“Even my bleat reminds you of Mary’s pet.”
“But you are not my pet — at least — it is well that my Golaud doesn’t hear you —”
“If he is so very big —” said I.
“He is really; he’s beefy. I’ve engaged myself to him, somehow or other. One never knows how one does those things, do they?”
“I couldn’t speak from experience,” said I.
“Cruel man! I suppose I felt Christmasy, and I’d just been reading Maeterlinck — and he really is big.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh — He, of course. My Golaud. I can’t help admiring men who are a bit avoirdupoisy. It is unfortunate they can’t dance.”
“Perhaps fortunate,” said I.
“I can see you hate him. Pity I didn’t think to ask him if he danced — before —”
“Would it have influenced you very much?”
“Well — of course — one can be free to dance all the more with the really nice men whom one never marries.”
“Why not?”
“Oh — you can only marry one —”
“Of course.”
“There he is — he’s coming for me! Oh, Frank, you leave me to the tender mercies of the world at large. I thought you’d forgotten me, dear.”
“I thought the same,” replied her Golaud, a great fat fellow with a childish bare face. He smiled awesomely, and one never knew what he meant to say.
We drove home in the early Christmas morning. Lettie, warmly wrapped in her cloak, had had a little stroll with her lover in the shrubbery. She was still brilliant, flashing in her movements. He, as he bade her good-bye, was almost beautiful in his grace and his low musical tone. I nearly loved him myself. She was very fond towards him. As we came to the gate where the private road branched from the highroad, we heard John say “Thank you”— and looking out, saw our two boys returning from the pit. They were very grotesque in the dark nights as the lamplight fell on them, showing them grimy, flecked with bits of snow. They shouted merrily, their good wishes. Lettie leaned out and waved to them, and they cried “‘ooray!” Christmas came in with their acclamations.
Chapter 9
Lettie Comes of Age
Lettie was twenty-one on the day after Christmas. She woke me in the morning with cries of dismay. There was a great fall of snow, multiplying the cold morning light, startling the slow-footed twilight. The lake was black like the open eyes of a corpse; the woods were black like the beard on the face of a corpse. A rabbit bobbed out, and floundered in much consternation; little birds settled into the depth, and rose in a dusty whirr, much terrified at the universal treachery of the earth. The snow was eighteen inches deep, and drifted in places.
“They will never come!” lamented Lettie, for it was the day of her party.
“At any rate — Leslie will,” said I.
“One!” she exclaimed.
“That one is all, isn’t it?” said I. “And for sure George will come, though I’ve not seen him this fortnight. He’s not been in one night, they say, for a fortnight.”
“Why not?”
“I cannot say.”
Lettie went away to ask Rebecca for the fiftieth time if she thought they would come. At any rate, the extra woman-help came.
It was not more than ten o’clock when Leslie arrived, ruddy, with shining eyes, laughing like a boy. There was much stamping in the porch, and knocking of leggings with his stick, and crying of Lettie from the kitchen to know who had come, and loud, cheery answers from the porch bidding her come and see. She came, and greeted him with effusion.
“Ha, my little woman!” he said, kissing her. “I declare you are a woman. Look at yourself in the glass now —”
She did so —
“What do you see?” he asked, laughing.
“You — mighty gay, looking at me.”
“Ah, but look at yourself. There! I declare you’re more afraid of your own eyes than of mine, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she said, and he kissed her with rapture.
“It’s your birthday,” he said.
“I know,” she replied.
“So do I. You promised me something.”
“What?” she asked.
“Here — see if you like it”— he gave her a little case. She opened it, and instinctively slipped the ring on her finger. He made a movement of pleasure. She looked up, laughing breathlessly at him.
“Now!” said he, in times of finality.
“Ah!” she exclaimed in a strange, thrilled voice.
He caught her in his arms.
After a while, when they could talk rationally again, she said: “Do you think they will come to my party?”
“I hope not — By Heaven!”
“But — oh yes! We have made all preparations.”
“What does that matter! Ten thousand folks here today —!”
“Not ten thousand — only five or six. I shall be wild if they can’t come.”
“You want them?”
“We have asked them — and everything is ready — and I do want us to have a party one day.”
“But today — damn it all, Lettie!”
“But I did want my party today. Don’t you think they’ll come?”
“They won’t if they’ve any sense!”
“You might help me —” she pouted.
“Well, I’ll be-! and you’ve set your mind on having a houseful of people today?”
“You know how we look forward to it — my party. At any rate — I know Tom Smith will come — and I’m almost sure Emily Saxton will.”
He bit his moustache angrily, and said at last:
“Then I suppose I’d better send John round for the lot.”
“It wouldn’t be much trouble, would it?”
“No trouble at all.”
“Do you know,” she said, twisting the ring on her finger, “it makes me feel as if I tied something round my finger to remember by. It somehow remains in my consciousness all the time.”
“At any rate,” said he, “I have got you.”
After dinner, when we were alone, Lettie sat at the table, nervously fingering her ring.
“It is pretty, Mother, isn’t it?” she said a trifle pathetically.
“Yes, very pretty. I have always liked Leslie,” replied my mother.
“But it feels so heavy — it fidgets me. I should like to take it off.”
“You are like me, I never could wear rings. I hated my wedding ring for months.”
“Did you, Mother?”
“I longed to take