She tried to recapture her position.
"Why, already--right after us."
She reseated herself, getting possession of one of his hands. To this tenderness he made no response. He seemed to ruminate. "Say, Rosie--" he began at last, but apparently thought better of what he had meant to say. "All right," he broke in, carelessly, going on to speak of the wisdom of leaving the public out of their confidence until their plans were more fully matured. "Thor"s to be married about the twentieth of next month," he continued, while Rosie was on her guard against further self-betrayal. "After that we"ll have Lois on our side, and she"ll do a lot for us."
By the time Claude emerged from the hothouse it was dark. Glad of the opportunity of slipping away un.o.bserved, he was hurrying toward the road when he found himself confronted by Jasper Fay. In the latter"s voice there was a sternness that got its force from the fact that it was so mild.
"You been in the hothouse, Mr. Claude?"
Claude laughed. In his present mood of happiness he could easily have announced himself as Fay"s future son-in-law. Nothing but motives of prudence held him back. He answered, jestingly, "Been in to see if you had any American beauties."
"No, Mr. Claude; we don"t grow them; no _kind_ of American beauties."
Claude laughed again. "Oh, I don"t know about that. Good night, Mr. Fay.
Glad to have seen you."
He pa.s.sed on with spirits slightly dashed because his condescension met with no response. He was so quick to feel that Fay"s silence struck him as hostile. It struck him as hostile with a touch of uncanniness. On glancing back over his shoulder he saw that Fay was following him watchfully, like a dog that sneaks after an intruder till he has left the premises. Being sensitive to the creepy and the sinister, Claude was glad when he had reached the road.
CHAPTER XVIII
The provision that for the moment he was to lead his customary life and Rosie hers made it possible for Claude to attend the ball by which Mrs.
Darling drew the notice of the world to her daughter. He did so with hesitations, compunctions, reluctances, and repugnances which in no wise diminished his desire to be present at the event.
It took place in the great circular ball-room of the city"s newest and most splendid hotel. The ball-room itself was white-and-gold and Louis Quinze. Against this background a tasteful decorator had constructed a colonnade that reproduced in flowers the exquisite marble circle of the Bosquet at Versailles. An imitation of Girardon"s fountain splashed in the center of the room and cooled the air.
Claude arrived late. He did so partly to compromise with his compunctions and partly to accentuate his value. In gatherings at which young men were sometimes at a premium none knew better than he the heightened worth of one who sauntered in when no more were to be looked for, and who carried himself with distinction. Handsome at any time, Claude rose above his own levels when he was in evening dress. His figure was made for a white waistcoat, his feet for dancing-pumps.
Moreover, he knew how to enter a room with that modesty which prompts a hostess to be encouraging. As he stood rather timidly in the doorway, long after the little receiving group had broken up, Mrs. Darling said to herself that she had never seen a more attractive young man--whoever he was!
She was glad afterward that she had made this reservation, for without it she might have been prejudiced against him on learning that he was Archie Masterman"s son. As it was, she could feel that the sins of the fathers were not to be visited on the children, especially in the case of so delightful a lad. Mrs. Darling had an eye for masculine good looks, particularly when they were accompanied by a suggestion of the thoroughbred. Claude"s very shyness--the gentlemanly hesitation which on the threshold of a ball-room has no dandified airs of seeming too much at ease--had this suggestion of the thoroughbred. Mrs. Darling, dragging a long, pink train and waving slowly a bespangled pink fan, moved toward him at once.
"How d"w do? So glad to see you! I"m afraid my daughter is dancing."
There was something in her manner that told him she had no idea who he was--something that could be combined with polite welcome only by one born to be a hostess.
Claude had that ready perception of his role which makes for social success. He bowed with the right inclination, and spoke with a gravity dictated by respect. "I"m afraid I must introduce myself, Mrs. Darling.
I"m so late. I"m Claude Masterman. My father is--"
"Oh, they"re here! So lovely your mother looks! Really there"s not a young girl in the room can touch her. Won"t you find some one and dance?
I"m sorry my daughter--But later on I"ll find her and intro--Why, Maidie, there you are! I thought you"d never come. How d"w do, dear?"
A more important guest than himself being greeted, Claude felt at liberty to move on a pace or two and look over the scene. It was easy to do this, for the outer rim of the circle, that which came beneath the colonnade, was raised by two steps above the s.p.a.ce reserved for dancing.
The _coup d"[oe]il_ was therefore extensive.
A ma.s.s of color, pleasing and confused, revolved languorously to those strains of the Viennese operetta in which the waltz might be said to have finished the autocracy of its long reign. The rhythm of the dancers was as regular and gentle as the breathing of a child. In glide and turn, in balance and smoothness, in that lift which was scarcely motion, there was the suggestion of frenzy restrained, of pa.s.sion lulled, which emanates from the barely perceptible heave of a slumbering summer sea.
