Kitabı oku: «Patricia Brent, Spinster», sayfa 13
For a further half-hour Galvin House waited, praying that the attack would not be renewed. There were little spurts of conversation. Mr. Sefton was slowly returning to the "foot on the Capstan" attitude, and actually had a cigarette alight. Mr. Bolton and Mr. Cordal were speculating as to where the bomb had fallen. Mrs. Craske-Morton was wondering if the Government would pay promptly for the damage to her glass.
Outside there were sounds of life and movement, cars were throbbing and passing to and fro, and men's voices could be heard. Suddenly there was a loud peal of the street-door bell. All looked at each other in consternation. Gustave looked about him as if he had lost a puppy. Mrs. Craske-Morton looked at Gustave.
"Gustave!" said Patricia, surprised at her own calm.
Gustave looked at her for a moment then, remembering his duties, went slowly to the door, listening the while as if expecting a further bombardment to break out. With the exception of Miss Wangle and the cook, everybody was on the qui vive of expectation.
"It's the police," suggested Mrs. Craske-Morton, with conviction.
"Or the ambulance," ventured Miss Sikkum in a trembling voice. "They're collecting the dead," she added optimistically.
All eyes were riveted upon the kitchen door. Steps were heard descending the stairs. A moment later the door was thrown open and Gustave in a voice strangely unlike his own announced:
"'Ees Lordship, madame."
Bowen entered the kitchen and cast a swift look about him. A light of relief passed over his face as he saw Patricia. Some instinct that she could neither explain nor control caused her to go over to him, and before she knew what was taking place both her hands were in his.
"Thank God!" he breathed. "I was afraid it was this house. I heard a bomb had dropped here. Oh, my dear! I've been in hell!"
There was something in his voice that thrilled her as she had never been thrilled before. She looked up at him smiling, then suddenly with a great content she remembered that she had dressed herself with care.
Bowen looked about him, and seeing Mrs. Craske-Morton, went over and shook hands.
"She's a regular heroine, Peter," said Patricia, unconscious that she had used his name. "She's been so splendid."
Mrs. Craske-Morton smiled at Patricia, again her human smile.
"Oh! go away, make him go away!" It was Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe who spoke. Her words had an electrifying effect upon everyone. Miss Wangle sat up and made feverish endeavours to straighten her wig. Jenny, the housemaid, looked round for cover that was nowhere available. The cook became aware of her lack of clothing. Miss Sikkum strove to minimise the exhibition of feminine bone-structure. Mrs. Barnes made a dive for Mr. Bolton, who was still holding various of her garments that he had retrieved. These she seized from him as if he had been a pickpocket, and thrust them under her arm.
"Oh, please go away!" moaned the cook.
"Come upstairs," said Patricia as she led the way out of the kitchen, to the relief of those whose reawakened modesty saw in Bowen's presence an outrage to decorum. Switching on the light in the lounge, Patricia threw herself into a chair. She was beginning to feel the reaction.
"Why did you come?" she asked.
"I heard that a bomb had fallen in this street and – well, I had to come. I was never in such a funk in all my life."
"How did you get round here; did you bring the car?"
"No, I couldn't get the car out, I walked it," said Bowen briefly.
"That was very sweet of you," said Patricia gratefully, looking up at him in a way she had never looked at him before. "And now I think you must be going. We must all go to bed again."
"Yes, the 'All Clear' will sound soon, I think," replied Bowen.
They moved out into the hall. For a moment they stood looking at each other, then Bowen took both her hands in his. "I am so glad, Patricia," he said, gazing into her eyes, then suddenly he bent down and kissed her full on the lips.
Dropping her hands and without another word he picked up his cap and let himself out, leaving Patricia standing gazing in front of her. For a moment she stood, then turning as one in a dream, walked slowly upstairs to her room.
"I wonder why I let him do that?" she murmured as she stood in front of the mirror unpinning her hair.
CHAPTER XIX
GALVIN HOUSE AFTER THE RAID
The next day and for many days Galvin House abandoned itself to the raid. The air was full of rumours of the appalling casualties resulting from the bomb that had been dropped in the next street. No one knew anything, everyone had heard something. The horrors confided to each other by the residents at Galvin House would have kept the Grand Guignol in realism for a generation.
