It was raining—a gentle, trickling summer rain, when, under a heap of magazines near a heavenly attic window, Missy and Tess came upon the paper-backed masterpieces of “The Duchess.”
The volume Missy chanced first to select for reading was entitled “Airy Fairy Lilian.” The very first paragraph was arresting:
Down the broad oak staircase—through the silent hall—into the drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted; through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the large, dull, handsome apartment almost comfortable...
“Broad oak staircase”—“drawing-room”—“large, dull, handsome apartment”—oh, wonderful!
Then on to the description of the alluring heroine:
... the face is more than pretty, it is lovely—the fair, sweet, childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes, now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her nose is pure Greek; her forehead low, but broad, is partly shrouded by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the exquisite azure within... There is a certain haughtiness about her that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression and laughing, kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young ash tree; her hands and feet are small and well-shaped; in a word, she is chic from the crown of her fair head down to her little arched instep...
Missy sighed; how wonderful it must be to be a creature so endowed by the gods!
Missy—Melissa—now, at the advanced age of fifteen, had supposed she knew all the wonders of books. She had learned to read the Book of Life: its enchantments, so many and so varied in Cherryvale, had kept her big grey eyes wide with smiles or wonder or, just occasionally, darkened with the mystery of sorrow. There was the reiterant magic of greening spring; and the long, leisurely days of delicious summer; the companionship of a quaint and infinitely interesting baby brother, and of her own cat—majesty incarnate on four black legs; and then, just lately, this exciting new “best friend,” Tess O'Neill. Tess had recently moved to Cherryvale, and was “different”—different even from Kitty Allen, though Missy had suffered twinges about letting anyone displace Kitty. But—
And, now, here it was in Tess's adorable attic (full of treasures discarded by departed tenants of the old Smith place) that Missy turned one of Life's milestones and met “the Duchess.”
Missy had loved to read the Bible (good stories there, and beautiful words that made you tingle solemnly); and fairy tales never old; and, almost best of all, the Anthology, full of poetry, that made you feel a strange live spirit back of the wind and a world of mysteries beyond the curtain of the sky.
But this—
The lure of letters was turned loud and seductive as the Blue Danube played on a golden flute by a boy king with his crown on!
Tess glanced up from her reading.
“How's your book?” she enquired.
“Oh, it's wonderful,” breathed Missy.
“Mine, too. Here's a description that reminds me a little of you.”
“Me?” incredulously.
“Yes. It's about the heroine—Phyllis. She's not pretty, but she's got a strange, underlying charm.”
Missy held her breath. She was ashamed to ask Tess to read the description of the strangely charming heroine, but Tess knew what friendship demanded, and read:
“'I am something over five-feet-two, with brown hair that hangs in rich chestnut tresses far below my waist.'”
“Oh,” put in Missy modestly, while her heart palpitated, “my hair is just mouse-coloured.”
“No,” denied Tess authoritatively, “you've got nut-brown locks. And your eyes, too, are something like Phyllis's eyes—great grey eyes with subtle depths. Only yours haven't got saucy hints in them.”
Missy wished her eyes included the saucy hints. However, she was enthralled by Tess's comparison, though incomplete. Was it possible Tess was right?
Missy wasn't vain, but she'd heard before that she had “beautiful eyes.” Perhaps Tess WAS right. Missy blushed and was silent. Just then, even had she known the proper reply to make, she couldn't have voiced it. As “the Duchess” might have phrased it, she was “naturally covered with confusion.”
But already Tess had flitted from the delightfully embarrassing theme of her friend's looks.
“Wouldn't it be grand,” she murmured dreamily, “to live in England?”
“Yes—grand,” murmured Missy in response.
“Everything's so—so baronial over there.”
Baronial!—as always, Tess had hit upon the exact word. Missy sighed again. She had always loved Cherryvale, always been loyal to it; but no one could accuse Cherryvale of being “baronial.”
That evening, when Missy went upstairs to smooth her “nut-brown locks” before supper, she gazed about her room with an expression of faint dissatisfaction. It was an adequate, even pretty room, with its flowered wall-paper and lace curtains and bird's-eye maple “set”; and, by the window, a little drop-front desk where she could sit and write at the times when feeling welled in her till it demanded an outlet.
But, now, she had an inner confused vision of “lounging-chairs” covered with pale-blue satin; of velvet, spindle-legged tables hung with priceless lace and bearing Dresden baskets smothered in flowers. Oh, beautiful! If only to her, Missy, such habitation might ever befall!
However, when she started to “brush up” her hair, she eyed it with a regard more favourable than usual. “Rich chestnut tresses!” She lingered to contemplate, in the mirror, the great grey eyes which looked back at her from their subtle depths. She had a suspicion the act was silly, but it was satisfying.
That evening at the supper-table marked the beginning of a phase in Missy's life which was to cause her family bewilderment, secret surmise, amusement and some anxiety.
During the meal she talked very little. She had learned long ago to keep her thoughts to herself, because old people seldom understand you. Often they ask embarrassing questions and, even if they don't laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal, just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar instead of cream over her berries, mother said:
“Well, Missy, what's the day-dream this time?”
Missy felt her cheeks “crimson with confusion.” Yesterday, at such a question, she would have made an evasive answer; but now, so much was she one with the charming creature of her thoughts, she forgot to be cautious. She cast her mother a pensive glance from her great grey eyes.
“I don't know—I just feel sort of triste.”
“Tristy?” repeated her astonished parent, using Missy's pronunciation. “Yes—sad, you know.”
