So when Margarita, with a quick glance at the obvious little melody, put her hands behind her back like a school-girl—she was dressed in a tight, plain little jacket and skirt of English tweeds, with stiff white collar and cuffs and thick-soled boots, and what used to be called an "Alpine hat"—and began to sing, to a slow waltz rhythm, one might not have expected much: indeed, the youth hummed audaciously with her, at first, and the other men, not one of whom was within many degrees of nonentity, beat time carelessly.
"Is there a single joy or pain
That I may never know?"
Stop a bit! What caught at your heart and worried you, Colonel, and stabbed a little under your D. S. O.? Were you quite fair to that lovely, high-spirited creature you married, all those years ago?
"Take back your love, it is in vain ..."
Ah, Lady Mary, you are a good twelve stone nowadays, but when that poor younger cousin gave you that look in the garden and the roses crawled over the old dial in the moonlight, you were slighter, and crueler!
"Bid me good-bye and go!"
It was a waltz, oh, yes, but it was a very Dance of Death to those of us who had any parting to look back to, that changed our life—and we could never go back again and make it better; never any more. That was what cut so, and Margarita, dark and slim like a plain brown nightingale, who leaves plumage to the raucous peacock because it matters so little what she, the real queen of us all, wears—Margarita spelled it out remorselessly, to the tune of a mess-room waltz, and told us that youth is only once and so sweet and for so little time! And the boy beside her smiled with pleasure and embroidered her rich, clear-cut phrasing and annotated it and threw jewels and flowers of unexpected chords through it and mocked the sad, charming fatalism of it as only spendthrift youth can.
"You do not love me, no!
Bid me good-bye and go ..."
Cruel Margarita, how could you make the tears splash down the cheeks of the poor little princess, who knew what was expected of her and had no greater sin on her conscience than a tiny lock of her yellow hair always warm, now, in the breast of a ridiculous second cousin on a sheep-ranch in far Dakota, U. S. A.?
"Good-bye, good-bye, 'tis better so ..."