Where Love Is

HAVE you dined at Ranelagh lately?” asked Norma Hardacre.

“I have never been there in my life,” replied Jimmie Padgate. “In fact,” he added simply, “I am not quite sure whether I know where it is.”

“Yours is the happier state. It is one of the dullest spots in a dull world.”

“Then why on earth do people go there?”

The enquiry was so genuine that Miss Hardacre relaxed her expression of handsome boredom and laughed.

“Because we are all like the muttons of Panurge,” she said. “Where one goes, all go. Why are we here to-night?”

“To enjoy ourselves. How could one do otherwise in Mrs. Deering's house?”

“You have known her a long time, I believe,” remarked Norma, taking the opportunity of directing the conversation to a non-contentious topic.

“Since she was in short frocks. She is a cousin of King's--that's the man who took you down to dinner--”

She nodded. “I have known Mr. King many weary ages.”

“And he has never told me about you!”

“Why should he?”

She looked him full in the face, with the stony calm of the fashionable young woman accustomed to take excellent care of herself. Her companion met her stare in whimsical confusion. Even so ingenuous a being as Jimmie Padgate could not tell a girl he had met for the first time that she was beautiful, adorable, and graced with divine qualities above all women, and that intimate acquaintance with her must be the startling glory of a lifetime.

“If I had known you for ages,” he replied prudently, “I should have mentioned your name to Morland King.”

“Are you such friends then?”

“Fast friends: we were at school together, and as I was a lonely little beggar I used to spend many of my holidays with his people. That is how I knew Mrs. Deering in short frocks.”

“It's odd, then, that I have n't met you about before,” said the girl, giving him a more scrutinising glance than she had hitherto troubled to bestow upon him. A second afterwards she felt that her remark might have been in the nature of an indiscretion, for her companion had not at all the air of a man moving in the smart world to which she belonged. His dress-suit was old and of lamentable cut; his shirt-cuffs were frayed; a little bone stud, threatening every moment to slip the button-hole, precariously secured his shirt-front. His thin, iron-grey hair was untidy; his moustache was ragged, innocent of wax or tongs or any of the adventitious aids to masculine adornment. His aspect gave the impression, if not of poverty, at least of narrow means and humble ways of life. Although he had sat next her at dinner, she had paid little attention to him, finding easier entertainment in her conversation with King on topics of common interest, than in possible argument with a strange man whom she heard discussing the functions of art and other such head-splitting matters with his right-hand neighbour. Indeed, her question about Ranelagh when she found him by her side, later, in the drawing-room was practically the first she had addressed to him with any show of interest.

She hastened to repair her maladroit observation by adding before he could reply,--

“That is rather an imbecile thing to say considering the millions of people in London. But one is apt to talk in an imbecile manner after a twelve hours' day of hard racket in the season. Don't you think so? One's stock of ideas gets used up, like the air at the end of a dance.”

“Not if you keep your soul properly ventilated,” he answered.

The words were, perhaps, not so arresting as the manner in which they were uttered. Norma Hardacre was startled. A little shutter in the back of her mind seemed to have flashed open for an elusive second, and revealed a prospect wide, generous, alive with free-blowing airs. Then all was dark again before she could realise the vision. She was disconcerted, and in a much more feminine way than was habitual with her she glanced at him again. This time she lost sight of the poor, untidy garments, and found a sudden interest in the man's kind, careworn face, and his eyes, wonderfully blue and bright, set far apart in the head, that seemed to look out on the world with a man's courage and a child's confidence. She was uncomfortably conscious of being in contact with a personality widely different from that of her usual masculine associates. This her training and habit of mind caused her to resent; despising the faint spiritual shock, she took refuge in flippancy.

“I fear our Tobin tubes get choked up in London,” she said with a little laugh. “Even if they did n't they are wretched things, which create draughts; so anyway our souls are free from chills. Look at that woman over there talking to Captain Orton--every one knows he's paymaster-general. A breath of fresh air in Mrs. Chance's soul would give it rheumatic fever.”

The abominable slander falling cynically from young lips brought a look of disapproval into Jimmie Padgate's eyes.

“Why do you say such things?” he asked. “You know you don't believe them.”

“I do believe them,” she replied defiantly. “Why shouldn't one believe the bad things one hears of one's neighbours? It's a vastly more entertaining faith than belief in their virtues. Virtue--being its own reward--is deadly stale to one's friends and unprofitable to oneself.”

“Cynicism seems cheap to-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile that redeemed his words from impertinence. “Won't you give me something of yourself a little more worth having?”

Norma, who was leaning back in her chair fanning herself languidly, suddenly bent forward, with curious animation in her cold face.

“I don't know who you are or what you are,” she exclaimed. “Why should you want more than the ordinary futilities of after-dinner talk?”

“Because one has only to look at you,” he replied, “to see that it must be very easy to get. You have beauty inside as well as outside, and everybody owes what is beautiful and good in them to their fellow-creatures.”

“I don't see why. According to you, women ought to go about like mediaeval saints.”

“Every woman is a saint in the depths of her heart,” said Jimmie.

“You are an astonishing person,” replied Norma.

The conversation ended there, for Morland King came up with Constance Deering: he florid, good-looking, perfectly groomed and dressed, the type of the commonplace, well-fed, affluent Briton; she a pretty, fragile butterfly of a woman. Jimmie rose and was led off to another part of the room by his hostess. King dropped into the chair Jimmie had vacated.

“I see you have been sampling my friend Jimmie Padgate. What do you make of him?”

“I have just told him he was an astonishing person,” said Norma.

“Dear old Jimmie! He's the best fellow in the world,” said King, laughing. “A bit Bohemian and eccentric--artists generally are--”

“Oh, he's an artist?” inquired Norma.

“He just manages to make a living by it, poor old chap! He has never come off, somehow.”

“Another neglected genius?”

“I don't know about that,” replied Morland King in a matter-of-fact way, not detecting the sneer in the girl's tone. “I don't think he's a great swell--I'm no judge, you know. But he has had a bad time. Anyway, he always comes up smiling. The more he gets knocked the more cheerful he seems to grow. I never met any one like him. The most generous, simple-minded beggar living.”