“My goodness! What makes you sad?”
But Missy couldn't answer that. Unexpected questions often bring unexpected answers, and not till after she'd made use of the effective new word, did Missy pause to ponder whether she was really sad or not. But, now, she couldn't very well admit her lack of the emotion, so she repeated the pensive glance.
“Does one ever know why one's sad?” she asked in a bewitchingly appealing tone..
“Well, I imagine that sometimes one dees,” put in Aunt Nettie, drily.
Missy ignored Aunt Nettie; often it was best to ignore Aunt Nettie—she was mother's old-maid sister, and she “understood” even less than mother did.
Luckily just then, Marguerite, the coloured hired girl, came to clear off the table. Missy regarded her capable but undistinguished figure.
“I wish they had butlers in Cherryvale,” she observed, incautious again.
“Butlers!—for mercy's sake!” ejaculated Aunt Nettie.
“What books have you got out from the library now, Missy?” asked father. It was an abrupt change of topic, but Missy was glad of the chance to turn from Aunt Nettie's derisive smile.
“Why—let me see. 'David Harum' and 'The History of Ancient Greece'-that's all I think. And oh, yes—I got a French dictionary on my way home this afternoon.”
“Oh! A French dictionary!” commented father.
“It isn't books, Horace,” remarked Aunt Nettie, incomprehensibly. “It's that O'Neill girl.”
“What's that O'Neill girl?” demanded Missy, in a low, suppressed voice.
“Well, if you ask me, her head's full of—”
But a swift gesture from mother brought Aunt Nettie to a sudden pause.
But Missy, suspecting an implied criticism of her friend, began with hauteur:
“I implore you to desist from making any insinuation against Tess O'Neill. I'm very proud to be epris with her!” (Missy made the climactic word rhyme with “kiss.”)
There was a little hush after this outburst from the usually reserved Missy. Father and mother stared at her and then at each other. But Aunt Nettie couldn't refrain from a repetition of the climactic word;
“E-priss!” And she actually giggled!
At the sound, Missy felt herself growing “deathly mute, even to the lips”, but she managed to maintain a mien of intense composure.
“What does that mean, Missy?” queried father.
He was regarding her kindly, with no hint of hidden amusement. Father was a tall, quiet and very wise man, and Missy had sometimes found it possible to talk with him about the unusual things that rose up to fascinate her. She didn't distrust him so much as most grown-ups.
So she smiled at him and said informatively:
“It means to be in intense sympathy with.”
“Oh, I see. Did you find that in the French dictionary?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I see we'll all have to be taking up foreign languages if we're to have such an accomplished young lady in the house.”
He smiled at her in a way that made her almost glad, for a moment, that he was her father instead of a Duke who might surround her with baronial magnificence. Mother, too, she couldn't help loving, though, in her neat, practical gingham dress, she was so unlike Lady Chetwoode, the mother in “Airy Fairy Lilian.” Lady Chetwoode wore dainty caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows that matched in colour her trailing gown. Her small and tapering hands were covered with rings. She walked with a slow, rather stately step, and there was a benignity about her that went straight to the heart... Well, there was something about mother, too, that went straight to the heart. Missy wouldn't trade off her mother for the world.
But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't help wishing it were a “drawing-room.” And when she moved on out to the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end, the stretch of slick green grass and the nasturtium bed aflame like an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze—yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant tranquillity of it.
But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE “pleasure-grounds”?), past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of some court belle...
Oh, enchanting!
But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of antlered deer in Cherryvale.
Then Poppylinda, the majestic black cat, trod up the steps of the porch and rubbed herself against her mistress's foot, as if saying, “Anyhow, I'm here!”
Missy reached down and lifted Poppy to her lap. She adored Poppy; but she couldn't help reflecting that a Skye terrier (though she had never seen one) was a more distinguished kind of pet than a black cat. A black cat was—well, bourgeois (the last rhyming with “boys”). Airy fairy Lilian's pet was a Skye. It was named Fifine, and was very frisky. Lilian, as she sat exchanging sprightly badinage with her many admirers, was wont to sit with her hand perdu beneath the silky Fifine in her lap.
“No, no, Fifine! Down, sir!” murmured Missy absently.
Poppy, otherwise immobile, blinked upward an inquiring gaze.
“Naughty Fifine! You MUST not kiss my fingers, sir!”
Poppy blinked again. Who might this invisible Fifine be? Her mistress was conversing in a very strange manner; and the strangest part of it was that she was looking straight into Poppy's own eyes.
Poppy didn't know it, but her name was no longer Poppylinda. It was Fifine.
That night Missy went to bed in her own little room in Cherryvale; but, strange as it may seem to you, she spent the hours till waking far across the sea, in a manor-house in baronial England.
After that, for a considerable period, only the body, the husk of her, resided in Cherryvale; the spirit, the pulsing part of her, was in the land of her dreams. Events came and passed and left her unmarked. Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office is tame business to one who has been participating in the panoplied romances of the high-born.
Missy lived, those days, to dream in solitude or to go to Tess's where she might read of further enchantments. Then, too, at Tess's, she had a confidante, a kindred spirit, and could speak out of what was filling her soul. There is nothing more satisfying than to be able to speak out of what is filling your soul. The two of them got to using a special parlance when alone. It was freely punctuated with phrases so wonderfully camouflaged that no Frenchman would have guessed that they were French.
“Don't I hear the frou-frou of silken skirts?” inquired Missy one afternoon when she was in Tess's room, watching her friend comb the golden tresses which hung in rich profusion about her shoulders.
