Джозеф Джефферсон Фарджон – Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests (страница 11)
If she had been dancing, there was little sign of it.
She looked as neat as when he had last seen her, and the double row of pearls lay against smooth, cool skin.
“Shall I go?” she asked with disarming bluntness.
“Go? Good Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Why on earth?”
“You look worried.” His mind raced for the right answer, but her mind raced his. “I expect your foot’s still giving you the devil.”
“Just a bit.”
“So I will go. You’d rather be alone. I know you’ve had a string of visitors. Good-night.”
“I say—you’re not—wait a minute—you’re not really going, are you?”
“You’re quite sure you don’t want me to?”
“I should hate you to!”
“Well, after all, I didn’t really come here just to turn round and go back again,” she smiled.
She entered the room and walked towards the window. A dog across the dark lawn was barking.
“Haig’s a bit restless to-night,” she remarked. “Haig is our watch-dog, and Lord Aveling’s method of keeping the Great War green. Though why anybody wants to keep a war green I’ve never learned.” She pulled the long curtains across the window, shutting out the lawn and muffling Haig’s war-cry. Then she rolled a large green silk pouffe towards the couch and sat beside him. “What do we talk about, Mr. Foss? Things that matter, or things that don’t?”
“I’ll leave the choice to you,” he hedged. “But perhaps cabbages and kings would be the safest.”
“Safest?”
He turned red. What a fool he was! What a blundering ass! Usually he was rather good at conversation, but now he could not even talk of cabbages and kings without putting his foot in it. He did not realise that there are some women with whom it is almost impossible for a man to talk insignificantly. Beneath their trivial words they are telling him all the while that they like him or dislike him, love him or loathe him. The personal equation is all that lives behind their conversation.
“Have a cigarette, and don’t worry,” said Nadine. She produced a tiny gold case and held it out to him. “Forgive their idiotic size.”
She struck a match. As the light flickered on her features, their perfection almost hurt him. Of course, it was beauty-parlour perfection. Therefore, not really perfection at all. He held on to that thought while he advanced his head to the light. She blew the match out as soon as he had used it, then struck another and lit her own cigarette from a greater distance.
They smoked for a few moments in silence. He had an agonising sensation that valuable seconds were slipping away, dropping irreclaimably into the void of time. Suddenly she raised her head.
“Yes,—I remember—one can just hear the music from this room,” she exclaimed. “Has it tantalised you, as it tantalised
“I’m not a great dancer,” he answered, “but I like it.”
“You’re cut out for the diplomatic service,” she smiled, “you answer questions so tactfully!
“How does Mr. Chater dance?” inquired John, feeling that all this conversation was mere prelude. “I can’t imagine him dancing attractively.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re right, anyway. He—how can one describe it?—he seems to press, and yet he doesn’t. I think it’s because he is pressing with his mind. He was asking questions—quite quietly and casually—all the time we danced.” She laughed. “He even asked a question about us.”
“What—you and me?”
“You and me. He wanted to know whether we’d known each other a long while.”
“Confound the fellow! It wasn’t his business!”
“So I implied. Although he did it quite nicely. Shall I tell you what he reminds me of? A fairly intelligent worm—and after talking with fairly intelligent worms, I always feel I want a bath!”
“I suppose it was when you implied that it wasn’t his business that you nearly came to blows?” asked John.
“No—we just survived that one. It was when he said, ‘Did I hear somebody say your husband’s in the army?’”
“I—see,” murmured John.
“I believe you do,” she answered.
A wave of anger swept through him.
“The man’s a cad!” he exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”
“That’s what I’m wondering, Mr. Foss,” replied Nadine thoughtfully. “Lord Aveling sometimes collects queer folk, but he’s rather excelled himself this week-end—I’ve not come across Mr. Chater’s type here before. By the way—do
John nodded, and hoped he was not flushing as he recalled the information Taverley had given him.
“Would it be cricket to ask who told you?”
“But you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. Harold Taverley. He was one of my husband’s best friends.”
“He still is.”
She looked at him quizzically, then smiled.
“You put that rather nicely,” she said. “And is Harold Taverley still my friend? No, never mind. I’m asking unfair questions.” She paused. She gave a queer little sigh. “Well, we’ve exhausted the cabbages and kings!”
She checked a movement to rise from the pouffe, and hunched her shoulders instead. The green wrap slipped from her back. As she half-turned to pick it up, a bare shoulder touched his sleeve.
“Your first impulse was right,” he said.
“What impulse?” she answered.
“Weren’t you going?”
“Yes. And then I decided not to.”
“Well—I think you’d better!”
“You’re not afraid of Mr. Chater?”
“Hell, no! I beg your pardon.”
“I like honest swearing, and hell’s a good word. Mr. Leveridge used it constantly. Are you afraid of me?”
“That’s possible. But more of myself. So, you see, you’d really better go.”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d only want me back again.”
He took a breath. He could not decide at that instant whether she were wonderful or hateful.
“Suppose that’s true?” he demanded.
“There’s no need to suppose it,” she replied smoothly. “It is true. I’m sorry I brought you here. That’s one thing I wanted to say. But, as I have, let’s face it and talk it out, shall we? It’s only when you don’t face facts that they become exaggeratedly distorted—or fruitless.”
He decided that she was wonderful. Already the idea of facing facts and of avoiding conventional subterfuges brought some ease to his mind, although he had no notion where the process was going to lead.
“Then let me make an admission,” he said. “It may—explain things a bit. My attitude, I mean. You’ve come upon me at a pretty bad time, Mrs. Leveridge.” He said “Mrs. Leveridge” for the conventional protection of it. “There’s no need to tell you things that just concern myself—that wouldn’t interest you. But please accept them as an explanation of my mood and of any silly blundering. I dare say you were right not to act upon that first impulse of yours to go. Yes, I’m sure you were. Something had to be said—you didn’t know quite what—but now I hope I’ve said it. If I have, you’re released to go back to the ballroom.”
“I haven’t implied any burning desire to go back to the ballroom,” she reminded him.
“Well—anywhere else.”
“Anywhere but here? Because, if I don’t, my seconds are numbered, and you will leap up, despite your foot, and throw your arms round my neck?”