Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 6.djvu/37

Dupont, who looked like a Spanish beauty well past her prime, dealt in masculine "futures," and was gowned from Paris.

Ned Angell had bored her with accounts of Hope. It gave her and Cora a certain satisfaction to perceive the girl, on her entrance, a dim little thing, obviously gauche.

Dim she was, gasping for breath, like a fresh-landed minnow, in her new element. Ned could not strike a spark from her, and he did like coruscations, fireworks. A part of Hope's prettiness was an extreme delicacy of complexion, waxlike almost; even her mouth was only pink. When she felt dashed or ill it was as though a fine grey ash had fallen on her. It fell on her now; she looked forlorn, and the odd gown she had chosen, admirably suited to her glowing mood, seemed sombre. It was of black lace, and her slippers were of soft blue satin; a ridiculous blue rose blossomed on her shoulder, and a black chiflon band encircled her head, with a fluffy bow that was meant to be perky. It had slipped a bit, and sat over one eye, making her look extraordinarily lost and neglected, but very quaint. Ned, beside her, felt humorously despairing. He would have to hand her over to the men with whom she must dance like—like a sick kitten, instead of "permitting them the privilege." He did not apply the epithet harshly; no one could feel harsh toward a poor little kitten.

He wondered why she attracted him at all. Sometimes, so did she. Undoubtedly the attraction existed; more, perhaps, in her absence than otherwise. He always went back to her, as though to look at her once more and confirm a previous impression, or perhaps hoping that at last she might realize some subtle anticipation. That she literally never heeded him at all, neither his comings nor his goings, was part of the charm. He could not imagine her waiting for him, even unconsciously. During an interim she would go on about her own affairs, just being herself. And it might be she would develop a new phase, and he should not miss it, He had had so many love affairs of all kinds, he was not sure but this was a new kind—when he was away from her.

They danced the first together, of course; her little blue satin feet were light on the floor. As her card was not half filled, he left her then to remedy the matter. She subsided into a seat, pale, but evidently of stoic courage. She was looking at the patronesses, with a touch of sly deliberation in her eye, when Mary and Mrs. Patten found her and swept down on her with subdued rustlings and laughter. It was charming to see her eyes at once darken and light up and the animation flow back to her face. The missing colour note was supplied to her tonal ensemble. And she wanted to kiss Mary and Lisbeth; her eyes said it, her mouth said it, but without words. That kissing expression was what made Tony Yorke, who had been watching her with mingled pity and amusement, get up from his chair and go in search of Ned. He decided suddenly he wanted to be presented to her.

"Thank heaven," Hope was saying to Mary. "Now I want you to impress all these people indelibly on my mind by telling me something horribly scandalous about each of them. Begin with the patronesses."

They did begin with the patronesses, who represented every shade of the town's evolution toward "society" as Mary explained. From Mrs. Manners—small, withered, terrifically dignified in her venerable Vandyke gown of velvet draped with real, if soiled, old lace—who had brought her country traditions with her from England along with the gown and preserved them inviolate through twenty years of struggle with the rawness of a frontier town, to Mrs Lockwood, a walking advertisement of her husband's trade as to avoirdupols, and his prosperity as to diamonds, they presented a complete social microcosm.

"Who," asked Lisbeth, "is that small, fair woman with Mrs. Lockwood? Have I ever seen her before"

"Perhaps not, she is only visiting. Mrs. Lockwood caught her in Banff. She," Mary smiled, "is a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Norway. Now, she's talking to Amy Bellwood. The Bellwood girls used to peddle milk, and I always fancy Amy carries her muff like a quart measure!"

"Cat!" said Hope. "Go on!" But Ned interrupted, with a tall, brown-eyed young man in tow, who looked at her with an air of recognition.

 

