Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  Other of the couples danced with the greatest languor and gravity, their arms held out rigid and at right angles with their bodies.

  About the doors and hallways stood the unhappy gentlemen who knew no one, watching the others dance, feigning to be amused. Some of them, however, had ascended to the dressing-room and began to strike up an acquaintance with each other and with Ellis, smoking incessantly, discussing business, politics, and even religion.

  In the ladies’ dressing-room two of the maids were holding a long conversation in low tones, their heads together; evidently it was concerning something dreadful. They continually exclaimed “Oh!” and “Ah!” suddenly sitting back from each other, shaking their heads, and biting their nether lips. On the top floor in the hall the servants in their best clothes leaned over the balustrade, nudging each other, talking in hoarse whispers or pointing with thick fingers swollen with dish-water. All up and down the stairs were the couples who were sitting out the dance, some of them even upon the circular sofa in the hall over the first landing.

  The music stopped, leaving a babel of talk in the air, the couples fell apart for an instant, but a great clapping of hands broke out and the tired musicians heroically recommenced.

  As soon as the short encore was done there was a rush for the lemonade and punch bowls. The guests thronged around them joking each other. “Hello! are you here again?” “Oh, this is dreadful!” “This makes six times I’ve seen you here.”

  A smell of coffee rose into the air from the basement. It was about half-past eleven; the next dance was the supper dance and the gentlemen hurried about anxiously searching the stairs, the parlours, and the conservatory for the girls who had promised them this dance weeks before. The musicians were playing a march, and the couples crowded down the narrow stairs in single file, the ladies drawing off their gloves. The tired musicians stretched themselves, rubbed their eyes, and began to talk aloud in the deserted parlours.

  Supper was served in the huge billiard-room in the basement and was eaten in a storm of gayety. The same parties and “sets” tried to get together at the same table; Henrietta Vance’s party was particularly noisy: at her table there was an incessant clamour of screams and shouts of laughter. One ate oysters à la poulette, terrapin-salads, and croquettes; the wines were Sauternes and champagnes. With the nuts and dessert the caps came on, and in a few minutes were cracking and snapping all over the room.

  Six of the unfortunates who knew no one, but who had managed through a common affliction to become acquainted with each other, gathered at a separate table. Ellis was one of their number; he levied a twenty-five assessment, and tipped the waiter a dollar and a half. This one accordingly brought them extra bottles of champagne in which they found consolation for all the ennui of the evening.

  After supper the dancing began again. The little stiffness and constraint of the earlier part of the evening was gone; by this time nearly everybody, except the unfortunates, knew everybody else. The good dinner and the champagne had put them all into an excellent humour, and they all commenced to be very jolly. They began a Virginia Reel still wearing the magician’s caps and Phrygian bonnets of tissue paper.

  Young Haight was with Turner Ravis as much as possible during the evening, very happy and excited. Something had happened; it was impossible for him to say precisely what, for on the face of things Turner was the same as ever. Nothing in her speech or actions was different, but there was in her manner, in the very air that surrounded her, something elusive and subtle that set him all in a tremor. There was a change in his favour; he felt that she liked to have him with her and that she was trying to have him feel as much in some mysterious way of her own. He could see, however, that she was hardly conscious of doing this and that the change was more apparent to his eyes than it was to hers.

  “Must you really go home now?” he said, as Turner began to talk of leaving, soon after supper. They had been sitting out the dance under a palm at the angle of the stairs.

  “Yes,” answered Turner; “Howard has the measles and I promised to be home early. Delphine was to come for me and she ought to be here now.”

  “Delphine?” exclaimed young Haight. “Didn’t you come with Van?”

  “No,” answered Turner quietly. Only by her manner, and by something in the way she said the word, Haight knew at once that she had broken definitely with Vandover. The talk he had had with her at her house came back to him on the instant. He hesitated a moment and then asked:

  “There is something wrong? Has Van done anything — never mind, I don’t mean that; it’s no business of mine, I suppose. But I know you care for him. I’m sorry if—”

  But he was not sorry. Try as he would, his heart was leaping in him for joy. With Vandover out of the way, he knew that all would be different; Turner herself had said so.

  “Oh, everything is wrong,” said Turner, with tears in her eyes. “I have been so disappointed in Van; oh, terribly disappointed.”

  “I know; yes, I think I know what you mean,” answered young Haight in a low voice.

