Imagination?

“Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine. Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine…” the old song drifted across the room as we took our seats for dinner. As I cast my gaze about the table, I saw the usual attendants at a dinner of this sort. There were fat, jolly men and plump, confidential women, young gentlemen whose flushed cheeks attested to their love of merriment and lack of prudence, and anxious young girls, trying various strategies to trap one of the aforementioned young men into marriage. And yet my gaze came to a halt when it reached the young hostess, Anne Grantham, wife of Jacob Grantham, the owner of this, one of the most prosperous estates in the county. I heard one of the plump, confidential women beside me whisper loudly to her neighbour, “…and what a match that Anne did make! Why if I could do half as well for my Letitia I would positively leap for joy! I always have wondered just how she managed it—she is a rather odd creature, you know—and with no background to speak of, why, I’ll wager twenty pounds no one in the town knows who her father was. If they do they certainly never told me…”
I lost interest in the old lady’s gossip as I observed its object. Anne Grantham was an attractive girl, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Her skin was smooth and creamy, but it was not the whitest that I had seen, nor even the whitest at the table. Her lips were the usual colour, and her cheeks not exceptionally rosy nor her teeth exceptionally white. Her hair hung in long, dark gently curling tresses, and her eyes were rather deep-set and very dark. Yet there was something about that face that would not let my gaze depart from it. The expression on her face was neither the anxious giggle of the hopeful maiden nor the excited gossip of the matron. It was calm, assured, confident, the look of one who trusts herself. Her eyes floated briefly about her guests and returned for a moment to her food as she gracefully slipped a piece of meat onto her fork. The man beside her spoke to her, although I was too far away to hear what he said. Her entire face changed to a look of childish innocence and I could see her apparently protesting his comment. Her eyes grew wide and she remonstrated for a moment, then flashed a good-humoured smile, and her eyes filled with warmth and good nature, as though she were dismissing his accusation as a joke.
This man was slightly older than Jacob Grantham, his hair beginning to grey and traces of wrinkles appearing around his eyes, but he was not an old man. I did not know him, and I presume that he was a visitor from a neighbouring county, but from his manner and style of dress I was certain of his wealth and status. After the exchange with his hostess, he had turned his attention to his chicken.
My eyes, however, were drawn back to Anne. The nuances of her expression were indescribable. Her eyes seemed to have deepened, and now scanned the table nonchalantly. However, the muscles of her face seemed tightened, tense. She did not look fearful, but I thought that I perceived a hint of caution, perhaps—as if she were wary of something or someone. Perhaps it was my imagination. Perhaps she was merely surveying her guests.
I looked away to avoid staring, but could not keep my gaze from her for more than a moment. When I again glanced in her direction, she was engaged in conversation with the same guest, and seemed to be highly interested in the topic. Her eyes were wide and fixed on him as if to drink in his words, and she even appeared to be distracted from her food, as she held her fork with its morsel of chicken in her hand just below her mouth. The light of the candles glinted off of the ruby ring that adorned her smooth, sure, hand as she slowly, absentmindedly turned her fork, opened her mouth, and slipped the food off of the utensil. I followed her hand to the table, where it rested with the fork. She wore a silver ring with a heart-shaped ruby set atop a rather large, heart-shaped casing. Around the ruby was seemingly ornate metalwork, but I could not see its details from my distance.
Suddenly I saw her eyes dart momentarily to her husband at the opposite end of the table. As she did so, I thought that the same slightly tense, alert look that I had seen before returned to her face, but only for an instant. Before I could be certain of what I saw she was again so intently engrossed in her conversation with her neighbour that I wondered if her eyes had ever left him at all. I turned to her husband, my host, but saw nothing to draw her attention. He was merely chatting with Lady Dinsmore, a loquacious elderly woman who could not possibly arouse jealousy in a woman like Anne, and sipping his prized red wine. I had not been listening to their conversation, however, and I supposed that Anne had caught a word that interested her.
My own dinner was a bit neglected at that point, so I tried to concentrate on eating without looking so self-contained as to attract the sympathy of the ladies beside me. Something, however, would not allow me to be distracted. Something pulled at my eyes, my mind, my heart, and forced me to watch the nuances of that unforgettable face. Every muscle, every movement of the eye, every curl of the lip was so unspeakably expressive and yet so utterly indecipherable that I was captivated. I abandoned my dinner and turned my eyes to her again.
