Auburn-haired little Mrs. Kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. She was very piquant and enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious laugh, but her dinner partner, Judith"s father, was tired and hard to amuse. He looked very boyish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked large and pathetic.
The other two young women and Judith"s mother, whose dark, low-browed Madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf, deserved the Honourable Joseph Grant"s flowery name for them, the Three Graces.
Before the Colonel"s time and Judith"s the Honourable Joe had been the most important man in Green River, and in evening things, and after a properly concocted c.o.c.ktail he still looked it, florid and portly and well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. He looked ten years younger than his old friend, Judge Saxon. The Judge"s coat was getting shiny at the seams, and--this appeared even more unfortunate to Judith--he was in the habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarra.s.sment. Mrs.
Saxon"s pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year"s cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she affected at informal dinners. The Saxons were not quite in the picture, but they were always very kind to Judith.
And if they were not in the picture, Mrs. Joseph Grant, certainly not the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied the centre of it.
She was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of gla.s.s, in a book of Judith"s, and besides, she had once been a real debutante, of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to look at her better than any one here except Colonel Everard.
"Cosmopolitan--ten years ahead of Wells, or any town in your state; real give and take in the table talk; really pretty women; the same little group of people rubbing wits against each other day after day and getting them sharpened instead of dulled by it; a concentrated, pocket edition of a social life, but complete--nothing provincial about it," a very distinguished outsider had said after his last week-end with the Colonel.
But he was fresh from a visit to the state capital, the most provincial city in the state when the legislature was not in session; also he had a known weakness for pretty women. Green River did not admire the Colonel"s circle so unreservedly, but Green River was jealous. Whatever you thought of it, it was made of fixed and unpromising material, and making it was no mean achievement, and the man at the head of the table looked capable of it, and of bigger things.
The Colonel was a big man and a public character, and as with many bigger men, you could divide the facts of his life into two cla.s.ses: what everybody knew and what n.o.body knew. If the known facts were not the most dramatic ones, they were dramatic enough. He was sixty now. At fifteen he had been a student in a small theological seminary, working for his board on his uncle"s farm, and engaged to the teacher of the district school, who helped him with his Greek at night. He gave up the ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a fortune somehow--these were the days of big graft--married for money and got an a.s.sured position in Washington society thrown in, and soon after his marriage chose Green River as a basis of operations, spending a winter month in Washington which later lengthened to three, ostensibly for the sake of his wife"s health. The t.i.tle of Colonel came from serving on the Governor"s staff in an uneventful year. He had held no very important office, but his importance to his party in state and national politics was not to be measured by that.
White haired, slightly built, managing with perfectly apparent tricks of carriage and dress to look taller than he was, he was the effective figure in this rather unusually good-looking group of people. Just now he was lighting a fresh cigarette for Mrs. Burr so gracefully that even Judge Saxon must enjoy watching, so Judith thought, though there was a tradition that he did not like women to smoke. Shocking the Judge was one of their favourite games here. It was only a game. Of course they could never shock anybody. They were quite harmless people, too grown up to be very interesting, but almost always kind, and always gay.
The Colonel"s profile was really beautiful through the curling, bluish smoke, and Judith liked his quick, flashing smile. He turned now and smiled at Judith. Her own smile was charming, a faint, half smile, that never knew whether to turn into a real smile or to go away and not come again, but was always just on the point of deciding.
"Is our debutante bored?"
"Oh, no; I was just thinking. No."
"She"s blushing. Look at her."
"Yes, look at a real one. Do you good, Lil," agreed the Judge, and Mrs.
Burr rubbed a pink cheek with her table napkin, exhibited it daintily, and laughed.
"Rose-white youth! But she doth protest too much." The Honourable Joe was fond of quotations, and often tried to make his remarks sound like them, when he could not recall appropriate ones, raising a solemn fat finger to emphasize them: "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
"Wrong, wrong thoughts," supplied Randolph Sebastian, so gravely that the Honourable Joe accepted the amendment, and looked worried, as only the thought of losing his grip on Bartlett"s "Familiar Quotations" could worry him at the end of a perfect meal.
