Part 11 (1/2)
For instance:
”Luttrell, my dear fellow, what is the matter with you this evening?
How remiss you are! Why don't you break some walnuts for Molly? I would but I don't wish Let.i.tia to feel slighted.”
”No, thank you, John,”--with a touch of asperity from Molly,--”I don't care for walnuts.”
”Oh, Molly Bawn! what a tarididdle! Only last night I quite shuddered at the amount of sh.e.l.ls you left upon your plate. 'How can that wretched child play such pranks with her digestion?' thought I, and indeed felt thankful it had not occurred to you to swallow the sh.e.l.ls also.”
”Shall I break you some, Miss Ma.s.sereene?” asks Luttrell, very coldly.
”No, thank you,” ungraciously.
”Luttrell, did you see that apple-tree in the orchard? I never beheld such a show of fruit in my life. The branches will hardly bear the weight when it comes to perfection. It is very worthy of admiration.
Molly will show it to you to-morrow: won't you, Molly?”
Luttrell, hastily: ”I will go round there myself after breakfast and have a look at it.”
John: ”You will never find it by yourself. Molly will take you; eh, Molly?”
Molly, cruelly: ”I fear I shall be busy all the morning; and in the afternoon I intend going with Let.i.tia to spend the day with the Laytons.”
Let.i.tia, agreeably surprised: ”Oh, will you, dear? That is very good of you. I thought this morning you said nothing would induce you to come with me. I shall be so glad to have you; they are so intensely dull and difficult.”
Molly, still more cruelly: ”Well, I have been thinking it over, and it seems, do you know, rather rude my not going. Besides, I hear their brother Maxwell (a few more strawberries, if you please, John) is home from India, and--he used to be _so_ good-looking.”
John, with much unction: ”Oh, has he come at last! I am glad to hear it. (Luttrell, give Molly some strawberries.) You underrate him, I think: he was downright handsome. When Molly Bawn was in short petticoats he used to adore her. I suppose it would be presumptuous to pretend to measure the admiration he will undoubtedly feel for her now.
I have a presentiment that fortune is going to favor you in the end, Molly. He must inherit a considerable property.”
”Rich and handsome,” says Luttrell, with exemplary composure and a growing conviction that he will soon hate with an undying hatred his whilom friend John Ma.s.sereene. ”He must be a favorite of the G.o.ds: let us hope he will not die young.”
”He can't,” says Let.i.tia, comfortably: ”he must be forty if he is a day.”
”And a good, sensible age, too,” remarks John; whereupon Molly, who is too much akin to him in spirit not to fully understand his manoeuvering, laughs outright.
Then Let.i.tia rises, and the two women move toward the door; and Molly, coming last, pauses a moment on the threshold, while Luttrell holds the door open for her. His heart beats high. Is she going to speak to him, to throw him even one poor word, to gladden him with a smile, however frozen?
Alas! no. Miss Ma.s.sereene, with a little curve of her neck, glances back expressively to where an unkind nail has caught the tail of her long soft gown. That miserable nail--not he--has caused her delay.
Stooping, he extricates the dress. She bows coldly, without raising her eyes to his. A moment later she is free; still another moment, and she is gone; and Luttrell, with a suppressed but naughty word upon his lips, returns to his despondency and John; while Molly, who, though she has never once looked at him, has read correctly his fond hope and final disappointment, allows a covert smile of pleased malevolence to cross her face as she walks into the drawing-room.
Mr. Ma.s.sereene is holding a long and very one-sided argument on the subject of the barbarous Mussulman. As Luttrell evinces no faintest desire to disagree with him in his opinions, the subject wears itself out in due course of time; and John, winding up with an amiable wish that every Turk that ever has seen the light or is likely to see the light may be blown into fine dust, finishes his claret and rises, with a yawn.
”I must leave you for awhile,” he says: ”so get out your cigars, and don't wait for me. I'll join you later. I have had the writing of a letter on my conscience for a week, and I must write it now or never. I really do believe I have grasped my own meaning at last. Did you notice my unusual taciturnity between the fish and the joint?”
”I can't say I did. I imagined you talking the entire time.”
”My dear fellow, of what were you thinking. I sincerely trust you are not going to be ill; but altogether your whole manner this evening---- Well, just at that moment a sudden inspiration seized me, and then and there my letter rose up before me, couched in such eloquent language as astonished even myself. If I don't write it down at once I am a lost man.”
”But now you have composed it to your satisfaction, why not leave the writing of it until to-morrow?” expostulates Luttrell, trying to look hearty, as he expresses a hypocritical desire for his society.