“It's the mater,” answered Tess. “She's dressed to pay some visits to the gentry. Later she's to dine at the vicarage. She's ordered out the trap, I believe.”
“Oh, not the governess-cart?”
Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as solemn as Missy's question.
It was that same “dinner” at the “vicarage”—in Cherryvale one dines at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had invited the O'Neills for supper—that gave Tess one of her most brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true inspirations do. The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party!
The Marble Hearts were Missy's “crowd,” thus named after Tess had joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye. It devolved upon herself and Missy to elevate it. So, at the next meeting of the crowd, they would broach the idea. Then they'd make all the plans; decide on the date and decorations and menu, and who would furnish what, and where the fete should be held. Perhaps Missy's house might be a good place. Yes. Missy's dining room was large, with the porch just outside the windows—a fine place for the orchestra.
Missy listened eagerly to all the earlier features of the scheme—she knew Tess could carry any point with the crowd; but about the last suggestion she felt misgivings. Mother had very strange, old-fashioned notions about some things. She MIGHT be induced to let Missy help give an evening dinner-party, though she held that fifteen-year-old girls should have only afternoon parties; but to be persuaded to lend her own house for the affair—that would be an achievement even for Tess!
However miracles continue to happen in this cut-and-dried world. When the subject was broached to Missy's mother with carefully considered tact, she bore up with puzzling but heavenly equanimity. She looked thoughtfully at the two girls in turn, and then gazed out the window.
“A six o'clock dinner-party, you say?” she repeated, her eyes apparently fixed on the nasturtium bed.
“Yes, Mrs. Merriam.” It was Tess who answered. Missy's heart, an anxious lump in her throat, hindered speech.
“For heaven's sake! What next?” ejaculated Aunt Nettie.
Mrs. Merriam regarded the nasturtiums for a second longer before she brought her eyes back to the two young faces and broke the tense hush.
“What made you think you wanted to give a dinner-party?”
Oh, rapture! Missy's heart subsided an inch, and she drew a long breath. But she wisely let Tess do the replying.
“Oh, everything in Cherryvale's so passe' and ennuye'. We want to do something novel—something really distingue'—if you know what I mean.”
“I believe I do,” replied Mrs. Merriam gravely.
“Dis-tinn-gwy!” repeated Aunt Nettie. “Well, if you ask me—” But Mrs. Merriam silenced her sister with an unobtrusive gesture. She turned to the two petitioners.
“You think an evening dinner would be—distinngwy?”
“Oh, yes—the way we've planned it out!” affirmed Tess. She, less diffident than Missy, was less reserved in her disclosures. She went on eagerly: “We've got it all planned out. Five courses: oyster cocktails; Waldorf salad; veal loaf, Saratoga chips, devilled eggs, dill pickles, mixed pickles, chow-chow and peach pickles: heavenly hash; and ice-cream with three kinds of cake. And small cups of demitasse, of course.”
“Three kinds of cake?”
“Well,” explained Tess, “you see Beula and Beth and Kitty all want cake for their share—they say their mothers won't be bothered with anything else. We're dividing the menu up between us, you know.”
“I see. And what have you allotted to Missy?”
Missy herself found courage to answer this question; Mother's grave inquiries were bringing her intense relief.
“I thought maybe I could furnish the heavenly hash, Mother.”
“Heavenly hash?” Mother looked perplexed. “What's that?”
“I don't know,” admitted Missy. “But I liked the name—it's so alluring. Beulah suggested it—I guess she knows the recipe.”
“I think it's all kinds of fruit chopped together,” volunteered Tess.
“But aren't you having a great deal of fruit—and pickles?” suggested Mrs. Merriam mildly.
“Oh, well,” explained Tess, rather grandly, “at a swell function you don't have to have many substantial viands, you know.”
“Oh, I nearly forgot—this is to be a swell function.”
“Yes, the real thing,” said Tess proudly. “Potted palms and hand-painted place-cards and orchestra music and candle shades and everything!”
“Candle shades?—won't it be daylight at six o'clock?”
“Well, then, we'll pull down the window shades,” said Tess, undisturbed. “Candle-light 'll add—”
Aunt Nettie, who couldn't keep still any longer, cut in:
“Will you tell me where you're going to get an orchestra?”
“Oh,” said Tess, with an air of patience, “we're going to fix the date on a band-practice night. I guess they'd be willing to practice on your porch if we gave them some ice-cream and cake.”
“My word!” gasped Aunt Nettie.
“Music always adds so much e'clat to an affair,” pursued Tess, unruffled.
“The band practicing 'll add a-clatter, all right,” commented Aunt Nettie, adding a syllable to Tess's triumphant word.
Missy, visioning the seductive scene of Tess's description, did not notice her aunt's sarcasm.
“If only we had a butler!” she murmured dreamily.
Aunt Nettie made as if to speak again, but caught an almost imperceptible signal from her sister.
“Surely, Mary,” she began, “you don't mean to say you're—”
Another almost imperceptible gesture.
“Remember, Nettie, that when there's poison in the system, it is best to let it out as quickly as possible.”
What on earth was Mother talking about?
But Missy was too thrilled by the leniency of her mother's attitude to linger on any side-question—anyway, grown-ups were always making incomprehensible remarks. She came back swiftly to the important issue.
“And may we really have the party here, Mother?”
Mother smiled at her, a rather funny kind of smile.
“I guess so—the rest of us may as well have the benefit.”
What did Mother mean?...
But oh, rapture!
