May Fair : $b being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and galanteries of these charming peopleArlen, Michael
History
May Fair : $b being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and galanteries of these charming people
Arlen, Michael
Great Britain -- History -- George V, 1910-1936 -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
It was almost twenty years to a day after the adventure of Playmate
Place that Hugh met Lamoir at a party at Mace, Guy de Travest’s place.
Miss Cavell her name was. He recognised her, he said, at once, at very
first sight. She had been seven then and she was twenty-seven now, but
he knew her on sight. And when she spoke, he was quite certain. Of
course she didn’t suck her finger and say “Oo!” any longer, but without
a doubt Lamoir Cavell was the grown-up of the kid of Playmate Place. And
he actually found himself wondering, as he talked to her that first time
at Mace, if she recognised him--and then he almost laughed aloud at his
childishness, for of course the whole thing had been a boy’s dream. But
it was very odd, his dreaming about someone he was actually to meet
twenty years later. And once he fancied, as he turned to her suddenly,
that she was looking at him a little strangely, in a puzzled sort of way
maybe, with that small slanting smile of hers as though she was smiling
at something she just hadn’t said. Oh, Lamoir must have been very
beautiful then!
She was born in India, where old man Cavell was something in the Civil
Service, and she had lived in India until recently, when her father
died. Hugh, that first time, asked her if she had ever been in England
as a child, and she said, staring at him in a way that seemed so
familiar to him that his heart gave a throb: “Only in dreams.” But he
didn’t tell her about the Playmate Place then. Then was the time to tell
her, then or never. He never told her.
They walked in enchantment, those two, for the next few days. Guy de
Travest has told me since that the whole house-party went about on
tiptoe, so as not to disturb Hugh and Lamoir in their exquisite
contemplation of their triumph over the law of life, which is of course
unknowable, but must be pretty depressing, seeing what life is.
They were married in the little village church at Mace, and Hilary
Townshend was Hugh’s best man, and Hilary has told me since that he
almost wept to see them going away--knowing as he did so certainly,
Hilary said, that Hugh and Lamoir had taken the one step in life which
will wake any couple up from any dream.
Hugh continually pulled at the stiff grey affair on his upper lip as he
told me of his marriage. “It’s Playmate Place,” he said, “that is
important in the story: much more important than my married life. Lamoir
and I never quite reached Playmate Place in actual life. We were in
sight of it sometimes--when I let Lamoir have her head. But I only see
that now, I didn’t realise it then.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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