HER name he knew; his mind always placed an interrogation point after it. He had seen her, times innumerable. It was characteristic of the difference in them; she had seen him, consciously, just once. He knew what she did; vaguely, where she came from; very definitely, what she looked like; and not at all what she was. He had always been curious about her, but only now in a personal way. At first, he had thought of her as "a girl Ned Angell took about;" later she was "the girl with the feet;" pretty feet she had, with a singularly light and happy way of hurrying along. Then he had seen her, in Edgerton's car. Now Tony Yorke was the child of his age, an unconscious worshipper of success. Edgerton's interest in the girl—whatever nature it partook of—invested her with a sort of value, a speculative value, one might say. There must be something in her. Edgerton and Ned Angell—extraordinary combination! She must be a queer little devil. He reserved judgment, in the way men do; a way that allows them to feel very generous since such a reserved judgment is tantamount to no more than a suspended sentence. Even admitting the worst, she must be one of those really rare women who wear their rue with a difference. Edgerton's manner to her convinced him of that. It did not quite convince him of anything else. In respect to Ned Angell, their presence here did convince Yorke; he could have echoed Mary Darke's dictum from that—she must have snubbed Ned! But Edgerton was different; he was a big man in his way, and would act like one. Well, there was the situation. He rather wanted to be on the inside of it all, and was quite willing to grin with her at Ned. But after all, that sudden look of hers made him forget every other reason, and simply wish to meet her because he did wish to meet her. And, his vision clear for a moment, he saw both Ned and Edgerton explained in himself. But unfortunately such moments of clairvoyance do not last. For one thing, few of us are willing to admit in cold blood that we are just exactly like other people.

 

HIS moment lasted the evening. Hope, looking up suddenly, smiled straight into his eyes, and held out her hand, quite unnecessarily. "But I know you," she said, and thought at the moment she was telling the truth. She had seen him once before, that was all. So she rose and let music carry her away with him, without even looking back at Mary and Lisbeth Patten.

Falling in love is not a faithfully descriptive phrase. One soars up to love as to a sunlighted pinnacle above a world of grey fog. Wings of enchantment are lent for the occasion. The kingdoms of the world are spread out before the transported victim, who promptly spurns them. The falling occurs subsequently.

Then the bruised and bleeding creature, who so lately was a god, sits painfully for awhile estimating injuries, and presently begins to pick up the pieces. Generally, it is found they can be got together in workable shape, with considerable effort, but nothing will ever be quite the same again. But if the real gods have had pity, they have surreptitiously put a grain of common-sense into the new mixing, so that the next time love is achieved step by step, as an Alpine climber mounts, one takes pains to make love a little footing at the very top, where it may rest secure.

But the reason why any one falls in love cannot be told, for it is different in every case.

Tony Yorke had charm, a gift that no man has a right to. That is because he can go to the woman he desires and plead his own cause with no more shame than his conscience puts on him. A woman needs charm to bring her choice to her. When some wicked godmother gives it to a man she means mischief. It is an alien element and means trouble. By virtue of that misplaced quality, Tony Yorke could not look at a woman without his glance telling her that she was, of all the world, the one person he would rather spend the next hour with. He also looked at her as though they were sharing some rather amusing secret, only they two, against all the world.

When he gave Hope that reassuring, confidential message with his eyes, hers answered with the same joyful intelligence. She believed every word he did not say. She dragged from the recesses of her soul all the garments of romance that had been hidden there for almost all the years of her life, and in the space of one evening neatly cut and fitted them to his outward mea sure and hung them about him willy-nilly. And with a sweet shameless pride she did not care if the whole ballroom knew it.

As a matter of fact, no one knew it. She did not know it herself, It is the obvious thing escapes the world longest. Even Ned Angell felt rather glad that Hope had brightened up. She quite did him credit, though he did feel a slight, indefinable unease. Perhaps because he had at last found the expected, unexpected different phase in her.

He looked at her closely when he took her to supper, or as closely as he could. Ned was the least bit muddled. Hope knew he drank, sometimes; but she had never before had direct evidence of it. He had the conventional decency for that, But now she was absent-minded, and he saw it, and wanted to attract her attention; he talked louder than was his wont. Eating her cold chicken placidly, and aware through her lowered lashes of every turn of Tony Yorke's head at the far end of the long trestled table, where he sat with Cora Shane, Hope woke to a sudden horrified consciousness of what Ned was saying. More, she felt what he was about to say; what he had said was nothing.

"Ned," she said in a low voice that was like a splash of cold water, be quiet, or I shall leave the table." It stopped him on a word; he bit Mrs. Shane's name in two like a cherry, and was silent. Hope looked about swiftly. No one else had noticed. She looked at Ned; he was sulking, wearing an air of injured innocence. His smoothly-barbered cheek and shining hair, his immaculate shirt-bosom and cuffs, everything about him so clean and orderly and daintily nice, contributed to that expression; and all these things he had in common with every one who sat there, eating, drinking, laughing; and all these things, somehow, seemed to make what he had been saying absurd, These people, so carefully composed outwardly, did not look as though there was any evil in them, any more than Ned did. But he made her, for one rather horrible moment, fancy (Continued on next page)

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YWOMAN'S WORLD PAGE 35

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