“Do you recollect?”
“Do you remember?”
“Have you forgotten?”
Clearly, they have fallen upon old times. I wish—I
dearly wish—that I might bite a piece out
of somebody.
“I saw pale kings, and princes,
too;
Pale warriors, death-pale
were they all,
They cried, ‘La Belle Dame, sans
merci,’
Hath thee in thrall.”
The long penance of dinner is over at last, thank
God! I may intermit my hopeless roarings, melancholy
as those of any caged zoological beast. Roger
and Zephine must also fain suspend their reminiscences.
There being no lady of the house, I have taken upon
myself to hasten the date of our departure. Before
Mrs. Zephine has finished her last grape, I have swept
her incontinently away into the drawing-room.
But I might as well have let it alone: almost
before you could say “Knife” they are
after us. I suppose that when three are eager
to come, and only two anxious to stay—(I
acquit my old friend and his nephew of any over-hurry
to rejoin us)—the three must needs get their
way. Anyhow, here they all five are! I am
so hot! so hot! Nothing heats one like bellowing
and being miserable and a failure. I have again
taken advantage of the mistressless condition of the
establishment, have drawn back the window-curtains,
and lifted the heavy sash. The night always soothes
me. There is something so stilling in the far
placidity of the high stars—in the sweet
sharpness of the night winds. I have sat down
on a couch in the embrasure, alone.
When the men come in, I remain alone. It does
not at all surprise or much vex me. I have nothing
pleasant to say to any one. Also, I think I must
be almost hidden by the droop of the curtains.
Roger, indeed, sent his eyes round the room on his
first entry, as if searching for something or somebody.
It cannot be Mrs. Huntley, who is right under his
nose, and who is, indeed, saying something playful
to him over the top of her black fan. For once,
he does not hear her. He is still looking.
Then he catches a glimpse of my skirts, and comes straight
toward me. Thank God! it was me he was
looking for. I feel a little throb of disused
gladness, as I realize this.
“Are not you cold?” he says, perceiving
the open window.
“Not I!” reply I, brusquely—“naught
never comes to harm.”
“I wish you would have a shawl!” he says,
as the evening wind comes, with the tartness of autumn,
to his face.
“Why do not you say, ‘do, for my sake!’
as Algy once said to me, when he mistook me in the
dark for Mrs. Huntley?” reply I, with a mocking
laugh—“I am not sure that he did not
add darling, but I will excuse that!”
At the mention of Algy, a shade crosses his face,
and his eye travels to where, in the dignified solitude
of a corner, my eldest brother is sitting, biting
his lips, and reading “Alice Through the Looking-glass,”
upside down.
