“Hobart Eddy, Hobart Eddy,” I said, “listen.”
Then I told him about Bonnie and Faint Heart, young god of the gardens. And he heard me, smiling, complaisant, delighted, and at the last, when he had seen what I had in mind, properly enthusiastic.
“Bonnie is going to look beautiful Monday night, Hobart,” I impressed him, “and that boy will not be there to see her—save from far off, with mandrake on his eyes! But he ought to be there to see her—and Hobart, why can you not take him to the wings with you for the tableaux and pretend that you need him to help you? And after he has seen Bonnie in her tableau you ought to be trusted to arrange something pleasant—”
He listened, pretending to be wholly amused at my excitement. But for all that he put in a word of planning here and there that made me trust him—dear Hobart Eddy.
“By Jove!” he finally recalled plaintively, “but I’m in love with her myself, you know, confound it.”
“Ah, but think,” I comforted him, “how easily you can forget your loves.”
The night of Monday came like a thing of cloud that had been going before the day and had become silver bright when the darkness overtook it. We walked through the park from the house—Avis and Lawrence and Pelleas and Hobart Eddy and I, across the still fields never really waked from sleep by any human voice. And when we came to the little temple the moon was so bright that it was as if we had passed into a kind of day made youthful, as we dream our days.
Pelleas and I found our seats in one of the half-circle of boxes built of sweet boughs, open to the moon and walled by leaves. There was a vacant chair or two and Avis and Lawrence and Hobart Eddy sat with us in turn while the folk gathered—guests from the near country-houses, guests who had motored out from town, and the party from Little Rosemont. The edge of the wood was hung with lanterns, as if a shower of giant sparks were held in the green.
“How will it be, Hobart?” I asked him eagerly as he joined us.
“Be? The love story? O, he’s up there,” Hobart assured me, “happy as anything. I think he’ll put grease paint in Endymion’s eyes when he comes to make me up, he’s that bereft.” He dropped his voice. “He has a bunch of scarlet salvia the size of a lamp,” he confided. “I think he means to fire it at us in the blessed middle of the tableau.”