Читать книгу The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary - Warner Anne - Страница 3

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It was almost like a scene at a ball, the great white-and-gold music room before dinner that night. The Burnett family proper numbered fifteen among themselves, and there were nearly thirty guests added. It was entirely too large a house party to have handled successfully for very long, but it would be most awfully jolly for three or four days; and now, when the whole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the picture was one of such bubbling joy that Jack's very heavy heart seemed to himself to be terribly out of place there and he wondered whether he should be able to put up even a fairly presentable front during the endless hours that must ensue before the time for breaking up arrived.

Burnett took him all around and introduced him to people in general, and people in general seemed to him to merely bring the fact of her pre-eminence more vividly than ever before his mind. He found himself looking everywhere but at them too, [pg 036]and listening with an acutely sensitive ear for sounds quite other than those of their various lips. But eternal disappointment rewarded his eyes and ears. She was nowhere.

So he talked blindly about nothing to all the nobodies and laughed stupidly over all their stupidities until—suddenly and without any warning—a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his constitution shooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and knew, that that radiant angel in silver tissue who had just entered the farther end of the room was indubitably Herself.

(Married!)

He quite forgot who, what and where he was. There was a somebody talking to him—a very awful and bony young lady, but she faded so completely out of the general scheme of his immediate present that all the use he made of her was to stare over her head at the distant apparition that was become, now and forever, his All in All. The distant apparition had not lied when she had told him up in her brother's room that she too, looked "nice" when dressed for dinner. Only the word "nice" was as watered milk to the champagne of her appearance. She was gowned superbly and her throat and arms were half bared by the folds of silvered lace; her hair fitted into the back of her neck in the smoothest mass of puffs and coils, [pg 037]and the curl on her forehead was more distracting than ever.

(Married!)

She seemed to be speaking to everyone, and everyone seemed to be crowding around her. He couldn't go up like everyone else, because the awful and bony young lady was talking hard at him and heightened her charms with a smile that took up two-fifths of her face, and wrinkled all the rest.

Her name was Lome—Maude Lome. He knew that she must be a relative without being told, because otherwise she wouldn't have been invited at all. Anyone could divine that.

"Oh, isn't dear Betty just lovely?" this fearful freak said. "I think she's just too lovely for anything! She's my cousin, you know; we're often mistaken for one another."

"I can well believe it," said Jack, heavily, not ceasing to stare beyond as he said it.

(Married!)

"Oh, you're flattering me! Because she's ever so much prettier than I am, and I know it."

He didn't reply. It had suddenly come over him to wonder whether there ever had been an authentic case of heartbreak. Because he had the most terrible ache right in his left side!

(Married! Married!) [pg 038]

"But, then," Miss Lome continued, "I'm younger than she is. Her being married makes her seem young, but she's really twenty-four. I'm only twenty."

He shut his eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn't come here, and then grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and all the while that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was getting worse and worse.

(Married! Married! Married!)

Burnett came up just then with a man wearing a monocle and presented him to Denham, and forthwith handed the bony cousin to his safe-keeping.

"She's a great pill, isn't she?" he began, as the couple moved away; and then he stopped short. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Sick?"

"I hope not," said Jack, trying to smile.

"You look hipped," his friend said anxiously. "Better go get a bracer; you'll have time if you hurry. You can't be sick before dinner, because I've been moving all the cards around so as to get Betty next to you, and I could never get them back as they were before if you gave out at the last minute."

"I don't believe I'm ill," said Jack, trying to realize whether the news that she was to be his (for dinner) made him feel any better or only just about [pg 039]the same. "I don't know what ails me. Do I look seedy?"

"You look sort of knocked out, that's all," said Burnett. "Perhaps, though, it was just the having to talk to my cousin Maude so long. Isn't she the limit, though? But I'll tell you the one big thing about that girl: She's just the biggest kind of a catch. She was my uncle's eldest child; she's worth twelve times what any of us ever will be."

"I'm sure she'll need it," said Jack heartily.

"You're right there," laughed his friend; "but you've got to hurry and get your brandy now if you want it, because they'll be going out in a minute."

"Oh, I'm all right," said the poor chap, straightening his shoulders back a little. "I can make out well enough, I'm sure. I think I'd better go over by your sister and let her know that I'm ready when the hour of need shall strike."

