VII
As this evening marked her first “grown-up party,” Fanny Wallace had entered with delight into the festivities. She had danced nearly all the dances, most of them with Guy Fullerton, who stood at the door of the ballroom and watched her hungrily while she was waltzing with other men. Now she was exhausted, but, in spite of her aunt’s hint, repeated several times, determined not to go to bed. “Let’s go where we can be alone,” she said to Guy. “Then you can fan me till I get a little breath, and entertain me. I’ve done so much talking ever since we got acquainted I actually don’t know whether you can talk or not.”
Guy, who liked her little jokes, even when they were directed against himself, agreed enthusiastically. They passed from room to room, only to find a group of people in each.
“I don’t suppose there’s any use in trying thelibrary,” said Fanny at last, with a sigh. “But perhaps no one’s there. It’s about time people were going home, anyway,” she added, tartly.
On entering the library she uttered a cry of delight. “Not a soul!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t all this leather furniture nice? I just love green leather. I made Auntie promise that she’d have it. Here, you fix this big chair for me, and bring up that foot-rest. Yes, that’s it. Oh, I do wish they wouldn’t make furniture sotall. There, that’s lovely! Now you can sit on that chair—yes, that one, and don’t bring it too near, please. That’s right.” She sank back luxuriously and folded her hands in her lap. “Now you can tell me—let me see, what can you tell me? Oh, talk to me about your life at Harvard. You haven’t told me half enough about that.”
“Well, there isn’t much to tell,” said Guy, with a smile, as he stroked his thick, blond hair.
“There isn’t? Well, you ought to be ashamed to say so. Did you workveryhard?”
“Well, notvery,” Guy replied, with an amused glance from his blue eyes.
“What did you do, then?”
“Oh, I did lots of things.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, the best thing I did was to make the first ten of the Pudding.”
“What!” Fanny sat bolt upright.
“Yes. I made the first ten of the Pudding,” Guy explained, modestly. “Great, wasn’t it?”
“What in the world are you talking about? Is it possible you’re guying me? Well, I’m ashamed. I didn’t think you’d try anything like that on me!”
“Oh!” Guy’s face lighted up. “I thought you knew what that meant. Please excuse me. Why, I wouldn’t guy you for anything in the world. The Pudding’s one of our crack societies, that’s all, and the men are elected in batches of ten. It’s a great compliment to be on the first ten. I was awfully proud of it.”
Fanny looked humbled. “I’m just a country girl, after all,” she acknowledged. “And you’re the first Harvard man I’ve ever known. There!” Suddenly she resumed her usual manner. “Now, don’t you take me down like that again, Guy Fullerton. If you do I’ll—Well, tell me about your old society.”
Guy controlled an impulse to rush over and kiss her. He never loved her so much as when she bullied him like that, especially if her bullying,as often happened, followed a moment of contrition or self-abasement.
“Well, it’s all right as a society. The best men in the class belong to it—that is,” Guy explained, with a blush, “a lot of the fellows are perfectly fine. Oh, I wish you could have come to my class day!” he broke out. “A lot of us, together in the gym—that is, the——”
“Oh, I guess I know what thegymnasiumis!” Fanny snapped. “I suppose you had heaps of girls there!”
“Oh, yes; heaps!” Guy continued, innocently. “All the fellows said that we had the prettiest——”
“Stop!”
Guy stopped, astonished.
“I don’t want to hear about your pretty girls.” Fanny turned her head away, and Guy hesitated. Then she gave him a sidelong glance and one of her most amiable smiles.
“Well, never mind,” she conceded. “Tell me about it—girls and all. You didn’t really care much for any of ’em, did you?”
Guy met her look with a smile. “Well, I thought I did at the time, but I’ve changed my mind since.”
Fanny kicked out her feet. “Oh, the poor things!” she exclaimed. “I suppose you made ’em think you’d never forget ’em. Well, anyhow there’sonegirl that’s on to you.” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m glad dad didn’t hear me say that. He says if I don’t stop talking slang he’ll cut off my allowance. Well, now go on. Tell me some more about the Pudding. Why, of course, theHastyPudding. I once went with Aunt Helen to some theatricals they gave in New York. That was three years ago. Did you ever take part in their theatricals?”
