The Heart of Arethusa Part 40

"Billy Watts! You are perfectly horrid!"

"Oh, come on, Arethusa, and stop getting all up in the air over nothing!" He took hold of her again, but she jerked angrily away.

"Don't be a goose," he added, "everybody in the room's looking at you!"

"I don't care a bit if they are!"

"Do you want me to run out and look up your sick friend and hold his head or anything? I will, if it'll please you very much! Because I sure didn't mean to set you off like this! Come on now, Arethusa, and be a better sport!"

This offer to go look after the suffering Mr. Bennet, although of a wording hardly as respectful as she considered seemly, mollified Arethusa to the extent of finis.h.i.+ng out this dance with Billy. But it was not at all necessary that he actually carry out his offer when the dance was really over, for just as the last strains of music were sounding, Mr. Bennet re-appeared from the direction of the hall.

Arethusa left Billy abruptly, standing open-mouthed in the middle of the floor at the suddenness of her departure, and without a single word of apology for leaving him, to greet Mr. Bennet with outstretched hands and anxious inquiry into the state of his immediate physical being. The answer was rea.s.suring and one calculated to raise her spirits. Mr.

Bennet believed he felt much better. Arethusa beamed.

"Do you want to dance this with me?" asked Mr. Bennet, then; for just at that very moment the music started once more.

"Do you feel well enough to be dancing?" Anxiety and solicitude were in voice and manner.

"Yes, indeed. It seems to me I haven't danced with you to amount to anything this evening. And I couldn't let it all slip by that way.

What's the use of being here with you, if other men have all the pleasure?"

Arethusa blushed.

And off they started together to the sound of a waltz that could not have helped but make the stiffest possible person dance like an angel, no matter how badly he might have danced before hearing this particular tune. It was a strain of melody with a haunting tinge of delicious melancholy. It aroused all sorts of queer, indistinct little longings, and aching memories of other happy times irretrievably past. Its sound seemed meant to dream by, or to make love by; ordinary speech seemed a real sacrilege while it quivered in the air.

Mr. Bennet had a little way when he danced with Arethusa (or when he danced with any girl alive for that matter, although she did not know this) of making it seem as though he thought that they were the one and only couple in all Christendom who had ever danced together for the dance to amount to anything worth remembering; as though she were the only girl he had ever really cared to dance with; and as though now, with bodies tuned to the one strain of those violins sobbing their soft refrain over and over, he had reached Paradise with the girl in his arms.

The music stopped.

Arethusa sighed with a funny little catch of her breath. "That ... that sounded just like Heaven," she said, softly.

Mr. Bennet bent his handsome head. "Was it only the music?" he asked.

He could not help asking it, and asking it just exactly as he did.

Arethusa laughed, it was a most subdued little sound of embarra.s.sment, and her only answer. And partly the spell of that wonderful music, and partly her quaint wors.h.i.+p of the man standing beside her, made her wish to get away from the crowd and their chattering talk of nothings for a wee while.

"Let's go sit in our little room," she suggested, with a bit of emphasis on the "our."

An encore to that waltz was starting just as they reached the entrance to the green recess, and Mr. Bennet hesitated. "Shall we go back and try this?"

But Arethusa shook her head.

She had a vague feeling that no other Waltz in all her life, no matter how many more she might dance hereafter, was ever going to be as perfect as the One just danced had been. And she could not spoil its memory by so immediately dancing another waltz to the very same tune.

So they went instead into the little recess and sat down on the rose-colored sofa, side by side, and without saying a word for a long time. Such music demanded silence, especially when listened to in such a setting. And the rose-colored lights threw the softest sort of glow all over them.

Mr. Bennet reclined a little in his corner of the sofa, with his feet gracefully outstretched and his ankles crossed, his arms folded, watching Arethusa, for her head was downcast and turned away from him, and she could not know that he was watching her. He smiled a bit as he always did whenever he watched her this way when she was not noticing.

