United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Women college students -- Fiction
The room with its conventional puppets of listeners faded away; Joy was
only conscious of one intent brown face. What if all day they had been
and still were hedged about by tiresome details; she could speak to him
if there were thousands listening. Oh, to make love with one’s voice:
“I think of you in the daytime
I dream of you by night
I wake and would you were here, love
And tears are blinding my sight.
I hear a low breath in the lime-tree
The wind is floating through
And oh, the night, my darling,
Is sighing, sighing for you, for you.”
Her emotion was mastering her, so that her voice came forth in bursts of
gorgeous tone or died away in a tremulous whisper; but it carried a
quality that made her listeners look uncomfortable, as conventional
people tend to do when they feel that their emotions are being aroused
in a public place.
She ended, and there was a small moment of recapitulation before the
polite murmurs started again. She left the piano and crossed to
Grant—veiled under the general chatter, it was the first moment they
had to speak to each other.
“I sang to you,” she said; and the Chinese masks which they had both
been assuming all day, made easier by the breath-taking weather and the
environment, fell away from them as they looked at each other.
“You must always sing to me, Joy—your singing’s you—and I can’t bear
to have anyone else even get a part of you.”
She smiled up at him, seeing only the worship of the idea. The callers
stayed to a “simple” Sunday supper of three courses and “on the sides,”
then left the Grey family to settle down to a repletely quiet Sunday
evening. Not so Betty; she announced that “Mr. Cortland” was coming to
take her riding, and Joy and Grant could come along too. Mrs. Grey made
a few quiet remarks about the ordinary people who rode Sunday evenings,
but “Mr. Cortland,” Betty’s newly-acquired fiancé, arrived about that
time, and the four set off without even a pretense of asking Mr. and
Mrs. Grey to accompany them. They went in “Mr. Cortland’s” racer, which
necessitated three-in-one seat and one-on-the-floor, always a piquant
combination.
“No use taking a larger car,” said the fiancé, in a
bored-man-of-the-world tone: “everyone would scrap as to who wouldn’t
drive, and I’d have to, and I can’t drive with one arm—I can only
stop.”
“Oh, Nick, you do tear off the worst line,” trilled Betty. “Come
on—take the Jerusalem road—of course we’ll go to Nantasket. I want to
ride in the roller-coasters!”
Grant turned and looked up at Betty. “You’re not going to Nantasket
to-night,” he said. “I suppose you want to ride the merry-go-round too,
and dance in the Palm Garden! Where do you get your lowbrow tastes?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account