yet, in spite of what might be called a good beginning, the dinner party was not a success. john was certain it hadn’t been a success. he reviewed it, walking home with corin in the starlight; he continued to review it sitting in an armchair with a pipe, since he was in little mood for sleep.
and yet, wherein precisely did its failure lie?
it did not lie with lady mary; nor with rosamund; nor with father maloney; nor, he was certain, with himself. (corin, as already mentioned, he left outside the category.) they had each and all of them been courteous, friendly, charming. they had kept the ball of conversation tossing lightly from one to the other; they had given david his full share of the game. certainly the fault did not lie with any of the four. he could not, also, have said precisely [pg 188]that there was any fault at all. outwardly, at least, there was none. yet there had been a subtle atmosphere, an indefinable hint of something lacking.
they had discussed books—standard authors—with which david was well acquainted. they had mentioned classical composers, with whom he was certainly less familiar. they had talked of flowers, birds, animals, sunsets, storms, and ships, and here he was in his element.
he had talked well. john had received a vivid impression of a land hot beneath the noonday sun, of wine-red sunsets, the atmosphere aglow with palpitating colour, the on-stealing of the darkly purple night, the stars big and luminous looking down with ever-watchful eyes upon the lonely veldt. he saw the vivid reds of the flame-coloured heaths and everlasting flowers, the brilliant blue of the lobelias, the waxen whiteness of the arum lilies. he heard the countless voices of the grasshoppers, the low booming note of the frogs, the muffled beating of the buzzards’ wings. and above all he felt the vast illimitable spaces, the great loneliness of the veldt. david had talked of muizenberg, and the white sands stretching for [pg 189]forty miles towards the mountains,—mountains gold and orange in the sunshine, blue in the evening twilight, the green sea bordering the sands, emerald set against pearl.
he had talked of cape town,—of the malay men with their great baskets of flowers, of table mountain with its silver-leaved trees, with the rolling cloth of white cloud covering it. but here he touched civilization; his speech was less fluent than when he held them in the vast solemnity of the lonely veldt.
and here john made a discovery. he perceived all at once, not merely the loneliness of the veldt, but the lonely spirit of the man who had dwelt on it. it was that which had caused the subtle incongruity in the atmosphere. he no more belonged to his surroundings than did a hermit to a london club; and, so thought john, carrying his discovery further, he—david—was, in a measure, aware of that fact himself. he had been a fish out of water, and however kindly, however charmingly, landsmen may treat it, a fish on land is certainly in an element in which it cannot by any possibility be at ease. it is true that this particular fish had entered the element of its own free will; but, so [pg 190]surmised john, it is equally true that he was not at home in it. and yet, so john perceived with a fine subtlety of perception, it was not the material surroundings alone which were at the root of the mischief. it lay deeper; it was in the mental atmosphere that the uneasiness lay.
now, he also perceived, or thought he perceived, that while david was aware of the incongruity of the situation, he had not fully recognized it to lie, as john saw it to lie, in this same mental atmosphere. this fact in itself increased the man’s loneliness. he was not only isolated in mind from those with whom he found himself, but he was isolated from himself, because he did not understand himself. it is the most bewildering kind of loneliness. it is almost useless to attempt to describe it in terms of speech. there are no precise words for it. i, at least, can find none, and john could not, though it is certain that he recognized it in a measure.
and then by one of those sudden flashes of inspiration which come to all men at times, or which come, at all events, to those given to a certain quality of mental analysis, john saw that the more material drama, of which he was at [pg 191]present an audience, sank into insignificance before the mental drama he had perceived. the man had come, so he believed, into his material birthright, but, regarding his mental birthright, he was utterly ignorant. how, in what fashion would he find it? if, indeed, he ever found it at all.
i do not say that john said all this to himself in words, even in the somewhat clumsy manner in which i have tried to express it. he perceived it vaguely that night. the actual articulation of his thoughts did not, i fancy, come till later.