Tess and Missy wrote the invitations themselves and decided to deliver them in person, and Missy had no more prevision of all that decision meant than Juliet had when her mother concluded she would give the ball that Romeo butted in on.
Tess said they must do it with empressement, meaning she would furnish an equipage for them to make their rounds in. Her father was a doctor, and had turned the old Smith place into a sanitarium; and, to use the Cherryvale word, he had several “rigs.” However, when the eventful day for delivery arrived, Tess discovered that her father had disappeared with the buggy while her mother had “ordered out” the surrey to take some ladies to a meeting of the Missionary Society.
That left only an anomalous vehicle, built somewhat on the lines of a victoria, in which Tim, “the coachman” (in Cherryvale argot known as “the hired man”), was wont to take convalescent patients for an airing. Tess realized the possible lack of dignity attendant upon having to sit in the driver's elevated seat; but she had no choice, and consoled herself by terming it “the box.”
A more serious difficulty presented itself in the matter of suitable steeds. One would have preferred a tandem of bright bays or, failing these, spirited ponies chafing at the bit and impatiently tossing their long, waving manes. But one could hardly call old Ben a steed at all, and he proved the only animal available that afternoon. Ben suffered from a disability of his right rear leg which caused him to raise his right haunch spasmodically when moving. The effect was rhythmic but grotesque, much as if Ben thought he was turkey-trotting. Otherwise, too, Ben was unlovely. His feet were by no means dainty, his coat was a dirty looking dappled-white, and his mane so attenuated it needed a toupee. As if appreciating his defects, Ben wore an apologetic, almost timid, expression of countenance, which greatly belied his true stubbornness of character.
Not yet aware of the turn-out they must put up with, about two o'clock that afternoon Missy set out for Tess's house. She departed unobtrusively by the back door and side gate. The reason for this almost surreptitious leave-taking was in the package she carried under her arm. It held her mother's best black silk skirt, which boasted a “sweep”; a white waist of Aunt Nettie's; a piece of Chantilly lace which had once been draped on mother's skirt but was destined, to-day, to become a “mantilla”; and a magnificent “willow plume” snipped from Aunt Nettie's Sunday hat. This plume, when tacked to Missy's broad leghorn, was intended to be figuratively as well as literally the crowning feature of her costume.
Tess, too, had made the most of her mother's absence at the Missionary Society. Unfortunately Mrs. O'Neill had worn her black silk skirt, but her blue dimity likewise boasted a “sweep.” A bouquet of artificial poppies (plucked from a hat of “the mater's”) added a touch of colour to Tess's corsage. And she, also, had acquired a “willow plume.”
Of course it was Tess who had thought to provide burnt matches and an extra poppy—artificial. The purpose of the former was to give a “shadowy look” under the eyes; of the latter, moistened, to lend a “rosy flush” to cheek and lip.
Missy was at first averse to these unfamiliar aids to beauty.
“Won't it make your face feel sort of queer—like it needed washing?” she demurred.
“Don't talk like a bourgeois,” said Tess.
Missy applied the wet poppy.
At the barn, “the coachman” was luckily absent, so Tess could harness up her steed without embarrassing questions. At the sight of the steed of the occasion, Missy's spirits for a moment sagged a bit; nor did old Ben present a more impressive appearance when, finally, he began to turkey-trot down Maple Avenue. His right haunch lifted—fell—lifted—fell, in irritating rhythm as his bulky feet clumped heavily on the macadam. Tess had insisted that Missy should occupy the driver's seat with her, though Missy wanted to recline luxuriously behind, perhaps going by home to pick up Poppy—that is, Fifine—to hold warm and perdu in her lap. But practical Tess pointed out that such an act might attract the attention of Mrs. Merriam and bring the adventure to an end. They proceeded down Maple Avenue. It was Tess's intention to turn off at Silver Street, to leave the first carte d'invitation at the home of Mr. Raymond Bonner. These documents were proudly scented (and incidentally spotted) from Mrs. O'Neill's cologne bottle.
Young Mr. Bonner resided in one of the handsomest houses in Cherryvale, and was himself the handsomest boy in the crowd. Besides, he had more than once looked at Missy with soft eyes—the girls “teased” Missy about Raymond. It was fitting that Raymond should receive the first billet doux. So, at the corner of Maple and Silver, Tess pulled the rein which should have turned Ben into the shady street which led to Raymond's domicile. Ben moved his head impatiently, and turkey-trotted straight ahead. Tess pulled the rein more vigorously; Ben twitched his head still more like a swear word and, with a more pronounced shrug of his haunch, went undivertingly onward.
“What's the matter?” asked Missy. “Is Ben a little—wild?”
“No—I don't think so,” replied Tess, but her tone was anxious. “I guess that it's just that he's used to Tim. Then I'm sort of out of practice driving.”
“Well, we can just as well stop at Lester's first, and come back by Raymond's.”
But when Tess attempted to manoeuvre Ben into Lester's street, Ben still showed an inalienable and masterful preference for Maple Avenue. Doggedly ahead he pursued his turkey-trotting course, un-mindful of tuggings, coaxings, or threats, till, suddenly, at the point where Maple runs into the Public Square, he made a turn into Main so abrupt as to send the inner rear wheel up onto the curb.
