Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories - стр. 10

On Saturday night she and Bill Knowles came to the country club. They were very handsome together and once more I felt envious and sad. As they danced out on the floor the three-piece orchestra was playing After You’ve Gone, in a poignant way that I can hear yet, as if each bar were trickling off a precious minute of that time.[34] I knew then that I had grown to love Tarleton. It was a time of youth and war, and there was never so much love around.

When I danced with Ailie she suddenly suggested that we go outside to a car. She wanted to know why didn’t people cut in on her tonight? Did they think she was already married?

“Are you going to be?”

“I don’t know, Andy. Sometimes, when he treats me as if I were sacred, it thrills me.” Her voice was quiet and far away. “And then – ”

She laughed. Her body, so frail and tender, was touching mine, her face was turned up to me, and there, suddenly, with Bill Knowles ten yards off, I could have finally kissed her. Our lips just touched experimentally; then an aviation officer turned a corner of the veranda near us, peered into our darkness and hesitated.

“Ailie.”

“Yes.”

“You heard about this afternoon?”

“What?” She leaned forward, tenseness already in her voice.

“Horace Canby crashed. He was instantly killed.”

She got up slowly and stepped out of the car.

“You mean he was killed?” she said.

“Yes. They don’t know what the trouble was. His motor – ”

“Oh-h-h!” Her rasping whisper came through the hands suddenly covering her face. We watched her helplessly as she put her head on the side of the car, gagging dry tears. After a minute I went for Bill, who was searching anxiously about for her, and told him she wanted to go home.

I sat on the steps outside. I had disliked Canby, but his terrible, pointless death was more real to me then than the day’s toll of thousands in France. In a few minutes Ailie and Bill came out. When Ailie saw me she came over swiftly.

“Andy” – she spoke in a quick, low voice – “of course you must never tell anybody what I told you about Canby yesterday. What he said, I mean.”

“Of course not.”

“Good night, Andy!” called Bill as they got into a taxi.

“Good night,” I said, and almost added: “You poor fool.”

At twenty-three I was entirely unconvinced about anything, except that some people were strong and attractive and could do what they wanted, and others were disgraced. I hoped I was of the former.[35] I was sure Ailie was.

I had to revise other ideas about her. In the course of a long discussion with some girl about kissing – in those days people still talked about kissing more than they kissed – I mentioned the fact that Ailie had only kissed two or three men, and only when she thought she was in love. To my considerable disconcertion the girl figuratively just lay on the floor and howled.