Silent herself, Patricia watched with interest the ferment around her. With the exception of Mrs. Craske-Morton, all seemed to desire most of all to emphasize their own attitude of splendid intellectual calm during the raid. They spoke scornfully of acquaintances who had flown from London because of the danger from bomb-dropping Gothas, they derided the Thames Valley aliens, they talked heroically and patriotically about "standing their bit of bombing." In short Galvin House had become a harbour of heroism.
Mrs. Craske-Morton, who had shown a calmness and courage that none of the others seemed to recognise, had nothing to say except about her broken glass; on this subject, however, she was eloquent. Miss Wangle managed to convey to those who would listen that her own safety, and in fact that of Galvin House, was directly due to the intercession of the bishop, who when alive was particularly noted for the power and sustained eloquence of his prayers.
Mr. Bolton was frankly sceptical. If the august prelate was out to save Galvin House, he suggested, it wasn't quite cricket to let them drop a bomb in the next street.
Everyone was extremely critical of everyone else. Mr. Bolton said things about Mrs. Barnes and her clothes that made Miss Sikkum blush, particularly about the nose, where, with her, emotion always first manifested itself. Mr. Sefton had permanently returned to the "women and children first" phase and, as two cigarettes were missing from his case, he was convinced that he had acquitted himself with that air of reckless bravado that endeared a man to women. He talked pityingly and tolerantly of Gustave's obvious terror.
Mr. Bolton saw in the adventure material for jokes for months to come. He laboured at the subject with such misguided industry that Patricia felt she almost hated him. Some of his allusions, particularly to the state of sartorial indecision in which the maids had sought cover, were "not quite nice," as Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe expressed it to Mrs. Hamilton, who returned from a visit the day following.
At breakfast everyone had talked, and in consequence everyone who worked was late for work; the general opinion being, what was the use of a raid unless you could be late for work? Punctuality on such occasions being regarded as the waste of an opportunity, and a direct rebuke to Providence who had placed it there.
Patricia did not take part in the general babel, beyond pointing out, when Gustave was coming under discussion, that it was he who had gone to the top of the house to call her. She looked meaningly at Mr. Bolton and Mr. Sefton, who had the grace to appear a little ashamed of themselves.
When Patricia returned in the evening, she found Lady Tanagra awaiting her in the lounge, literally bombarded with different accounts of what had happened – all narrated in the best "eye-witness" manner of the alarmist press. Following the precept of Charles Lamb, Galvin House had apparently striven to correct the bad impression made through lateness in beginning work by leaving early.
It was obvious that Lady Tanagra had made herself extremely popular. Everyone was striving to gain her ear for his or her story of personal experiences.
"Ah, here you are!" cried Lady Tanagra as Patricia entered. "I hear you behaved like a heroine last night."
Mrs. Craske-Morton nodded her head with conviction.
"Mrs. Morton was the real heroine," said Patricia. "She was splendid!"
Mrs. Craske-Morton flushed. To be praised before so distinguished a caller was almost embarrassing, especially as no one had felt it necessary to comment upon her share in the evening's excitement.
"Come up with me while I take off my things," said Patricia, as she moved towards the door. She saw that any private talk between herself and Lady Tanagra would be impossible in the lounge with Galvin House in its present state of ferment.
In Patricia's room Lady Tanagra subsided into a chair with a sigh. "I feel as if I were a celebrity arriving at New York," she laughed.
"They're rather excited," smiled Patricia, "but then we live such a humdrum life here – the expression is Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe's – and much should be forgiven them. A book could be written on the boarding-house mind, I think. It moves in a vicious circle. If someone would only break out and give the poor dears something to talk about."
"Didn't you do that?" enquired Lady Tanagra slily.
Patricia smiled wearily. "I take second place now to the raid. Think of living here for the next few weeks. They will think raid, read raid, talk raid and dream raid." She shuddered. "Thank heavens I'm off to-morrow."
"Off to-morrow?" Lady Tanagra raised her eyes in interrogation.
"Yes, to Eastbourne for a fortnight's holiday as provided for in the arrangement existing between one Patricia Brent and Arthur Bonsor, Esquire, M.P. It's part of the wages of the sin of secretaryship." Patricia sighed.
"I hope you'll enjoy – "
"Please don't be conventional," interrupted Patricia. "I shall not enjoy it in the least. Within twenty-four hours I shall long to be back again. I shall get up in the morning and I shall go to bed at night. In between I shall walk a bit, read a bit, get my nose red (thank heavens it doesn't peel) and become bored to extinction. One thing I won't do, that is wear openwork frocks. The sun shall not print cheap insertion kisses upon Patricia Brent."
