Part 55 (1/2)
”All right. Good-by.”
”Goot-py, Marie Louise.”
CHAPTER II
While Mamise was talking her telephone ear had suffered several sharp and painful rasps, as if angry rattlesnakes had wakened in the receiver.
The moment she put it up the bell rang. Supposing that Nicky had some postscript to add, she lifted the receiver again. Her ear was as bewildered as your tongue when it expects to taste one thing and tastes another, for it was Davidge's voice that spoke, asking for her.
She called him by name, and he growled:
”Good Lord! is that you? Who was the fascinating stranger who kept me waiting so long?”
”Don't you wish you knew?” she laughed. ”Where are you now? At the s.h.i.+pyard?”
”No, I'm in Was.h.i.+ngton--ran up on business. Can I see you to-night?”
”I hope so--unless we're going out--as I believe we are. Hold the wire, won't you, while I ask.” She came back in due season to say, ”Polly says you are to come to dinner and go to a dance with us afterward.”
”A dance? I'm not invited.”
”It's a kind of club affair at a hotel. Polly has the right to take you--no end of big bugs will be there.”
”I'm rusty on dancing, but with you--”
”Thanks. We'll expect you, then. Dinner is at eight. Wrap up well.
It's cold, isn't it?”
He thought it divine of her to think of his comfort. The thought of her in his arms dancing set his heart to rioting. He was singing as he dressed, and as he rode put to Grinden Hall, singing a specimen of the new musical insanity known as ”jazz”--so pestilential a music that even the fiddlers capered and writhed.
The Potomac was full of tumultuous ice, and the old Rosslyn bridge squealed with cold under the motor. It was good to see the lights of the Hall at last, and to thaw himself out at the huge fireplace.
”Lucky to get a little wood,” said Major Widdicombe. ”Don't know what we'll do when it's gone. Coal is next to impossible.”
Then the women came down, Polly and Mamise and two or three other house guests, and some wives of important people. They laid off their wraps and then decided to keep them on.
Davidge had been so used to seeing Mamise as a plainly clad, discouraged office-hack that when she descended the stairs and paused on the landing a few steps from the floor, to lift her eyebrows and her lip-corners at him, he was glad of the pause.
”Break it to me gently,” he called across the bal.u.s.trade.
She descended the rest of the way and advanced, revealed in her complete height and all her radiant vesture. He was dazed by her unimagined splendor.
As she gave him her hand and collected with her eyes the tribute in his, she said:
”Break what to you gently?”
”You!” he groaned. ”Good Lord! Talk about 'the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome'!”
With amiable reciprocity she returned him a compliment on his evening finery.