Part 21 (2/2)
Then, when he came into the hall with the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead, he heard the notes of the piano.
It was a Mazurka of Chopin's, played with gaiety and brilliancy, yet no funeral march ever sounded more fatefully in the ears of mortal.
He could not do it. Then--he turned the handle of the music-room door and entered.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SECOND HONEYMOON
Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in daylight, and different.
She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski's Melodie Op. 8. No.
3, a lonesome sort of tune it seemed to him, as he dropped into a chair, crossed his legs and listened.
Then as he listened he began to think. Up to this his thoughts had been in confusion, chasing one another or pursued by the monstrosity of the situation. Now he was thinking clearly.
She was his, that girl sitting there at the piano with the light upon her hair, the light upon her bare shoulders and the sheeny fabric of her dress. He had only to stretch out his hand and take her. Absolutely his, and he had only met her twice. She was the most beautiful woman in London, she had a mind that would have made a plain woman attractive, and a manner delightful, full of surprises and contrarieties and tendernesses--and she loved him.
The Arabian Nights contained nothing like this, nor had the brain that conceived Tantalus risen to the heights achieved by accident and coincidence.
She finished the piece, rose, turned over some sheets of music and then came across the room--floated across the room, and took her perch on the arm of the great chair in which he was sitting. Then he felt her fingers on his hair.
”I want to feel your b.u.mps to see if you have improved--Ju-ju, your head isn't so flat as it used to be on top. It seems a different shape somehow, nicer. Blunders is as flat as a pancake on top of his head.
Flatness runs in families I suppose. Look at Venetia's feet! Ju-ju, have you ever seen her in felt bath slippers?”
”No.”
”I have--and a long yellow dressing gown, and her hair on her shoulders all wet, in rat tails. I'm not a cat, but she makes me feel like one and talk like one. I want to forget her. Do you remember our honeymoon?”
”Yes.”
She had taken his hand and was holding it.
”We were happy then. Let's begin again and let this be our second honeymoon, and we won't quarrel once--will we?”
”No, we won't,” said Jones.
She slipped down into the chair beside him, pulled his arm around her and held up her lips.
”Now you're kissing me really,” she murmured; ”you seemed half frightened before--Ju-ju, I want to make a confession.”
”Yes?”
”Well--somebody pretended to care for me very much a little while ago.”
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