ADY HAYES was looking extremely bored, but that was her normal condition, and had not necessarily anything to do with the fact that I was having tea with her. She was delivering herself of her opinions on the futility of existence.
“Nobody really seems to care about anything,” she was saying, “and I am sure I don’t. No one in London is ever enthusiastic, and there really seems no reason why they should be. How stupid it all is! To-night, for instance, what a programme! I go out to dinner, and every one will ask me if I enjoyed Ascot very much, and whether I have read the last inane three-volume novel, and I shall say that I detest Ascot and I don’t know what the last three-volume novel is. Then I go to a ball, and every one will say how lovely the flowers are, and how hot it will be in about an hour, and will I have an ice.”
“Where are you dancing?” I asked.
“At the Waldenechs.”
“Well, I will promise to show you some one who is enthusiastic, if you want,” I said.
“Who is it?”
“Reggie Davenport. I’m sure you have never seen him, and I’m sure you will agree that he is enthusiastic. He has just come back from India.”
“Oh, dear, I suppose he is enthusiastic about tigers and and high temperatures. I don’t care about that sort of thing at all.”
I rose to go.
“Well, we shall see. I won’t promise anything for fear you should be disappointed. But he is enthusiastic.”
Reggie Davenport was my first cousin, and I know him very well, for, having lost both my father and mother when I was quite little, I had been brought up by my uncle. He was only just twenty-two, and was quite the most charming and infinitely the most susceptible young man I have ever seen. He fell in love on an average about once a fortnight. The intervals varied a little, but were very seldom longer than this. It was an inconvenient habit, because the charming young women with whom he fell in love—he never fell in love with any one who was not charming—often fell in love with him, and then there was trouble. But just at present we were leading a peaceful life, for he was engaged to one of his periodic raptures, and was to be married in six months. The girl was in love with him and he was in love with the girl. She lived in the country.
Reggie and I went to the dance that evening, and later on Lady Hayes appeared. She danced once with the Prince, and when he led her away at the end, she passed close to where I was standing.
“Well, where is your enthusiast?” she asked.
“He is here somewhere; shall we go and find him?”
She turned to Prince Waldenech.
“He has promised to show me an enthusiast,” she said; “do you think I shall enjoy it?”
“I have only met one enthusiast in all my life,” said he, “and that one was a missionary. He was also quite mad. Do you like missionaries? But there is no missionary here, as far as I know.”
“Oh, Reggie isn’t a missionary,” I said.
“He has just come back from India,” said Lady Hayes. “I am beginning to be suspicious. However, come and find him.”
Lady Hayes took my arm, and we went to look for Reggie. She had a habit of looking over people’s heads and not noticing any one. But Reggie was six foot four, and their eyes met.
Reggie stared until Lady Hayes began to laugh, and after a moment she turned to me and asked who that pretty boy was. Reggie also turned away and asked who the most beautiful woman in the world was.
Then I said, “Reggie, let me introduce you to Lady Hayes.”
And so the great loom clattered and shifted, and two more threads were laid side by side and woven into the garment of God. If you prefer the phrase you may call it a chance meeting, but it depends on what you mean by chance.
I left Reggie still at the dance when I came away about two o’clock in the morning, and Lady Hayes was still there too. Reggie came down to breakfast at half-past ten and plunged violently into a confession that was more exultant than penitent.
“And I am going to lunch with her,” he finished up. “She’s one of the nicest people I ever saw, and the most beautiful. I’m quite old friends with her already, and I told her all about Gertrude, and she wants to know her.”
Lady Hayes had been very nice to Reggie. She regarded him as a profitable investment which was likely to yield a large percentage of amusement. His confession of his young love, and the prospective marriage, seemed to her the most delightfully fresh and ingenuous thing she had ever heard. If the fiancée was as handsome as he they would be a perfect couple.
Two nights after this I received a note from Lady Hayes asking me to dine with her and go to the opera afterwards.