“Of course,” she murmured, “there are artists and studios and models and poverty everywhere.... I suppose that without poverty real romance is scarcely possible.”
He was still laughing when he answered:
“Financial conditions make no difference. Romance is in one’s self — or it is nowhere.”
“Is it in — you?” she asked audaciously.
He made no pretence of restraining his mirth.
“Why, I don’t know, Geraldine. Lots of people have the capacity for it. Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not essentials.... You ask if it is in me. I think it is. I think it exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace. To make people look with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar to arrest their attention — only your romancer can accomplish this.”
“Please go on,” she said as he ended. “I’m listening very hard. You are glorifying commonplaces, you know.”
They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal charmed at her dainty thrust at himself.
“I was talking commonplaces,” he admitted, “but how was I to know enough not to? Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter opens a tin of mouldy axioms.... I didn’t realise I was encountering my peer — —”
“You may be encountering more than that,” she said, the excitement of her success with him flushing her adorably.
“Oh, I’ve heard how terribly educated you and Scott are. No doubt you can floor me on anything intellectual. See here, Geraldine, it’s simply wicked! — you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few predigested platitudes on you — —”
“I don’t know anything, Duane! How perfectly horrid of you!”
“Well, you’ve scared me!”
“I haven’t. You’re laughing at me. You know well enough that I don’t know the things you know.”
“What are they, in Heaven’s name?”
“Things — experiences — matters that concern life — the world, men, everything!”
“You wouldn’t be interesting if you knew such things,” he said. She thought there was the same curious hint of indifference, something of listlessness, almost fatigue in the expression of his eyes. And again, apparently apropos of nothing, she found herself thinking of what Kathleen had said about this man.
“I don’t understand you,” she said, looking at him.
He smiled, and the ghost of a shadow passed from his eyes.
“I was talking at random.”
“I don’t think you were.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head, drawing a long, quiet breath. Silent, lips resting in softly troubled curves, she thought of what Kathleen had said about this man. What had he done to disgrace himself?
A few moments later she rose with decision.
“Come,” she said, unconsciously imperious.
He looked across the room and saw Dysart.
“But I haven’t begun to tell you—” he began; and she interrupted smilingly:
“I know enough about you for a while; I have learned that you are a very wonderful young man and that I’m inclined to like you. You will come to see me, won’t you?... No, I can’t remain here another second. I want to go to Kathleen. I want you to ask her to dance, too.... Please don’t urge me, Duane. I — this is my first dinner dance — yes, my very first. And I don’t intend to sit in corners — I wish to dance; I desire to be happy. I want to see lots and lots of men, not just one.... You don’t know all the lonely years I must make up for every minute now, or you wouldn’t look at me in such a sulky, bullying way.... Besides — do you think I find you a compensation for all those delightful people out yonder?”
He glanced up and saw Dysart still watching them. Suddenly he dropped his hand over hers.
“Perhaps you may find that compensation in me some day,” he said. “How do you know?”
“What a silly thing to say! Don’t paw me, Duane; you hurt my hand. Look at what you’ve done to my fan!”
“It came between us. I’m sorry for anything that comes between us.”
Both were smiling fixedly; he said nothing for a moment; their gaze endured until she flinched.
“Silly,” she said, “you are trying to tyrannise over me as you did when we were children. I remember now — —”
“You did the bullying then.”
“Did I? Then I’ll continue.”
“No, you won’t; it’s my turn.”
“I will if I care to!”
“Try it.”
“Very well. Take me to Kathleen.”
“Not until I have the dances I want!”
Again their eyes met in silence. Dark little lights glimmered in hers; his narrowed. The fixed smile died out.
“The dances you want!” she repeated. “How do you propose to secure them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing on the stage and in fiction, but they’re not suitable to have tagging at heel — —”
“I won’t do any tagging at heel,” he said; “don’t count on it.”
“I have no inclination to count on you at all,” she retorted, thoroughly irritated.
“You will have it some day.”
“Oh! Do you think so?”
“Yes.... I didn’t mean to speak the way I did. Won’t you give me a dance or two?”
“No. I had no idea how horrid you could be.... I was told you were.... Now I can believe it. Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?”
After a step or two he said, not looking at her:
“I’m really sorry, Geraldine. I’m not a brute. Something about that fellow Dysart upset me.”
“Please don’t talk about it any more.”
“No.... Only I am glad to see you again, and I do care for your regard.”
“Then earn it,” she said unevenly, as her anger subsided. “I don’t know very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when they’re offensive.”
“Was I?”
“Yes.... Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it the easiest way to take with me on every occasion.... Duane, do you know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike? And that is why we used to fight so.”
“I believe we are,” he said slowly. “But — I was never able to keep away from you.”
“Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn’t it?” she said, turning to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. “Do let us agree, Duane. Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other — unless we have forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. I thought you were the perfection of all boys.”
“I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine.”
She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying:
“Think so now, Duane! It will be good for us both.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Not — seriously,” she said.... “And, Duane, please don’t be too serious with me. I am — you make me uncertain — you make me uncomfortable. I don’t know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn’t be — that way — with me; you won’t, will you?”
He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. “No,” he said, laughing; “I’ll open another can of platitudes.... You’re a dear to forgive me.”
Dancing had been general before the cotillion; débutantes continued to arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in bright-eyed battalions.
The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society to its intellectual foundations.
In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach tricycle-chair
trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours — live white cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through which the men jumped.
There was also a Totem-pole figure — and other things, including supper and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times.
On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing with her first venturesome glass of champagne.
All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to live!
Her childhood’s playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young fellow was clean swept off his feet.
Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment’s preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she took Dysart’s arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she turned and looked back at her childhood’s comrade, who followed, scowling at Dysart’s graceful back.
Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of which Dysart, as usual, robbed him.
Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and Dysart, but not offering to follow them.
“Lot of débutantes here — the whole year’s output,” he said vaguely. “What a noisy supper-room — eh, Mallett? I’m rather afraid champagne is responsible for some of it.”
Duane started forward, halted.
“Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?”
“Y — yes.... I’d better go and tell her, hadn’t I?”
He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared.
For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; then Duane said in a constrained voice:
“I’ll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you’ll find her brother and Mrs. Severn”; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda.
When he found them — and he found them easily, for Geraldine’s overexcited laughter warned and guided him — Dysart, her fan in his hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from lips and eyes.
“Kathleen sent for you,” said Duane drily.
“I’ll come in a minute, Duane.”
“In a moment,” repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back.
The colour surged into Mallett’s face; he turned sharply on his heel.
“Wait!” said Geraldine; “Duane — do you hear me?”
“I’ll take you back,” began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and laid her hand on Mallett’s arm.
“Won’t you wait for me, Duane?”
And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again.
“Duane!”
“What?”
“I tell you to wait for me — here!” She stamped her foot.
He scowled — but waited. She turned on Dysart:
“Good-night!” — offering her hand with decision.
Dysart began: “But I had expected — —”
“Good-night!”
Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and an excellent exit, all things considered.
Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm through his.
“Duane,” she said, “the champagne has gone to my head.”
“Nonsense!”
“It has! My cheeks are queer — the skin fits too tight. My legs don’t belong to me — but they’ll do.”
She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his cheek.
“My first dinner! Isn’t it disgraceful? But how could I know?”
“You mustn’t let it scare you.”
“It doesn’t. I don’t care. I knew something would go wrong. I — the truth is, that I don’t know how to act — how to accept my liberty. I don’t know how to use it. I’m a perfect fool.... Do you think Kathleen will notice this? Isn’t it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I look — queer?”
“No. It isn’t so, anyway — and you’ll simply lean on me — —”
“Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It’s only that they don’t seem to belong to me. I’m — I’m excited — I’ve laughed too much — more than I have ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don’t know what I mean, do you, Duane? But it’s true; I’ve talked to-night more than I ever have in any one week.... And it’s gone to my head — all this — all these people who laugh with me over nothing — follow me, tell me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with them — as though I would need asking or urging! — as though my impulse is not to open my heart to every one of them — open my arms to them — thank them on my knees for being here — for being nice to me — all these boys who make little circles around me — so funny, so quaint in their formality — —”
She pressed his arm tighter.
“Let me rattle on — let me babble, Duane. I’ve years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I’m not one.... Oh, the happiness of this one night! — the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I — I’m perfectly mad over pleasure; I like men.... I suppose the champagne makes me frank about it — but I don’t care — I do like men — —”
“That one?” demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms which screened the conservatory doors.
“You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes — I — do like him.”
“Well, he’s married, and you’d better not,” he snapped.
“C-can’t I like him?” in piteous astonishment which set the colour flying into his face.
“Why, yes — of course — I didn’t mean — —”
“What did you mean? Isn’t it — shouldn’t he be — —”
“Oh, it’s all right, Geraldine. Only he’s a sort of a pig to keep you away from — others — —”
“Other — pigs?”
He turned sharply, seized her, and forcibly turned her toward the light. She made no effort to control her laughter, excusing it between breaths:
“I didn’t mean to turn what you said into ridicule; it came out before I meant it.... Do let me laugh a little, Duane. I simply cannot care about anything serious for a while — I want to be frivolous — —”
“Don’t laugh so loud,” he whispered.
&
nbsp; She released his arm and sank down on a marble seat behind the flowering oleanders.
“Why are you so disagreeable?” she pouted. “I know I’m a perfect fool, and the champagne has gone to my silly head — and you’ll never catch me this way again.... Don’t scowl at me. Why don’t you act like other men? Don’t you know how?”
“Know how?” he repeated, looking down into the adorably flushed face uplifted. “Know how to do what?”
“To flirt. I don’t. Everybody has tried to teach me to-night — everybody except you ... Duane.... I’m ready to go home; I’ll go. Only my head is whirling so — Tell me — are you glad to see me again?... Really?... And you don’t mind my folly? And my tormenting you?... And my — my turning your head a little?”
“You’ve done that,” he said, forcing a laugh.
“Have I?... I knew it.... You see, I am horridly truthful to-night. In vino veritas! ... Tell me — did I, all by myself, turn that too-experienced head of yours?”
“You’re doing it now,” he said.
She laughed deliciously. “Now? Am I? Yes, I know I am. I’ve made a lot of men think hard to-night.... I didn’t know I could; I never before thought of it.... And — even you, too?... You’re not very serious, are you?”
“Yes, I am. I tell you, Geraldine, I’m about as much in love with you as — —”
“In love!”
“Yes — —”
“No!”
“Yes, I am — —”
But she would not have it put so crudely.
“You dear boy,” she said, “we’ll both be quite sane to-morrow.... No, I don’t mind your kissing my hand — I’m dreadfully tired, anyway.... We’ll find Kathleen, shall we? My head doesn’t buzz much.”
“Geraldine,” he said, deliberately encircling her waist, “you are only the same small girl I used to know, after all.”
“‘Duane!’ she gasped— ‘why did you?’”
“Y-yes, I’m afraid so.”
“And you’re not really old enough to really care for anybody, are you?”
“Care?”
“Love.”
“No, I’m not. Don’t talk to me that way, Duane.”
He drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her on the cheek twice, and again on the mouth, as, crimson, breathless, she strained away from him.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 428