_ CHAPTER XIX
"Lucky I'm in evening dress," she said, loosening her cloak as they went through a corridor, shimmering with dresses and diamonds, to a crowded supper-room.
"But you're always in evening dress, surely."
"I might have been in tights." And she had a malicious self-wounding pleasure in watching him gasp. She hurried into a revelation of her exact position, as soon as they had secured a just-vacated little table in a window niche. She omitted only Colonel Doherty.
He listened breathlessly. "And nobody knows you are Eileen O'Keeffe, I mean Nelly O'Neill?"
She laughed. "You see _you_ don't know which I am."
"It's incredible."
"So much the worse for your theories of credibility. The longer I live, the less the Show surprises me."
"What show?"
"Oh, it's too long to explain. Say Vanity Fair." Her thumb fell into its old habit of flicking the table. There was a silence.
"I am sorry you told me," he said slowly.
"Why?"
A waiter loomed over them.
"Supper, Sir Robert?"
She glanced quickly at her companion.
"Yes," he said. "_Ma buonissima!_ I leave it to you. And champagne."
"_Prestissimo_, Sir Robert." He smirked himself off.
"Why does he call you that?" she asked.
"Oh, didn't you know my poor father was made a Baronet, after we entertained Royalty?"
"No; how strange your lives should have been going on all the time!" The pop of a cork at her elbow startled her. Then she lifted her frothing glass. "Sir--to you!"
He clinked his against it. "To the lady of my dreams."
"Still?" She sipped the wine: her eyes sparkled.
"Yes; I've still a long opinion of myself."
She put out her hand quickly and pressed his an instant.
"Thank you!" he said huskily. "That was why I said I was sorry to know that to the world you were still a governess. Of course I was glad, too."
"I don't understand. I always said you were more Irish than I."
"I was glad you had kept yourself unspotted from the stage-world."
"Good God! You call that unspotted! What are men made of?"
"You were in a bad atmosphere. Your lips caught phrases."
"Nonsense. I'm a crow, not a parrot; a thoroughly sooty bird."
"It was your whiteness that attracted--your morning freshness. You don't know what vulgarity is."
"You don't know what _I_ am."
"I know you to your delicious finger-tips. And that's why I am sorry you told me so much. I wanted to ask Nelly O'Neill to marry me. Now she'll think I'm only asking Eileen O'Keeffe, the daughter of the Irish gentleman."
Her eyes filled with tears. "No, they both believe you capable of any folly. Besides, somebody would find out Nelly all the same." And a smile made a rainbow across her tears.
The arrival of the soup relaxed the tension of emotion. In mid-plate she suddenly put down her spoon and laughed softly.
"What is it?" he said, not without alarm at her transitions.
"Why, it would be one of those stock theatrical marriages, into which we entrap titles! Fascinated by a Serio-Comic, poor silly young man. She played her cards well, that Nelly. Ha! ha! ha! Who would dream of Plato's dialogues? And you talk of incredible!"
"I am content to be called silly." He tried to take her hand.
"Well, don't be it in public. You will rank with Lord Tippleton who married Bessie Bilhook, and made a Lady of her--the only ladyhood she's ever known."
"No, I can't rank with him," he smiled back. "I'm only a Baronet."
"It sounds the same. Lady Maper!" she murmured. "But, oh, how funny! There'd be two Lady Mapers."
"My mother would be the Dowager Lady--"
"That's funnier still."
He ate in silence. Eileen mused on the picture of the Dowager, her forefinger to heaven.
"The Royalty--how did that go off?" she said, as he carved the chicken.
"With fireworks. For the reception father built a new house and furnished it with old furniture. Royalty stopped an hour and a quarter. Oh, she was wonderful. I mean my mother. Copied your phrases--see what an impression you made."
"And what have you been doing since you came into the title?"
"Looking for you."
"Nonsense!" She dropped her fork. "But you knew I had people in Ireland."
"I never knew exactly where."
"But what put you on the track of the music-halls?"
"Nothing. I never dreamed of looking for you there. I just went." Master Harold Lee Carter's phrase flashed back to her memory, "All the chaps go."
"But what about the Black Hole--I mean the works?"
"They go on," he said. "I just get the profits."
"And how about your Socialism?"
"You taught me the fallacy of it."
"I? Well, that's the cream of the joke."
"Yes. Don't laugh at me, please. When you came into my life, or rather when you went out of it--yes, I am Irish--I saw that money and station are the mere veneer of life: the central reality is--Love."
Again her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent.
"And I saw that I, the master, was really poorer than the majority of my serfs, with their wives and bairns."
"You are a good fellow," she murmured. "I--I meant to say," she corrected herself, "what have you done with your clothes?"
"My clothes!" he echoed vaguely, looking down at his spotless shirt-front.
"Your factory clothes! Wouldn't it be fun to wear them at supper here? Do you think they could turn you out? I don't see how, legally. Do test the question. Yes, do. Please do." And she laid her hand on his black sleeve. "I won't marry you if you don't."
"I did think you were serious to-night, Eileen," he said, disappointed.
"How could you think that, if you read the programme, as you say? 'Nelly O'Neill, Serio-Comic.' _Allons, ne faites cette tete mine de hibou_. Admit the world is entirely ridiculous and give me some more champagne." Her eyes glittered strangely.
A clock struck twelve.
"What, midnight!" she cried, starting up. "I must go."
"No, no;" he took her hand.
"Yes, yes; don't you know, at the stroke of midnight I change back to a governess."
"Well, the magic didn't work, for that clock's very slow. Sit down, please."
"You have spoken the omen. I remain Nelly O'Neill and drop Eileen for ever. _Vogue la galere._"
"Absit omen!" He shuddered.
"Why not? What do you offer me? The love of one man. But my public loves me as one man--with a much more voluminous love--I love it in return. Why should I change?"
"Shall we say merely because the public changes? I am constant."
"Yes, you are very wonderful.... And if it's to-morrow already, my fate will be settled to-day. Drink to my destiny."
"I drink to our destiny," he said, raising his glass.
"No. Only to mine. It will be decided this afternoon."
"You will give me your answer this afternoon?" he cried joyfully.
"I don't say that. It's my answer I shall know this afternoon. Yours you shall have to-morrow afternoon. You don't mind giving me one day's option of your hand?"
"One day's! When you have had--"
She interrupted impatiently. "Let bygones be bygones. You shall have a letter by Monday afternoon. But, oh, Heavens! how could we marry? You believe in nothing!"
"There's the Registrar."
She pouted: "Dry legality. No flowers, no organ, no feeling sweet and virginal in a long veil. Oh, dear! Besides, there's mother--"
"I don't object to the church ceremony."
"I'm glad. The law may end marriage. Marriage shouldn't begin with law. It ought to look beautiful at the start, at least, though one may know it's a shaky scraw."
"A shaky what?"
"Oh, it's an Irish term for a bit of black bog that looks like lovely green meadow. You step out so gaily on the glittering grass, and then squish! squash! down you go to choke in the ooze."
"Don't be so pessimistic. It would be much more sensible to think of marriage as solid meadow-land after your present scramble over a shaky what-d'ye-call it."
"True for you! I give you the stage as the shakiest of all scraws. But where _is_ solid footing to be found? The world itself is only a vast bog that sucks in the generations."
"I am sorry I asked you to be serious," he said glumly. "You're such a quick-change artiste."
"I must quickly assume the governess or I'll lose my character," she said, rising resolutely.
He put her cloak tenderly round her.
"You know I'll take you without a character," he said lightly.
"If I had no character I might be tempted to take you," she retorted dispiritingly. "Thank you so much for my first supper." _