"No, I won"t hear you talk so, colonel!" cried a bride of a year. "Uncle George is never stupid, and he couldn"t be old. What would all these young girls do--what would I have done" (another love affair with St.
George as healer and mender!)--"what would anybody have done without him? Come, Miss Lavinia--do you hear the colonel abusing Uncle George because he isn"t married? Speak up for him--it"s wicked of you, colonel, to talk so."
Miss Lavinia Clendenning, who was one of St. George"s very own, in spite of her forty-odd years, threw back her head until the feathers in her slightly gray hair shook defiantly:
"No--I won"t say a word for him, Sue. I"ve given him up forever. He"s a disgrace to everybody who knows him."
"Oh, you renegade!" exclaimed St. George in mock alarm.
"Yes,--a positive disgrace! He"ll never marry anybody, Sue, until he marries me. I"ve begged him on my knees until I"m tired, to name the day, and he won"t! Just like all you shiftless Marylanders, sir--never know when to make up your minds."
"But you threw me over, Lavinia, and broke my heart," laughed Temple with a low bow, his palms flattened against his waistcoat in a.s.sumed humility.
"When?"
"Oh, twenty years ago."
"Oh, my goodness gracious! Of course I threw you over then;--you were just a baby in arms and I was old enough to be your mother--but now it"s different. I"m dying to get married and n.o.body wants me. If you were a Virginian instead of a doubting Marylander, you would have asked me a hundred times and kept on asking until I gave in. Now it"s too late.
I always intended to give in, but you were so stupid you couldn"t or wouldn"t understand."
"It"s never too late to mend, Lavinia," he prayed with hands extended.
"It"s too late to mend you, St. George! You are cracked all over, and as for me--I"m ready to fall to pieces any minute. I"m all tied up now with corset laces and stays and goodness knows what else. No--I"m done with you."
While this merry badinage was going on, the young people crowding the closer so as not to lose a word, or making room for the constant stream of fresh arrivals on their way toward the dressing-rooms above, their eyes now and then searching the top of the stairs in the hope of getting the first glimpse of Kate, our heroine was receiving the final touches from her old black mammy. It took many minutes. The curl must be adjusted, the full skirts pulled out or shaken loose, the rare jewels arranged before she was dismissed with--"Dah, honey chile, now go-long.
Ain"t nary one on "em ain"t pizen hongry for ye--any mos" on "em "ll drown derselves "fo" mawnin" becos dey can"t git ye."
She is ready now, Harry beside her, her lace scarf embroidered with pink rosebuds floating from her lovely shoulders, her satin skirt held firmly in both hands that she might step the freer, her dainty silk stockings with the ribbons crossed about her ankles showing below its edge.
But it was the colonel who took possession of her when she reached the floor of the great hall, and not her father nor her lover.
"No, Harry--stand aside, sir. Out with you! Kate goes in with me!
Seymour, please give your arm to Mrs. Rutter." And with the manner of a courtier leading a princess into the presence of her sovereign, the Lord of Moorlands swept our Lady of Kennedy Square into the brilliant drawing-room crowded with guests.
It was a great ball and it was a great ballroom--in s.p.a.ciousness, color, and appointments. No one had ever dreamed of its possibilities before, although everybody knew it was the largest in the county. The gentle hostess, with old Alec as head of the pulling-out-and-moving-off department, had wrought the change. All the chairs, tables, sofas, and screens, little and big, had either been spirited away or pushed back against the wall for tired dancers. Over the wide floor was stretched a linen crash; from the ceiling and bracketed against the white walls, relieved here and there by long silken curtains of gold-yellow, blazed cl.u.s.ters of candles, looking for all the world like so many bursting sky-rockets, while at one end, behind a ma.s.s of flowering plants, sat a quartette of musicians, led by an old darky with a cotton-batting head, who had come all the way from Philadelphia a-purpose.
Nor had the inner man been forgotten: bowls of hot apple toddy steamed away in the dining-room; bowls of eggnog frothed away in the library; ladlings of punch, and the contents of several old cut-gla.s.s decanters, flanked by companies of pipe-stem gla.s.ses, were being served in the dressing-rooms; while relays of hot terrapin, canvas-back duck, sizzling hot; olio, cold joints; together with every conceivable treatment and condition of oysters--in scallop sh.e.l.ls, on silver platters and in wooden plates--raw, roasted, fried, broiled, baked, and stewed--everything in fact that could carry out the colonel"s watchword, "Eat, drink, and be merry," were within the beck and call of each and every guest.
And there were to be no interludes of hunger and thirst if the host could help it. No dull pauses nor recesses, but one continued round, lasting until midnight, at which hour the final banquet in the dining-room was to be served, and the great surprise of the evening reached--the formal announcement of Harry and Kate"s engagement, followed by the opening of the celebrated bottle of the Jefferson 1800 Monticello Madeira, recorked at our young hero"s birth.
And it goes without saying that there were no interludes. The fun began at once, a long line of merry talk and laughter following the wake of the procession, led by the host and Kate, the colonel signalling at last to the cotton-batting with the goggle spectacles, who at once struck up a polka and away they all went, Harry and Kate in the lead, the whole room in a whirl.
This over and the dancers out of breath, Goggles announced a quadrille--the colonel and St. George helping to form the sets. Then followed the schottische, then another polka until everybody was tired out, and then with one accord the young couples rushed from the hot room, hazy with the dust of lint from the linen crash, and stampeded for the cool wide stairs that led from the great hall. For while in summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place--and the top step the one most sought--because there was n.o.body behind to see. This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the music struck up again.