"You're quite sure that it is a holiday," Lady Tanagra looked up quizzically at Patricia as she stood gazing out of the window.
"A holiday!" repeated Patricia, looking round.
"It sounded just a little depressing," said Lady Tanagra.
"It will be exactly what it sounds," Patricia retorted; "only depressing is not quite the right word, it's too polite. You don't know what it is to be lonely, Tanagra, and live at Galvin House, and try to haul or push a politician into a rising posture. It reminds me of Carlyle on the Dutch." There was a note of fierce protest in her voice. "You have all the things that I want, and I wonder I don't scratch your face and tear your hair out. We are all primitive in our instincts really." Then she laughed. "Well! I had to cry out to someone, and I shall feel better. It's rather a beastly world for some of us, you know; but I suppose I ought to be spanked for being ungrateful."
"Do you know why I've come?" enquired Lady Tanagra, thinking it wise to change the subject.
Patricia shook her head. "A more conceited person might have suggested that it was to see me," she said demurely.
"To apologise for Peter," said Lady Tanagra. "He disobeyed orders and I am very angry with him."
Patricia flushed at the memory of their good-night. For a few seconds she stood silent, looking out of the window.
"I think it was rather sweet of him," she said without looking round.
Lady Tanagra smiled slightly. "Then I may forgive him, you think?" she enquired.
Patricia turned and looked at her. Lady Tanagra met the gaze innocently.
"He wanted to write to you and send some flowers and chocolates; but I absolutely forbade it. We almost had our first quarrel," she added mendaciously.
For the space of a second Patricia hated Lady Tanagra. She would have liked to turn and rend her for interfering in a matter that could not possibly be regarded as any concern of hers. The feeling, however, was only momentary and, when Lady Tanagra rose to go, Patricia was as cordial as ever.
From Galvin House Lady Tanagra drove to the Quadrant.
"Peter!" she cried as she entered the room and threw herself into an easy chair, "if ever I again endeavour to divert true love from its normal – "
"How is she?"' interrupted Bowen.
"Now you've spoiled it," cried Lady Tanagra, "and it was – "
"Spoiled what?" demanded Bowen.
"My beautiful phrase about true love and its normal channel, and I have been saying it over to myself all the way from Galvin House." She looked reproachfully at her brother.
"How's Patricia?" demanded Bowen eagerly.
"Fair to moderately fair, rain later, I should describe her," replied Lady Tanagra, helping herself to a cigarette which Bowen lighted. "She's going away."
"Good heavens! Where?" cried Bowen.
"Eastbourne."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"Damn!"
"My dear Peter," remarked Lady Tanagra lazily, "this primitive profanity ill becomes – "
"Please don't rot me, Tan," he pleaded. "I've had a rotten time lately."
There was helpless and hopeless pain in Bowen's voice that caused Lady Tanagra to spring up from her chair and go over to him.
"Carry on, old boy," she cried softly, as she caressed his coat-sleeve. "It's your only chance. You're going to win."
"I must see her!" blurted out Bowen.
"If you do you'll spoil everything," announced Lady Tanagra with conviction.
"But, last night," began Bowen and paused.
"Last night, I think," said Lady Tanagra, "was a master-stroke. She is touched; it's taken us forward at least a week."
"But look here, Tan," said Bowen gloomily, "you told me to leave it all in your hands and you make me treat her rottenly, then you say – "
"That you know about as much of how to make a woman like Patricia fall in love with you as an ostrich does of geology," said Lady Tanagra calmly.
"But what will she think?" demanded Bowen.
"At present she is thinking that Eastbourne will be a nightmare of loneliness."
"I'll run down and see her," announced Bowen.
"If you do, Peter!" There was a note of warning in Lady Tanagra's voice.
"All right," he conceded gloomily. "I'll give you another week, and then I'll go my own way."
"Peter, if you were smaller and I were bigger I think I should spank you," laughed Lady Tanagra. Then with great seriousness she said, "I want you to marry her, and I'm going the only way to work to make her let you. Do try and trust me, Peter."
Bowen looked down at her with a smile, touched by the look in her eyes. For a moment his arm rested across her shoulders. Then he pushed her towards the door. "Clear out, Tan. I'm not fit for a bear-pit to-night."
The Bowens were never demonstrative with one another.