Guy fairly beamed. “Did I? I was thePrincessin ‘The Princess and the Dwarf.’”
“A girl’s part!” cried Fanny, with a woman’s horror at discovering even a remote suggestion of effeminacy in a man she likes.
“Yes; why not? It was great sport.”
“But why didn’t they let you be a man?”
“Oh, they said I’d do better for a girl,” Guy replied, flushing. “You see, with my smooth face I could make up to look like a girl easily enough.”
“It must have been kind of fun,” Fanny acknowledged. Then she asked: “Did you wear——?—did you?”
Guy nodded. “It was awful getting ’em on. They made me hold my breath till I thought I’d nearly die. Then two of the fellows fastened ’em. I didn’t draw a comfortable breath the whole evening. Gee! It was fierce.”
Fanny clapped her hands. “Oh, how I wish I could have seen you!”
“I’ve got some of the pictures,” Guy remarked, tentatively.
“Here?” Fanny exclaimed.
“They’re up in my trunk somewhere.”
“Oh, you mean thing! You’ve had ’em all this time and never showed ’em to me! Well, that’s just like a man! And you might have known I’d have given anything to see ’em.”
“Well, I’ll bring ’em down to-morrow,” Guy promised.
“And what else did you do in your old club?”
“Oh, we used to have all kinds of sport,” Guy replied, feeling the difficulty of explaining to the feminine mind matters exclusively masculine.
“And didn’t you do any work at all in college?” Fanny cried, petulantly, with the exaction of serious accomplishment that all women make from men.
“Ye-e-s,” Guy replied. “I used to work pretty hard at examination times. But I wasn’t a grind, you know,” he added, quickly, as if defending himself from a reproach.
“What’s a grind?”
“Why, a fellow that does nothing but study—just grubs. It’s awful to be like that!”
Fanny sat upright again.
“Well, I declare!” she said. Then she sighed. “You’re the funniest thing!”
“There were some fellows I knew,” Guy conceded, “who could do a lot of work and yet go in for all the society things; but they were wonders. I never pretended to be much at study, you know. If I got through my ‘exams’ by the skin of my teeth I considered myself lucky.”
Fanny looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, you’re kind of a nice boy, just the same.” She cuddled in the corner of the chair and crossed her arms, her hands clasping her shoulders. “I never was much at lessons myself,” she admitted. Then she turned quickly toward the door. “’Sh!I see some people coming.”
From the hall they heard a woman’s voice. “Well, I declare! I feel played out. I’ve done nothing but bump against people all the evening;all kinds of people, too. I never saw so many nationalities in all my life.”
“It’s Mrs. Burrell,” Fanny whispered. “You know her, don’t you?—that queer old woman from Maine, with the three daughters. Let’s go out.”
Mrs. Burrell had entered the room, and started on discovering Guy. Fanny was hidden behind the back of her chair. “Excuse me, if we’re intruding,” she said to Guy, with effusive politeness and a bow that somehow suggested an intended curtsey.
Fanny lifted her head like a Jack-in-the-box. “Oh, not at all, Mrs. Burrell. How d’you do?”
The old woman started. “How you scared me!”
Three young girls had come into the room, followed by a youth whose deep black and carefully curled mustache at once revealed his race. A shriveled little man with thin white hair and beardless, wrinkled face, enlivened by a pair of keen eyes, walked loosely behind.
Fanny nodded to the girls and rose from her seat. The Frenchman greeted her with an elaborate bow. Guy looked uncomfortable, but Fanny did not try to relieve his embarrassmentby introducing him. It was Mrs. Burrell who broke the silence.
“Ain’t it fine here to-night?” she said. “Well, Washington’s a wonderful place! Here’s Emeline’s been speakin’ French to Musseer de Lange on one side, and Gladys has been talking German to—” She looked round at the girls. “Where is he?” she asked.
“I think we have lost ’eem in the crowd,” the Frenchman explained, with a look of distress on his face. He had evidently been having a hard time.