"Wrong thought?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice.
"Thinking"s barred here. What"s the penalty, Judge?"
"You aren"t likely to get it inflicted on you, so I won"t tell you, Lil."
"No, I don"t think; I act," Mrs. Burr admitted cheerfully. She always became a shade more cheerful just when you expected her to lose her temper.
"How true that is," observed Mr. Sebastian gently.
"Ranny!"
"Didn"t you play auction with me last night? We"re out just----"
"Don"t tell me. I can"t think in anything beyond three figures. Ted"s doing higher mathematics over it. That"s why he"s home, really. I"ll play with you again to-night, for your sins."
"For my sins!" He made melancholy eyes, as if he were really confessing them. Mr. Sebastian always pretended a deep devotion to Mrs. Burr.
Judith thought it was one of the silliest of their games.
"But what was Judy thinking about?" demanded Mrs. Grant, in the sweet, indifferent voice that always made itself heard.
"She met a fairy prince at the ball last night. They are still to be met--at b.a.l.l.s."
"You"d meet one anywhere he made a date, wouldn"t you, Edith Kent?" said the Judge rudely. "Give Miss Judy a penny for her thoughts, if you want them, Everard. You"ve got to pay sometimes, you know--even you."
"Don"t commercialize her too young," said Mr. Sebastian smoothly.
"Though, on the whole--can you commercialize them too young?"
"Judith, what were you thinking about?" the Colonel interrupted, rather quickly, turning every one"s eyes upon her at once, as he could with a word.
Judith met them confidently--amused, curious eyes, but all friendly and gay. They talked a great deal of nonsense here, but it did not irritate her, as it did her friend Judge Saxon, though she was not always amused, and could not always understand. They never tried to shock her. She was sorry for the Judge. He was not at home with these gay and good-natured people, and it was so easy to be.
She tipped her head backward in deliberate imitation of Edith Kent, whom she admired, half closed her eyes, like Lillian Burr, whom she admired still more, gazed up at the Colonel, and said, in her clear little voice:
"I was thinking about you."
"That"s the answer," said Mr. Kent, and rewarded it with a lump of sugar dipped in his apricot brandy.
"For an ingenue?" said Mrs. Burr, very sweetly indeed.
""She"s getting older every day,"" hummed Mrs. Kent, in her charming, throaty contralto.
But Judge Saxon pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.
"I"ve had dinner enough," he said, "and so have you, Miss Judy."
"We all have, Hugh," said the Colonel quickly, and rose, too, and slipped an intimate hand through his arm. "Run along, children! Hugh, about that Brady matter----"
Judge Saxon submitted sulkily, but was laughing companionably with the Colonel by the time they all reached the library.
Judith never admired the Colonel more than when he was managing Judge Saxon in a sulky mood. And she never admired the Colonel and his friends more than she did in the lazy intimate hour here before the cards began.
The room was long and high, and too narrow; unfriendly, as only a room that is both badly proportioned and unusually large can be, but you forgot this in the softening glow of candles and rose-shaded lights. You forgot, too, that you were an exile from your own generation, among elders who bored you, though you were subtly flattered to be among them.
Safe on a high window-bench in the most remote window, entirely your own, since the architect had not designed it to be sat on, and n.o.body else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of themselves in the big room.
Sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or Mrs.
Everard"s suite, if she was well, or out through the French windows, across the broad, gla.s.sed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the Colonel"s rose garden. It was warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, September moon showed invitingly through the windows. Mrs. Grant, who liked to be alone, as Judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the Honourable Joe"s big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window now, taking the coat that Mr. Sebastian brought her, but refusing to let him go with her.
He went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon Mrs. Burr.
"Ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? You terrify me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the Colonel"s chair.
Judith"s mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts demurely, and looking more Madonna-like than ever through the cloudy smoke of a belated cigarette. The others made themselves equally comfortable, all but Judge Saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact that he was not.
"Smile at me," Mrs. Kent begged, hovering over his chair; "I"m going to sing by and by, and I need it. Do smile! If you don"t, I"m going to kiss you, Judge."