"Crying!" repeated Nina incredulously. Then, disarmed by the serene frankness of the girl, she added: "A blue-stocking is bad enough, but a grimy one is impossible. _Allons! Vite_!" she insisted, driving Eileen before her; "the country is demoralising you. Philip, we"re dining early, so please make your arrangements to conform. Come, Eileen; have you never before seen Philip Selwyn?"
"I am not sure that I ever have," she replied, with a curious little smile at Selwyn. Nina had her by the hand, but she dragged back like a mischievously reluctant child hustled bedward:
"Good-bye," she said, stretching out her hand to Selwyn--"good-bye, my unfortunate fellow fogy! I go, slumpy, besmudged, but happy; I return, superficially immaculate--but my stockings will still be blue! ...
Nina, dear, if you don"t stop dragging me I"ll pick you up in my arms!--indeed I will--"
There was a laugh, a smothered cry of protest; and Selwyn was the amused spectator of his sister suddenly seized and lifted into a pair of vigorous young arms, and carried into the house by this tall, laughing girl who, an hour before, had lain there among the cushions, frightened, unconvinced, clinging instinctively to the last gay rags and tatters of the childhood which she feared were to be stripped from her for ever.
It was clear starlight when they were ready to depart. Austin had arrived unexpectedly, and he, Nina, Eileen, and Selwyn were to drive to Hitherwood House, Lansing and Gerald going in the motor-boat.
There was a brief scene between Drina and Boots--the former fiercely pointing out the impropriety of a boy like Gerald being invited where she, Drina, was ignored. But there was no use in Boots offering to remain and comfort her as Drina had to go to bed, anyway; so she kissed him good-bye very tearfully, and generously forgave Gerald; and comforted herself before she retired by putting on one of her mother"s gowns and pinning up her hair and parading before a pier-gla.s.s until her nurse announced that her bath was waiting.
The drive to Hitherwood House was a dream of loveliness; under the stars the Bay of Shoals sparkled in the blue darkness set with the gemmed ruby and sapphire and emerald of ships" lanterns glowing from unseen yachts at anchor.
The great flash-light on Wonder Head broke out in brilliancy, faded, died to a cinder, grew perceptible again, and again blazed blindingly in its endless monotonous routine; far lights twinkled on the Sound, and farther away still, at sea. Then the majestic velvety shadow of the Hither Woods fell over them; and they pa.s.sed in among the trees, the lamps of the depot wagon shining golden in the forest gloom.
Selwyn turned instinctively to the young girl beside him. Her face was in shadow, but she responded with the slightest movement toward him:
"This dusk is satisfying--like sleep--this wide, quiet shadow over the world. Once--and not so very long ago--I thought it a pity that the sun should ever set... . I wonder if I am growing old--because I feel the least bit tired to-night. For the first time that I can remember a day has been a little too long for me."
She evidently did not ascribe her slight sense of fatigue to the scene on the veranda; perhaps she was too innocent to surmise that any physical effect could follow that temporary stress of emotion. A quiet sense of relief in relaxation from effort came over her as she leaned back, conscious that there was happiness in rest and silence and the soft envelopment of darkness.
"If it would only last," she murmured lazily.
"What, Eileen?"
"This heavenly darkness--and our drive, together... . You are quite right not to talk to me; I won"t, either... . Only I"ll drone on and on from time to time--so that you won"t forget that I am here beside you."
She lay so still for a while that at last Nina leaned forward to look at her; then laughed.
"She"s asleep," she said to Austin.
"No, I"m not," murmured the girl, unclosing her eyes; "Captain Selwyn knows; don"t you? ... What is that sparkling--a fire-fly?"
But it was the first paper lantern glimmering through the Hitherwood trees from the distant lawn.
"Oh, dear," sighed Eileen, sitting up with an effort, and looking sleepily at Selwyn. "_J"ai sommeil--besoin--dormir_--"
But a few minutes later they were in the great hall of Hitherwood House, opened from end to end to the soft sea wind, and crowded with the gayest, noisiest throng that had gathered there in a twelvemonth.
Everywhere the younger set were in evidence; slim, fresh, girlish figures pa.s.sed and gathered and crowded the stairs and galleries with a flirt and flutter of winnowing skirts, delicate and light as powder-puffs.
Mrs. Sanxon Orchil, a hard, highly coloured, tight-lipped little woman with electric-blue eyes, was receiving with her slim brunette daughter, Gladys.
"A tight little craft," was Austin"s invariable comment on the matron; and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a converted yacht cleared for action.
Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable, and from time to time squinting sideways, as usual, in the ever-renewed expectation that he might catch a glimpse of his stiff, retrousse moustache.
The Lawns were there, the Minsters, the Craigs from Wyossett, the Grays of Shadow Lake, the Draymores, Fanes, Mottlys, Cardwells--in fact, it seemed as though all Long Island had been drained from Cedarhurst to Islip and from Oyster Bay to Wyossett, to pour a stream of garrulous and animated youth and beauty into the halls and over the verandas and terraces and lawns of Hitherwood House.
It was to be a lantern frolic and a lantern dance and supper, all most formally and impressively _sans facon_. And it began with a candle-race for a big silver gilt cup--won by Sandon Craig and his partner, Evelyn Cardwell, who triumphantly bore their lighted taper safely among the throngs of hostile contestants, through the wilderness of flitting lights, and across the lawn to the goal where they planted it, unextinguished, in the big red paper lantern.
