Читать книгу Magnificent Obsession - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 17

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She turned toward the big white house with the green shutters, and Masterson's eyes appraisingly followed her graceful movements as she crossed the lawn...Some girl!...He set the swing gently in motion and inhaled deeply from his cigarette...A thoroughbred! So, she was Bobby's, then? What the devil did Bobby mean—trying to keep this a secret from him? Well, if she considered herself Bobby's property—and obviously she did—Bobby's pal must be loyal. However, a man could look at her, couldn't he?...And wish she belonged to him?...A compliment, in a way...perhaps...debatable question, probably...But seriously, why shouldn't an artist in creative writing have as much licence to admire beauty for its own lovely sake as a painter—no matter whose girl she thought she was? What a type! Not many blondes like that left in this dyed and painted world...Original colours, these...Pale gold and milk white; with the slinky-footed gait of some wild woods thing...Some girl! But what made her think Bobby was interested in her? Or—was he? If so, he had kept his sentiments carefully concealed...

Joyce's reappearance through the shrubbery, accompanied by her step-mother, interrupted Masterson's day-dreaming. The two offered a striking contrast. Mrs. Hudson was Latin in every feature and curve, in the glossy blackness of her shingled hair, the arch of her brows, the utter lack of self-consciousness in her posture and carriage. Joyce was perfect Saxon; slightly the taller. Leading the way, she seemed the older.

He strolled to meet them. Helen waved her hand, upon sight of him. She had adopted the rôle of being years his senior, much to his amusement. They had often made a little game of it—he, cast for the part of a spoiled nine-year-old, which he carried off with amazing skill; she, the exasperated but polite mother, endeavouring to keep her whelp in hand without making too much of a scene. They had done it, quite spontaneously, at the Byrnes, one evening. Laura Byrne, upon her own testimony, "had about passed out," Senator Byrne had said the skit was worth a fortune in vaudeville "big time". They had thought it not half bad, themselves.

The conventional uniform of the bereft had only accentuated her youth. It called attention to her girlish vitality, deepened her dimples, whitened her throat; as a severe frame on a bright etching will heighten its colours; emphasize its values.

She extended a small hand and smiled. Her recent experience had left traces. She was pale and a bit remote, her appearance suggesting convalescence from a serious illness.

The smile fluttered momentarily and was gone; but it was essentially the same smile that one waited for, plotted for, tried to recapture in memory, analyzed without success. Once Masterson had attempted to persuade one of his women in a story to smile like that; but she couldn't learn it. He had written, of "Gloria"—

"It was more than a smile. It was a little sonata, in three movements. It arrived first in her eyes, which gradually grew wider and bluer. Almost imperceptibly, but very disturbingly, the patrician brows lifted, ever so little, as if they asked permission. That was the adagio movement.

"Then, suddenly, the sonata played upon her lips, as when an organist seeks with one hand a lower bank of keys for the melody. They parted to disclose the smallest, straightest, whitest of teeth. That was the scherzo movement.

"Instantly, however, as if the lips had become alarmed at their own audacity, they closed, demurely. But the smile lingered in her eyes—in the outer corners of her eyes—long after her pretty mouth had done with it; and that was the largo movement. Largo dolcemente.

"And the beholder? What of him? Ah—but his pulse ran on into throbbing, pounding strotto!"

Masterson knew the description was silly. He had added, rather helplessly:

"—a vastly disquieting smile; a smile to be smiled with discretion, preferably among strong-minded, elderly men—relatives, if at all convenient to have relatives at hand."

Helen Hudson smiled. To-day it was a sonatina. The movements were adagio, andante, lento; but it was no less stirring for its chastened mood.