The party was supposed to have
started at seven, and, by 7:45, he was terrifically bored. He was in love,
which was usually a cure for boredom, but Jane hadn’t arrived yet, which meant
he was spending the evening talking with people with whom he was most
decidedly, not in love. People with whom he was not in love had a greyness that
hung about them. They were vaguely put together of eyeglasses, mustaches, hoop
skirts, braided hair, balding. They had accents of varying degrees, often
talked of the weather, the latest hunting season, and novels. He did not
actively detest them as a group. In fact, he felt as though he didn’t have the
space or time to care much more about them than he did about a lamp or a book
written in French, which he assiduously did not read.
He crossed the room to speak with
his father, George. George was a kind and robust man. In the middle of life’s
way he had begun to expand ever so slightly, but in what can only be described
as a pleasant way. He had a large mustache that was greying from the center
out. He had a large head, and deep set eyes, which were almost always twinkling
in a way that made him appear as if he were enjoying some silent joke.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he
asked, Daniel, placing his large hand gently on his son’s shoulder.
“It’s impossible not too with so
much pleasantness gathered in one room,” Daniel answered, peering around the
room and trying to find someone pleasant.
His eyes alighted on his father’s old
business partner, Mr. Denby. Mr. Denby, unlike his father, had begun to be
whittled away as he aged. His legs were slender as was his waist. His voice was
thin, reed like and a bit nasally. He had a daughter, Charlotte—a cold girl who
spent most of her time up north with a fiancée whom everyone pitied for having
hitched himself to such an unpleasant girl.
The evening didn’t really start for
him until Jane arrived. Jane—a girl he’d grown up with, a girl he’d walked
through the fields with, named clouds, named stars. He’d been intending to
marry Jane for years. They’d grown up, as the children of close friends often
do, in close proximity. They’d played in barns, at funerals, at weddings. She
was quite beautiful, thin-boned and pale. She reminded him of a very beautiful
swallow. She was quick-witted and she laughed frequently. She threw her head
back when she laughed. She laughed with every fiber of her being.
She had the habit of swiping the
hair away from her forehead with her left hand, and tucking it behind her ear.
She was, as anyone who has ever loved can tell you, probably not as objectively
pretty as he thought, which was entirely beside the point because objectivity
and love are not strange bed fellows, they live in separate countries, speak
different languages, and would only ever hear of the other in the way that a
baby can hear the distant whine of a mower, thin and soft.
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