But Arethusa may have felt his look, although she did not turn around to really see it, or it may have been those shy little thoughts of him which were at the moment filling her head which caused it, for a soft flush suddenly ran all over her neck, and even up behind her ears. Mr.

Bennet's smile broadened, perceptibly.

If anyone had asked him just then what he thought of Arethusa, he would have said that she was a very pretty girl, in his opinion; the prettiest girl, in fact, that he had known for some time. Mr. Bennet had even found himself wondering, on several occasions lately, if he was not beginning to think too much of Arethusa and her prettiness; just a little bit more than was quite wise, from his own point of view.

There was very open admiration in his face as he studied her now. He noticed the tiny curls at the back of her neck, warm from dancing to be twisted in the tightest little rings; they were the most babyish looking little curls he had ever seen, he thought. And he distinctly liked that proud little way she carried her head. He moved just a trifle, then, so that he could see more of her face; how her extraordinarily long lashes swept her cheek, and her adorable nose, which was ever so slightly retroussee. Timothy, in some of those moments when Arethusa was inclined to be most trying, had called it a "pug nose," but Mr. Bennet's ideas were much more poetical. And he could see her mouth, with her red lips curved in a slight smile; Arethusa had a very pretty mouth.

And then quite suddenly, without himself having any really preconceived idea that he was going to do such a thing, Mr. Bennet leaned over and kissed Arethusa. He kissed her square on her sweet mouth.

And almost immediately, he kissed her the second time.

Arethusa had been startled by his first kiss, very naturally; it had broken rudely into her shy dreams to scatter them far away and bring her back to reality. But she returned his second salutation with all of her young soul. Then she sprang up from the sofa, gently disengaging herself from the arm he had half slipped around her.

"Now, you mustn't kiss me any more," she said, with a quaint air of authority.

Mr. Bennet was somewhat startled by this, himself; and then rather amused. He had hardly intended to do so again, being a trifle ashamed of himself already, but Arethusa's reasons for anything were always original.

"Why not?" he enquired.

"Because...." She blushed deeply, rosy-red.

"Because what?"

"Because...." She looked down for just a moment, then raised her head with an adorable air of dignity most becoming, "you mustn't kiss me any more until after we're married. Aunt 'Liza always says a girl mustn't!"

"Married!" The thoroughly startled Mr. Bennet sank backward on the pink sofa. "Why...."

"Yes," repeated Arethusa. Then something in his expression suddenly frightened her; her face went chalk white. "Why.... Why did you....

Didn't you...."

"I think you've misunderstood me," began Mr. Bennet, gently, "I didn't mean...." Then he stopped awkwardly. For once in his life the Wonderful Mr. Bennet was at an utter loss for the words with which to continue a conversation with a lady.

"You ki ... kissed me," said Arethusa.

But Mr. Bennet made no reply. It was a Fact which it was unnecessary to confirm, and could not be denied.

"And di ... didn't you ... you mean," she continued slowly, "that you wanted to marry me?" She brought each word of this question out with difficulty. "I thought me ... men never kissed girls that way unless they wanted to marry them?" This last was also an interrogation.

"No," replied Mr. Bennet, uncomfortably, "not necessarily."

She began backing away from him, her eyes fixed upon him, wide with a sort of horror.

"My dear child...."

"I'm not your dear child!" Arethusa was suddenly so angry that she trembled with rage from head to foot. "Don't come anywhere near me,"

she exploded, as Mr. Bennet started towards her.

She stuck her hands straight out in front of her as if to push him away, and Mr. Bennet stopped short where he was.

"If you'll let me explain," he said, "I think I can. I didn't.... That is, I'm just as sorry as I can be. And I really didn't mean a single thing!" But this was a very wrong beginning.

It made matters, already bad enough, very much worse. He had Kissed her and he had Not Meant a Single Thing! There was Deep Disgrace for Arethusa in this simple declaration.