Part 39 (1/2)
She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her other guests.
Next to young Ellerton sat a niece of her own; a pretty girl in grey and scarlet nursing kit; the red- and blue _artilleriste_ uniform of Gustave Tronchet next; delighting the eyes of his _fiancee_ opposite.
Agatha Walsh had taken off years, Mrs. Cartwright thought, since they had parted at Les Pins. In place of the ”old-maid” look, she was acquiring that of the young and prosperous woman--her smile seeming not yet entirely her own, and she had a new gesture or two modelled on those of Madame Leroux, her aunt-to-be. Also, her speech was altered. Some one must have rallied her on her ”English” habit of beginning every sentence with ”Oh”----Mrs. Cartwright missed it as she caught fragments of Miss Walsh's talk to Jack Awdas, who sat on her left.
”Now could _you_ tell me, Mr. Awdas, the really best sort of man's wrist watch?... I want to get a really _special_ one for Gustave--it is his '_fete_' on Thursday ... not time to engrave anything, I'm afraid....
Ah, yes, if you could come with me on Monday, you and Miss van Huysen, to help choose! That would be so amiable of you--nice, I mean. So stupid of me. I _keep_ putting in the French words for things always, now!
”Ah, a bracelet-watch like yours, that would be perfect....
”Was there a _cadeau de fiancailles_--let's see, what do you call it in English, an engagement present?”
And she put her carefully dressed head on one side as she inspected the watch that Jack Awdas, smiling, held out towards her. Jack was silent this evening, Mrs. Cartwright had noticed already, as she noticed every detail, still, of the young flyer's looks and manner.... He was in some happy abstraction, she saw, worlds away from the brightly-lighted table thronged with these young people chattering over their grapes and oranges....
There was a light behind those horizon-blue eyes of his even when they were not turned upon the sweetheart at his other side. There was an undernote of something new and joyous in the tone of his voice as he spoke to her.
(”What _d'you_ think about it, girl?”)
From the Sunburst Girl, as ever, a radiance seemed to emanate that was more than the effulgence of her white-and-golden dress. But she, too, was quieter than usual as she sat; now giving a little friendly smile to her hostess across Captain Ross and his dogmas, now leaning to the right and putting in a word about the matter of the engagement present.
(”But, Bird-boy, if Miss Walsh _wants_ it in platinum----!”)
Now turning her wide eyes affectionately upon the girl friend opposite to her. Olwen was not flirting with the young sailor who talked so much and had so little to say beyond his ”Bai Joves” and ”Ha's”; she was only blooming in what Mr. Brown had already called ”the suns.h.i.+ne of his smile”; she was also caught in and made beautiful by some of that happiness that flowed in a current about the table under the pink inverted parasol of lights, flowed from Golden and her Jack....
Golden and Jack.... What pretty lover's secrets was between them now?
Still watching them covertly, Mrs. Cartwright could only wonder why, since it was possible for young human beings to be grown so big and beautiful--why in the name of a thousand pities did Nature turn out so many samples of the stunted, the plain, the commonplace? Must this well-matched pair stand for the exception rather than the rule? She watched them, and that scene of physical perfection which had so nearly brought Claudia Cartwright to s.h.i.+pwreck over a boy-lover was no longer her torment, but her comfort.
She had wept all her tears; she had tossed sleeplessly through all her hours of fierce rebellion; she had gone through the most agonizing ordeal of her woman's life. But thank G.o.d it was over now....
It was over! and her eyes travelled now to that which is a woman's only balm for such wounds as hers had been.
He sat, the master of the house, with a school-fellow between himself and Agatha Walsh. This school-fellow was sixteen, a year older but three inches shorter than young Keith Cartwright. Keith was already well over six foot. Coltish at present, with great wrists shooting ever too quickly beyond his cuffs, and feet that seemed four sizes too large for his ankles, but wait until he began to fill out! thought Claudia proudly. Her rightness of bone, her limbs, her suppleness had gone to her boys; Reggie, on a visit in the country, was just as good, but it was her elder son who seemed the child of her soul as well as of her body. He had her tastes, her impatiences. Her own ardour would presently be breaking into flame in his heart. She felt (as even the mute-bird mothers feel) that she at least would not fail to understand him. She smiled across the table into his face, pink and free of care, with its clear eyes, thick lashes (those were from his father's side), and the fruit-like, perfect oval that does not outlast twenty-five. She, the mother, faded; but she had set in these young plants and they were budding.
Keith's voice (or rather voices, for he himself never knew in what octave his words might break forth) came roughly but affectionately across the table to his mother.
”I say, mums! What about coffee----” so far in the ba.s.s, and now a treble squeak of ”if you don't mind. Harrison says he's got to get back home, and I wanted to put on these new records”--relapse into the ba.s.s, ”for him first?... Rightoh....”
They had coffee before they adjourned to the sitting-room. It was a low-ceilinged, soothing place with soft brown walls, low cus.h.i.+ony seats, a richly-glowing Persian rug, some bra.s.s, and a few pictures. Mrs.
Cartwright's standing-desk at which she worked had been wheeled away into a corner near an old oak coffer. Its place was usurped by the tall stand of a gramophone. About this the young people cl.u.s.tered, talking ”records” ...
”I say, have you got that topping thing of George Graves's----?”
”Not a talking one; Miss Walsh wanted something _pretty_----”
”Well, what about 'The Naughty Sporty Girl,' Miss Olwen?”
”Bai Jove, did you hear him in----?”