Chance of a Lifetime

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “No,” said Mr. Washburn, looking down at his gloves uncomfortably. “Not a bill. He suggested that perhaps I would like to loan him some money for a year’s time, at a good rate of interest, to help him buy a small business that he had opportunity to get. I would have been glad to do it if it had been possible, but that was just at the time when you went to the hospital for an operation, Eloise, and then were ordered abroad for a year afterward, and I couldn’t see my way clear to do it. I took up the matter with him two years later, but he said he no longer needed it. By the way, Sherrill, who is he working for now? Is he getting along all right?”

  “Very nicely,” said Sherrill quietly. “But he isn’t working for anybody. He has his own business. He bought it at the time when he wrote you. The bank gladly loaned him the money, and he has paid off the entire loan now, and is quite independent.”

  “You don’t say!” said Uncle Weston with a light of satisfaction in his eyes. “He must be very enterprising.”

  “Well, but I don’t understand,” began Aunt Eloise, fixing her husband with a glassy stare that implied she had been deceived in something. “I was quite inclined to understand that the family was in straitened circumstances. When you wanted me to invite—”

  “Eloise!” said Uncle Weston with sternness in his voice. “We will talk of something else, if you please. Remember that Sherrill is our guest.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Washburn and relapsed into haughty silence.

  “Well, that’s a peach of a coat!” said Carol grudgingly. “I’ll borrow it sometimes. It will just go with my new imported brown velvet.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Carol,” said her father still sternly. “You have plenty of coats of your own, and if you haven’t, I’ll get you what you need. But you are not to impose upon your cousin. Understand! That’s a command! If I find you disobeying it, I shall take back my promise about getting you a new car in the spring.”

  “I don’t see that you need to take it out on Carol,” said her mother disagreeably. “The fact is you don’t understand the whole thing anyway. I told Sherrill to wear certain things that I gave her, which I felt were suitable for her to wear as our guest, and she has ignored my request.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Eloise,” said Sherrill in a pleasant little voice, which nevertheless had a note of firmness in it, “but I’d much rather wear my own things. Think how you would feel yourself, if you came to Rockland and had to wear Mother’s dresses. You wouldn’t like it a bit.”

  “I should say not!” said the aunt with a curl of her unpleasant carmine lip. “That’s hardly a parallel case.”

  “I want it thoroughly understood,” said Uncle Weston, “that Sherrill is to wear what she feels like while she is with us. She’s not to be badgered.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said his wife disagreeably. “Do you want me to let her make herself a laughingstock among our friends?”

  “It seems to me,” said the worried uncle, “that Sherrill can be trusted not to do that. She seems to have turned herself out very well, as far as I can see.”

  “A lot you know about clothes, Westy!” put in his daughter impertinently. “If I were you, I’d keep out of this. You won’t get a rise out of Eloise no matter what you say.”

  “You are impertinent, Carol!” said her father.

  “I meant to be, Weston!” said his daughter imperturbably.

  And then the car stopped and the chauffeur opened the door.

  “There!” said Mrs. Washburn. “You’ve taken up all the time, and I meant to tell Sherrill what she would have to do and how to act!”

  “I think she would do very well without instructions,” said her husband.

  “You would!” said Carol, pushing rudely past Sherrill and running up the steps of the house.

  Sherrill got out and walked beside her uncle up to the door.

  “You mustn’t mind your aunt, Sherrill,” said her uncle in a low tone as he helped her up the steps. “She doesn’t really mean to sound unpleasant. She is just anxious to have everything go off all right. She is just plain spoken!”

  “Of course!” said Sherrill briskly, trying to look cheerful, and feeling greatly comforted for the ordeal before her by this little word.

  So they all progressed into the house, the ladies going upstairs to lay off their wraps.

  Sherrill slipped out of her coat and scarf, gave a pat to her hair before the mirror, and forgetting about her dress, stepped aside for her aunt to take the place before the dressing table. She somehow felt she had finished with the subject of clothes for the present.

