes, pretty near every time I met her,-but I never seemed to get quite to it, don't you know.'

'How was that?'

'Why, just as I was going to say, "Miss Lindon, may I offer you the gift of my affection--"'

'Was that how you invariably intended to begin?'

'Well, not always-one time like that, another time another way. Fact is, I got off a little speech by heart, but I never got a chance to reel it off, so I made up my mind to just say anything.'

'And what did you say?'

'Well, nothing,-you see, I never got there. Just as I was feeling my way, she'd ask me if I preferred big sleeves to little ones, or top hats to billyc.o.c.ks, or some nonsense of the kind.'

'Would she now?'

'Yes,-of course I had to answer, and by the time I'd answered the chance was lost.' Percy was polishing his eye-gla.s.s. 'I tried to get there so many times, and she choked me off so often, that I can't help thinking that she suspected what it was that I was after.'

'You think she did?'

'She must have done. Once I followed her down Piccadilly, and chivied her into a glove shop in the Burlington Arcade. I meant to propose to her in there,-I hadn't had a wink of sleep all night through dreaming of her, and I was just about desperate.'

'And did you propose?'

'The girl behind the counter made me buy a dozen pairs of gloves instead. They turned out to be three sizes too large for me when they came home. I believe she thought I'd gone to spoon the glove girl,-she went out and left me there. That girl loaded me with all sorts of things when she was gone,-I couldn't get away. She held me with her blessed eye. I believe it was a gla.s.s one.'

'Miss Linden's?-or the glove girl's?'

'The glove girl's. She sent me home a whole cartload of green ties, and declared I'd ordered them. I shall never forget that day. I've never been up the Arcade since, and never mean to.'

'You gave Miss Lindon a wrong impression.'

'I don't know. I was always giving her wrong impressions. Once she said that she knew I was not a marrying man, that I was the sort of chap who never would marry, because she saw it in my face.'

'Under the circ.u.mstances, that was trying.'

'Bitter hard.' Percy sighed again. 'I shouldn't mind if I wasn't so gone. I'm not a fellow who does get gone, but when I do get gone, I get so beastly gone.'

'I tell you what, Percy,-have a drink!'

'I'm a teetotaler,-you know I am.'

'You talk of your heart being broken, and of your being a teetotaler in the same breath,-if your heart were really broken you'd throw teetotalism to the winds.'

'Do you think so,-why?'

'Because you would,-men whose hearts are broken always do,-you'd swallow a magnum at the least.'

Percy groaned.

'When I drink I'm always ill,-but I'll have a try.'

He had a try,-making a good beginning by emptying at a draught the gla.s.s which the waiter had just now filled. Then he relapsed into melancholy.

'Tell me, Percy,-honest Indian!-do you really love her?'

'Love her?' His eyes grew round as saucers. 'Don't I tell you that I love her?'

'I know you tell me, but that sort of thing is easy telling. What does it make you feel like, this love you talk so much about?'

'Feel like?-Just anyhow,-and nohow. You should look inside me, and then you'd know.'

'I see.-It's like that, is it?-Suppose she loved another man, what sort of feeling would you feel towards him?'