“My!” gasped Missy, regaining her balance. “He IS wild, isn't he? Do you think, maybe—”
She stopped suddenly. In front of the Post Office and staring at them was that new boy she had heard about—it must be he; hadn't Kitty Allen seen him and said he was a brunette? Even in her agitated state she could but notice that he was of an unusual appearance—striking. He somewhat resembled Archibald Chesney, one of airy fairy Lilian's suitors. Like Archibald, the stranger was tall and eminently gloomy in appearance. His hair was of a rare blackness; his eyes were dark—a little indolent, a good deal passionate—smouldering eyes! His eyebrows were arched, which gave him an air of melancholy protest against the world in general. His nose was of the high-and-mighty order that comes under the denomination of aquiline, or hooked, as may suit you best. However he did not shade his well-cut mouth with a heavy, drooping moustache as did Archibald, for which variation Missy was intensely grateful. Despite Lilian's evident taste for moustached gentlemen, Missy didn't admire these “hirsute adornments.”
She made all these detailed observations in the second before blond Raymond Bonner, handsomer but less interesting-looking than the stranger, came out of the Post Office, crying:
“Hello, girls! What's up?—joined the circus?”
This bantering tone, these words, were disconcerting. And before, during their relentless progress down Maple Avenue, the expressions of certain people sitting out on front porches or walking along the street, had occasioned uncertainty as to their unshadowed empressement. Still no doubts concerning her own personal get-up had clouded Missy's mind. And the dark Stranger was certainly regarding her with a look of interest in his indolent eyes. Almost you might say he was staring. It must be admiration of her toilette. She was glad she was looking so well—she wished he might hear the frou-frou of her silken skirt when she walked!
The consciousness of her unusually attractive appearance made Missy's blood race intoxicatingly. It made her feel unwontedly daring. She did an unwontedly daring thing. She summoned her courage and returned the Strange Boy's stare—full. But she was embarrassed when she found herself looking away suddenly—blushing. Why couldn't she hold that gaze?—why must she blush? Had he noticed her lack of savoir-faire? More diffidently she peeped at him again to see whether he had. It seemed to her that his expression had altered. It was a subtle change; but, somehow, it made her blush again. And turn her eyes away again—more quickly than before. But there was a singing in her brain. The dark, interesting-looking Stranger LIKED her to look at him—LIKED her to blush and look away!
She felt oddly light-headed—like someone unknown to herself. She wanted to laugh and chatter about she knew not what. She wanted to—
But here certain external happenings cruelly grabbed her attention. Old Ben, who had seemed to slow down obligingly upon the girls' greeting of Raymond, had refused to heed Tess's tugging effort to bring him to a standstill. To be sure, he moved more slowly, but move he did, and determinedly; till—merciful heaven!—he came to a dead and purposeful halt in front of the saloon. Not “a saloon,” but “the saloon!”
Now, more frantically than she had urged him to pause, Tess implored Ben to proceed. No local standards are so hide-bound as those of a small town, and in Cherryvale it was not deemed decently permissible, but disgraceful, to have aught to do with liquor. “The saloon” was far from a “respectable” place even for men to visit; and for two girls to drive up openly—brazenly—
“Get up, Ben! Get up!” rang an anguished duet.
Missy reached over and helped wallop the rains. Oh, this pain!—this faintness! She now comprehended the feeling which had so often overcome the fair ladies of England when enmeshed in some frightful situation. They, on such upsetting occasions, had usually sunk back and murmured:
“Please ring the bell—a glass of wine!” And Missy, while reading, had been able to vision herself, in some like quandary, also ordering a “glass of wine”; but, now!... the wine was only too terribly at hand!
“Get up!—there's a good old Ben!”
“Good old Ben—get up!”
But he was not a good old Ben. He was a mean old Ben—mean with inborn, incredibly vicious stubbornness. How terrible to live to come to this! But Missy was about to learn what a tangled web Fate weaves, and how amazingly she deceives sometimes when life looks darkest. Raymond and the Stranger (Missy knew his name was Ed Brown; alas! but you can't have everything in this world) started forth to rescue at the same time, knocked into each other, got to Ben's head simultaneously, and together tugged and tugged at the bridle.
Ben stood planted, with his four huge feet firmly set, defying any force in heaven or earth to budge them. His head, despite all the boys could do, maintained a relaxed attitude—a contradiction in terms justified by the facts—and also with a certain sidewise inclination toward the saloon. It was almost as if he were watching the saloon door. In truth, that is exactly what old Ben was doing. He was watching for Tim. Ben had good reason for knowing Tim's ways since, for a considerable time, no one save Tim had deigned to drive him. Besides having a natural tendency toward being “set in his ways,” Ben had now reached the time of life when one, man or beast, is likely to become a creature of habit. Thus he had unswervingly followed Tim's route to Tim's invariable first halt; and now he stood waiting Tim's reappearance through the saloon door. Other volunteer assistants, in hordes, hordes, and laughing as if this awful calamity were a huge joke, had joined Raymond and the Other. Missy was flamingly aware of them, of their laughter, their stares, their jocular comments.
But they all achieved nothing; and relief came only when Ben's supreme faith was rewarded when Tim, who had been spending his afternoon off in his favourite club, was attracted from his checker-game in the “back room” by some hubbub in the street and came inquisitively to the front door.
Ben, then, pricked his ears and showed entire willingness to depart. Tim, after convincing himself that he wasn't drunk and “seeing things,” climbed up on the “box”; the two girls, “naturally covered with confusion,” were only too glad to sink down unobtrusively into the back seat. Not till they were at the sanitarium again, did they remember the undelivered invitations; but quickly they agreed to put on stamps and let Tim take them, without empressement, to the Post Office.