For half an hour Bowen sat smoking one cigarette after another until he was interrupted by the entrance of Peel, who, after a comprehensive glance round the room, proceeded to administer here and there those deft touches that emphasize a patient and orderly mind. Bowen watched him as he moved about on the balls of his feet.
"Have you ever been to Eastbourne, Peel?" enquired Bowen presently. Just why he asked the question he could not have said.
"Only once, my lord," replied Peel as he replaced the full ash-tray on the table by Bowen with a clean one. There was a note in his voice implying that nothing would ever tempt him to go there again.
"You don't like it?" suggested Bowen.
"I dislike it intensely, my lord," replied Peel as he refolded a copy of The Times.
"Why?"
"It has unpleasant associations, my lord," was the reply.
Bowen smiled. After a moment's silence he continued:
"Been sowing wild oats there?"
"No, my lord, not exactly."
"Well, if it's not too private," said Bowen, "tell me what happened. At the moment I'm particularly interested in the place."
Peel gazed reproachfully at a copy of The Sphere, which had managed in some strange way to get its leaves dog-eared. As he proceeded to smooth them out he continued:
"It was when I was young, my lord. I was engaged to be married. I thought her a most excellent young woman, in every way suitable. She went down to Eastbourne for a holiday." He paused.
"Well, there doesn't seem much wrong in that," said Bowen.
"From Eastbourne she wrote, saying that she had changed her mind," proceeded Peel.
"The devil she did!" exclaimed Bowen. "And what did you do?"
"I went down to reason with her, my lord," said Peel.
"Does one reason with a woman, Peel?" enquired Bowen with a smile.
"I was very young then, my lord, not more than thirty-two." Peel's tone was apologetic. "I discovered that she had received an offer of marriage from another."
"Hard luck!" murmured Bowen.
"Not at all, my lord, really," said Peel philosophically. "I discovered that she had re-engaged herself to a butcher, a most offensive fellow. His language when I expostulated with him was incredibly coarse, and I am sure he used marrow for his hair."
"And what did you do?" enquired Bowen.
"I had taken a return ticket, my lord. I came back to London."
Bowen laughed. "I'm afraid you couldn't have been very badly hit, Peel, or you would not have been able to take it quite so philosophically."
"I have never allowed my private affairs to interfere with my professional duties, my lord," replied Peel unctuously.
For five minutes Bowen smoked in silence. "So you do not believe in marriage," he said at length.
"I would not say that, my lord; but I do not think it suitable for a man of temperament such as myself. I have known marriages quite successful where too much was not required of the contracting parties."
"But don't you believe in love?" enquired Bowen.
"Love, my lord, is like a disease. If you are on the look out for it you catch it, if you ignore it, it does not trouble you. I was once with a gentleman who was very nervous about microbes. He would never eat anything that had not been cooked, and he had everything about him disinfected. He even disinfected me," he added as if in proof of the extreme eccentricity of his late employer.
"So I suppose you despise me for having fallen in love and contemplating marriage," said Bowen with a smile.
"There are always exceptions, my lord," responded Peel tactfully. "I have prepared the bath."
"Peel," remarked Bowen as he rose and stretched himself, "disinfected or not disinfected, you are safe from the microbe of romance."
"I hope so, my lord," responded Peel as he opened the door.
"I wonder if history will repeat itself," murmured Bowen as he walked through his bedroom into the bathroom. "I, too, hate Eastbourne."
CHAPTER XX
A RACE WITH SPINSTERHOOD
Before she had been at Eastbourne twenty-four hours Patricia was convinced that she had made a mistake in going there. With no claims upon her time, the restlessness that had developed in London increased until it became almost unbearable. The hotel at which she was staying was little more than a glorified boarding-house, full of "the most jungly of jungle-people," as she expressed it to herself. Their well-meant and kindly efforts to engage her in their pursuits and pleasures she received with apathetic negation. At length her fellow-guests, seeing that she was determined not to respond to their overtures, left her severely alone. The men were the last to desist.
She came to dislike the pleasure-seekers about her and grew critical of everything she saw, the redness of the women's faces, the assumed youthfulness of the elderly men, the shapelessness of matrons who seemed to delight in bright open-work blouses and juvenile hats. She remembered Elton's remark that Fashion uncovers a multitude of shins. The shins exposed at Eastbourne were she decided, sufficient to undermine one's belief in the early chapters of Genesis.