  But Eloise Washburn, seating herself for a last touch of lipstick, got a full glance of her niece in her little blue French frock with its bunches of sweetheart roses, and her smile changed into an icy glare.

  “Oh! And so you discarded the dress I bought for you also!” she said, as if Sherrill had broken all the laws in the Decalogue. “Well, I certainly think you have been the rudest girl that it ever was my misfortune to meet. Here I spent two days hunting for that frock, and you refused to wear it!”

  “Oh,” said Sherrill, feeling suddenly very tired and wishing she could run away and never come back, “I’m sorry to have seemed rude and to have disappointed you, but indeed, Aunt Eloise, I couldn’t wear that dress without any back. I’m not used to such things, and I should have felt—ashamed. I’m sure my mother would have been horrified at my dressing that way.”

  “I have told you before that your mother has nothing whatever to say about what you wear or what you do while you are with us. I am the one to judge. And you are scarcely respectable, nowadays in the evening, without a low-cut back. I have no desire to have my hostess think I have imported a little country child to force into society. Where did you get that dress anyway? It surely wasn’t bought in Rockland?”

  Sherrill, by this time, was boiling, ready to say all the mean things she could think of, but just as she opened her lips to make a sharp retort, she remembered her mother’s last injunction. “Remember, dear, ‘the tongue is a little member … Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.” She closed her eyes with a long break and opened them again, and spoke gravely, quietly, patiently.

  “No, Aunt Eloise, it came from Paquin in Paris. Aunt Harriet Masters, a friend of Mother’s, brought it to me last week. She has just returned from a two years’ trip abroad, and brought me some lovely things. You won’t really need to worry about me—”

  Two more arrivals in the dressing room, friends of Mrs. Washburn, put an end to the conversation. And Sherrill turned away to the curtained window and gazed out on the lights of the city for an instant, to steady her shaken nerves and put up an audible prayer for help and strength.

  She was interrupted by her cousin’s voice behind her in a low tone.

  “Did you say that came from Paquin? I don’t believe it. Paquin wouldn’t put on a back that wasn’t low cut nowadays. Show me the label.”

  “It’s on the back of the neck,” said Sherrill wearily, “if you care to look. I’m sure I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “Well, it makes this difference,” said Carol disagreeably, “that I don’t see you having to try to dress better than I do. If that’s a Paquin, I’ve got to have one! But I’m sure I don’t see how you managed to get yourself up all in style when you’re only a hick.”

  “Come, girls, we’re going down now! Don’t keep us waiting!” came Mrs. Washburn’s command, and Sherrill closed her lips on the hot words that were on the tip of her tongue, and went down to her first formal dinner in New York.

  Chapter 16

  There was no makeup on Sherrill’s face, but she needed none. Her cheeks were flaming gloriously, her eyes were sparkling with something besides pleasure, and she had bitten her lips until they were almost as red as her rude little cousin’s carmine cupid’s bow that pouted from her face as artificially as a little painted mask.

  When Sherrill went downstairs, walking quietly behind all
the rest, keeping herself as much in the background as possible, she became aware almost at once that her French frock was a great asset. She felt inconspicuous and well dressed, and knew that the other members of the party had accepted her as all right. She knew this by that woman’s intuition that can weigh the glances of her fellow women to the fraction of an atom and know just where they have placed her. Her fingers touched the soft blue silk of her frock in quiet thankfulness that it had helped her through the first hard minutes. It was no pleasure trip to be attending her first dinner party under the displeasure of an aunt who had compelled her to be there.

  But the introductions were through with more comfortably than she had hoped, and she found herself going in to dinner with an elderly gentleman of courtly presence and a humorous turn, who paid her several compliments with his first sentences—told her she looked as if she had stepped out of an old-time valentine, and called her his sweetheart in a pleasant little impersonal way that made her feel very young and put her at ease.

