The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
Читать онлайн книгу.
my marble brow. What a good invention you are! It would be worse than going back to the days of hansoms and four-wheelers to be without you. Without undue flattery, it would!"
Dodo's slight attack of seriousness evaporated completely, and having tried the effect of her hat, which comprised, so she said, the entire flora and fauna of Brazil, on Jack's head, put it on her own, and sent a message to Nadine that she had been waiting an hour and a half.
"But Hughie shall not come out with us," she said, "since he and Nadine don't pay the smallest attention to me, when they are together, and I feel alone in London. Besides, Nadine has to buy things that young gentlemen don't know anything about—and here you are at last, my darling Nadine, but I'm not going to take your darling with us, any more than he takes you to his haberdasher, or whoever it is sells that sort of thing. Don't look cross, Hughie, because Jack's going to let you have the yacht, and you and Nadine can be unwell to your heart's content. Go and sulk at your club, dear, for an hour, and then you come back to lunch, and stop for tea and dinner if you like. But the obduracy of your esteemed mother-in-law elect on the subject of the drive is quite invincible. Dear me, what beautiful language!"
Nadine and her mother did their errands, and as only Edith was going to lunch with them, who was almost invariably half-an-hour late, but who, if she arrived in time, would be quite certain to begin lunch without them, they prolonged their outing by a turn in the Park. The morning was of that exquisite tempered heat that lies midway between the uncertain warmth of spring and the fierceness of true midsummer weather, and following, as it did, on a week of rainy days had brought out both crowds and flowers. The little green seats and shady alleys were full of kaleidoscopic color from hats and parasols and summer dresses, and more stable than these, but hardly less brilliant, were the clumps of full-flowered rhododendrons and beds of blossomings. The dust had been laid on the roads, and washed from the angled planes, and summer sat in the lap of spring. Summer and spring too, as it were, sat side by side in Dodo's motor, and who could say which was the more glorious, the mother in the splendor of her full-blown life, or Nadine, that exquisite opening bud, still dewy in the morning of her days, no wild-flower, but more like an orchid, fragrant and subtle and complex. All that still remained to her: she would never be wild-rose or honeysuckle, in spite of the big simple human love which had come to her, and daily sprang higher, flame-like.
To-day neither paid much attention to the crowd that contained so many friends. Occasionally Dodo blew a sudden gale of kissed finger-tips at some especially beloved face, but the smile that never left her face, though it did duty for general salutation, was really inspired from within. Her daughter's awakening was a deep joy to Dodo.
"You and Hughie and Jack and I ought to be stuffed and put in the South Kensington Museum, darling," she said, "as curious survivals of absolutely happy people, who are getting exceedingly rare. I should utter a few words of passionate protest when the executioner and the taxidermist arrived, but I think I should consent for the good of the nation in general."
Nadine disagreed altogether.
"We are much more useful alive," she said, "because we're infectious. Or would our broad fatuous grins be infectious when we were stuffed? Oh, there's Seymour, Mama. Do kiss your hand violently, because it wouldn't be suitable for me to. I can only smile regretfully."
"But you don't regret," said Dodo, after giving him a perfect volley of kissed finger-tips.
"No, but only because I can't. My will regrets. He has sent me a lovely necklace of jade, with a little label, 'Jade for the jade,' on it. So I think he must feel better, as it's a sort of joke. I wrote him quite a nice little note, and said how dear it would be of him to come to my wedding, if he felt up to it."
Dodo giggled.
"My dear, that is exactly what I should have done at your age," she said. "But I think I should have kissed my hand to him just now, and people would certainly have thought you heartless, if you had, just because they have got great wooden hearts themselves, accurately regulated, that pump exactly sixty times in a minute, neither more nor less. You do feel kindly and warmly to poor Seymour, and you trust he is getting over it. About stuffing us, now. I'm not quite sure I should stuff Papa Jack. He's anxious about me, poor old darling, as if at my age I didn't know how to have a baby properly. I talked about dying a little, which upset him, I'm afraid, though it wasn't in the least meant to. My dear, to think that in ten days from now you'll be married! Nadine, I do look forward to being a grandmama: I want to be lots of grandmamas, if you see what I mean. Then there'll be Papa Hughie, and Papa Jack, and look, there's Papa Waldenech. I never knew he was in town. We must stop a moment: I have not seen him since he came uninvited to my ball in the autumn, a little bit on. Ah, what a fool I am: he meant me not to tell you, so bear in mind that I haven't. Waldenech, my dear, what a surprise!"
They drew up at the curb, and he came to the carriage-door, hat in hand, courteous, distinguished and evil.
"I have just come from Paris," he said. "It is charming of you to welcome me. Nadine, too. Nadine, is your father to be allowed to come to your wedding? May I—"
Dodo had half-risen to greet him, and he saw the lines of her figure. He broke off short.
"You are going to be a mother again?" he said.
"Yes, my dear, but you needn't tell the Albert Memorial about it," said she. "And of course you may come to Nadine's wedding. I had no notion you would be in England."
He appeared to pay not the slightest attention to this—but looked at her eagerly, hungrily, at those wonderful brown eyes, at the still youthful oval of her face, at the mouth he had so often kissed.
"My God, you are a beautiful woman!" he said. "And you used to be mine!"
Then he turned abruptly, and walked straight away from them without another glance. Dodo looked after him in silence a moment, frowning and smiling together.
"Poor old chap: it was a shock to him somehow," she said. "But he'll go back to the Ritz and steady himself. How old he has got to look, Nadine."
But Nadine had the frown without the smile.
"I didn't like the way he went off," she said. "He didn't give another thought to my wedding, Mama, after he saw. He looked hungry for you, and he looked horrible. He admired you so enormously. He was thinking of what he had lost and what Papa Jack had gained. And I felt frightened of him, just as I felt frightened one night when I was very little, and he came stumbling into the nursery, and wanted to say good-night to me. I remember my nurse tried to turn him out, and he looked as if he would have murdered her. Poor Daddy isn't a nice man, you know."
But Nadine looked more puzzled than vexed.
Dodo's frown had quite cleared away. She was far too essentially happy to mind little surface disturbances.
"Poor old Daddy," she said. "He was startled, darling, and when people are startled they look like themselves, that is all, and Daddy isn't quite nice, any more than the rest of us are. But it was rather sweet of him to want to go to your wedding. I hope he will be sober. He will probably want to kiss us all in the vestry, all of us except Jack. I shall certainly kiss him, if he shows the slightest wish that I should do so. But he might be nasty to Jack. Perhaps we had better not tell Jack he is here. It might make him anxious again, like when I talked about death this morning. Oh, Nadine, look at those delicious horses, cantering along, and praising God because they feel so strong and young! What a rotten seat that man has: oh, of course he has, because he's Berts. How he fidgets his horse—Berts, dear—"
And Dodo blew a shower of kisses on the end of her fingers.
Nadine's enjoyment in this liquid air had been suddenly extinguished. She herself hardly knew why, but her lowered pleasure she felt to be connected with her father. She tried, very sensibly, to get rid of it by speech, for the unreal thing when spoken, became so fantastically absurd.
"Was Daddy ever very jealous about you?" she asked.
Dodo recalled her mind from the tragedy of Berts riding so badly.
"But violently pea-green with it," she said, "so that sometimes I didn't know if I could say good-morning to the butler in safety.