At one time she would have been amused at the types around her, and their various conceptions of "one crowded hour of glorious life." As it was, everything seemed sordid and trivial. Why should people lose all sense of dignity and proportion at a set period of the year? It was, she decided, almost as bad as being a hare.
All she wanted was to be alone, she told herself; yet as soon as she had discovered some secluded spot and had settled herself down to read, the old restlessness attacked her, and fight against it as she might, she was forced back again to the haunts of men.
For the first few days she watched eagerly for letters. None came. She would return to the hotel several times a day, look at the letter-rack, then, to hide her disappointment, make a pretence of having returned for some other purpose. "Why had not Bowen written?" she asked herself, then a moment after she strove to convince herself that he had forgotten, or at least that she was only an episode in his life.
His sudden change from eagerness to indifference caused her to flush with humiliation; yet he had gone to Galvin House during the raid to assure himself of her safety. Why had he not written after what had occurred? Perhaps Aunt Adelaide was right about men after all.
Patricia wrote to Lady Tanagra, Mrs. Hamilton, Lady Peggy, Mr. Triggs, even to Miss Sikkum. In due course answers arrived; but in only Miss Sikkum's letter was there any reference to Bowen, a gush of sentiment about "how happy you must be, dear Miss Brent, with Lord Bowen running down to see you every other day. I know!" she added with maidenly prescience. Patricia laughed.
Mr. Triggs committed himself to nothing more than two and three-quarter pages, mainly about his daughter and "A. B.," Mr. Triggs was not at his best as a correspondent. Lady Tanagra ran to four pages; but as her handwriting was large, five lines filling a page, her letter was disappointing.
Lady Peggy was the most productive. In the course of twelve pages of spontaneity she told Patricia that the Duke and the Cabinet Minister had almost quarrelled about her, Patricia. "Peter has been to lunch with us and Daddy has told him how lucky he is, and how wonderful you are. If Peter is not very careful, I shall have you presented to me as a stepmother. Wouldn't it be priceless!" she wrote. "Oh! What am I writing?" She ended with the Duke's love, and an insistence that Patricia should lunch at Curzon Street the first Sunday after her return.
Patricia found Lady Peggy's letter charming. She was pleased to know that she had made a good impression and was admired – by the right people. Twenty-four hours, however, found her once more thrown back into the trough of her own despondency. Instinctively she began to count the days until this "dire compulsion of infertile days" should end. She could not very well return to London and say that she was tired of holiday-making. Galvin House would put its own construction upon her action and words, and whatever that construction might be, it was safe to assume that it would be an unpleasant one.
There were moments when a slight uplifting of the veil enabled her to see herself as she must appear to others.
"Patricia!" she exclaimed one morning to her reflection in a rather dubious mirror. "You're a cumberer of the earth and, furthermore, you've got a beastly temper," and she jabbed a pin through her hat and partly into her head.
As the days passed she found herself wondering what was the earliest day she could return. If she made it the Friday night, would it arouse suspicion? She decided that it would, and settled to leave Eastbourne on the Saturday afternoon.
As the train steamed out of the station she made a grimace in the direction of the town, just as an inoffensive and prematurely bald little man opposite looked up from his paper. He gave Patricia one startled look through his gold-rimmed spectacles and, for the rest of the journey, buried himself behind his paper, fearful lest Patricia should "make another face at him," as he explained to his mother that evening.
"She's come home in a nice temper!" was Miss Wangle's diagnosis of the mood in which Patricia reached Galvin House.
Gustave regarded her with anxious concern.
The first dinner drove her almost mad. The raid, as a topic of conversation, was on the wane, although Mr. Bolton worked at it nobly, and Patricia found herself looked upon to supply the necessary material for the evening's amusement. What had she done? Where had she been? Had she bathed? Were the dresses pretty? How many times had Bowen been down? Had she met any nice people? Was it true that the costumes of the women were disgraceful?
At last, with a forced laugh, Patricia told them that she must have "notice" of such questions, and everybody had looked at her in surprise, until Mr. Bolton's laugh rang out, and he explained the parliamentary allusion.
When at last, under pretence of being tired, she was able to escape to her room, she felt that another five minutes would have turned her brain.
Sunday dawned, and with it the old panorama of iterations unfolded itself: Mr. Bolton's velvet coat and fez, Mr. Cordal's carpet slippers with the fur tops, Mrs. Barnes' indecision, Mr. Sefton's genial and romantic optimism, Miss Sikkum's sumptuary excesses; all presented themselves in due sequence just as they had done for – "was it centuries?" Patricia asked herself. To crown all it was a roast-pork Sunday, and the reek of onions preparing for the seasoning filled the house.
