Читать книгу Twos and Threes - G. B. Stern - Страница 6

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“I think it is going to be Logan Thane,” Peter decided, as she paused for a moment in the pleasing process of dressing for the dance, to stand bare-limbed before the fire, and feel its warmth run and leap and shiver over her skin; one of those luxuries to which memories of chill apartments and scrambled toilets now gave a zest and flavour. Peter liked equally the action of slowly drawing a cigarette from its silver case; the use of a bathroom, gleaming white tiles and silver taps and mist-wreaths dimming the mirror on the wall. Things which Merle took as a matter of course. Merle found her keenest enjoyment in escape for a whole day to Thatch Lane, to trespass over barbed-wire fencing in dank and thorny woods; discarding, for an old skirt and jersey of Peter’s, the elaborately suitable-for-the-country raiment provided by Madame des Essarts. Madame’s mental vision of these expeditions showed her granddaughter reclining upon a cushioned chair, in a very clean field, the while Miss Worthing’s footman (non-existent) asked if she took sugar and milk, and Peter added solicitously: “You must put up with our picnic teas, Merle, dearest. Will you have some Devonshire cream on your home-baked bread?”

Ever since their conversation on the second-empire bedspread, a fortnight before, the two girls were almost hypnotically persuaded that the forthcoming ball was to furnish, as far as their scheme of things was concerned, some startling issue. During their intercourse of two and a half years, the male element in its more serious form had been conspicuously and even unnaturally lacking. Peter was aware that this state of things could not possibly continue, in the case of two so magnetically alive. She had sought to forestall the Inevitable, by herself weaving in the thread. To-night she would choose its colour. To-night!... it was fun, playing at God.

Logan Thane fixed himself firmer and ever firmer in her imagination, while she put on her gold stockings and shoes, her bronze evening-dress, with its border of rich fur, and swathed gold sash. His name held possibilities; and she was not averse to the background of antlers and hothouse grapes, catalogued by Merle. She added to these, roses, and a sweet white-haired mother; picturing agreeably how the latter would describe Merle and herself as “quite at home in Thane Manor; running in and out all day; dear girls, both of them!”—Logan at this juncture tossed them an expressive smile from where he stood, as per arrangement, smiting his boot with a riding-whip.

And if he should fall in love with one or the other of them....

“It would be rough luck on Merle,” mused Peter, drawing on her long white kid gloves.

Certainly Peter was divinely human!

Someone knocking at the door:

“Are you ready?” cries Jinny, aged fourteen; “the Lesters are here, and don’t I just wish I was going too!”

Peter is staying the week-end with some twice-removed cousins in a Turnham Green boarding-house; a convenience of which she frequently availed herself, when evening pleasure-seeking made it impossible for her to catch the last train from Euston to Thatch Lane. The Lester boys and their sister, friends of Merle, had offered to fetch her in their car and bring her home again.

“And so if we don’t enjoy ourselves,” proposes Rose-Marie, a nervous débutante, “we can keep to our own party....” The car moves slowly forward in a long queue.

Peter is not enthusiastic. Both the Lester boys are under twenty, and have pimples on their chins. She wishes—in the cloakroom now, and in the approved fashion letting her wrap fall languidly from her shoulders, to be caught by dexterous and silent attendants—that the thought of Merle hostess of this magnificence, did not remove her so very far from the Merle of their adventure days.

The staircase again, and conventional figures in black and white, struggling with their glove-buttons. Which of them is Logan Thane? “Wait for me,” pleads Rose-Marie, still busy with her powder-puff. A burst of music from the ballroom, striking thrilling response from the tuned-up senses. Events moving with the swift unreality of a cinema. The ballroom swims forward and engulfs Peter with its hum of talk, rising and falling like waves on a flat beach; its light mellowed by blossoms; blossoms made translucent by light. Impression of a group just within the doorway; Merle’s grandmother, from a mere solicitous voice in Lancaster Gate: “Es-tu fatiguée, chérie?” knuckles that tapped the door and a rustle that swept the staircase,—now materialized into diamonds, and Point d’Alençon, and dignified, almost royal, reception of the entering guests. Mademoiselle des Essarts, a little to her left, beauty in faint old-rose and lilac, silver-threaded; a tiny moon-shaped black patch below the lip; a bouquet of lilies of the valley. Mademoiselle des Essarts—“Elle est exquise,” whisper the diplomats and the ambassadors and the consuls, beribboned and bearded, who surround Madame, and lend a contrast of French court circles to the assembly of bostoning twentieth-century youth.

Mademoiselle des Essarts receives Miss Kyndersley with grave unsmiling courtesy, and introduces: “Mr. Milligan.”

Is this the owner of a new motor-car, or a Designing Female? Desperately Peter tries to collect her whirling thoughts, while Merle, according to previous arrangement, detaches herself from other duties, to present one partner after another; names that sound familiar: “the son of a judge ... can imitate ducklings ... black waistcoat where others elect to wear white,”—easily distinguishable, this last; “a life-story ... serious intentions ... seven devils and a shoe-black” ... the descriptions on the list jostle each other, and form part of the brilliant kaleidoscopic blur which goes to make Peter’s evening. She is beginning to enjoy the keen sense of expectancy with which she herself has infused the air. Light as the flutter of a peaseblossom, Merle blows across the polished floor: “Peter, have you a dance left? I want to introduce you——” no, the pink card is already scribbled over from top to bottom.

“Never mind; you can cut—let me see!” coolly Mademoiselle scans the names, and crosses off a harmless personage bearing the Oriental title of Otto Mann. “He’s not important” ... and she presents Mr. Thane, who looks rather astonished at these unceremonious proceedings, but laughingly accepts number twenty-three, the last waltz but one.

“I believe you’ll do!” thinks Peter exultantly. But nevertheless, she will give other unconscious candidates their chance. Her peculiar talent for playing up, body and soul, to whatever part be thrust upon her, can be exercised to its full in the swift coming and going, change and interchange of companionship, that is ballroom custom.