Читать книгу Henry Is Twenty - Samuel Merwin - Страница 5

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Henry's colour was rising a little. He cleared his throat, and said, mumbling, 'Leave anything you like.'

'I'll do just that,'—she turned, with a flirt of her apron and stood, between washstand and door, surveying him—'what I like, and nothing more.'... Her eyes wandered now from him to the picture at the left of the pincushion, then to the snapshots on the wall, and she smiled, very self-contained, very knowing, with the expression that the young call 'sarcastic.' The adjective came to mind. Henry's colour was mounting higher.

'Pretty snappy to-day, ain't we?' said he.

'Yes, when we're snapped at,' said she.

There was a silence that ran on into seconds and tens of seconds.

Then, acting on an impulse of astonishing suddenness, he sprang toward her.

With almost equal agility she stepped away. But he caught one hand.

She had the door-knob in her other hand. She drew the door open, then, indecisively, pushed it nearly to.

'Be careful!' she whispered. 'They'll hear!'

She made a small effort to free her hand. For a moment they stood tugging at each other.

When Henry spoke, in an effort to appear the off-hand man of the world he assuredly was not, his voice sounded weak and husky.

'Whew—strong!'

'Suppose I slapped.'

'Slap all you like.'

'What would Martha Caldwell say?'

There was a gloomy sort of anger on Henry's red face. He jerked her violently toward him.

'Stop! You're hurting my wrist!' With which she yielded a little. He found himself about to take her in his arms. He heard her whispering—'For Heaven's sake be careful! They'll surely hear!'

He was most unhappy. He pushed her roughly away, and rushed to the window.,

He knew from the silence that she was lingering. He hated her. And himself.

She said: 'Well, you needn't get mad.'

Then, slowly, cautiously, she let herself out. He heard her moving composedly along the hall.

He felt weak. And deeply guilty. For a long time this moment had been a possibility; now it had taken place. What if some one had seen her come in! What if she should come again! What if she should tell!...

He found one hair brush on the floor, the other on the bed, and brushed his hair; donned his coat, buttoning it and smoothing it down about his shapely torso with a momentary touch of complacency; glanced at the mirror; twisted up his moustache; then stood waiting for his colour to go down.

Suddenly, with one of his quick impulses, he sprang at the bookcase, drew out the Epictetus—it was a little book, bound in 'ooze' calf of an olive-green colour—and read these words (the book opened there):—

'To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable.

He lowered the book and repeated the phrase aloud.