Sparrows Part 39

The waiters handed him the menus, from which, after much thought, he ordered an elaborate meal. When the waiters hastened to execute his orders, he found Mavis staring at him wide-eyed.

"Are you entertaining your regiment?" she asked.

"You," he replied.

"But--"

"It isn't much, but it's the best they've got. Whatever it is, it's in honour of our first meeting."

"I shan't eat a thing," urged Mavis.

"You won't sit there and see me starve?"

"There won't be time. I have to get back."

"But, however much you hate me, you surely haven't the heart to send me supperless to bed?"

"You shouldn't make silly resolutions."

As Windebank did not speak for some moments, Mavis looked at her surroundings. Men and women in evening dress were beginning to trickle in from theatres, concerts, and music hall. She noticed how they all wore a bored expression, as if it were with much of an effort that they had gone out to supper.

"Don't move! Keep looking like that," cried Windebank suddenly.

"Why?" she asked, quickly turning to him.

"Now you've spoiled it," he complained.

"Spoiled what?"

"Your expression. Good heavens!"

The exclamation was a signal for retrospection on Windebank's part.

When he next spoke, he said:

"Is your name, by any wonderful chance, Mavis Keeves?"

"What?"

"Answer my question. Is your name Mavis Keeves: Mavis Weston Keeves in full?"

"You know it isn't. That woman told you what it was."

"She didn't tell you my name, and I thought she might have done the same by you. And when I saw that expression in your face--"

"Who is Mavis Keeves?"

"A little girl I knew when I was a kid. She'd hair and eyes like yours, and when I saw you then--but you haven't answered my question. Is your name Mavis Weston Keeves?"

Mavis had decided what to reply if further directly questioned.

"No, it isn't," she answered.

"Confound! I might have known. It's much too good to be true."

While Mavis was tortured with self-reproach at having told a lie, soup, in gilt cups, was set before Windebank and Mavis, the latter of whom was more than ever resolved to accept no hospitality from the man who appeared sincerely anxious to befriend her. The fact of her having told him a lie seemed, in the eyes of her morbidly active conscience, to put her under an obligation to him, an indebtedness that she was in no mind to increase. She folded her hands on the napkin, and again looked about her.

"Don't you want that stuff?" Windebank asked.

"No, thank you."

"Neither do I. Take it away!"

The waiters removed the soup, to subst.i.tute, almost immediately, an appetising preparation of fish. At the same time an elderly, important-mannered man poured out wine with every conceivable elaboration of his office.

"Don't refuse this. The place is famous for it," urged Windebank.

"You know what I said. I mean it more than ever."

"Don't you know that obstinacy is one of the seven deadly sins?"

"Is it?"

"If it isn't, it ought to be. Do change your mind."

"Nothing will make me," she replied icily.

He signalled to the waiters to remove the food.

"What a jolly night we're having!" he genially remarked, when the men were well out of hearing.

"I'm afraid I've spoiled your evening."

"Not at all. I like a good feed. It does one good."

Mavis would have been hard put to it to repress a smile at this remark, had she not suddenly remembered how she had left her purse in the pocket of the frock that she had left behind her at Mrs Hamilton's; she realised that she would have to walk to Mrs Bilkins's. The fact of having no money to pay a 'bus fare reminded her how the cab was waiting outside.

"You've forgotten your cab," she remarked.

"What cab?"

"The one you told to wait outside."

"What of it?"

"Won't he charge?"

"Of course. What of it?"

"What an extravagance!" she commented.