Waltz Into Darkness

8

Rosy-cheeked, dewy-eyed, winsome in the early morning sunlight, in a dressing sack of warm yellow whose hue matched the sunny glow falling about her, she quickly forestalled Aunt Sarah, took the coffee urn from her hand, insisting as she did every day on pouring his cupful herself.

He smiled, flattered, as he did every day when this same thing happened.

Next she took up the small silver tongs, fastened them on a lump of twinkling sugar, carefully carried it past the rim of his cup, and holding it low so that it might not splash, released it.

He beamed.

“So much the sweeter,” he murmured confidentially.

She gave her fingertips a brisk little brushing-together, though they had not as a matter of fact touched anything at first hand, placed a kiss at the side of his head, hurried around to her side of the table, and seated herself with a crisp little rustling.

It was like a little girl, he couldn’t help thinking, pressing a little boy into playing at house with her. You be the papa, and I’ll be the mamma.

Settled in her own chair, she raised her cup, eyes smiling at him to the last over its very rim, until she must drop them to make sure of fitting it exactly to her still incredibly, always incredibly, tiny mouth.

“This is really excellent coffee,” she remarked, after a sip.

“It’s some of our own. One of the better grades, from the warehouse. I have a small sackful sent home every now and again for Aunt Sarah’s use.”

“I don’t know what I should do without it. It is so invigorating, of a chilly morning. There is nothing I am quite so fond of.”

“You mean since you have begun to sample Aunt Sarah’s?”

“No, always. All my life I—”

She stopped, seeing him look at her with a sort of sudden, arrested attention. It was like a stone cast into the bubbling conversation, and sinking heavily to the bottom, stilling it.

There was some sort of contagion passed between them. Impossible to give it a name. She seemed to take it from him, seeing it appear on his face, and her own became strained and watchful. It was unease, a sudden chilling of assurance. It was the unpleasant sensation, or feeling of loss, that a worthless iron washer might convey, suddenly detected in a palmful of golden disks.

“But—” he said at last, and didn’t go on.

“Yes?” She said with an effort. “Were you going to say something?” And the turn of one hand appeared over the edge of the table before her, almost as if in a bracing motion.

“No, I—” Then he gave himself the lie, went on to say it anyway. “But in your letter once you said the opposite. Telling me how you went down to a cup of tea in the morning. Nothing but tea would do. You could not abide coffee. ‘Heavy, inky drink.’ I can still remember your very words.”

She lifted her cup again, took a sip. She was unable therefore to speak again until she had removed it out of the way.

“True,” she said, speaking rather fast to make up for the restriction, once it had been removed. “But that was because of my sister.”

“But your preferences are your own, how could your sister affect them?”

“I was in her house,” she explained. “She was the one liked tea, I coffee. But out of consideration for her, in order not to be the means of causing her to drink something she did not like, I pretended I liked it too. I put it in my letter because I sometimes showed her my letters to you before I sent them, and I did not want her to discover my little deception.”

“Oh,” he grinned, almost with a breath of relief.

She began to laugh. She laughed almost too loudly for the small cause she had. As if in release of stress.

“I wish you could have seen your face just then,” she told him. “I didn’t know what ailed you for a moment.”

She went on laughing.

He laughed with her.

They laughed together, in a burst of fatuous bridal merriment.

Aunt Sarah, coming into the room, joined their laughter, knowing as little as either of them what it was about.