Читать книгу The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death - Hugh Walpole - Страница 16

Uncle John had been promised a dance; his moment arrived. He had watched her during the early part of the evening, and had been afraid that she was not at all happy.

She was so unlike other girls, and that first miserable hour seemed to him the most tragic omen of her future career.

"How is she ever to get on if she takes things as badly as this? I wish I could help her. I know so exactly how she must be feeling."

But imagine him now confronted with a figure that shone with happiness, with success, with splendour!

She caught his arm—"Come, Uncle John, we won't dance. We'll talk. Up here—There's no one in this room."

She ran ahead of him, found a corner for them both, and then, pushing him on to a sofa, twisted round in front of him, turning on her toes, flashing laughter at him, sitting down at last beside him, and then kissing him.

"Oh, my dear! I'm so glad," he said. "I thought you were miserable."

"So I was—at first—perfectly wretched. Now it's all splendid—glorious!"

This was to him an entirely new Rachel. In her movement, her excitement, her immediate glad acceptance of the life that an hour ago she had feared with such alarm, he perceived an element that was indeed foreign to all things Beaminster. And this new attitude reminded him with renewed sharpness that he could not now hope to hold the old Rachel with the intimate affection that had been his before. She was slipping from him—slipping … even as he watched her, she was going.

She laid her hand upon his arm: "Uncle John, I'm a success! I am really. I can dance, dance beautifully! I can put these young men in their places. They're frightened!… really frightened."

"Of course—you're lovely—the biggest success there's ever been. But what was the matter with you at dinner?"

"Yes. Wasn't that dreadful? Everything went wrong, and the only thing I could think of was how glad grandmamma would be. I had a kind of paralysis."

Uncle John nodded his head. "I know exactly what it's like."

"Well, I shall never let myself be so stupid again—never! I swear it!" They sat in silence for some time, she, restless, straining towards the music, he a little overcome by her happiness.

There was a pause between the dances and then the band began once more.

"Have you danced with Roddy Seddon yet?"

"No. What's he like?"

"Oh! he's nice—you'll like him."

"I don't expect to. He's a friend of grandmamma's. Hark! There's the band again!… Come along, back we go!"

Smiling, radiant, she hung upon his arm. Afterwards, standing in a doorway, he watched her.

He sighed. "What a selfish old pig I am!… But she'll never be mine again."