Part 28 (1/2)
Arnold appeared at the other end of the long row of gladioli. He was obviously looking for some one. Sylvia called to him, with the friendly tone she always had for him: ”Here I am! I don't know where Judith is. Will I do?”
From a distance Arnold nodded, and continued to advance, the irregularity of his wavering gait more p.r.o.nounced than usual. As soon as she could see the expression of his face, Sylvia's heart began to beat fast, with a divination of something momentous. He sat down beside her, took off his hat, and laid it on the bench. ”Do you remember,” he asked in a strange, high voice, ”that you said you would like me for your brother?”
She nodded.
”Well, I'm going to be,” he said, and covering his face with his hands, burst into sobs.
Sylvia was so touched by his emotion, so sympathetically moved by his news, that even through her happy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns the tears rained down her own cheeks. She tried to wipe them away and discovered, absurdly enough, that she had lost her handkerchief. ”Aren't we idiots!” she cried in a voice of joyful quavers. ”I never understood before why everybody cries at a wedding. See here, Arnold, I've lost my handkerchief. Loan me yours.” She pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, she wiped her eyes, she put a sisterly kiss on his thin, sallow cheek, she cried: ”You dears! Isn't it too good to be true!
Arnold! So soon! Inside two weeks! How ever could you have the courage? Judith! My Judith! Why, she never looked at a man before. How did you dare?”
His overmastering fit of emotion was pa.s.sed now. His look was of white, incredulous exaltation. ”We saw each other and ran into each other's arms,” he said; ”I didn't have to 'dare.' It was like breathing.”
”Oh, how perfect!” she cried, ”how simply, simply perfect!” and now there was for an instant a note of wistful envy in her voice. ”It's _all_ perfect! She never so much as looked at a man before, and you said the other night you'd never been in love before.”
Arnold looked at her wildly. ”I said that!” he cried.
”Why, yes, don't you remember, after that funny, joking talk with me, you said that was the nearest you'd ever come to proposing to any girl?”
”G.o.d Almighty!” cried the man, and did not apologize for the blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons of innocence widened inimitably before his horrified eyes. And then, following some line of a.s.sociation which escaped Sylvia, ”I'm not fit to _look_ at Judith!” he cried. The idea seemed to burst upon him like a thunder-clap.
Sylvia patted him on the shoulder rea.s.suringly. ”That's the proper thing for a lover to think!” she said with cheerful, commonplace inanity. She did not notice that he shrank from her hand, because she now sprang up, crying, ”But where's Judy? Where _is_ Judy?”
He nodded towards the house. ”She sent me out to get you. She's in her room--she wants to tell you--but when I saw you, I couldn't keep it to myself.” His exaltation swept back like a wave, from the crest of which he murmured palely, ”Judith! Judith!” and Sylvia laughed at him, with the tears of sympathy in her eyes, and leaving him there on the bench staring before him at the living fire of the flame-colored flowers, she ran with all her speed into the house.
Morrison, lounging in a chair with a book, looked up, startled at her whirlwind entrance. ”What's up?” he inquired.
At the sound of his voice, she checked herself and pirouetted with a thistle-down lightness to face him. Her face, always like a clear, transparent vase lighted from within, now gave out, deeply moved as she was, an almost visible brightness. ”Judith!” she cried, her voice ringing like a silver trumpet, ”Judith and Arnold!” She was poised like a b.u.t.terfly, and as she spoke she burst into flight again, and was gone.
She had not been near him, but the man had the distinct impression that she had thrown herself on his neck and kissed him violently, in a transport of delight. In the silent room, still fragrant, still echoing with her pa.s.sage, he closed his book, and later his eyes, and sat with the expression of a connoisseur savoring an exquisite, a perfect impression....
Tea that afternoon was that strangest of phenomena, a formal ceremony of civilized life performed in the abas.h.i.+ng and disconcerting presence of naked emotion. Arnold and Judith sat on opposite sides of the pergola, Judith s.h.i.+ning and radiant as the dawn, her usually firmly set lips soft and tremulous; Arnold rather pale, impatient, oblivious to what was going on around him, his spirit prostrated before the miracle; and when their starry eyes met, there flowed from them and towards them from every one in the pergola, a thousand unseen waves of excitement.
