Part 25 (1/2)
”Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that.”
”I sha'n't tell you. This much I will tell you, though--” she added with the frankness usual to her, ”I don't look forward to it much.”
It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she was ready.
She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky.
”Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?” he said.
”Yes, yes,” she remembered herself; ”I will try to look pleasant. But I feel cross.”
”Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?”
”Oh, I made a fool of myself.”
”That sounds serious. Was it?”
”Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. I don't suppose it was really serious....
But the whole thing has made me cross.”
She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it, that was evident.
”You see,” she plunged without preamble into her confidence, ”from the beginning, I didn't want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt telling me--or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out--that yesterday was his birthday. I said, 'Come and celebrate with us!' I was thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and n.o.body else's. I've no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don't mean them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without so much as making a face. It wasn't so bad, after all, everything went all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn't having much fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn't a bit my kind. And last night, I don't mind telling you--” her voice dropped to a note confidentially low, ”with his compliments and incinerations, you'd almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I say, I wasn't having much fun. Then I don't know what got into me. They were pa.s.sing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent a.s.sortment that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took it--and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross.”
”I shouldn't be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too.”
”He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off!
I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said, I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant it.”
Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way of comment on what he had heard.
Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one eager to make reparation for an injustice, ”It's all right now! A beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see it?”
”No, Mrs. Hawthorne.”
”Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?”
”No.”
”I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?”
”Does sitting bore you so much?”
”Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite well.”
”Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?”
”Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you, Stickly-p.r.i.c.kly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it, you're one of the patientest persons I know. I'd take my chances with you for a judge a lot sooner than I'd like to with loads of people who aren't half so ready to call you a blame' fool.”
”While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character, what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. Hawthorne?” asked Gerald, after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of a compliment.