Part 26 (1/2)
So she told herself in the flash of a moment, while she waited for Noel's kiss to lift her once and for all into some far realm of romance where trivial details of manifestation should no longer obscure the true values of life.
Unconsciously, she had shut her eyes, but at an unaccountable pause in the proceedings, she opened them again.
Noel was carefully removing his pince-nez.
”I say,” he stammered, ”you're--you're sure you don't mind?”
If Alex had followed the impulse of her own feelings, she must have cried out at this juncture:
”Not if you're quick and get it over!”
But instead, she heard herself murmuring feebly:
”Oh, no, not at all.”
She hastily raised her face, turning it sideways to Noel, and felt his lips gingerly touching the middle of her cheek. Then she opened her eyes again, and, scrupulously avoiding Noel's embarra.s.sed gaze, saw him diligently polis.h.i.+ng his pince-nez before replacing them.
It was the apotheosis of their anti-climax.
Alex possessed neither the light-heartedness which is--mistakenly--generally ascribed to youth, nor the philosophy, to face facts with any determination.
She continued to cram her unwilling mind with illusions which her innermost self perfectly recognized as such.
It was, on the whole, easier to place her own interpretation upon Noel's every act of commission or omission when the shyness subsequent to their first ill-conducted embrace had left him, which it speedily did. Easier still, when intercourse between them was renewed upon much the same terms of impersonal enthusiasm in discussion as in Scotland, and easiest of all when Alex herself, in retrospect, wrenched a sentimental significance out of words or looks that had been meaningless at the time of their occurrence.
When Noel went to Devons.h.i.+re, whither his father by slow, invalid degrees had at last been allowed to move, he said to Alex in farewell:
”I shall expect to hear from you very often, mind. I always like getting letters, though I'm afraid I'm not much good at writing them. You know what I mean: I can write simply pages if I'm in the mood--just as though I were talking to some one--and other days I can't put pen to paper.”
”I don't think I write very good letters myself,” said Alex wistfully, in the hope of eliciting rea.s.surance.
”Oh, never mind,” said Noel consolingly. ”Just write when you feel like it.”
Alex, who had composed a score of imaginary love-letters, both on his behalf and her own, tried to compensate herself the following evening for the vague misery that was encompa.s.sing her spirit, by writing.
She was alone in her own room, the fire had fallen into red embers, and her surroundings were sufficiently appropriate to render attainable the state of mind which she desired to achieve.
As she involuntarily rehea.r.s.ed to herself the elements of her own situation, she lulled herself into a species of happiness.
His ring on her finger, his letter on its way to her--she was going to write to the man who had asked her to become his wife.
There was really some one at last, Alex told herself, to whom she had become the centre of the universe, to whom her letters would matter, to whom everything that she might think or feel would be of importance.
She remembered Maurice Goldstein, his knowledge of Queenie's every movement, his triumphant rapture at being allowed to take her out to luncheon or tea. Even now, Alex had seen him follow his wife with his ardent, glowing gaze, as she moved, serene and graceful, round a crowded room on the arm of some other man--and the look had made her heart throb sympathetically, and perhaps not altogether unenviously.
Almost fiercely she told herself that she had Noel's love. She was to him what Queenie was to young Goldstein.
To every rebellious doubt that rose within her, she opposed the soundless, vehement a.s.sertions, that the indelible proof of Noel's love lay in the fact that he had asked her to marry him.