by Anne Warner
CHAPTER FOUR - MARRIED
It was almost like a scene at a ball, the great white-and-gold music roombefore dinner that night. The Burnett family proper numbered fifteen amongthemselves, and there were nearly thirty guests added. It was entirely toolarge a house party to have handled successfully for very long, but itwould be most awfully jolly for three or four days; and now, when thewhole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the picture was one of suchbubbling joy that Jack's very heavy heart seemed to himself to be terriblyout of place there and he wondered whether he should be able to put upeven a fairly presentable front during the endless hours that must ensuebefore the time for breaking up arrived.
Burnett took him all around and introduced him to people in general, andpeople in general seemed to him to merely bring the fact of herpre-eminence more vividly than ever before his mind. He found himselflooking everywhere but at them too, and listening with an acutelysensitive ear for sounds quite other than those of their various lips. Buteternal disappointment rewarded his eyes and ears. She was nowhere.
So he talked blindly about nothing to all the nobodies and laughedstupidly over all their stupidities until--suddenly and without anywarning--a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his constitutionshooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and knew, that thatradiant angel in silver tissue who had just entered the farther end of theroom was indubitably Herself.
(Married!)
He quite forgot who, what and where he was. There was a somebody talkingto him--a very awful and bony young lady, but she faded so completely outof the general scheme of his immediate present that all the use he made ofher was to stare over her head at the distant apparition that was become,now and forever, his All in All. The distant apparition had not lied whenshe had told him up in her brother's room that she too, looked "nice" whendressed for dinner. Only the word "nice" was as watered milk to thechampagne of her appearance. She was gowned superbly and her throat andarms were half bared by the folds of silvered lace; her hair fitted intothe back of her neck in the smoothest mass of puffs and coils, and thecurl on her forehead was more distracting than ever.
(Married!)
She seemed to be speaking to everyone, and everyone seemed to be crowdingaround her. He couldn't go up like everyone else, because the awful andbony young lady was talking hard at him and heightened her charms with asmile that took up two-fifths of her face, and wrinkled all the rest.
Her name was Lome--Maude Lome. He knew that she must be a relative withoutbeing told, because otherwise she wouldn't have been invited at all.Anyone could divine that.
"Oh, isn't dear Betty just lovely?" this fearful freak said. "I thinkshe's just too lovely for anything! She's my cousin, you know; we're oftenmistaken for one another."
"I can well believe it," said Jack, heavily, not ceasing to stare beyondas he said it.
(Married!)
"Oh, you're flattering me! Because she's ever so much prettier than I am,and I know it."
He didn't reply. It had suddenly come over him to wonder whether thereever had been an authentic case of heartbreak. Because he had the mostterrible ache right in his left side!
(Married! Married!)
"But, then," Miss Lome continued, "I'm younger than she is. Her beingmarried makes her seem young, but she's really twenty-four. I'm onlytwenty."
He shut his eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn't come here, andthen grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and all thewhile that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was getting worse andworse.
(Married! Married! Married!)
Burnett came up just then with a man wearing a monocle and presented himto Denham, and forthwith handed the bony cousin to his safe-keeping.
"She's a great pill, isn't she?" he began, as the couple moved away; andthen he stopped short. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Sick?"
"I hope not," said Jack, trying to smile.
"You look hipped," his friend said anxiously. "Better go get a bracer;you'll have time if you hurry. You can't be sick before dinner, becauseI've been moving all the cards around so as to get Betty next to you, andI could never get them back as they were before if you gave out at thelast minute."
"I don't believe I'm ill," said Jack, trying to realize whether the newsthat she was to be his (for dinner) made him feel any better or only justabout the same. "I don't know what ails me. Do I look seedy?"
"You look sort of knocked out, that's all," said Burnett. "Perhaps,though, it was just the having to talk to my cousin Maude so long. Isn'tshe the limit, though? But I'll tell you the one big thing about thatgirl: She's just the biggest kind of a catch. She was my uncle's eldestchild; she's worth twelve times what any of us ever will be."
"I'm sure she'll need it," said Jack heartily.
"You're right there," laughed his friend; "but you've got to hurry and getyour brandy now if you want it, because they'll be going out in a minute."
"Oh, I'm all right," said the poor chap, straightening his shoulders backa little. "I can make out well enough, I'm sure. I think I'd better goover by your sister and let her know that I'm ready when the hour of needshall strike."