Selwyn and Eileen came up breathless and laughing with the others, she holding aloft their candle, which somebody had succeeded in blowing out; and everybody cheered the winners, significantly, for it was expected that Miss Cardwell"s engagement to young Craig would be announced before very long.
Then rockets began to rush aloft, starring the black void with iridescent fire; and everybody went to the lawn"s edge where, below on the bay, a dozen motor-boats, dressed fore and aft with necklaces of electric lights, crossed the line at the crack of a cannon in a race for another trophy.
Bets flew as the excitement grew, Eileen confining hers to gloves and bonbons, and Selwyn loyally taking any offers of any kind as he uncompromisingly backed Gerald and Boots in the new motor-boat--the _Blue Streak_--Austin"s contribution to the Silverside navy.
And sure enough, at last a blue rocket soared aloft, bursting into azure magnificence in the zenith; and Gerald and Boots came climbing up to the lawn to receive prize and compliments, and hasten away to change their oilskins for attire more suitable.
Eileen, turning to Selwyn, held up her booking list in laughing dismay: "I"ve won about a ton of bonbons," she said, "and too many pairs of gloves to feel quite comfortable."
"You needn"t wear them all at once, you know," he a.s.sured her.
"Nonsense! I mean that I don"t care to win things. Oh!"--and she laid her hand impulsively on his arm as a huge sheaf of rockets roared skyward, apparently from the water.
Then, suddenly, Neergard"s yacht sprang into view, outlined in electricity from stem to stern, every spar and funnel and contour of hull and superstructure twinkling in jewelled brilliancy.
On a great improvised open pavilion set up in the Hither Woods, garlanded and hung thick with multi-coloured paper lanterns, dancing had already begun; but Selwyn and Eileen lingered on the lawn for a while, fascinated by the beauty of the fireworks pouring skyward from the _Niobrara_.
"They seem to be very gay aboard her," murmured the girl. "Once you said that you did not like Mr. Neergard. Do you remember saying it?"
He replied simply, "I don"t like him; and I remember saying so."
"It is strange," she said, "that Gerald does."
Selwyn looked at the illuminated yacht... . "I wonder whether any of Neergard"s crowd is expected ash.o.r.e here. Do you happen to know?"
She did not know. A moment later, to his annoyance, Edgerton Lawn came up and asked her to dance; and she went with a smile and a whispered: "Wait for me--if you don"t mind. I"ll come back to you."
It was all very well to wait for her--and even to dance with her after that; but there appeared to be no peace for him in prospect, for Scott Innis came and took her away, and Gladys Orchil offered herself to him very prettily, and took him away; and after that, to his perplexity and consternation, a perfect furor for him seemed to set in and grow among the younger set, and the Minster twins had him, and Hilda Innis appropriated him, and Evelyn Cardwell, and even Mrs. Delmour-Carnes took a hand in the badgering.
At intervals he caught glimpses of Eileen through the gay crush around him; he danced with Nina, and suggested to her it was time to leave, but that young matron had tasted just enough to want more; and Eileen, too, was evidently having a most delightful time. So he settled into the harness of pleasure and was good to the pink-and-white ones; and they told each other what a "dear" he was, and adored him more inconveniently than ever.
Truly enough, as he had often said, these younger ones were the charmingly wholesome and refreshing antidote to the occasional misbehaviour of the mature. They were, as he also a.s.serted, the hope and promise of the social fabric of a nation--this younger set--always a little better, a little higher-minded than their predecessors as the wheel of the years slowly turned them out in gay, eager, fearless throngs to teach a cynical generation the rudiments of that wisdom which blossoms most perfectly in the hearts of the unawakened.
Yes, he had frequently told himself all this; told it to others, too.
But, now, the younger set, _en ma.s.se_ and in detail, had become a little bit _cramponne_--a trifle too all-pervading. And it was because his regard for them, in the abstract, had become centred in a single concrete example that he began to find the younger set a nuisance. But others, it seemed, were quite as mad about Eileen Erroll as he was; and there seemed to be small chance for him to possess himself of her, unless he were prepared to make the matter of possession a pointed episode. This he knew he had no right to do; she had conferred no such privilege upon him; and he was obliged to be careful of what he did and said lest half a thousand bright unwinking eyes wink too knowingly--lest frivolous tongues go clip-clap, and idle brains infer that which, alas!
did not exist except in his vision of desire.
The Hither Woods had been hung with myriads of lanterns. From every branch they swung in cl.u.s.ters or stretched away into perspective, turning the wooded aisles to brilliant vistas. Under them the more romantic and the dance-worn strolled in animated groups or quieter twos; an army of servants flitted hither and thither, serving the acre or so of small tables over each of which an electric cl.u.s.ter shed yellow light.
Supper, and then the Woodland cotillon was the programme; and almost all the tables were filled before Selwyn had an opportunity to collect Nina and Austin and capture Eileen from a very rosy-cheeked and indignant boy who had quite lost his head and heart and appeared to be on the verge of a headlong declaration.
"It"s only Percy Draymore"s kid brother," she explained, pa.s.sing her arm through his with a little sigh of satisfaction. "Where have you been all the while?--and with whom have you danced, please?--and who is the pretty girl you paid court to during that last dance? What? _Didn"t_ pay court to her? Do you expect me to believe that? ... Oh, here comes Nina and Austin... . How pretty the tables look, all lighted up among the trees! And such an uproar!"--as they came into the jolly tumult and pa.s.sed in among a labyrinth of tables, greeted laughingly from every side.