XIX
THE Prom was held not in the School of Mines but in The Coliseum, a large hall over a saloon and garage, half way between The Hill and The Flat, requisitioned by all classes when the weather forbade the use of Columbia Gardens. The walls were covered with the School colours, copper and green, flags, and college pennants. The ceiling was a network of electric lights with coloured globes, copper and green, fluttering paper and sprays of apple blossoms, brought from far! “Cozy corners” looked like fragments of a lower altitude, and the faithful palm was on duty everywhere. The orchestra, on a suspended balcony in the centre of the room, was invisible within the same elaborate scheme of decoration.
When Ora entered with her husband the Grand March had finished and the instruments were tuning for a waltz. She saw Ida standing directly under the orchestra surrounded by several men who patently were clamouring for dances. Even in that great room full of women dressed from New York and Paris, Ida looked distinctive and superb. Ora smiled proudly, as she observed her, quite oblivious that the throng of men and women and indignant “squabs,” who had been discussing the wife of Gregory Compton, had transferred their attention to the dazzling apparition in white. Ida wore her gown of coral silk, whose flimsiness was concealed under a mist of black shadow lace. The coral beads clasped her strong white throat and fell to her supple waist. There was a twist of coral tulle in her black hair, which was arranged in the rolling fashion of the moment, obeyed by every other woman in the room save Ora Blake. And her cheeks, her lips, were as coral as the fruit of the sea. She had powdered her face lightly to preserve its tone through exercise and heat. All the arrogance of youth and beauty andpowerful magnetism was expressed in the high poise of her head; a faint smile of triumph curved above her little white teeth; her body was in perfect repose yet as alert as that of a healthy young cat. The waltz began and she glided off in the arm of a young mining engineer from the East. She danced precisely as the best-bred women in the room danced (early in the evening): ease without abandon, dignity without stiffness.
“Heavens, but the American woman is adaptable!” thought Ora. “I never realised before exactly what that time-worn platitude meant. Probably the standards in the Ida set are not so different from ours, after all. As for looks and carriage she might have three generations behind her. Is it democracy or the actress instinct of woman—permitted its full development in this country for the first time in her history?”
This was not entirely a monologue, but addressed for the most part to Professor Becke, one of the most distinguished instructors of the School of Mines, and one of the men she liked best in Butte. He was a tall fair man, with a keen thin fimbriated face, and long fine hands. Ora made a point of asking him to dine with her once or twice a month.
He led the way to two of the chairs on the side of the hall after she had announced that she did not intend to dance.
“But this is the first party we have had for weeks,” he said. “They won’t leave you to me for long.”
“I don’t feel in the mood for dancing. Besides,” she added with a new daring, “I’m all in white and looking very white once more; I don’t want to get warm and spoil the effect.”
He stared into her challenging eyes as if he saw her for the first time. In that room, full of colour and of vivid women and young girls, she produced an almost disconcerting effect with her statuesque beauty, her gleaming whiteness, her frail white body so daringly displayed in its white gown. And, oddly enough, to those staring at her, she made the other women look not only commonplace but cold.
Ora smiled to herself; she was quite aware of the impression at work, not only on the scientific brain, but on others more readily responsive; she had considered theprudence of practising on Butte before departing for wider fields.
The Professor changed colour, but replied steadily: “Fancy you two extraordinary creatures loose in Europe! You should take a bodyguard. I can understand Compton giving his consent, for he is the kind of man that wouldn’t remember whether his wife were twenty or forty at the end of his honeymoon, and there can be little between them in any case. But Blake!”
“Oh, we’ll come home without a scandal,” said Ora lightly. “Ida is the reverse of what she looks, and I—well, I am the proverbial ‘cold’ American woman—that the European anathematises. Ida, of course, looks the siren, and I shall have some trouble protecting her, until she learns how far she can go. But at least I am forewarned.”
“I fancy you will have more trouble protecting yourself!” Professor Becke’s voice was not as even as usual. His intellect was brilliant, and illuminating, and never more so than when in the society of this young woman whom heretofore he had admired merely as a vivacious and exceptional mind; but, startling as this revelation of subtle and alluring womanhood was, he remembered that he was no longer young and that he had an admirable wife with an eagle eye; he had no intention of scorching his fingers in the attempt to light a flame that would guide him to the rocks even were he invited to apply the torch. But he was a man and he sighed a little for his vanished youth. If he had been twenty years younger he fancied that he would have forgotten his good lady and risked burning his heart out. He moved his eyes away deliberately and they rested on Mark Blake, mopping his scarlet face after a lively waltz. He was a kindly man, but all that was deathlessly masculine in him grinned with a cynical satisfaction.
“Who is that?” asked Ora abruptly, and forgetting a faint sensation of pique.
“Ah! Who?”
She indicated a man leaning against one of the doorways, and looking over the crowd with unseeing eyes. “Heavens! What a jaw! Is he as ‘strong’ as he looks, or is he one of Bismarck’s wooden posts painted to look like a man of iron?—Why, it’s——”
“That is Gregory Compton, and he is no wooden post, believe me.”
“I haven’t seen him for years.Canany man be as strong ashelooks?”
“Probably not. He hasn’t had time to discover his master weaknesses yet, so I don’t pretend to guess at them myself. At present he is too absorbed in squeezing our poor brains dry——”
“Doesn’t he ever smile?”
“So rarely that the boys, who have a nickname for all their fellow students, call him ‘Sunny Jim.’”
“What do you think of his wife?” asked Ora abruptly. She hardly knew why she asked the question, nor why she felt a secret glow at the expected answer.