Burnet nodded and then he went on and his friend walked down the room, no one but himself knowing that he was making his way into the lion's (or, rather, lioness's) den.

And then he paused there beside her. Oh! she Was seven million times lovelier close to than far away. All the rot about Venus and statues and paintings and Helen of Troy was nowhere beside [pg 040]Her and he felt his strength come surging mightily upward and then—oh Heavens!

She looked up—looked so sweetly up—right into his eyes and smiled.

"I expect you are to take me into dinner," she said; and at her words the man who had been talking to her murmured something meaningless and got out of their way.

"I believe so," he said.

She rose and he noticed that the top of her head was just level with his coat lapel. He wondered, with a miserable pang, where she came to on her husband's coat and with the wonder his surging strength surged suddenly out to sea again and left him feeling like Samson when he awoke to the realization of his haircut.

"Dinner's very late," she said, quite as if life presented no problem whatever; "you see, it's the first big company in the house. We were only seventeen last night, and to-night we're forty-five. It makes a difference."

"I can imagine so," he said. He was suddenly acutely aware of feeling very awkward, and of finding her different—quite different from what she had seemed up in her brother's room.

"What is it?" she asked after a minute, looking up at him; and then she showed that she was conscious of the change, for she added: "Something [pg 041]has happened; Bob has been saying mean things about me to you?"

"Yes, he did tell me something," he admitted; and just then the butler announced dinner.

"What did he tell you?" she asked, as they moved away. "How could he say anything worse than what he said before me?"

"He told me something that was worse—much worse."

She looked troubled and as if she did not understand.

"But he said that I was a flirt, and that I couldn't speak the truth, and that I drove people—"

"Yes, I remember all that; but this was infinitely worse."

"Infinitely worse!"

"Yes."

She stopped in an angle where the big room dwindled into a narrow gallery, and stared astonished.

"I can't at all understand," she said.

"No, you can't," he said, "and I can't tell you—I mustn't tell you—how terrible it is to me to look at you and think of what he told me."

After a second she went on again and presently they entered the dining-room. The confusion of rustling skirts and sliding chairs quite covered [pg 042]their speech for a moment and made them seem almost alone. Her hand had been resting on his arm and now she drew it out, looking up at him again as she did so. Her eyes had a premonitory mist over them.

"For Heaven's sake," she said very earnestly, "tell me what he said?"

He was silent.

"Tell me," she pleaded.

He was still silent.

"Tell me," she said imperiously.

He continued silent. They sat down.

"Mr. Denham," she said, as she took up her napkin, and her voice grew very low, and yet he heard, "I don't think that we can pretend to be joking any longer. You are my brother's friend, and I am a married woman. Please treat me as you should."

"That's just it," said Jack; "that's all there is to it. It wouldn't have amounted to anything except for that—or perhaps, if it hadn't been for that, it might have amounted to a great deal."

"If it hadn't been for what?"

"For your being married."

She quite started in her seat.

"What do you mean?"

"You see I never knew it before." [pg 043]

"You never knew what before?"

"That you were married."

"Until when?"

"Until after you went out of the room to-night."

The men were putting the clams around. She seemed to reflect. And then she peppered and salted them before she spoke.

"Bob is very wrong to talk so," she said at last, picking up her fork, "when you're his friend, too."

He poked his clams—he hated clams.

"I suppose men think it's amusing to do such things," she continued, "but I think it's as ill-bred as practical joking."

"But you are married," he said, trying fiercely to pepper some taste into the tasteless things before him.

"Yes, I'm married," she admitted tranquilly, "but, then, my husband went to Africa so soon afterwards that he hardly seemed to count at all. And then he was killed there; so, after that, he seemed to count less than ever."

The air danced exclamation points and the man on the other side spoke to her then so that her turning to answer him gave Jack time to rally his wits.

(A widow!)

Then she turned back and said:

"I think Bob mystified you unnecessarily. Of course I don't flatter myself that you've suffered." [pg 044]

"Oh, but I have," he hastened to assure her.

(A widow! A widow!)

"But it always makes a difference whether a woman is married or not."

"I should say it did," he interrupted again. "It makes all the difference in the world."

At that she laughed outright, and someone suddenly abstracted the distasteful clams and substituted for them a golden and glorious soup, and music sounded forth from some invisible quartet, and—and—

(A widow! A widow! A widow!)

[pg 045]