All afternoon Missy burned and chilled in turn. Oh, it was too dreadful! What would people say? What would her parents, should they hear, do? And what, oh what would the interesting-looking Stranger think? Oh, what a contretemps!
If she could have heard what the Stranger actually did say, she would still have been “covered with confusion”—though of a more pleasurable kind. He and Raymond were become familiar acquaintances by this time. “What's the matter with 'em?” he had inquired as the steed Ben turkey-trotted away. “Doing it on a bet or something?”
“Dunno,” replied Raymond. “The blonde one's sort of bughouse, anyway. And the other one, Missy Merriam, gets sorta queer streaks sometimes—you don't know just what's eating her. She's sorta funny, but she's a peach, all right.”
“She the one with the eyes?”
Raymond suddenly turned and stared at the new fellow.
“Yes,” he assented, almost reluctantly.
“Some eyes!” commented the other, gazing after the vanishing equipage.
Raymond looked none too pleased. But it was too late, now, to spike Fate's spinning wheel. Missy was terribly cast down by the afternoon's history; but not so cast down that she had lost sight of the obligation to invite to her dinner a boy who had rescued her—anyhow, he had tried to rescue her, and that was the same thing. So a carte must be issued to “Mr. Ed Brown.” After all, what's in a name?—hadn't Shakespeare himself said that?
At supper, Missy didn't enjoy her meal. Had father or mother heard? Once she got a shock: she glanced up suddenly and caught father's eyes on her with a curious expression. For a second she was sure he knew; but he said nothing, only looked down again and went on eating his chop.
That evening mother suggested that Missy go to bed early. “You didn't eat your supper, and you look tired out,” she explained.
Missy did feel tired—terribly tired; but she wouldn't have admitted it, for fear of being asked the reason. Did mother, perhaps, know? Missy had a teasing sense that, under the placid, commonplace conversation, there was something unspoken. A curious and uncomfortable feeling. But, then, as one ascertains increasingly with every year one lives, Life is filled with curious and often uncomfortable feelings. Which, however, one would hardly change if one could, because all these things make Life so much more complex, therefore more interesting. The case of Ben was in point: if he had not “cut up,” it might have been weeks before she got acquainted with the Dark Stranger!
Still pondering these “deep” things, Missy took advantage of her mother's suggestion and went up to undress. She was glad of the chance to be alone.
But she wasn't to be alone for yet a while. Her mother followed her and insisted on helping unfasten her dress, turning down her bed, bringing some witch-hazel to bathe her forehead—a dozen little pretexts to linger. Mother did not always perform these offices. Surely she must suspect. Yet, if she did suspect, why her kindness? Why didn't she speak out, and demand explanations?
Mothers are sometimes so mystifying!
The time for the good night kiss came and went with no revealing word from either side. The kiss was unusually tender, given and received. Left alone at last, on her little, moon-whitened bed, Missy reflected on her great fondness for her mother. No; she wouldn't exchange her dear mother, not even for the most aristocratic lady in England.
Then, as the moon worked its magic on her fluttering lids, the flowered wall-paper, the bird's-eye maple furniture, all dissolved in air, and in their place magically stood, faded yet rich, lounges and chairs of velvet; priceless statuettes; a few bits of bric-a-brac worth their weight in gold; several portraits of beauties well-known in the London and Paris worlds, frail as they were fair, false as they were piquante; tobacco-stands and meerschaum pipes and cigarette-holders; a couple of dogs snoozing peacefully upon the hearth-rug; a writing-table near the blazing grate and, seated before it—
Yes! It was he! Though the room was Archibald Chesney's “den,” the seated figure was none other than Ed Brown!...
A shadow falls across the paper on which he is writing—he glances up—beholds an airy fairy vision regarding him with a saucy smile—a slight graceful creature clothed in shell-pink with daintiest lace frillings at the throat and wrists, and with a wealth of nut-brown locks brought low on her white brow, letting only the great grey eyes shine out.
“What are you writing, sir?” she demands, sending him a bewitching glance.
“Only a response to your gracious invitation, Lady Melissa,” he replies, springing up to kiss her tapering fingers... The moon seals the closed eyelids down with a kiss.
The day of days arrived.
Missy got up while the rest of the household was still sleeping. For once she did not wait for Poppy's kiss to awaken her. The empty bed surprised and disconcerted Poppy—that is, Fifine—upon her appearance. But much, these days, was happening to surprise and disconcert Poppy—that is, Fifine.
Fifine finally located her mistress down in the back parlour, occupied with shears and a heap of old magazines. Missy was clipping sketches from certain advertisements, which she might trace upon cardboard squares and decorate with water-colour. These were to be the “place-cards”—an artistic commission Missy had put off from day to day till, now, at the last minute, she was constrained to rise early, with a rushed and remorseful feeling. A situation familiar to many artists.
She succeeded in concentrating herself upon the work with the greatest difficulty. For, after breakfast, there began a great bustling with brooms and carpet-sweepers and dusters; and, no sooner was the house swept than appeared a gay and chattering swarm to garnish it: “Marble Hearts” with collected “potted palms” and “cut flowers” and cheesecloth draperies of blue and gold—the “club colours” which, upon the sudden need for club colours, had been suddenly adopted.
Missy betook herself to her room, but it was filled up with two of the girls and a bolt of cheesecloth; to the dining room, but there was no inspiration in the sight of Marguerite polishing the spare silver; to the side porch, but one cannot work where giggling girls sway and shriek on tall ladders, hanging paper-lanterns; to the summerhouse, but even to this refuge the Baby followed her, finally upsetting the water-colour box.
