Books › The Red Book 1905-01: Vol 4 Iss 3, 1905 › scan 117
Scan 117
The Red Book 1905-01: Vol 4 Iss 3, 1905
16 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. Printed page 382. See the scan on archive.org.
1big theaters," or ringing the electric bell at the Raynors' front door, where the butler concealed his grins, and going up to the tea-room to frolic with their fair enslavers.
3Winter is not popularly supposed to be the most favored season in Arcadia. In the tales that are told of that country we hear only of blue skies and blossoming roses; yet in the Arcadia where these two particular lambkins and their shepherdesses disported themselves, the winter days were the golden ones. Truly, however, it was hard to remember that the sleet was whistling outside while the temperature of the tea-room was that of midsummer, and the air was scented with the carnations and violets that filled the cut-glass bowls. The light fell softly through pink globes—the brass lamp from Constantinople had been found impracticable—and little songs about starlight and bunches of daisies rippled from Eileen's throat and mandolin, to make the illusion of summer and its witchery more perfect.
5There was an unquestionable charm in all this, and in time Eileen herself fell under the spell. She knew that Reggie was younger than she, and that in some other things besides age he was her inferior. There were times when she loathed his "charahds" and other inanities, feeling that she could never, never take Reggie seriously; but there were times when she would close her eyes, lean her head against his square boyish shoulder and wish that the world of ambitions and affairs would slip away, leaving these two to live together forever—say, on a desert isle, or in a tree-top, like the Swiss Family Robinson.
7This idyl, the intimacy of the Raynors and Egertons, was so very pretty and pleasant that it seems a pity that it should ever have ended, yet the end was near. When that very gay season just before Lent came round, when functions fairly fell over one another in their eagerness to find room, Eileen and Betty grew restive in their forced seclusion, and teased their father and aunt until those worthies decided that there could no longer be any impropriety in their going out.
9No ponies, long stabled, were ever more full of capers than the two girls when they accepted their first invitation. The affair was merely a musicale—an unsatisfactory affair to restless feet and tongues like Betty's, though she enjoyed immensely the very fact of wearing her pretty frock and seeing her own kind once more. As for Eileen, she was fond of music; besides, Eileen could extract amusement, if put to that test, from a lecture on Druidical remains. We sat in tight rows, wedged into hired ball-room seats or massive Mission chairs, according to our luck or foresight. We heard a big German play his own compositions, his fat, pink hands racing mightily up and down the keyboard, and growing pinker with each attack. We also heard violin solos much too fine for us to appreciate, and songs which might have been songs without words, for any distinct impression that the subjects made upon us, except occasionally at the end of a stanza when the singer would wail out "Good-by-y-e!" or "Dear Lo-o-o-ve!"
11Eileen had listened with bright attention to the violin and the German's gyrations; in this desert of dull songs, each one encored, she began to look about her for a fresh interest. All at once I saw her lean forward, in a pretty confusion which flushed her neck down to the rich embroidery of her collarless blouse, to recognize and welcome a very big, very wholesome, handsome young man who occupied a seat just in front of her. He turned so suddenly as to endanger the fragile gilt chair which Fate had awarded him, or which he had selected with the mad instinct that leads the heaviest man to the most treacherous piece of furniture in a drawing-room. She had to tell him who she was, for she had been a little girl in short frocks when he had last seen her, but when he had learned her name, he took her small, gloved fingers in so large and athletic a grip as to recall the French idiom for a hand-shake—"handful of hand."
13His name was Bruce Wilmerding, and he was a fellow-townsman of ours, although he had been abroad since his mere boyhood, first at school and afterwards traveling.
15"Now," I thought, "here is fresh game for Eileen. What'll become of poor Reginald?" On second thoughts, I was
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