It was dreamy to a charm; it was graceful to the point at which the eye begins to sicken of gracefulness; it was monotonous with the force of a necromantic spell. It was soothing; it also threw a hint of melancholy into a gathering intended to be gay. It was as though all that was most sentimentally lovely in the essence of the nineteenth century had concentrated its strength to subdue the daring spirit of the twentieth, winning a decade of success. Now, however, that the decade was past, there were indications of revolt. On the arc of the circle most remote from the eye of the hostess audacious couples were giving way to bizarre little dips and kicks and att.i.tudes, named by outlandish names, inaugurating a new freedom.
Claude stood alone beneath one of the wide, delicate floral arches--a spectator who was not afraid of being observed. In reality he was noting to himself the degree to which he had pa.s.sed beyond the merely pleasure-seeking impulse. In Rosie and Rosie"s cares he had come to realities. He was rather proud of it. With regard to the young men and young women swirling in this variegated whirlpool, as well as to those who, wearied with the dance, were sitting or reclining on the steps, where rugs and cushions had been thrown for their convenience, he felt a distinct superiority. They were still in the childish stage, while he was grown to be a man. To the pretty girls, with their Parisian frocks and their relatively idle lives, Rosie, with her power of tackling actualities, was as a human being to a race of marionettes. It would be necessary for him, in deference to his hosts, to step down among them in a minute or two and twirl in their company; but he would do it with a certain pity for those to whom this sort of thing was really a pastime; he would do it as one for whom pastimes had lost their meaning and who would be in some sense taking a farewell.
The music breathed out its last drowsy cadence, and the whirlpool resolved itself into a series of shimmering, subsidiary eddies. There was a decentralizing movement toward the rugs and cushions on the steps, or to the seclusion of seats skilfully embowered amid groups of palms.
Dowagers sought the rose-colored settees against the walls. Gentlemen, clasping their white-gloved hands at the base of their spinal columns, bent in graceful conversational postures. A few pairs of attractive young people continued to pace the floor. Claude remained where he was.
He remained where he was partly because he hadn"t decided what else to do, and partly because his quick eye had singled out the one girl in the room who embodied something that was not embodied by every other girl.
When first he saw her she was standing beside the Girardon fountain in conversation with a young man. The fact that the young man was his friend Cheever brought her directly within Claude"s circle and stirred that spirit of emulation which five minutes earlier he thought he had outlived. The girl was adjusting something in her corsage, her glance flying upward from the action of her fingers toward Cheever"s face, not shyly or coquettishly, but with a perfectly straightforward nonchalance which might have meant anything from indifference to defiance.
Claude knew the precise moment at which she noticed him by the fact that she glanced toward him twice in rapid succession, after which Cheever glanced toward him, too. He understood then that she had been sufficiently struck by him to ask his name, and judged that Billy would treat him to some such pardonable epithet as "awful a.s.s," in order to keep her attention on himself. In this apparently he didn"t succeed, for presently they began to saunter in Claude"s direction. The latter stood his ground.
In the knowledge that he could endure scrutiny, he stood his ground with an ease that plainly roused the young lady"s interest. With her hand on the arm of her cavalier she sauntered forward, and, swerving slightly, sauntered by. She sauntered by with a lingering look of curiosity that seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-a.s.sertive, but it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new experience, calling out in him a new response.
It was a rule with Claude never to take the initiative with girls of his own cla.s.s, or with those who--because they lived in the city while he lived in the village--felt themselves geographically his superiors. He found it wise policy to wait to be sought, and therefore fell back toward his hostess with compliments for her scheme of decoration. He got the reward he hoped for when Mrs. Darling called to her daughter, saying:
"Elsie dear, come here. I want to introduce Mr. Claude Masterman."
So it happened that when the nineteenth century was putting forth a further effort with the swooning phrases of the barcarolle from the "Contes d"Hoffmann," adapted to the Boston, Claude found himself swaying with the twentieth.
They had not much to say. Whatever interest they felt in each other was guarded, taciturn. When they talked it was in disjointed sentences on fragmentary subjects.
"You"ve been abroad, haven"t you?"
"Yes; for the last five years."
"Do you like being back?"
The answer was doubtful. "Rather. For some things." Then, as though to explain this lack of enthusiasm, "Everybody looks alike." She qualified this by adding, "You don"t."
"Neither do you," he stated, in the matter-of-fact tone which he felt to be suited to the piquantly matter-of-fact in her style.
It was a minute or two before either of them spoke again. "You"ve got a brother, haven"t you? My father"s his guardian or something."
a.s.senting to these statements, Claude said further, "He couldn"t come to-night because he"s going to be married on Thursday."
"To that Miss Willoughby, isn"t it?" A jerky pause was followed by a jerky addition: "I think she"s nice."
"Yes, she is; top-hole. So"s my brother."
She threw back her head to fling him up a smile that struck him as adorably straightforward. "I like to hear one brother speak of another like that. You don"t often."
"Oh, well, every brother couldn"t, you know."
They had circled and reversed more than once before she sighed: "I wish I had a brother--or a sister. It"s an awful bore being the only one."
"Better to be the only one than one of too many."
More minutes had gone by in the suave swinging of their steps to Offenbach"s somnolent measures when she asked, abruptly, "Do you skate?"