"Do take her out, Henry," she said. "She"s been on my nerves all evening."
So we went, and there was a girl in one of the pictures who had exactly the right hair arrangement. She had it loose and wavy about her face, and it blew about the way things do blow in the movies, and in the back it was a sort of soft wad.
It shows the a.s.sociation of ideas that I found my hand in Henry"s coat pocket, and he grabbed it like a lunatic.
"You darling!" he said thickly. "Don"t do that unless you mean it. I can"t stand it."
I had to be very cool on the way home in the motor or he would have kissed me.
Mother and I went to a reception on the following Tuesday, and I wondered if mother noticed. She did. Coming home in the motor she turned and stared at me.
"Thank heaven, Kit," she said, "you still look like a young girl. All at once Ellie and the others look like married women. Earrings! It"s absurd. And such earrings! I am quite sure," she went on, eying me, "that some of them had been smoking. I got an unmistakable whiff of it when I was talking with Bessie Willing."
Well, I had rinsed my mouth with mouth wash and dabbed my lips with cologne, so she got nothing from me. But I tasted like a drug store.
I am not smoking now. I am not doing much of anything. I--but I"m coming to that.
I"m no hypocrite. I"d been raised for one purpose, and that was to marry well. If I did it in my own way, and you think my way not exactly ethical, I can"t help it. This thing of sitting back and letting somebody find you and propose to you is ridiculous. There is only one life, and we have to make the best we can of it.
Ethical! Don"t girls always have the worst of it anyhow? They can"t go and ask the man. They have to lie in wait and plan and scheme, or get left and have their younger sisters come out and crowd them, and at twenty-five or so begin to regard any man at all as a prospect. Maybe my methods sound a bit crude, but compared with the average girl I know, I was delicate. I didn"t play up my attractions, at least not more than was necessary. I was using my mind, not my body.
III
On Tuesday night I was going to a dance. Mother and father were dining out and were to meet me later, so I was free until ten o"clock. That night Henry brought Russell Hill.
I kept them waiting a few minutes, and came down ready for the car. At the last minute I pulled my hair a bit loose over my face, and the effect was exactly right.
Henry was horribly uncomfortable, and left in a few minutes. He was going with some people to the dance, and would see us later. About all he said was with his usual tact.
"You two ought to get together," he said. "There"s a lot too much being whispered these days, and not enough talking out loud."
With that he went, and we two were left facing each other.
"This is one of Henry"s inspirations, Miss Katherine," Russell said.
"I--I don"t usually have to wait until the family is out before I make a call."
"Families are queer," I said non-committally. There was a window open and I stood near it, under a pink lamp, and let my hair blow about.
"Are we going to sit down, or am I to be banished as soon as I"ve explained that I am a safe companion for a debutante?"
He was plainly laughing at me, although he was uncomfortable too. And I have some spirit left.
"I am afraid you are giving me credit for too much interest," I said.
"This is Henry"s idea, you know. You needn"t defend yourself to me. You look--entirely safe."
He hated that. No man likes to look entirely safe. He put his hands in his pockets and half closed his eyes.
"Humph!" he said. "Then I gather that this whole meeting is a mistake.
I"m respectable enough to be uninteresting, and the ban your people have placed on me doesn"t particularly concern you!"
"That"s not quite true," I said slowly. "I--if I ever got a chance to know you really well, I"m sure we"d be--but I"ll never get a chance, you know."
"Upon my word," he broke out, "I"d like to know just what your people have heard! But that doesn"t matter. What really matters"--he had hardly taken his eyes off me--"what really matters is that I am going to see you again. Often!"
"It"s impossible."
"Rot! We"re always going to the same places. Am I absolutely warned off?"
"You"re not. But I am."
He began to walk up and down the room. Half an hour before he had never given me a thought. Henry, I knew, had lugged him there by sheer force and a misplaced sense of justice. And now he was pacing about in a rage!
He stopped rather near me.
"If it"s Mrs. Warrington all the fuss is about, it"s imbecile," he said.
"In the first place, there never was anything to it. In the second place, it"s all over anyhow."
"I don"t know what the fuss is about."
"You know the whole thing. Don"t pretend you don"t. You"ve got the face of a little saint, with all that fluffy hair, but your eyes don"t belong to the rest, young lady. Are you going to dance with me to-night?"
"I"m afraid not."
"Well, you"ll give me a little time, won"t you? I suppose we can sit in a closet and talk, or hide on a veranda."
"It"s--it"s rather sneaking, isn"t it?"
"That doesn"t hurt it any for me."
So I promised, and, the car being announced, he put my wrap round my shoulders.
"Stunning hair you"ve got," he said from behind me. "Thank heaven for hair that isn"t marceled and glued up in a net!"
I held out my hand in the hall, and he took it.
"I"m not such a bad lot after all, am I?" he demanded.
With my best spontaneous gesture I put my free hand over his as it held mine.
"I"m so sorry, so terribly sorry, if I"ve misunderstood," I said earnestly.
Wallace had gone to the outer door. Russell Hill stooped over and kissed my hand.
Well, it was working. An hour before I was one of what I"d heard he had called "the dolly dozen." Now, by merely letting him understand that he couldn"t have what he"d never wanted, he was eager.
We sat out one dance under the stairs, and an intermission in a pantry while the musicians who had been stationed there were getting their supper. He tried to hold my hand and I drew it away--not too fast, but so he could understand the struggle I was having between duty and inclination. And we talked about love.