The party goes on, someone picks up something by Montaigne

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.

            She arrived around 8:30, long after he’d wandered round the room wondering why everyone else in the world was so recalcitrantly dull. He’d spoken for a while with Mr. Denby and his daughter. They’d talked of how he’d spend the summer, up north, working with his uncle, who was a lawyer. He had tried briefly to engage his daughter in conversation, but she’d been almost pointedly ignoring him. For a while, she’d politely nodded in the background of their conversation, which hadn’t bothered him much. Her eyes wandered over the room, and she’d signaled a waiter to bring her a cup of water. After a moment, she’d excused herself and wandered towards the book case.

            “Excuse me,” he’d said to Mr. Denby, crossing over to her. “Are you looking for something in particular? My father is not as well-read as he’d like us all to believe, but we have most of the classics, Shakespeare, Donne, Sophocles.”

            Her forefinger trailed along the spine of a book, The Merchant of Venice, before she answered him. “I am looking for something more entertaining than the conversation that’s currently taking place in this room. With that in mind, I’m finding great success. Why? Nearly anything will do,” she said, opening The Essays of Montaigne.

            He was too young not to be taken aback, though he’d been thinking the same thing himself moments before. “That’s rather rude,” he said. “Certainly you bear some responsibility for making the party entertaining don’t you?”

            She looked up briefly from her book and said, “Hmmm.”

            She was disagreeable that girl. There was really nothing to be done about it. Or if there was, it should have been done ages ago. He was angry, but he knew that he was not angry on his own behalf, but on behalf of his father, who’d thrown a party and invited his old friend Mr. Denby and his wretched daughter had attended, eaten the food, drank at least the water, and then sneered at it.

            Jane arrived shortly thereafter, and he was immediately soothed. For this too is a strange quality of love. That though it is often equated with wild passions and proclamations, what it really brings is a sort of serenity beneath the madness. That serenity is the heart finding a place to rest. And so, when Jane walked through the door, shaking hands with a few ladies before their eyes met, he saw her, and rested. He was home.