She was leaning over the table, making a labyrinth with the currants from a cake and listening intently. He stopped politely, feeling that he was talking too much. But, "Go on, please do," she commanded, and he told simply, seeing it more and more, of Satan and the Grenadier, of the fairies who had beckoned to him from the Irish coast hills, and the comradeship of Morton.
She interrupted only once, murmuring, "My dear, it's a good thing you're articulate, anyway-" which didn't seem to have any bearing on hay-bales.
She sent him away with a light "It's been a good party, hasn't it, caveman? (If you are a caveman.) Call for me tomorrow at three. We'll go to the Tate Gallery."
She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.
"Yes. Good night, Miss Nash," he quavered.
A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to the Tate Gallery he might be the faithful shadow and beautiful transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D. As a result, when he stood before the large canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the stories in the pictures of Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded:
"Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands. You've got to learn to play. You don't know how to play. Come. I shall teach you. I don't know why I should, either. But-come."
She explained as they left the gallery: "First, the art of riding on the buses. Oh, it is an art, you know. You must appreciate the flower-girls and the gr-r-rand young bobbies. You must learn to watch for the blossoms on the restaurant terraces and roll on the grass in the parks. You're much too respectable to roll on the grass, aren't you? I'll try ever so hard to teach you not to be. And we'll go to tea. How many kinds of tea are there?"
"Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and-oh-Chinese."
"B-"
"And golf tees!" he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop the bus.
"Puns are a beginning at least," she reflected.
"But how many kinds of tea are there, Istra?... Oh say, I hadn't ought to-"
"Course; call me Istra or anything else. Only, you mustn't call my bluff. What do I know about tea? All of us who play are bluffers, more or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others are bluffing.... There's lots of kinds of tea. In the New York Chinatown I saw once-Do you know Chinatown? Being a New-Yorker, I don't suppose you do."
"Oh yes. And Italiantown. I used to wander round there."
"Well, down at the Seven Flowery Kingdoms Chop Suey and American Cooking there's tea at five dollars a cup that they advertise is grown on `cloud-covered mountain-tops.' I suppose when the tops aren't cloud-covered they only charge three dollars a cup.... But, serious-like, there's really only two kinds of teas-those you go to to meet the man you love and ought to hate, and those you give to spite the women you hate but ought to-hate! Isn't that lovely and complicated? That's playing. With words. My aged parent calls it `talking too much and not saying anything.' Note that last-not saying anything! It's one of the rules in playing that mustn't be broken."
He understood that better than most of the things she said. "Why," he exclaimed, "it's kind of talking sideways."
"Why, yes. Of course. Talking sideways. Don't you see now?"
Gallant gentleman as he was, he let her think she had invented the phrase.
She said many other things; things implying such vast learning that he made gigantic resolves to "read like thunder."
Her great lesson was the art of taking tea. He found, surprisedly, that they weren't really going to endanger their clothes by rolling on park grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea and a jug of clotted cream for him, with a pile of cinnamon buns.
"But-" said Istra. "Isn't this like Alice in Wonderland! But you must learn the buttering of English muffins most of all. If you get to be very good at it the flunkies will let you take tea at the Carleton. They are such hypercritical flunkies, and the one that brings the gold butter-measuring rod to test your skill, why, he always wears knee-breeches of silver gray. So you can see, Billy, how careful you have to be. And eat them without buttering your nose. For if you butter your nose they'll think you're a Greek professor. And you wouldn't like that, would you, honey?" He learned how to pat the butter into the comfortable brown insides of the muffins that looked so cold and floury without. But Istra seemed to have lost interest; and he didn't in the least follow her when she observed:
"Doubtless it was the best butter. But where, where, dear dormouse, are the hatter and hare? Especially the sweet bunny rabbit that wriggled his ears and loved Gralice, the princesse d' outre-mer.
"Where, where are the hatter and hare,
And where is the best butter gone?"
Presently: "Come on. Let's beat it down to Soho for dinner. Or-no! Now you shall lead me. Show me where you'd go for dinner. And you shall take me to a music-hall, and make me enjoy it. Now you teach me to play."
"Gee! I'm afraid I don't know a single thing to teach you."
"Yes, but-See here! We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange land. We'll play together for a little while. We're not used to each other's sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all the more. I don't know how long we'll play or-Shall we?"
"Oh yes!"
"Now show me how you play."
"I don't believe I ever did much, really."
"Well, you shall take me to your kind of a restaurant."
"I don't believe you'd care much for penny meat-pies."
"Little meat-pies?"
"Um-huh."
"Little crispy ones? With flaky covers?"
"Um-huh."
"Why, course I would! And ha'p'ny tea? Lead me to it, O brave knight! And to a vaudeville."
He found that this devoted attendant of theaters had never seen the beautiful Italians who pounce upon protesting zylophones with small clubs, or the side-splitting juggler's assistant who breaks up piles and piles of plates. And as to the top hat that turns into an accordion and produces much melody, she was ecstatic.
At after-theater supper he talked of Theresa and South Beach, of Charley Carpenter and Morton-Morton-Morton.
They sat, at midnight, on the steps of the house in Tavistock Place.
"I do know you now, "she mused. "It's curious how any two babes in a strange-enough woods get acquainted. You are a lonely child, aren't you?" Her voice was mother-soft. "We will play just a little-"
"I wish I had some games to teach. But you know so much."
"And I'm a perfect beauty, too, aren't I?" she said, gravely.
"Yes, you are!" stoutly.
"You would be loyal.... And I need some one's admiration.... Mostly, Paris and London hold their sides laughing at poor Istra."
He caught her hand. "Oh, don't! They must 'preciate you. I'd like to kill anybody that didn't!"
"Thanks." She gave his hand a return pressure and hastily withdrew her own. "You'll be good to some sweet pink face.... And I'll go on being discontented. Oh, isn 't life the fiercest proposition!... We seem different, you and I, but maybe it's mostly surface-down deep we're alike in being desperately unhappy because we never know what we're unhappy about. Well-"