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The sight of this room brought back the memory of a pretty lamplit parlour, with an old man sitting in a high-backed easy-chair: a genial matron bending over her work; two fair-faced girls; a favourite mastiff stretched full length upon the hearth; and, last of all, a young man at home from college, yawning over a sporting newspaper, weary to death of all the simple innocent delights of home, sick of the companionship of gentle sisters, the love of a fond mother, and wishing to be back again at the old uproarious wine-parties, the drunken orgies, the card-playing and prize-fighting, the extravagance and debauchery of the bad set in which he was a chief.
Occupants officers, sailors, and soldiers in batches, alone or with ladies; white shirts and skirts gleam green in the moonlight the road dusty, stuffy, and the pace go-as-you-please; past a lamplit bungalow in the shadows of trees and out into the open again and moonlight and dust past a motor by the roadside, its owner, in court dress, sweating at its works dust, moonlight, and black silk a Whistler by Jove!
"A moment," said a voice, which I recognized as Constance Pleyel's; "it is very well to have the window open, but all the same we need not catch our death of cold. Will you be good enough, Signor Roncivalli, to lower the blind." The signor arose and obeyed her, and as he did so I could see his long figure between me and the whitewashed, lamplit ceiling of the room.
Later, in the autumn evenings, a lamplit replica of the same picture presented itself.
Would he refuse? There was the slightest pause. Then "Thank you very much," he said quietly. "I shall be delighted." "We dine at an unearthly hour to-night, of course," volunteered Penelope. "Half-past six." "As I contrived to miss my lunch to-day, I shan't grumble," replied Peter, smiling. "Till to-night, then." And the Fentons' motor slid away into the lamplit dusk.
Most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards.
Waterloo, lamplit and resonant: the pulsing of many lamps, the hurry of many steps, the flitting by of many faces under an arch of gloom: dark quiet and the scent of violets in a waiting car. "What a jolly taxi!" Isabel exclaimed. "I never was in a taxi like this before. Is it a more expensive kind?"
What a fairy-world is this opening out beneath our feet, with its golden glowing squares and circles and palaces, with its lamplit gardens and pagodas! and who are these gay and beautiful beings flitting hither and thither, and passing from one bright garden to another on the stream of pleasure?
The road turned northward, going round through the outskirts of Bognor, in one place dark and heavy under a thick growth of trees, then amidst villas again, some warm and lamplit, some white and sleeping in the moonlight; then between hedges, over which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist.
"Y-yes," confessed Gatewood, "it's all right for me once in a while, because I know that I am presently going back to my own home a jolly lamplit room and the prettiest girl in Manhattan curled up in an armchair " "You're fortunate," said Kerns shortly. And for the first time there remained no lurking mockery in his voice; for the first time his retort was tinged with bitterness.
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