The mistress of the house herself poured tea in honor of the great occasion, and she was very humorous and amusing about the mistakes caused by her sympathetic agitation. ”There! I've put three lumps in yours, Mr. Sommerville. How _could_ I! But I really don't know what I'm doing. This business of having love-at-first-sight in one's very family--! Give your cup to Molly; I'll make you a fresh one. Oh, Arnold! How _could_ you look at Judith just then! You made me fill this cup so full I can't pa.s.s it!”
Mr. Sommerville, very gallant and full of compliments and whimsical allusions, did his best to help their hostess strike the decent note of easy pleasantry; but they were both battling with something too strong for them. Unseconded as they were by any of the others, they gave a little the effect of people bowing and smirking to each other at the foot of a volcano in full eruption. Morrison, picking up the finest and sharpest of his conversational tools, ventured the hazardous enterprise of expressing this idea to them. Mrs.
Marshall-Smith, trying one topic after another, expressed an impatience with the slow progress of a Henry James novel she was reading, and Mr. Sommerville, remarking with a laugh, ”Oh, you cannot hurry Henry,” looked to see his mild witticism rewarded by a smile from the critic. But Morrison shook his head, ”No, my dear old friend.
_Il faut hurler avec les loups_--especially if you are so wrought up by their hurlements that you can't hear yourself think. I'm just giving myself up to the rareness, the richness of the impression.”
The new fiancee herself talked rather more than usual, though this meant by no means loquacity, and presented more the appearance of composure than any one else there; although this was amusingly broken by a sudden shortness of breath whenever she met Arnold's eyes.
She said in answer to a question that she would be going on to her hospital the day after tomorrow--her two weeks' vacation over--oh yes, she would finish her course at the hospital; she had only a few more months. And in answer to another question, Arnold replied, obviously impatient at having to speak to any one but Judith, that of course he didn't mind if she went on and got her nurse's diploma--didn't she _want_ to? Anything she wanted....
No--decidedly the thing was too big to make a successful fete of.
Morrison was silent and appreciatively observant, his eyes sometimes on Sylvia, sometimes on Judith; Mr. Sommerville, continuing doggedly to make talk, descended to unheard-of trivialities in reporting the iniquities of his chauffeur; Molly stirred an untasted cup, did not raise her eyes at all, and spoke only once or twice, addressing to Sylvia a disconnected question or two, in the answers to which she had obviously no interest. Judith and Arnold had never been very malleable social material, and in their present formidable condition they were as little a.s.sistance in the manufacture of geniality as a couple of African lions.
The professional fete-makers were consequently enormously relieved when it was over and their unavailing efforts could be decently discontinued. Professing different reasons for escape, they moved in disjointed groups across the smooth perfection of the lawn towards the house, where Molly's car stood, gleaming in the sun. Sylvia found herself, as she expected, manoeuvered to a place beside Morrison. He arranged it with his un.o.btrusive deftness in getting what he wanted out of a group of his fellow-beings, and she admired his skill, and leaned on it confidently. They had had no opportunity that day for the long talk which had been a part of every afternoon for the last week; and she now looked with a buoyant certainty to have him arrange an hour together before dinner. Her antic.i.p.ation of it on that burning day of reflected heat sent thrills of eager disquietude over her. It was not only for Judith and Arnold that the last week had been one of meeting eyes, long twilight evenings of breathless, quick-ripening intimacy....
As they slackened their pace to drop behind Mr. Sommerville, who walked hand-in-hand with his granddaughter in front of them, Morrison said, looking at her with burning eyes, ”... an instrument so finely strung that it vibrates at the mere sound of another wakened to melody--what mortal man lives who would not dream of its response if he could set his own hand to the bow?”
The afternoon had been saturated with emotional excitement and the moment had come for its inevitable crystallization into fateful words.
The man spoke as though he were not wholly conscious of what he was saying. He stepped beside her like one in a dream. He could not take his eyes from her, from her flushed, grave, receptive face, from her downcast, listening eyes, her slow, trance-like step as she waited for him to go on. He went on: ”It becomes, my dear, I a.s.sure you--the idea of that possibility becomes absolutely an obsession--even to a man usually quite his own master--”