The Professor turned his appraising eye upon the substantial vision in coral and black that tonight had been pronounced the handsomest woman in Butte. “There could be no finer example of the obvious. All her goods are in the front window. There are no surprises behind that superlative beauty; certainly no revelations.”
“I wonder! Ida is far cleverer than you think, and quite capable of affording your sex a good deal in the way of surprises, not to say shocks.”
“Not in the way I mean—not as you will do, worse luck for my helpless sex. There is no soul there, and, I fancy, little heart. She is the last woman Gregory Compton should have married.”
“Why?” Ora tried to look bored but polite.
“Oh—whatever she may have for other men she has nothing for him. She looks the concentrated essence of female—American female—egoism. Compton needs a woman who would give him companionship when he wanted it, and, at the same time, be willing in service.”
Ora bristled. “Service? How like a man. Are we still expected to serve men? I thought the world was moving on.”
Professor Becke, who, like most men married to a domestic commander-in-chief, was strenuously opposed to giving women any powers backed up by law, asked with cold reserve: “Are you a suffragette?”
Ora laughed. “Not yet. But I just escaped being born in the Twentieth Century. I belong to it at all events.”
“So you do, but you never have been in love——” Hebroke off in embarrassment; he had forgotten for the moment that this white virginal creature had been married for six years. She showed no resentment, for she barely had heard him; she was looking at Gregory Compton again, and concluding that he might appeal strongly to the supplementary female, but must antagonise women whose highly specialised intellects, at home only on the heights of civilisation, had submerged their primal inheritance.
Professor Becke went on:
“Even a clever woman’s best career is a man. If you women develop beyond nature that powerful old tyrant will simply snuff you out.”
“Well, man will go too. That may be our final triumph.”
“Atlantis over again! And quite in order that the race should perish through the excesses of woman. Then Nature, having wiped her slate clean with a whoop, will begin all over again and precisely where she did before. No doubt she will permit a few records to survive as a warning.”
“You may be right—but, although I have an idea I shall one day want to justify my existence by being of some use, it won’t be because my sex instinct has got the better of my intelligence. But I refuse to think of that until I have had a royal good time for a few years.”
“That is your right,” he said impulsively. “You are altogether exceptional—and you have had six years of Butte! I am glad your mine has panned out so splendidly. There is quite an excitement in the Sampling Works——”
“What?” Ora forgot Gregory Compton. “I knew the mine was doing well——”
“Surely you know that your profits in royalties already must be something over a hundred thousand dollars——” He stopped in confusion.
Ora’s face was radiant and she never had liked Mark as sincerely as at that moment. “It is just like him! He wanted to wait and give me a great surprise—my husband, I mean.”
“And I have spoilt it! I am really sorry. Please don’t tell him.”
“I won’t. And I’ll be the most surprised woman in the world when he takes me to the bank to sign my letterof credit. You needn’t mind. I’ll have the fun of thinking about it for five months—and rolling it up in my imagination. Ah!”
“Compton has recognised you, I think.”
Ora had met the long narrow concentrated gaze of her husband’s friend. She bowed slightly. Compton made a step forward, hesitated, braced himself, and walked toward her.
“A constitutionally shy man, but a brave one,” said Professor Becke with a grim smile, as he rose to resign his seat. “A strong magnet has pulled up many a sinking heart. Good evening, Compton. Glad you honour our party, even if you don’t dance.”
“I intend to ask Mrs. Blake to dance.” Gregory betrayed nothing of his inner trepidation although he did not smile. He could always rely upon the stern mask into which he had trained his visage not to betray him.
Ora, oblivious of her resolution not to dance, rose and placed her hand on his shoulder, smiling an absent farewell to Professor Becke. For a moment she forgot her resentful interest in this man in her astonishment that he danced so well. She had the impression of dancing with a light supple creature of the woods, one who could be quite abandoned if he chose, although he held her as if he were embracing a feather. She wondered if it were his drop of aboriginal blood and looked up suddenly. To her surprise he was smiling, and his smile so altered the immobility of his face that she lost her breath.
“I feel as if I were dancing with a snowflake,” was his unexpected remark.
“You look the last man to pay compliments and murmur sweet nothings.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Perhaps I am. I rather liked your attitude—expression, rather—of cool superiority.”
“Why don’t you use the word prig?”
“Oh, no!—Well, perhaps that is what I did mean.”
He stopped short, regardless of the annoyance he caused several impetuous couples. “If you did I shall leave you right here.”
“I did not. Please go on. Everybody is staring at us. You took me completely by surprise.”
“I? Why?”
“You are the last man I should expect the usual small talk from.”
“Small talk? Heavens knows I have none of that. Girls used to talk my head off in self-defence. I merely said what I thought. What did you expect me to talk about?”
“Oh—mines, I suppose.” Again, to her surprise, his face lit up as if by an inner and jealously hidden torch. But he said soberly:
“Well, there is no more interesting subject. Never has been since the world began. Where shall we find a seat?”
The waltz was over. The chairs were filling. Young couples were flitting toward the embowered corners.
“Let’s go outside,” he said abruptly.
“What? On the street? And nobody goes out of doors from a ballroom in June.”
“Good reason for going. Come with me.”
He led her to the cloak-room. “Get your wrap,” he said.
Ora frowned, but she asked for her heavy white woollen wrap and put it on; then automatically followed him down the stairs and into the street.
“Why don’t you get your coat and hat?” she asked, still dazed. “It’s cold, you know.”
“I never was cold in my life,” he said contemptuously. He hailed a taxi. “I must go up to the School of Mines, and ask the result of some assaying,” he added as he almost lifted her in. “Then we can talk up there. May I smoke?”
“I don’t care what you do.”
He smiled directly into her resentful eyes this time and tucked the lap-robe about her.