  “Oh, please don’t let’s talk about it at all,” cried Turner. But young Haight could not stop now.

  “Is Van really out of the question, then?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, not seeing what he was coming to. “Oh, yes; how could I — how could I care for him after — after what has happened?”

  Very much embarrassed, young Haight went on: “I know it’s unfair to take advantage of you now, but do you remember what you said once? That if Vandover were out of the question, that ‘perhaps’ you might — that it would be — that there might be a chance for me?”

  Turner was silent for a long time, and then she said: “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, how about that now?” asked young Haight with a nervous laugh.

  “Ah,” answered Turner, “how do I know — so soon!”

  “But what do you think, Turner?” he persisted.

  “But I haven’t thought at all,” she returned.

  “Well, think now!” he went on. “Tell me — how about that?”

  “About what?”

  “Ah, you know what I mean,” young Haight replied, feeling like a little boy, “about what you said at your house that Sunday night. Please tell me; you don’t know how much it means to me.”

  “Oh, there’s Delphine at the door!” suddenly exclaimed Turner. “Now, really, I must go down. She doesn’t know where to go; she’s so stupid!”

  “No,” he answered, “not until you tell me!” He caught her hand, refusing to let it go.

  “Ah, how mean you are to corner me so!” she cried laughing and embarrassed. “Must I — well — I know I shouldn’t. O-oh, I just detest you!” Young Haight turned her hand palm upward and kissed the little circle of crumpled flesh that showed where her glove buttoned. Then she tore her hand away and ran downstairs, while he followed more slowly.

  On her way back to the dressing-room she met him again, crossing the hall.

  “Don’t you want to see me home?” she said.

  “Do I want to?” shouted young Haight.

  “Oh, but I forgot,” she cried. “You can’t. I won’t let you. You have your other dances engaged!”

  “Oh, damn the other dances!” he exclaimed, but instead of being offended, Turner only smiled.

  Toward one o’clock there was a general movement to go. Henrietta Vance and Mrs. Vance were inquired for, and the blue and white opera cloaks reappeared, descending the stairs, disturbing the couples who were seated there. The banging of carriage doors and the rumble of wheels recommenced in the street. The musicians played a little longer. As the party thinned out, there was greater dance room and a consequent greater pleasure in dancing. These last dances at the end of the evening were enjoyed more than all the others. But the party was breaking up fast: Turner had already gone home; Mrs. Vance and Henrietta were back at their places in front of the mantel, surrounded by a group of gentlemen in capecoats and ladies in opera wra
ps. Every one was crying “Good-bye” or “Good night!” and assuring Mrs. Vance and Henrietta of the enjoyableness of the occasion. Suddenly the musicians played “Home Sweet Home.” Those still dancing uttered an exclamation of regret, but continued waltzing to this air the same as ever. Some began to dance again in their overcoats and opera wraps. Then at last the tired musicians stopped and reached for the cases of their instruments, and the remaining guests, seized with a sudden panic lest they should be the last to leave, fled to the dressing-rooms. These were in the greatest confusion, every one was in a hurry; in the gentlemen’s dressing-room there was a great putting on of coats and mufflers and a searching for misplaced gloves, hats and canes. A base hum of talk rose in the air, bits and ends of conversation being tossed back and forth across the room. “You haven’t seen my hat, have you, Jimmy?” “Did you meet that girl I was telling you about?” “Hello, old man! have a good time to-night?” “Lost your hat? No, I haven’t seen it.” “Yes, about half-past ten!” “Well, I told him that myself!” “Ah, you bet it’s the man that rustles that gets there.” “Come round about four, then.” “What’s the matter with coming home in our carriage?”

  At the doors of the dressing-rooms the ladies joined their escorts, and a great crowd formed in the halls, worming down the stairs and out upon the front steps. As the first groups reached the open air there was a great cry: “Why, it’s pouring rain!” This was taken up and repeated and carried all the way back into the house. There were exclamations of dismay and annoyance: “Why, it’s raining right down!” “What shall we do!” Tempers were lost, brothers and sisters quarrelling with each other over the question of umbrellas. “Ah,” said Geary, delighted, peeling the cover from his umbrella in the vestibule, “I thought it was going to rain before I left and brought mine along with me. Ah, you bet I always look out for rain!” On the horse-block stood the caller, chanting up the carriages at the top of his voice. The street was full of coupés, carriages, and hacks, the raindrops showing in a golden blur as they fell across the streaming light of their lamps. The horses were smoking and restless, and the drivers in oilskins and rubber blankets were wrangling and shouting. At every instant there was a long roll of wheels interrupted by the banging of the doors. Near the caller stood a useless policeman, his shield pinned on the outside of his wet rubber coat, on which the carriage lamps were momentarily reflected in long vertical streaks.