"Oh, Kate, you precious darling, how lovely you look!" burst out Harry for the hundredth time when she had nestled down beside him--"and what a wonderful gown! I never saw that one before, did I?"
"No--you never have," she panted, her breath gone from her dance and the dash for the staircase. "It"s my dear mother"s dress, and her scarf too.
I had very little done to it--only the skirt made wider. Isn"t it soft and rich? Grandpa used to bring these satins from China."
"And the pearls--are they the ones you told me about?" He was adjusting them to her throat as he spoke--somehow he could not keep his hands from her.
"Yes--mother"s jewels. Father got them out of his strong-box for me this morning. He wanted me to wear them to-night. He says I can have them all now. She must have been very beautiful, Harry--and just think, dear--she was only a few years older than I am when she died. Sometimes when I wear her things and get to thinking about her, and remember how young and beautiful she was and how unhappy her life, it seems as if I must be unhappy myself--somehow as if it were not right to have all this happiness when she had none." There was a note of infinite pathos in her voice--a note one always heard when she spoke of her mother. Had Harry looked deeper into her eyes he might have found the edges of two tears trembling on their lids.
"She never was as beautiful as you, my darling--n.o.body ever was--n.o.body ever could be!" he cried, ignoring all allusion to her mother. Nothing else counted with the young fellow to-night--all he knew and cared for was that Kate was his very own, and that all the world would soon know it.
"That"s because you love me, Harry. You have only to look at her portrait in father"s room to see how exquisite she was. I can never be like her--never so gracious, so patient, no matter how hard I try."
He put his fingers on her lips: "I won"t have you say it. I won"t let anybody say it. I could hardly speak when I saw you in the full light of the hall. It was so dark in the coach I didn"t know how you looked, and I didn"t care; I was so glad to get hold of you. But when your cloak slipped from your shoulders and you--Oh!--you darling Kate!" His eye caught the round of her throat and the taper of her lovely arm--"I am going to kiss you right here--I will--I don"t care who--"
She threw up her hands with a little laugh. She liked him the better for daring, although she was afraid to yield.
"No--NO--Harry! They will see us--don"t--you mustn"t!"
"Mustn"t what! I tell you, Kate, I am going to kiss you--I don"t care what you say or who sees me. It"s been a year since I kissed you in the coach--forty years--now, you precious Kate, what difference does it make? I will, I tell you--no--don"t turn your head away."
She was struggling feebly, her elbow across her face as a shield, meaning all the time to raise her lips to his, when her eyes fell on the figure of a young man making his way toward them. Instantly her back straightened.
"There"s Langdon Willits at the bottom of the stairs talking to Mark Gilbert," she whispered in dismay. "See--he is coming up. I wonder what he wants."
Harry gathered himself together and his face clouded. "I wish he was at the bottom of the sea. I don"t like Willits--I never did. Neither does Uncle George. Besides, he"s in love with you, and he always has been."
"What nonsense, Harry," she answered, opening her fan and waving it slowly. She knew her lover was right--knew more indeed than her lover could ever know: she had used all the arts of which she was mistress to keep Willits from proposing.
"But he IS in love with you," Harry insisted stiffly. "Won"t he be fighting mad, though, when he hears father announce our engagement at supper?" Then some tone in her voice recalled that night on the sofa when she still held out against his pleading, and with it came the thought that while she could be persuaded she could never be driven.
Instantly his voice changed to its most coaxing tones: "You won"t dance with him, will you, Kate darling? I can"t bear to see you in anybody else"s arms but my own."
Her hand grasped his wrist with a certain meaning in the pressure.
"Now don"t be a goose, Harry. I must be polite to everybody, especially to-night--and you wouldn"t have me otherwise."
"Yes, but not to him."
"But what difference does it make? You are too sensible not to understand, and I am too happy, anyway, to want to be rude to anybody.
And then you should never be jealous of Langdon Willits."
"Well, then, not a round dance, please, Kate." He dare not oppose her further. "I couldn"t stand a round dance. I won"t have his arm touch you, my darling." And he bent his cheek close to hers.
She looked at him from under her shadowed lids as she had looked at St. George when she greeted him at the foot of the stairs; a gleam of coquetry, of allurement, of joy shining through her glances like delicate antennae searching to feel where her power lay. Should she venture, as her Uncle George had suggested, to take the reins in her own hands and guide this restive, mettlesome thoroughbred, or should she surrender to him? Then a certain mischievous coquetry possessed her.
With a light, bubbling laugh she drew her cheek away.
"Yes, any kind of a dance that he or anybody else wants that I can give him," she burst out with a coquettish twist of her head, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fun.
"But I"m on your card for every single dance," he demanded, his eyes again flashing. "Look at it--I filled it up myself," and he held up his own bit of paste-board so she could read the list. "I tell you I won"t have his arm around you!"
"Well, then, he sha"n"t touch even the tips of my fingers, you dreadful Mr. Bluebeard." She had surrendered now. He was never so compelling as when determined to have his own way. Again her whole manner changed; she was once more the sweetheart: "Don"t let us bother about cards, my darling, or dances, or anything. Let us talk of how lovely it is to be together again. Don"t you think so, Harry?" and she snuggled the closer to his arm, her soft cheek against his coat.
Before Harry could answer, young Willits, who had been edging his way up the stairs two steps at a time, avoiding the skirts of the girls, reaching over the knees of the men as he clung to the hand-rail, stood on the step below them.
"It"s my next dance, Miss Kate, isn"t it?" he asked eagerly, scanning her face--wondering why she looked so happy.