Her companion had apparently just finished his discourse and plunged into his food with such resolve that he reminded me of myself only a few moments earlier. The wide-eyed, fascinated smile was fading from her face, and as she returned to her food I saw her cast a very different glance in his direction. Her eyes seemed to narrow a bit, her jaw to tighten ever so slightly, and a barely detectable upward curl to appear at the corners of her mouth. She then cast her gaze in the direction of her husband again, who was still chatting with Lady Dinsmore and sipping wine, with the look that had first captured my attention—calm, sure, and steady. She then perused all of her guests and seemed to be satisfied. A smile crept over her lips. It was hardly perceptible, but the shadows thrown by the candlelight on her modelled cheeks showed me the tightening of the muscles and the ever so slight swelling just below the cheekbones. She contentedly turned her eyes to her plate, and so continued for the next few moments.
Suddenly a low gasp from Jacob Grantham drew the attention of every guest. He clasped his chest, and his face was contorted in unspeakable agony. His eyes bulged from his face as he clamoured for breath, writhing in excruciating pain.
“My—heart!” he gasped, “Call a—doc—tor!” He then slumped in his chair and uproar swept the table. Ladies exclaimed that they should faint, and men appeared not to know what to do. A few guests rushed to his side.
I turned to Anne. She was rising from her chair to go to him. Everyone’s gaze except mine was fixed on the dying man. Some of those faces were marked with shock, and others with horror, but not Anne’s. She retained the same calm, controlled look as before, although I thought I perceived that her eyes were a bit narrower. I saw her pause after she stood, take a slow breath, and then rush to her husband’s side. She then hurried to the kitchen door and called out some orders to the servants, presumably that they call a doctor, and then returned to Mr. Grantham’s side. Although he was unconscious, she took his hand and kissed it repeatedly, a concerned frown crinkling her forehead but no flash of shock disturbing the soft night of her deep, dark eyes.
The ladies beside me babbled more obnoxiously than ever. God forbid that he should die, but he did have a chance at living yet, for he had always had a bad heart and had had several attacks before this. The first that anyone could remember was at that horse race—the one to which Lady Caswell wore that perfectly horrid dress—did she remember? Why of course she did, how could one ever forget such an atrocity—anyway, it was at that race, and they had nearly pronounced him dead when the fellow miraculously rallied and was unmolested for the next three months. That next incident wasn’t nearly so serious, of course—that was about two years before he married Anne. Of course he had that fit on the day of the Dinsmores’ ball last year and couldn’t attend, and there was the time…
This time, however, he did not rally. The butler entered with a few other servants and they carried him out to await the doctor. Anne turned to her guests, apologized for the disturbance, and bade us all finish our dinner and trust to Heaven and to medicine to do the best for our host. Her voice was tense and unsteady, but her eyes were the picture of calm. Her forehead vacillated between a worried frown and a helpless strain, but her lips were steady, her jaw unwavering. She spoke to the musician, apparently instructing her to resume her music, then followed her husband out of the room. As the guests settled back into their places, with the exception of a very few who had accompanied the Granthams, including Lord Dinsmore, the husband of one of the ladies beside me, and Anne’s companion, the strains of the old love-song drifted again across the room, distantly, as if from another world: “Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge with mine. Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine…”

I never saw Anne Grantham again. I learned the day after the dinner party that Jacob Grantham had died of a heart attack, hardly a surprise considering his medical history. I was unable to attend the funeral because I was urgently needed in London on business, and when I returned Anne had gone to stay at the home of friends in Suffolk, as she presumably had no family. Scarcely over a year later, I overheard the ladies say that she had married Walter Hampton, a wealthy Suffolk landowner who had been a friend of Mr. Grantham’s and had even been at his side when he was pronounced dead. That was the last I ever heard of her. And yet I still find myself wondering from time to time if perhaps those eyes were steady for a reason. My mind’s eye is still drawn to that darting glance whenever Jacob Grantham took a sip of wine, that oversized ring that could easily have disguised a tiny clasp in the metalwork, and the calm of those eyes through it all. Although I am no doctor, I do know that when a heart condition exists, attacks are easily induced… but perhaps it is all in my imagination.