  In a short time all the guests were gone except the one young lady whose maid and carriage had somehow not been sent. Henrietta Vance’s brother took this one home in a hired hack. Mrs. Vance and Henrietta sat down to rest for a moment in the empty parlours. The canvas-covered floors were littered with leaves of smilax and La France roses, with bits of ribbon, ends of lace, and discarded Phrygian bonnets of tissue paper. The butler and the second girl were already turning down the gas in the other rooms.

  Long before the party broke up Vandover had gone home, stunned and dazed, as yet hardly able to realize the meaning of what had happened. Some strange and dreadful change had taken place; things were different, people were different to him; not every one had been so outspoken as Turner, Henrietta Vance and her mother, but even amongst others who had talked to him politely and courteously enough, the change was no less apparent. It was in the air, a certain vague shrinking and turning of the shoulder, a general atmosphere of aversion and repulsion, an unseen frown, an unexpressed rebuff, intangible, illusive, but as unmistakable as his own existence. The world he had known knew him now no longer. It was ostracism at last.

  But why? Why? Sitting over his tiled flamboyant stove, brooding into the winking coals, Vandover asked himself the question in vain. He knew what latitude young men were allowed by society; he was sure nothing short of discovered crime could affect them. True enough he had at one time allowed himself to drift into considerable dissipation, but he was done with that now, he had reformed, he had turned over a new leaf. Even at his worst he had only lived the life of the other young men around him, the other young men who were received as much as ever, even though people, the girls themselves, practically knew of what they did, knew that they were often drunk, and that they frequented the society of abandoned women. What had he done to merit this casting off? What could he have done? He even went so far as to wonder if there was anything wrong about his father or his sudden death.

  A little after one o’clock he heard Geary’s whistle in the street outside. “Hello, old man!” he cried as Vandover opened the window. “I was just on my way home from the hoe-down; saw a light in your window and thought I’d call you up. Say, have you got anything wet up there? I’m extra dry.”

  “Yes,” said Vandover, “come on up!”

  “Did you hear what Beale said to me this evening?” said Geary, as he mixed himself a cocktail at the sideboard. “Oh, I tell you, I’m getting right in, down at that office. Beale wants me to take the place of one of the assistants in the firm, a fellow who’s got the consumption, coughing up his lungs all the time. It’s an important place, hundred a month; that’s right. Yes, sir; you bet, I’m going to get in and rustle now and make myself so indispensable in that fellow’s place that they can’t get along without me. I’ll crowd him right out; I know it may be selfish, but, damn it! that’s what you have to do to get along. It’s human nature. I’ll tell you right here to-night,” he exclaimed with sudden energy, clenching his fist and slowly rapping the knuckles on the table to emphasize each word, “that I’ll be the head of that firm some day, or I’ll know the reason why.”

  When Geary finally became silent, the two looked into the fire for some time without speaking. At last Geary said:

  “You came home early to-night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” answered Vandover, stirring uneasily. “Yes, I did.”

  There was another silence. Then Geary said abruptly: “It’s too bad. They are kind of stinky-pinky to you.”

  “Yes,” said Vandover with a grin. “I don’t know what’s the matter. Everybody seems nasty!”

  “It’s that business with Ida Wade, you know,” replied Geary. “It got around somehow that she killed herself on your account. Everybody seems to be on to it. I heard it — oh, nearly a month ago.”

  “Oh,” said Vandover with a short laugh, “that’s it, is it? I was wondering.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” answered Geary. “You see they don’t know for sure; no one knows, but all at once every one seemed to be talking about it, and they suspect an awful lot. I guess they are pretty near right, aren’t they?” He did not wait for an answer, but laughed clumsily and went on: “You see, you always have to be awfully careful in those things, or you’ll get into a box. Ah, you bet I don’t let any girl I go with know my last name or my address if I can help it. I’m clever enough for that; you have to manage very carefully; ah, you bet! You ought to have looked out for that, old man!” He paused a moment and then went on: “Oh, I guess it will be all right, all right, in a little while. They will forget about it, you know. I wouldn’t worry. I guess it will be all right.”

