"I'm going to dress," she said.
In her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. It was of gold
tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the
ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and
a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells,
especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed. When
she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her; it
even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would not
have a view. But the gong had sounded, and she went down.
She made a sensation in the drawing-room. Winifred thought it "Most
amusing." Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it "stunning,"
"ripping," "topping," and "corking."
Monsieur Profond, smiling with his eyes, said: "That's a nice small
dress!" Her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at her, and said
nothing. It remained for her father to apply the test of common sense.
"What did you put on that thing for? You're not going to dance."
Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.
"Caprice!"
Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to Winifred. Jack
Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Profond took Imogen. Fleur went in by
herself, with her bells jingling....
The "small" moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft
and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the
billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and
women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder,
fit as a flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything
but baby's slumber. For so many lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the
criss-cross of the world.
The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river
meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see;
and the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones. Pheasants in the tall
trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the
gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and the
sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the
lack of wind. The Mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters,
scraped at her straw a little; and the few night-flitting things--bats,
moths, owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night
lay in the brain of all day-time Nature, colourless and still. Men and
women, alone, riding the hobby-horses of anxiety or love, burned their
wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours.