Читать книгу Gray youth - Oliver Onions - Страница 14

The invitations were out for Miss Geraldine Towers’ wedding, and the first acceptance Aunt Jerry received was that of Cosimo Pratt. For Amory had kept her promise and had brought them together. It had been at the studio in Cheyne Walk, which Aunt Jerry and Mr. Massey had come to see the very night before Amory had left Glenerne; and really there had seemed something to be said for Mrs. ’Ill’s cautious practice of coughing as she ascended the stairs and tapping and waiting before she entered the room. Amory had held a candle at the head of the stairs when they had left, but had not descended with them, and she had re-entered her room to find Cosimo at his funniest and most solemn.

“I trust, Amory,” he had said, looking gravely at her, “that my ears deceived me? …”

“Cosimo,” Amory had replied, looking as gravely at him, “I greatly fear. …”

“It sounded like one, Amory. …”

“It was one, Cosimo. …”

“You are sure? …”

“If an aquarium, why not a greengrocer’s entry? … At their age!” Amory had burst out laughing. “Well, one thing’s pretty certain now—you’ll be invited to the wedding!”

At this Cosimo’s gravity had become profounder and funnier still.

“You don’t mean. …”

Amory had clapped her hands.

“I do! Didn’t you see it in auntie’s eyes? … Cosimo, dear, you’re approved of—quite an eligible young man!—So that makes Mrs. ’Ill (one), Jellies (two), Dorothy (three), aunt and uncle (five), and the plumber and the chimney-sweep (seven)—seven of these dear, quaint, obsolete souls. …”

“All trying to marry you and me, Amory?”

“Yes, Cosimo.”

“And I shall be asked to the wedding as—er—one of the family?”

“Quite, if I know anything about auntie.”

“Then,” said Cosimo, in a deep voice, “I can only say that I shall come.”

“Oh, do!” Amory broke out. She clutched his arm. “And I’ll make a bet with you, Cosimo! Our great pandjandrum will be there—‘Mr. Wellcome Himself,’ they call him, with a capital ‘h,’ almost like God—and I’ll bet you anything you like he says, ‘May all your troubles be little ones!’ ”

“You promise me he shall say that?” said Cosimo incredulously.

“Oh, you don’t know the atmosphere I’ve had to keep my art alive in!”

“I shall certainly come,” Cosimo had said. He added that he would have gone there barefoot if only Mr. Wellcome would say, “May all your troubles be little ones.”

The wedding was to take place at St. Mark’s, not far from Mr. Massey’s bookshop, and the breakfast was to be given at Glenerne itself. It was to be sent in from Bunters’, all but what Mr. Sandys, the baritone, of the Lillie Road branch of the East Midlands Bank, called “the wet.” That was to be Mr. Wellcome’s wedding-gift. He had vowed that unless he was allowed to stand just one little bottle with a bit of gold foil on it to two of the very best that ever stepped, he would never set foot in Glenerne again; and everybody knew that by “just one little bottle,” Mr. Wellcome meant a case, if not two, not to speak of a liqueur for the sake of which an invading general might have sacked a monastery. Mr. Wellcome was also to give Miss Geraldine Towers away.

The clear-eyed Weiniger, the ruthless Strindberg, the hypochondriac Schopenhauer himself—not one of these could have shed a more searching light of criticism on the whole apparatus of Aunt Jerry’s wedding than did the bride’s pretty and artistic niece. She reduced Cosimo to a state of mere respectful admiration. First there was the age of the contracting parties. It was not even (so to speak) a case of May and December; it was November and December—or, at any rate, October and November. If this was the outcome of young and musical society, what was to be expected of those who really were in the April of their lives? It was a very good thing indeed that Amory and Cosimo were able to set an example of restraint. If age must go a-giddying, youth must show itself sober and responsible. Amory put it fairly and squarely to Cosimo: was that not a Law? Cosimo agreed that it was a Law—the Law of Compensation.