  She found herself seated at the table between him and a rather dumb-looking young man with a tiny mustache on his upper lip that resembled a smudge of soot. But he did not seem to consider Sherrill dumb. He almost neglected the lady he had brought in to converse with her, and between the two she scarcely had opportunity to eat.

  But the conversation was froth, most of it, and Sherrill, usually quick at repartee, scarcely knew how to take some of the things that were said to her. The young man conversed of plays, or pictures, and Sherrill had seen neither of them. She spoke of books that he had not read and did not enjoy the questionable jokes that he told.

  On the other side, the elderly man paid open court to her in most gracious flattery that was almost embarrassing. In the few intervals that she had to herself, she studied the people gathered around the table and realized from the scraps of conversation she heard that they were nearly all talking froth.

  She studied the priceless cloth that covered the banqueting board, the heavy silver, the glittering crystal and monogrammed china, and compared it to the Thanksgiving dinner she had attended the night before in Howard Evans’ barn with guests from the Flats and wished she were back there again. She compared the guests at this table with those in the barn, and a startling thought came to her that they were of the same blood, made by the same Creator, living on the same earth, bound for the same ending, so far as this earth was concerned. She listened to their conversation and felt that the talk of the people from the Flats on the night before had been infinitely preferable to what was going on about her. Doubtless the Flats could win out in blasphemy and filth, against these people when they were off guard, but so far as last night’s dinner was concerned they had been interested and courteous and well behaved. What was it about these people that made her feel as if she were in an alien land? Not just the fact that they were strangers. No, they were almost talking a strange language. Their sentences were filled with allusions to things with which she had nothing in common.

  She tried to fancy any of these men and women and young people as having been present at that supper last evening. How would they have fitted? Well, she could select several of them that might have been good sports and entered into the fun, enjoyed the singing and the color and pleasantry, but would they have fitted any better than the people from the Flats into the little gathering around the fire at the close? Would they have bowed their heads in prayer and entered into that hush that brought heaven to seem so near?

  “Do you know,” said the young man with the smudge on his upper lip, “it really is criminal to look so serious as you are looking now.”

  Sherrill’s face lighted up.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to look so serious,” she said. “I was just thinking.”

  “But you shouldn’t,” said the young man jauntily. “It isn’t being done. People as young as you often die of thinking. And why aren’t you drinking your champagne? That isn’t at all wise, you know.”

  “I don’t care for it,” said Sherrill briefly.

  “Oh, but you should,” the young man, Elbert Girard, said. “It’s very old and very costly. Are you really serious that you don’t want it? Well then, would you mind, since it’s sitting so close to me?” And he lifted her glass and drained it as if it were his own. Presently a servant filled it again, and again he drained it. So Sherrill sat and reflected that, in the eyes of whoever might happen to notice, she appeared to be drinking a good deal of champagne. Having been brought up with very decided opinions on the subject of drinking, she felt most uncomfortable. It was, therefore, a great relief to her when at last the dinner was ended and they all repaired to the reception room. It seemed to her that she had been an age in this alien world, and she was beginning to feel terribly weary. She slipped into a seat in a corner behind a table and made show of examining a book that lay there. Her aunt presently discovered her and came over.

  “Sherrill, you are to go with Carol now. I have made your excuses to the hostess, and all you have to do will be to stop beside her and say how sorry you are that it is impossible for you to remain for the evening. She understands you have a previous engagement and you only came to fill in.”

  “Engagement?” echoed Sherrill blankly, the momentary relief changing to dismay. “Is Carol going elsewhere? I thought she was going home.”

  “Home! At this hour of the evening? Certainly not. You are going to one of the merriest little dances of the season, and you are quite lucky to have got here in time to go. It isn’t everybody that is invited.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to seem inappreciative, Aunt Eloise, but really I am very tired, and I’d be so glad to get to bed after my journey.”

