Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriageOnions, Oliver
General
Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage
Onions, Oliver
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
Then was begun the writing of a page unparalleled for brightness in
the annals of Glenerne. Health after health was drunk, and it was Mr.
Rainbow who proposed that of the youngest bachelor present--the infant
Wellcome. Yesterday, he said, had been a fine day for Toreador's race,
but no finer than to-day was for another race--the Human Race!... Such
a roar as went up! Nobody had supposed Rainbow had it in him. Aunt
Jerry blushed; Mrs. Deschamps, who was sipping champagne at the time,
had to have her back slapped by M. Criqui, and did not recover for
several minutes; Cosimo's laugh rivalled that of Mr. Wellcome himself.
And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on Cosimo likewise.... For nothing
succeeds like success, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, immediately
scored again. If little birds were to be believed, he said, giving
the discreetest of glances at Cosimo and Amory, they might be having
another jollification before long. He mentioned no names. He would
merely say that one of them was not unknown to fame, fame of what he
might call an artistic sort; and all he would say, in the words of a
song that used to be sung when he was a good many years younger, was,
"That's the time to do it--while you're young!"
Then Mr. Rainbow made his best hit of all--he sat down in the perfect
moment of his triumph.
"The cake, the cake!" everybody shouted; and one of Bunters' waiters
handed Aunt Jerry a knife.
Then there were fresh shrieks of merriment, for when Aunt Jerry
tried to cut that formidable cake it was discovered to be of solid
plaster-of-Paris--a white grindstone tricked out with silver-paper
cupids and spurious sugar-work.
"Beats Mrs. Deschamps and the Kissing Bee hollow!" roared the authors
of the imposture.
And so the real cake had to be brought and cut.
They rose from the table and ascended to the drawing-room, and there
the merriment became more furious still. For Mr. Wellcome's eyes fell
on the whatnot with the photographs of Miss Addams's "grandchildren,"
and the seed of an idea sprang into being in his mind. It grew; it
blossomed; it spread into the Rose of Eugenics itself. Mr. Wellcome
approached Amory and Cosimo. He was perhaps just slightly drunk. His
fingers moved lovingly on Cosimo's biceps, and passed to his pectoral
muscles: his other hand was out, almost as if he would have done the
same to Amory: and then he gave them, so to speak, their certificate of
physical fitness. Noisily he bade Cosimo kiss Amory there and then.
"Be a man ... kiss her, damme!" he cried, a forcible hand on each; and
Amory dropped her lids....
But Cosimo, who was there to see others make exhibitions of themselves
but not to make one of himself, hung reluctantly back. But the
irresistible Wellcome dragged them both forward again. There was no
help for it, and so, knocking his head against Amory's, he gave her a
stage kiss only, which, of course, in this tale of Two Kisses, does not
count.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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