The day went rushing past. Enticing odours arose from the kitchen. The grocery wagon came, and came again. The girls went home. A sketchy lunch was eaten off the kitchen table, and father stayed down town. The girls reappeared. They overran the kitchen, peeling oranges and pineapples and bananas for “heavenly hash.” Marguerite grew cross. The Baby, who missed his nap, grew cross. And Missy, for some reason, grew sort of cross, too; she resented the other girls' unrestrainable hilarity. They wouldn't be so hilarious if it were their own households they were setting topsy-turvy; if they had sixteen “place-cards” yet to finish. In England, the hostess's entertainments went more smoothly. Things were better arranged there.
Gradually the girls drifted home to dress; the house grew quiet. Missy's head was aching. Flushed and paint-daubed, she bent over the “place-cards.”
Mother came to the door.
“Hadn't you better be getting dressed, dear?—it's half-past five.”
Half-past five! Heavens! Missy bent more feverishly over the “place-cards”; there were still two left to colour.
“I'll lay out your dotted Swiss for you,” offered mother kindly.
At this mention of her “best dress,” Missy found time for a pang of vain desire. She wished she had a more befitting dinner gown. A black velvet, perhaps; a “picture dress” with rare old lace, and no other adornment save diamonds in her hair and ears and round her throat and wrists.
But, then, velvet might be too hot for August. She visioned herself in an airy creation of batiste—very simple, but the colour combination a ravishing mingling of palest pink and baby-blue, with ribbons fluttering; delicately tinted long gloves; delicately tinted slippers and silken stockings on her slender, high-arched feet; a few glittering rings on her restless fingers; one blush-pink rose in her hair which, simply arranged, suffered two or three stray rippling locks to wander wantonly across her forehead.
“Missy! It's ten minutes to six! And you haven't even combed your hair!” It was mother at the door again.
The first guest arrived before Missy had got her hair “smoothed up”—no time, tonight, to try any rippling, wanton effects. She could hear the swelling sound of voices and laughter in the distance—oh, dreadful! Her fingers became all thumbs as she sought to get into the dotted swiss, upside down.
Mother came in just in time to extricate her, and buttoned the dress with maddeningly deliberate fingers.
“Now, don't fret yourself into a headache, dear,” she said in a voice meant to be soothing. “The party won't run away—just let yourself relax.”
Relax!
The musicians, out on the side porch, were already beginning their blaring preparations when the hostess, at last, ran down the stairs and into the front parlour. Her agitation had no chance to subside before they must file out to the dining room. Missy hadn't had time before to view the completely embellished dining room and, now, in all its glory and grandeur, it struck her full force: the potted palms screening the windows through which floated strains of music, streamers of blue and gold stretching from the chandelier to the four corners of the room in a sort of canopy, the long white table with its flowers and gleaming silver—
It might almost have been the scene of a function at Chetwoode Manor itself!
In a kind of dream she was wafted to the head of the table; for, since the function was at her house, Missy had been voted the presiding place of honour. It is a very great responsibility to sit in the presiding place of honour. From that conspicuous position one leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right, laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison. She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful resourcefulness hangs the success of a dinner-party. But Missy, though a trifle fluttered, had felt no anxiety; she knew so well just how Lady Chetwoode had managed these things.
The hostess must also, of course, direct the nutrimental as well as the conversational process of the feast. She is served first, and takes exactly the proper amount of whatever viand in exactly the proper way and manipulates it with exactly the proper fork or knife or spoon. But Missy had felt no anticipatory qualms.
She was possessed of a strange, almost a lightheaded feeling. Perhaps the excitement of the day, the rush at the last, had something to do with it. Perhaps the spectacle of the long, adorned table, the scent of flowers, the sound of music, the dark eyes of Mr. Edward Brown who was seated at her right hand.
(Dear old faithful Ben!—to think of how his devotion to tippling Tim had brought Edward Brown into her life!)
She felt a stranger to herself. Something in her soared intoxicatingly. The sound of her own gay chatter came to her from afar—as from a stranger. Mr. Brown kept on looking at her.
The butler appeared, bringing the oyster cocktails (a genteel delicacy possible in an inland midsummer thanks to the canning industry), and proceeded to serve them with empressement.
The butler was really the climactic triumph of the event. And he was Missy's own inspiration. She had been racking her brains for some way to eliminate the undistinguished Marguerite, to conjure through the very strength of her desire some approach to a proper servitor. If only they had ONE of those estimable beings in Cherry vale! A butler, preferably elderly, and “steeped in respectability” up to his port-wine nose; one who would hover around the table, adjusting this dish affectionately and straightening that, and who, whenever he left the room, left it with a velvet step and an almost inaudible sigh of satisfaction...
And then, quite suddenly, she had hit upon the idea of “Snowball” Saunders. Snowball had come to the house to borrow the Merriams' ice-cream freezer. There was to be an informal “repast” at the Shriners' hall, and Snowball engineered all the Shriners' gustatory festivities from “repasts” to “banquets.” Sometimes, at the banquets, he even wore a dress suit. It was of uncertain lineage and too-certain present estate, yet it was a dress suit. It was the recollection of the dress suit that had given Missy her inspiration. To be sure, in England, butlers were seldom “coloured,” but in Cherry vale one had to make some concessions.
The butler was wearing his dress suit as he came bearing the oyster cocktails.
“Hello, Snowball!” greeted Raymond Bonner, genially. “Didn't know you were invited to-night.”