  “Nonsense!” said the elder woman. “You are young! You mustn’t mind being a little tired. You can sleep till noon tomorrow. You mustn’t humor yourself that way.”

  “Well then, would you mind if I just stayed here, please? I don’t dance, and I’m sure I would not be anything but a burden to my cousin.”

  “You don’t dance! What can your mother have been thinking of? Well, you’ll soon learn. No, Sherrill, I’ve accepted this invitation for you, and it’s very rude to stay away. Besides, we’re all going to play bridge here, and there wouldn’t be a partner for you. Come, you must hurry. Carol is waiting for you in the dressing room.”

  Sherrill arose precipitately. She certainly would be no more at home at a bridge party than at a dance. She hurried up to the dressing room, wondering if she could persuade Carol to leave her at the house. But when she reached the dressing room there was no sign of Carol, and the maid in attendance told her the young ladies had all gone down to the car. Sherrill hurried after them but found to her dismay that Carol had gone off in the first car and left her to go in the company of strangers, most of whom she had barely met. It was no use to ask them to take her back to her uncle’s house, even if she could have made herself heard. They were all talking at once, and a young man who had sat next to her at the dinner table seemed impatient to be off, so Sherrill took the place assigned her and tried to think of some other way out. It seemed to her that she just could not go through anything more tonight. Every nerve was sore and tired. She would get hold of Carol, somehow, and tell her that she was almost sick she was so tired, and perhaps Carol would find a way to send her home, or at least go home early herself.

  But Carol was not to be interviewed. The dancing was already in full swing, and she was in the midst of it. When the music broke and changed, she seemed to disappear utterly.

  Sherrill drifted into another room finally, after having run the gauntlet of a number of invitations to dance. She felt that if anybody else asked her and she had to explain again that she did not dance, she would scream or laugh or something. She was getting almost hysterical in her weariness. She felt utterly out of place and disgusted. Wine was flowing freely, and some of the young people were already silly with its effects. Carol was conspicuous for her loud voice and silly laughter, and also for the way in which she danced. Sh
errill’s cheeks burned with shame for her. It seemed dreadful to think she belonged to her. Did her father know that she acted this way when she was out of his sight? Why didn’t her mother guard her?

  From her retreat in the library, Sherrill could see the dancing, and every time her cousin circled the room and came within view, her eyes grew more troubled. It almost seemed as if she, guest though she was, were responsible for what her cousin was doing. Finally when she saw Carol stop dancing and sit down across the large room for a moment alone, she made her way to her side and suggested pleasantly that they might both go home now, pleading her own weariness.

  But Carol only stared at her vacantly and then broke into a loud, mirthless laugh of contempt, finishing with a ribald little local improvision, whose chorus changed into the old drunken song, “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning.”

  With burning cheeks, Sherrill retreated to the library and ensconced herself in a big chair near a light with a book. She did not notice what the book was, nor if she held it upside down or right side up, for her thoughts were burning, and her brain was seething with disgust and horror and anger that she should have allowed herself to be in such a position.

  She had been sitting for some time wondering if the night would never end, when she heard a voice at her elbow. “Ye gods and little fishes! Why this seclusion? Am I intruding? Say, you don’t look as if you belong here with this unholy mob!”

  “Oh, I don’t!”

  Sherrill go to her feet in a panic, laying the book down on the table, and lifting frightened eyes to look at a tall, attractive youth with mocking laughter in his eyes. He was perhaps three or four years older than her, and utterly sophisticated in appearance, yet he seemed to be entirely sober and respectful, and her fear died away.

  “You—don’t seem to belong, either,” she added, with relief in her voice.

  “Oh, but I do!” said the young man. “I very much belong. I’m Barney Fennimore, and this party happens to be given in my honor. Not that I care much for this sort of thing, but my aunt does, so she gives it. But if you mean I’m not drunk like the rest, you’re entirely correct. I don’t go in for it. Don’t care for the bad taste next day. Besides I’m in training.”