After the adventure on the Versailles road, Lushington eschewed
disguises, changed his lodgings again and appeared in clothes that
fitted him. It was a great relief to look like a human being and a
gentleman, even at the cost of calling himself an ass for having tried
to look like something else. There was but one difficulty in the way of
resuming his former appearance, and that lay in the loss of his beard,
which would take some time to grow again, while its growth would
involve retirement from civilisation during several weeks. But he
reflected that it was fashionable to be clean-shaven, and that, in
point of appearance, all that is fashionable is right, though Plato
would have declared it to be removed in the third degree from truth.
A week after the accident he went out to Versailles in the morning.
Mrs. Rushmore had a headache and Margaret received him. She smiled as
she took his hand, and she looked hard at his face, as if to be sure
that it was he, after all. The absence of the gleaming fair beard made
a great difference.
'I think I like you better without it,' she said, at last. 'Your face
has more character!' 'It's the inevitable,' answered Lushington, 'so I'm glad you are
pleased.' 'Come out,' she said, turning to the door. 'It always seems more
natural to talk to you on the lawn, and the bench is still there.' He felt like an exile come home. Nothing was changed, except that
Margaret was gentler and seemed more glad to see him than formerly. He
wondered how that could be, seeing that he had made himself so very
ridiculous; for he was not experienced enough to know that a woman's
sense of humour is very different from that of a man she likes, when
she herself has been concerned in the circumstances that have made him
an object of ridicule to others. Then her face grows grave, her eyes
harden, and her head goes up. 'I cannot see that there is anything to
laugh at,' she says very coldly, to the disagreeable people who are
poking fun at the poor man. At these signs, the disagreeable people
generally desist and retire to whisper in a corner.
Lushington followed Margaret out. As they passed through the hall, she
took an old garden hat from the table and fastened it upon her head
with the pin that had been left stuck in it. It was done almost with a
single motion and without even glancing at the mirror which hung above
the hall table. Lushington watched her, but not as Logotheti would have
done, in artistic admiration of the graceful movement and perfect
balance. The Englishman, who called himself a realist, was admiring the
ideal qualities with which he had long ago invested the real woman. As
he watched her, his imagination clothed her handsome reality with a
semi-divine mantle of glory; for him she could never be anything but
Margaret Donne, let her call herself Cordova or anything else, let her
sing in Rigoletto or in any other opera.