CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without theguest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if shecould have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guestof the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle,on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, whichwas elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. Hecomplained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.
"Too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it--dresstoo well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. You need morebackground, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't havecream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and makea whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't--toomuch tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you needbackground. You can't get on without it."
"We do," said his host.
The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night,but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing hehad felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at allthe Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had beenadmitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working toohard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying theelaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rarehothouse flower.
You saw it in quick glimpses of passing faces thrown into strong reliefby the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight;you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of themusic, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden,the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air.You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusuallykeen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.
You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, oreven entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in thewomen's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide smuttyfingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make youforget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen tooclosely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.
There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasonswhich the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for lookingworried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of anyincome at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, butall quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of theweek before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secretconferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephonewire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would befrequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were themonths before election, when the things that were going to happen beganto happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talkedpolitics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even whenthey slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of thelawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached,the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.
No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh,cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at theheight of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware ofthe fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile andwide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the timeor place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties orprivileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take careof yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evidentfrom her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she wassharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark headclose to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly,as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equallyagreeable to her.
"We miss Judy so much," she said sweetly.
"I can see just how much, dear," said Judith's mother more sweetlystill.
"And it's so long since she's been here."
"She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not wellto-night."
"But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening."
"He did."
"There he is." The third person singular, unqualified, could mean onlyone gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentlemanwas passing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of thefact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fashioned waltz withelaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased ashe passed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, thoughit was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had ablurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculatedtouch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint butrelentless light of amusement in her narrowed eyes.
"Edie's had just one cocktail too many."
"Yes." They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. Theevening had reached the stage when he always had.
"He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear."
"I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil."
"I haven't seen him dance with you at all."
"He hasn't yet."
"No?" said Mrs. Burr, very casually.
"No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague."
"Don't you want me, dear? Well, Ranny always wants me."
Mr. Randolph Sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proofof this as he carried her off. If the Colonel's secretary had reallybeen recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there,and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was thetype of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gaveher lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker ofmeaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty anylonger, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced withMr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose ofdancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if theirelaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they werereally lovers.
Mrs. Clifford Kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into Mrs. Burr'sempty place. Her dance with the Colonel was over. "My Lord's in fineform to-night," she confided without preliminary. "We're going to playblind-man's buff after the duchess goes home." The duchess was Mrs.Grant, the Honourable Joe's wife, still the first lady of Green River,but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetlybehind her back. "He told me the tiger story." This represented atriumph. Getting the Colonel's smoking-room stories at first handinstead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form ofrivalry about which these ladies were frank with each other. "I got itout of Cliff first, anyway. He said he couldn't tell me, but he did. Imade him. Where was Harry last night?"
"What do you mean?"
"Cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. Didn'tHarry know about it?"
"What were they doing?"
"Just talking. The Colonel and I don't know who else. I heard twostrange voices, and I didn't hear Harry's voice. Didn't Harry know?"
"I suppose so. What did they talk about?"
"Campaign stuff--prohibition or something. Cliff wouldn't tell me."
"Was Teddy Burr there?"
"I didn't hear him. What do you care?"
"I don't care."
"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help itnow."
"Edith, don't go. Wait."
"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out inthe library and meet him inside. The duchess is getting jealous.Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and oldand tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh,darling--
" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to herfriend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away withoutwaiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laughbehind--"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybodybeen making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me.Good-bye."
Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her templesfor a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smileat Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at herkeenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.
"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"
"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."
"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unlessyou're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's thematter? Where's Harry?"
"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all Ican to-night."
"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the otherboys away."
The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settledinto a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quietword in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper ofthe party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the generalchange. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and theystayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her establishedprivilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. Nobody seemedto miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was aheavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness nowabout the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnaturalexcitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire ofinconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meantnothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all theColonel's parties, too.
The Judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in thewistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly topeople who cannot answer you in it.
"Don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? But it was here first,and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quitedecorative for a moon."
"I hate it," said Mrs. Randall, with a personal vindictiveness notusually directed against natural phenomena. The Judge took no immediatenotice of it. More guests had gone. In a cleared circle in the heart ofthe lanternlight Mrs. Kent was performing one of the more expurgatedand perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audiencethat remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. The motif of it wasfaintly Spanish.
"Paper doll," commented the Judge, "that's all that girl is. You andHarry are the best of them, Minna. They're a faky lot, all ofthem--about as real as a house of cards. It looks big, but it will alltumble down if you pull one card out--only one card. The devil of it isto know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if youhaven't got the nerve? I haven't. I'm too old. But it's a comfort tothink of it. Don't you agree with me?"
"I didn't really hear you."
"Minna, I've known you since you were two. Can't you tell me what's thematter? You're frightened."
She looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face tohim, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh.
"Nothing's the matter. Nothing new."
"Well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the Judge,rebuffed but still gentle. "I won't trouble you any longer, my dear.There comes Harry."
Mrs. Randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden andthe broad, unlighted lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light thatone of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite ofthe slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawntoward the garden.
His wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away fromthe lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. Her eyes weredizzy from the flickering lights. She could not see him clearly, and thefigure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see.
It was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. The man hadnot come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he hadslipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it,seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn ata queer little staggering run. Twice she saw him stand still, so stillthat she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped awaythrough the dark.
In the garden Mrs. Kent's performance was over, and the game ofblind-man's buff was beginning. It was a novelty, and acclaimed even atthis stage of the evening. Lillian Burr's shrill laugh and Edith Kent'spretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. They weretrying to blindfold the Colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, lookingsomehow vacuous and old, with his longish, white hair straggling acrosshis forehead. No one in the garden but Minna Randall had attention tospare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected.
Which was he? He was out of sight again, but this time she had seen himreach the edge of the lighted enclosure. Was he gone, or waitingoutside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, toappear suddenly at the end of it and among them? Instinctively she kepther eyes upon it, though her husband had already passed through. She waswatching for the figure that it might frame next.
"Harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his wayto her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in thelanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? Who was itfollowing you?"
He paid no attention to her question. He did not seem to hear it. He puta hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled.
"Oh, Harry, what is it?" she said. "I've had such a horrible evening.I'm so afraid."
"Don't be afraid, Minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to thetelephone. Norah's calling you. She's just come home. She wants to tellyou something about Judith."
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