Dodo's Daughter: A Sequel to Dodo. Benson Edward Frederic

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Grantham had conceived this misbegotten plan of bringing them unexpectedly face to face, with the only result that the party numbered thirteen, and her father was very uncomfortable for weeks afterwards. Once again they had been caught in a block in taxi-cabs exactly opposite each other. Dodo, taking the bull by the horns, had leaned impulsively toward him with both hands outstretched and cried, "Ah, Jack, are we never to meet again?" On which the bull, so to speak, paid his fare, and continued his journey on foot. Dodo had been considerably disappointed by this rebuff: it had seemed to her that no man should have resisted her direct appeal. On the other hand, Jack on seeing her had nailed to his face so curiously icy a mask that his appearance became quite ludicrous. Also he knocked his hat against the roof of the closed half of his cab, and it fell into the road, in the middle of an unusually deep puddle. She noticed that he was not bald yet, which was a great relief, since she detested the sight of craniums.

      And now Jack had yielded, had walked out of his citadel without any further assault being delivered, and was to arrive to-day. At the thought, when she woke in the stillness of earliest morning, Dodo's brain started into fullest activity, and, as always, as much interested in the motives that inspired actions as in the actions themselves, she set herself to ponder the nature of the impulse which had caused so complete a volte-face. But the action itself interested and charmed her also: all this year she had wanted to see Jack again. He had understood her better than any one, and in spite of the vile way in which she had used him, she had more nearly loved him than either of the men she had married. Her first husband had never been more to her than "an old darling," and often something not nearly that. Of Waldenech she had simply been afraid: under the fascination of fear she had done what he told her. But Jack —

      Dodo felt for the switch of her electric light: the darkness was too close to her eyes, and she wanted to focus them on something. Clearly there were several possibilities any of which would account for this change in him. He might perhaps merely wish to resume ordinary and friendly relations with her. But that did not seem a likely explanation, since, if that was all, he would more naturally have waited till she returned to town again after this sojourn in the country. There must have been in his mind a cause more potent than that. Naturally the more potent cause occurred to her, and she sat up in bed. "It is too ludicrous," she said to herself, "it cannot possibly be that." And yet he had remained unmarried all these years, with how many charming girls about who would have been perfectly willing to share his wealth and title, not to speak of himself.

      Dodo got out of bed altogether; and went across the room to where a big looking-glass set in the door of her wardrobe reflected her entire figure. She wished to be quite honest in her inspection of herself, to see there not what she wanted to see but what there was to be seen. The room was brightly lit, and through her thin silk nightdress she could see the lines of her figure, molded in the soft swelling curves of her matured womanhood. Yet something of the slimness and firm elasticity of youth still dwelt there, even as youth still shone in the smooth unwrinkled oval of her face and sparkled in the depths of her dark eyes. Right down to her waist hung the thick coils of her black hair, still untroubled by gray, and slim and shapely were her ankles, soft and rosy from the warmth of her bed her exquisite feet. And at the sight of herself her mouth uncurled itself into a smile: the honesty of her scrutiny had produced no discouraging revelations. Then frankly laughing at herself she turned away again, and wholly unconsciously and instinctively took half a dozen dance-steps across the Persian rugs that were laid down over the polished floor. She could no more help that impulse of her bubbling vitality than she could help the fact that she was five feet eight in height.

      The coolness and refreshment of the two hours before dawn streamed in through her open window, and she put on the dressing-gown with its cascades of lace and blue ribands that lay on the chair by her dressing-table. Supposing it was the case that Jack was coming for her, that he wanted her now as in the old days when she had thrown his devotion back at him like a pail of dirty water, what answer would she make him? Really she hardly knew. Neither of her marriages had been a conspicuous success, but for neither of her husbands had she felt anything of that quality of emotion which she had felt for the man she had treated so infamously. She gave a great sigh and began ticking off certain events on her fingers.

      "First of all I refused him before I married poor darling Chesterford the first," she said to herself. "Secondly, having married Chesterford the first, I asked Jack to run away with me. But that was in a moment of great exasperation: it might have happened to anybody. Thirdly, as soon as Chesterford I. was taken, I got engaged to Jack which I ought to have done originally; and fourthly, I jilted him and married Waldenech."

      Dodo had arrived at her little finger and held her other hand poised over it.

      "What the devil is fifthly to be?" she said aloud.

      She got out of her chair again.

      "It is very odd but I simply can't make up my mind," she thought, "and I usually can make it up without the slightest trouble; indeed it is usually already made up, just as one used to find eggs already boiled in that absurd machine that always stood by Chesterford at breakfast. I hate boiled eggs! But I wonder if I owe it to Jack to marry him if he wants me to? Supposing he says I have spoiled his life, and he wants me to unspoil it now? Is it my duty apart from whatever my inclination may be, and I wish I knew what it was?"

      Dodo felt herself quite unable to make up her mind on this somewhat important point. She felt herself already embarked on an argument with Jack, as she had been so often embarked in the old days, and on how pleasant and summery a sea. She would certainly tell him that nobody ought to let his life be spoiled by anybody else, and she would point to herself as a triumphant instance of how she had refused to let her joy of life get ever so slightly tarnished by the really trying experiences in her partnership with Waldenech. Here was she positively as good as new. And then unfortunately it occurred to her that Jack might say "But then you didn't love him." And the ingenious Dodo felt herself unable to frame any reply to this very bald suggestion. It really seemed unanswerable.

      There was a further reason which might account for Jack's coming: Nadine. Dodo knew that the two were great friends. She had even heard it suggested that Jack had serious thoughts with regard to her. Very likely that was only invented by some friend who was curious to know how she herself would take the suggestion, but clearly this was not an improbable, far less an impossible, contingency. But that Nadine had serious thoughts with regard to Jack was less likely. Dodo felt that her daughter took after herself in emotional matters and was probably not at that age seriously thinking about anybody. Yet after all she herself had married at that age (though without serious thought) and the experiment which seemed so sensible and promising had been a distinct disappointment. Ought she to warn Nadine against marrying without love? Or would that look as if, for other reasons, she did not wish her to marry Jack? That would be an odious interpretation to put on it, and the worst of it was that she was not perfectly certain whether there was not some sort of foundation for it. Something within her ever so faintly resented the idea of Jack's marrying Nadine.

      Dodo's thought paused and was poised over this for a little, and she made an eager and a conscious effort to root out from her mind this feeling of which she was genuinely ashamed. Then suddenly all her meditations were banished, for from outside there came the first faint chirrupings of an awakening bird. Deep down in her, below the trivialities and surface-complications of life, below all her warm-heartedness and her egoism there lay a strain of natural untainted simplicity, and these first flutings of birds in the bushes roused it. She went to the window and drew up the blind.

      The dusk still hovered over the sea and low-lying land, and in the sky already turning dove-colored a late star lingered, remotely burning. The bird that had called her to look at the dawn had ceased again, and a pause holy and sweet and magical brooded over this virginal meeting of night and day. But far off to the right the hill-tops had got the earliest news of what was coming and were flecked with pale orient reflections and hints of gold and scarlet and faint crimson. But here below the dusk lay thick still, like clear dark water.

      Just below her window lay СКАЧАТЬ