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Page 54
George, from the shaded seclusion of a gallery, looked down upon
the brilliant throng with impatience. It seemed to him that he had
been doing this all his life. The novelty of the experience had
long since ceased to divert him. It was all just like the second
act of an old-fashioned musical comedy (Act Two: The Ballroom,
Grantchester Towers: One Week Later)--a resemblance which was
heightened for him by the fact that the band had more than once
played dead and buried melodies of his own composition, of which he
had wearied a full eighteen months back.
A complete absence of obstacles had attended his intrusion into the
castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even
Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs.
Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with
Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while
talking to George carrying on two other conversations on topics of
the moment), and he was past the censors and free for one night
only to add his presence to the chosen inside the walls of Belpher.
His duties were to stand in this gallery, and with the assistance
of one of the maids to minister to the comfort of such of the
dancers as should use it as a sitting-out place. None had so far
made their appearance, the superior attractions of the main floor
having exercised a great appeal; and for the past hour George had
been alone with the maid and his thoughts. The maid, having asked
George if he knew her cousin Frank, who had been in America nearly
a year, and having received a reply in the negative, seemed to be
disappointed in him, and to lose interest, and had not spoken for
twenty minutes.
George scanned the approaches to the balcony for a sight of Albert
as the shipwrecked mariner scans the horizon for the passing sail.
It was inevitable, he supposed, this waiting. It would be difficult
for Maud to slip away even for a moment on such a night.
"I say, laddie, would you mind getting me a lemonade?"
George was gazing over the balcony when the voice spoke behind him,
and the muscles of his back stiffened as he recognized its genial
note. This was one of the things he had prepared himself for, but,
now that it had happened, he felt a wave of stage-fright such as he
had only once experienced before in his life--on the occasion when
he had been young enough and inexperienced enough to take a
curtain-call on a first night. Reggie Byng was friendly, and would
not wilfully betray him; but Reggie was also a babbler, who could
not be trusted to keep things to himself. It was necessary, he
perceived, to take a strong line from the start, and convince
Reggie that any likeness which the latter might suppose that he
detected between his companion of that afternoon and the waiter of
tonight existed only in his heated imagination.
As George turned, Reggie's pleasant face, pink with healthful
exercise and Lord Marshmoreton's finest Bollinger, lost most of its
colour. His eyes and mouth opened wider. The fact is Reggie was
shaken. All through the earlier part of the evening he had been
sedulously priming himself with stimulants with a view to amassing
enough nerve to propose to Alice Faraday: and, now that he had
drawn her away from the throng to this secluded nook and was about
to put his fortune to the test, a horrible fear swept over him that
he had overdone it. He was having optical illusions.
"Good God!"
Reggie loosened his collar, and pulled himself together.
"Would you mind taking a glass of lemonade to the lady in blue
sitting on the settee over there by the statue," he said carefully.
He brightened up a little.
"Pretty good that! Not absolutely a test sentence, perhaps, like
'Truly rural' or 'The intricacies of the British Constitution'.
But nevertheless no mean feat."
"I say!" he continued, after a pause.
"Sir?"
"You haven't ever seen me before by any chance, if you know what I
mean, have you?"
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