Snowball? what a gosherie! With deliberate hauteur Missy spoke:
“Oh, Saunders, don't forget to fill the glasses with ice-water.”
Raymond cast her an astonished look, but, perhaps because he was more impressed by the formality of the function than he would have admitted, refrained from any bantering comment.
The hostess, then, with a certain righteous complacence, lowered her eyes to her cocktail glass.
Oh, heavens!
It was the first time, so carried away had she been with this new, intoxicating feeling, that she had really noticed what she was eating—how she was eating it.
She was eating her oysters with her after-dinner coffee spoon!
The tiny-pronged oyster fork was lying there on the cloth, untouched!
Oh, good heavens!
An icy chill of mortification crept down her spine, spread out through her whole being. She had made a mistake—SHE, the hostess!
A whirlwind of mortal shame stormed round and round within her. If only she could faint dead away in her chair! If only she could weep, and summon mother! Or die! Or even if she could sink down under the table and hide away from sight. But she didn't know how to faint; and hostesses do not weep for their mothers; and, in real life, people never die at the crucial moments; nor do they crawl under tables. All she could do was to force herself at last, to raise her stricken eyelids and furtively regard her guests.
Oh, dear heaven!
They were all—ALL of them—eating their oyster cocktails with their after-dinner coffee spoons!
Missy didn't know why, at that sight, she had to fight off a spasm of laughter. She felt she must scream out in laughter, or die.
All at once she realized that Mr. Brown was speaking to her.
“What's the matter?” he was saying. “Want to sneeze?”
That struck her so funny that she laughed; and then she felt better.
“I was just terribly upset,” she found herself explaining almost naturally, “because I suddenly found myself eating the oyster cocktail with the coffee spoon.”
“Oh, isn't this the right implement?” queried Mr. Brown, contemplating his spoon. “Well, if you ask ME, I'm glad you started off with it—this soupy stuff'd be the mischief to get away with with a fork.”
Archibald Chesney wouldn't have talked that way. But, nevertheless, Missy let her eyelids lift up at him in a smile.
“I'm glad you didn't know it was a mistake,” she murmured. “I was TERRIBLY mortified.”
“Girls are funny,” Mr. Brown replied to that. “Always worrying over nothing.” He returned her smile. “But YOU needn't ever worry.”
What did he mean by that? But something in his dark eyes, gazing at her full, kept Missy from asking the question, made her swiftly lower her lashes.
“I bet YOU could start eating with a toothpick and get away with it,” he went on.
Did he mean her social savoir-faire—or did he mean—
Just then the butler appeared at her left hand to remove the cocktail course. She felt emboldened to remark, with an air of ease:
“Oh, Saunders, don't forget to lay the spoons when you serve the demi-tasses.”
Mr. Brown laughed.
“Oh, say!” he chortled, “you ARE funny when you hand out that highfalutin stuff!”
No; he surely hadn't meant admiration for her savoir-faire; yet, for some reason, Missy didn't feel disappointed. She blushed, and found it entrancingly difficult to lift her eyelids.
The function, rather stiffly and quite impressively, continued its way without further contretemps. It was, according to the most aristocratic standards, highly successful. To be sure, after the guests had filed solemnly from the table and began to dance on the porches, something of the empressement died away; but Missy was finding Mr. Brown too good a dancer to remember to be critical. She forgot altogether, now, to compare him with the admired Archibald.
Missy danced with Mr. Brown so much that Raymond Bonner grew openly sulky. Missy liked Raymond, and she was sure she would never want to do anything unkind—yet why, at the obvious ill temper of Raymond Bonner, did she feel a strange little delicious thrill?
Oh, she was having a glorious time!
Once she ran across father, lurking unobtrusively in a shadowed corner.
“Well,” he remarked, “I see that Missy's come back for a breathing-spell.”
Just what did father mean by that?
But she was having too good a time to wonder long. Too good a time to remember whether or not it was in the baronial spirit. She was entirely uncritical when, the time for good nights finally at hand, Mr. Brown said to her:
“Well, a fine time was had by all! I guess I don't have to tell YOU that—what?”
Archibald Chesney would never have put it that way. Yet Missy, with Mr. Brown's eyes upon her in an openly admiring gaze, wouldn't have had him changed one bit.
But, when at last sleep came to her in her little white bed, on the silvery tide of the moon, it carried a dream to slip up under the tight-closed eyes...
The ball is at its height. The door of the conservatory opens and a fair young creature steals in. She is fairer than the flowers themselves as, with a pretty consciousness of her own grace, she advances into the bower. Her throat is fair and rounded under the diamonds that are no brighter than her own great grey eyes; her nut-brown locks lie in heavy masses on her well-shaped head, while across her forehead a few rebellious tresses wantonly wander.
She suddenly sees in the shadows that other figure which has started perceptibly at her entrance; a tall and eminently gloomy figure, with hair of a rare blackness, and eyes dark and insouciant but admiring withal.
With a silken frou-frou she glides toward him, happy and radiant, for she is in her airiest mood tonight.
“Is not my dress charming, Mr. Brown?” she cries with charming naivete. “Does it not become me?”
“It is as lovely as its wearer,” replied the other, with a suppressed sigh.
“Pouf! What a simile! Who dares compare me with a paltry gown?”
Then, laughing at his discomfiture, the coquette, with slow nonchalance, gathers up her long train.
“But I'll forgive you—this once,” she concedes, “for there is positively no one to take poor little me back to the ballroom.”
And Lady Melissa slips her hand beneath Mr. Brown's arm, and glances up at him with laughing, friendly eyes...
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