“I guess Gladys’s German was too much for him,” said the tallest and the least pretty of the girls.
“I’ve asked you not to say things like that, Carrie Cora,” said Mrs. Burrell.
The old gentleman, who had been looking with a dazed expression at the book-shelves and at the etchings on the walls, now spoke for the first time, turning, with a smile, to Fanny.
“Carrie Cora an’ I are the plain ones of the family,” he said. “English is good enough for us.”
Mrs. Burrell sank into one of the leather chairs. “Well, it’s kind of a relief to get out ofthat crowd. You go over there, Emeline, an’ go on talkin’ French with musseer.”
The look of distress deepened in the face of the Frenchman, who, however, made a place for the girl.
Fanny had edged toward Guy. “Let’s get away,” she whispered. “We haven’t had more than ten minutes alone the whole evening.”
Guy’s face brightened. “I don’t believe there’s anyone in the conservatory.”
As Fanny started for the door she asked: “Aren’t you girls dancing?”
Mrs. Burrell answered for them: “I’ve been urgin’ them, but they won’t.”
“I don’t know how,” the eldest girl explained, with a note of resentment in her voice, which her mother at once detected.
“I should think you’d be ashamed to say so, Carrie Cora, after all them lessons last Winter.”
“It’s too hot in there,” said Gladys, who, being the prettiest, evidently considered that she need not try very hard to be amiable.
“Well, good-bye,” said Fanny, unceremoniously. “Come on, Guy.”
Mrs. Burrell followed the slim figure with an envious look in her eyes. “Ain’t she the brightlittle thing?” she remarked, addressing her husband. “I wish our girls was more like her. She’ll marry someone ’way up. You see if she don’t.”
“Oh, I guess our girls can hold their own against anyone, Sarah,” Burrell replied.
“Well, I’m sure they’ve had advantages enough,” Mrs. Burrell grumbled. “I don’t see why they don’t get more attention, though.”
Burrell’s eyes sparkled with irritation. “Well, they get attention enough when they’re to home. That’s where they ought to be.”
“I just hate to hear you talk like that, father. You don’t seem to have no ambition for the children.”
“I’ve brought ’em up respectable, an’ I’ve given ’em enough to eat an’ drink, an’ I’ve expected ’em to marry decent fellers in their own station in life. I married a farmer’s daughter, an’ I ain’t had no call to regret it; an’ what’s good enough for me is good enough for them.”
Mrs. Burrell refused to be mollified by the compliment. “Well, times are changed since then, an’ I guess I ain’t a-goin’ to have those girls’ education wasted. What did we come here to Washington for, anyway?”
“Well, that’s the very question I’ve been askin’ myself ever since we landed here. What in hell did we come here for? I wish I’d stayed down in Maine, where I belong. I’m somebody down there. But here the’ ain’t hardly anybody thinks I’m worth speakin’ to. There’s not a man here that’s asked me to have a drink with him to-night.”
Mrs. Burrell rose from her seat with quiet dignity. “If you’re goin’ to begin to talk like that,” she said, in a low voice, “I’m goin’ home. I declare, these parties are only an aggravation, anyway. Come on, girls.” She walked toward the little Frenchman and offered her hand. “Good-night, musseer,” she said, with a large smile.
The Frenchman bowed low again. “Good-night, madame.” He touched the tips of her fingers with his small, gloved hand.
“I don’t believe I like those Frenchmen,” whispered Mrs. Burrell, as the family started to leave the room. “You never can tell whether they’re laughin’ at you or not.”
“I guess nearly everybody’s beginning to go,” said Carrie Cora, briskly. “Let’s hurry up, or they’ll think we want to be put out. Oh, say, look out there, will you? There’s thatMr.West,that they say is so attentive to Mrs. Briggs. He’s been drinking champagne and punch all the evening. See how red his face is!”
“Hold your tongue, Carrie Cora,” said Burrell.
“And talking with Mrs. Briggs, too,” cried the youngest daughter. “Here they come. Let’s get out of the way. They’ll think we’re spying on them.”