Daisy's Aunt

by E. F. Benson

All his life women had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, and there was also most assuredly a time when those fevers should cease.

He had so repeatedly told himself that it was time they should cease for him, that of late he had come to believe it. He believed it still, and it was for that reason that he had determined to settle down, to choose, as he had done in his own mind, this pretty and charming girl, much younger than himself, as was right, and ask her to settle down with him.

He was not in love with her in any absorbed or tumultuous way, but he meant to do his best to make her happy, and looked forward to being immensely happy himself. All that had seemed very right and reasonable and satisfactory, but to-night, in some way, the mirror of his future tranquillity was disturbed; it was as if little sudden puffs of wind, like those that rustled every now and then through "the darkness thick and hot" outside, ruffled and broke its surface, making it dim and full of shattered images that seemed to have swum up from below.

Was it that once again he was beginning to fall in love with Daisy in the old passionate way? But at that moment he was aware that he was not thinking about Daisy at all.

All this passed very rapidly through his mind; it was no effort of conscious or reasoned thought, but more as if without volition of his own these pictures had been drawn across his brain, as he stood in the hall while the rustling procession of women went upstairs. And with their going, he became aware that the rest of the evening was likely to be rather boring.

It was still not after half-past ten, an hour impossible to go to bed at, impossible, anyhow, to go to sleep at, and he fancied that his own company and his own thoughts were not likely to be very comfortable or very profitable. He did not want to think; he wanted the hours to pass as quickly and unreflectingly as possible until it was morning again. No doubt then things would present themselves in a more normal light. Certainly the events of the day had proved rather exciting and unsettling, or, to be perfectly honest, Jeannie had somehow unsettled him. How quickly their friendship had sprung up! And what had happened then? She seemed to have left him altogether, glided away from him.

He strolled back into the billiard-room, where he would find company of some sort, but there already the hour of yawns and fitful conversation had begun, and first one and then another man nodded good-night and left the room. Jim Crowfoot, however, who hated going to bed as much as he disliked getting up, had a brilliant cargo of conversation on board, which he proceeded to unload. The two knew each other well, and when they were left alone conversation rapidly became intimate.

"Thunderstorms always are simultaneous with sombreness," he said, "and I sometimes wonder whether it is our sombreness that produces the storm or the storm that produces sombreness. Every one has been sombre to-day, except, perhaps, you, Tom, and the merry widow."

"Are you referring to Mrs. Halton?"

"I don't know of any other. Lady Nottingham isn't merry. I can't think how you manage to produce so much impression with so little material. I have to talk all the time to produce an impression at all, and then it is usually an unfortunate one."