Burnet nodded and then he went on and his friend walked down the room, noone but himself knowing that he was making his way into the lion's (or,rather, lioness's) den.
And then he paused there beside her. Oh! she Was seven million timeslovelier close to than far away. All the rot about Venus and statues andpaintings and Helen of Troy was nowhere beside Her and he felt hisstrength come surging mightily upward and then--oh Heavens!
She looked up--looked so sweetly up--right into his eyes and smiled.
"I expect you are to take me into dinner," she said; and at her words theman who had been talking to her murmured something meaningless and got outof their way.
"I believe so," he said.
She rose and he noticed that the top of her head was just level with hiscoat lapel. He wondered, with a miserable pang, where she came to on herhusband's coat and with the wonder his surging strength surged suddenlyout to sea again and left him feeling like Samson when he awoke to therealization of his haircut.
"Dinner's very late," she said, quite as if life presented no problemwhatever; "you see, it's the first big company in the house. We were onlyseventeen last night, and to-night we're forty-five. It makes adifference."
"I can imagine so," he said. He was suddenly acutely aware of feeling veryawkward, and of finding her different--quite different from what she hadseemed up in her brother's room.
"What is it?" she asked after a minute, looking up at him; and then sheshowed that she was conscious of the change, for she added: "Something hashappened; Bob has been saying mean things about me to you?"
"Yes, he did tell me something," he admitted; and just then the butlerannounced dinner.
"What did he tell you?" she asked, as they moved away. "How could he sayanything worse than what he said before me?"
"He told me something that was worse--much worse."
She looked troubled and as if she did not understand.
"But he said that I was a flirt, and that I couldn't speak the truth, andthat I drove people--"
"Yes, I remember all that; but this was infinitely worse."
"Infinitely worse!"
"Yes."
She stopped in an angle where the big room dwindled into a narrow gallery,and stared astonished.
"I can't at all understand," she said.
"No, you can't," he said, "and I can't tell you--I mustn't tell you--howterrible it is to me to look at you and think of what he told me."
After a second she went on again and presently they entered thedining-room. The confusion of rustling skirts and sliding chairs quitecovered their speech for a moment and made them seem almost alone. Herhand had been resting on his arm and now she drew it out, looking up athim again as she did so. Her eyes had a premonitory mist over them.
"For Heaven's sake," she said very earnestly, "tell
me what he said?"
He was silent.
"Tell me," she pleaded.
He was still silent.
"Tell me," she said imperiously.
He continued silent. They sat down.
"Mr. Denham," she said, as she took up her napkin, and her voice grew verylow, and yet he heard, "I don't think that we can pretend to be joking anylonger. You are my brother's friend, and I am a married woman. Pleasetreat me as you should."
"That's just it," said Jack; "that's all there is to it. It wouldn't haveamounted to anything except for that--or perhaps, if it hadn't been forthat, it might have amounted to a great deal."
"If it hadn't been for what?"
"For your being married."
She quite started in her seat.
"What do you mean?"
"You see I never knew it before."
"You never knew what before?"
"That you were married."
"Until when?"
"Until after you went out of the room to-night."
The men were putting the clams around. She seemed to reflect. And then shepeppered and salted them before she spoke.
"Bob is very wrong to talk so," she said at last, picking up her fork,"when you're his friend, too."
He poked his clams--he hated clams.
"I suppose men think it's amusing to do such things," she continued, "butI think it's as ill-bred as practical joking."
"But you are married," he said, trying fiercely to pepper some taste intothe tasteless things before him.
"Yes, I'm married," she admitted tranquilly, "but, then, my husband wentto Africa so soon afterwards that he hardly seemed to count at all. Andthen he was killed there; so, after that, he seemed to count less thanever."
The air danced exclamation points and the man on the other side spoke toher then so that her turning to answer him gave Jack time to rally hiswits.
(A widow!)
Then she turned back and said:
"I think Bob mystified you unnecessarily. Of course I don't flatter myselfthat you've suffered."
"Oh, but I have," he hastened to assure her.
(A widow! A widow!)
"But it always makes a difference whether a woman is married or not."
"I should say it did," he interrupted again. "It makes all the differencein the world."
At that she laughed outright, and someone suddenly abstracted thedistasteful clams and substituted for them a golden and glorious soup, andmusic sounded forth from some invisible quartet, and--and--
(A widow! A widow! A widow!)