Patricia felt that the fates were fighting against her. In nerving herself for the usual human Sunday ordeal, she had forgotten the vegetable menace, in other words that it was "pork Sunday." Mr. Bolton was always more than usually trying on Sundays; but reinforced by onions he was almost unbearable. Patricia fled.
It was the Sunday before August Bank Holiday. Patricia shuddered at the remembrance. It meant that people were away. She did not pause to think that her world was at home, pursuing its various paths whereby to cultivate an appetite worthy of the pork that was even then sizzling in the Galvin House kitchen under the eagle eye of the cook, who prided herself on her "crackling," which Galvin House crunched with noisy gusto.
Patricia sank down upon a chair far back under the trees opposite the Stanhope Gate. Here she remained in a vague way watching the people, yet unconscious of their presence. From time to time some snatch of meaningless conversation would reach her. "You know Betty's such a sport?" one man said to another. Patricia found herself wondering what Betty was like and what, to the speaker's mind, constituted being a sport. Was Betty pretty? She must be, Patricia decided; no one cared whether or no a plain girl were a sport. She found herself wanting to know Betty. What were the lives of all these people, these shadows, that were moving to and fro in front of her, each intent upon something that seemed of vital importance? Were they – ?
"I doubt if Cassandra could have looked more gloomily prophetic."
She turned with a start and saw Geoffrey Elton smiling down upon her.
"Did I look as bad as that?" she enquired, as he took a seat beside her.
"You looked as if you were gratuitously settling the destinies of the world," he replied.
"In a way I suppose I was," she said musingly. "You see they all mean something," indicating the paraders with a nod of her head, "tragedy, comedy, farce, sometimes all three. If you only stop to think about life, it all seems so hopeless. I feel sometimes that I could run away from it all."
"That in the Middle Ages would have been diagnosed as the monastic spirit," said Elton. "It arose, and no doubt continues in most cases to arise from a sluggish liver."
"How dreadful!" laughed Patricia. "The inference is obvious."
"The world's greatest achievements and greatest tragedies could no doubt be traced directly to rebellious livers: Waterloo and 'Hamlet' are instances."
"Are you serious?" enquired Patricia. She was never quite certain of Elton.
"In a way I suppose I am," he replied. "If I were a pathologist I should write a book upon The Influence of Disease upon the Destinies of the World. The supreme monarch is the microbe. The Germans have shown that they recognise this."
"Ugh!" Patricia shuddered.
"Of course you have to make some personal sacrifice in the matter of self-respect first," continued Elton, "but after that the rest becomes easy."
"I suppose that is what a German victory would mean," said Patricia.
"Yes; we should give up lead and nickel and T.N.T., and invent germ distributors. Essen would become a great centre of germ-culture, and – "
"Oh! please let us talk about something else," cried Patricia. "It's horrible!"
"Well!" said Elton with a smile, "shall we continue our talk over lunch, if you have no engagement?"
"Lady Peggy asked me – " began Patricia.
"They're away in Somerset," said Elton, "so now I claim you as my victim. It is your destiny to save me from my own thoughts."
"And yours to save me from roast pork and apple sauce," said Patricia, rising. As they walked towards Hyde Park Corner she explained the Galvin House cuisine.
They lunched at the Ritz and, to her surprise Patricia found herself eating with enjoyment, a thing she had not done for weeks past. She decided that it must be a revulsion of feeling after the menace of roast pork. Elton was a good talker, with a large experience of life and a considerable fund of general information.
"I should like to travel," said Patricia as she sipped her coffee in the lounge.
"Why?" Elton held a match to her cigarette.
"Oh! I suppose because it is enjoyable," replied Patricia; "besides, it educates," she added.
"That is too conventional to be worthy of you," said Elton.
"How?" queried Patricia.
"Most of the dull people I know ascribe their dullness to lack of opportunities for travel. They seem to think that a voyage round the world will make brilliant talkers of the toughest bores."
"Am I as tedious as that?" enquired Patricia, looking up with a smile.
"Your friend, Mr. Triggs, for instance," continued Elton, passing over Patricia's remark. "He has not travelled, and he is always interesting. Why?"
"I suppose because he is Mr. Triggs," said Patricia half to herself.
"Exactly," said Elton. "If you were really yourself you would not be – "