  “Yes,” answered Vandover absently, “I guess so — perhaps.”

  A few days later Vandover was in the reading-room of the Mechanics Library, listlessly turning over the pages of a volume of l’Art. It was Saturday morning and the place was full of ladies who were downtown for their shopping and marketing, and who had come in either to change their books or to keep appointments with each other. On a sudden Vandover saw Turner just passing into the Biography alcove. He got up and followed her. She was standing at the end of the dim book-lined tunnel, searching the upper shelves, her head and throat bent back, and her gloved finger on her lip. The faint odour of the perfume she always affected came to him mingled with the fragrance of the jonquils at her belt and the smell of leather and of books that exhaled from the shelves on either side. He did not offer to take her hand, but came up slowly, speaking in a low voice.

  It was the last time that Vandover ever met Turner Ravis. They talked for upward
of an hour, leaning against the opposite book-shelves, Vandover with his fists in his pockets, his head bent down, and the point of his shoe tracing the pattern in the linoleum carpet; Turner, her hands clasped in front of her, looking him squarely in the face, speaking calmly and frankly.

  “Now, I hope you see just how it is, Van,” she said at length. “What has happened hasn’t made me cease to care for you, because if I had really cared for you the way I thought I did, the way a girl ought to care for the man she wants to marry, I would have stood by you through everything, no matter what you did. I don’t do so now, because I find I don’t care for you as much as I thought I did. What has happened has only shown me that. I’m sorry, oh, so sorry to be disappointed in you, but it’s because I only think of you as being once a very good friend of mine, not because I love you as you think I did. Once — a long time ago — when we first knew each other, then, perhaps — things were different then. But somehow we seem to have grown away from that. Since then we have both been mistaken; you thought I cared for you in that way, and I thought so, too, and I thought you cared for me; but it was only that we were keeping up appearances, pretending to ourselves just for the sake of old times. We don’t love each other now; you know it. But I have never intentionally deceived you or tried to lead you on; when I told you I cared for you I really thought I did. I meant to be sincere; I always thought so until this happened, and then when I saw how easily I could let you go, it only proved to me that I did not care for you as I thought I did. It was wrong of me, I know, and I should have known my own mind before, but I didn’t, I didn’t. You talk about Dolly Haight; but it is not Dolly Haight at all who has changed my affection for you. I will be just as frank as I can with you, Van. I may learn really to love Dolly Haight; I don’t know, I think perhaps I will, but it isn’t that I care for him just because I don’t care for you. Can’t you see, it’s just as if I had never met you. You know it’s very hard for me to say this to you, Van, and I suppose it’s all mixed up, but I can’t help it. You don’t know how sorry I am, because we have been such old friends — because I really did care for you as a friend; it’s a proof of it, that there is no other man in the world I could talk to like this. I think, too, Van, that was the only way you cared for me, just as a good friend — except perhaps at first, when we first knew each other. You know yourself that is so. We really haven’t loved each other at all for a long time, and now we have found it out before it was too late. And even if everything were different, Van, don’t you know how it is with girls? They really love the man who loves them the most. Half the time they’re just in love with being loved. That’s the way most girls love nowadays, and you know yourself, Van, that Dolly Haight really loves me more than you do.” She gathered up her books and went on after a pause, straightening up, ready to go: “If I should let myself think of what you have done, I feel — as if — as if — why, dreadful — I — that I should hate you, loathe you; but I try not to do that. I have been thinking it all over since the other night. I shall always try to think of you at your best; I have tried to forget everything else, and in forgetting it I forgive you. I can honestly say that,” she said, holding out her hand, “I forgive you, and you must forgive me because once, by deceiving myself, I deceived you, and made you think that I cared for you in that way when I didn’t.” As their hands fell apart Turner faced him and added, with tears in her eyes: “You know this must be good-bye for good. You don’t know how it hurts me to tell you. I know it looks as if I were deserting you when you were alone in the world and had most need of some one to influence you for the good. But, Van, won’t you be better now? Won’t you break from it all and be your own self again? I have faith in you. I believe it’s in you to become a great man and a good man. It isn’t too late to begin all over again. Just be your better self; live up to the best that’s in you; if not for your own sake, then for the sake of that other girl that’s coming into your life some time; that other girl who is good and sweet and pure, whom you will really, really love and who will really, really love you.”