They Dine With The Past

Almost the first thing which Toby said to me when we met was, “Imogen is in London again.”
Even to Toby to whom this could never mean as much as to the rest of us, it seemed the only thing of immediate importance; to me, more than as pleasure or pain, though, of course, it was both of these, it came as a breaking away of near memories.
For some moment of time the bar where we stood was frozen in space; the handles, the slopped wood, the pallid man beyond them lost perspective; “If you like our beer tell your friends; if you don’t tell us” stood as cut in stone, the ordainment of priest kings, immeasurably long ago; the three years or a little more that stood between now and that grim evening in April fell, unhonoured, into the remote past and there was no sound from the street.
Then, instantly almost, the machine fell to its work again and I said as though nothing had intervened between his voice and mine:
“Was she with him?”
For even now, after three years or more, I could not easily say his name; I spoke of him, as slatternly servants will speak of their master, impersonally. And indeed it was thus I thought of him; the name was an insignificant thing labelling an event. Toby understood something of this as anyone who had known Imogen, must have understood, even he; for he was associated with much that was wholly alien to him; he had been in Adelphi Terrace in that strange evening in April when Hauban had gazed out across the river for two, three hours, and scarcely a word spoken.
To my question, down such valleys of thought, his answer made a way; she had been with him; they in a taxi; Toby had seen it from the top of a bus in Regent Street.
And so, quite naturally, I went to find Hauban, whom I had not thought to seek when I had landed that morning—or was it three and a half years ago? Thus suddenly had I returned to the past. And when I found Hauban, he said:
“So you, also, are returned to England.”
Thus I knew that he too had seen Imogen and with his next words he invited me to dinner where I should meet many old friends, whom he would assemble to greet my return. But he and I and his guests knew that not for my welcome were we assembled, though no word was spoken of Imogen all the evening through.
And the thought of her was about and between us all; with such shy courtesy did we treat her, who had been Queen, for all who had loved her were gathered there and none dared speak even her name.