XIII
IT fell out—most unseasonably for the Vermilions—that Mrs. O’Neal had planned her annual reception for the same night as their fancy-ball. All the world was sure to go to Mrs. O’Neal’s sooner or later, and it broke up the mask-ball at an unusual hour, just before the champagne began to take effect, which was, on the whole, rather a mercy to the Vermilions, though they knew it not and suffered some keen pangs of anger and jealousy. Mrs. O’Neal had, of course, done it on purpose, Cynthia Vermilion said, and, perhaps she had! Mrs. O’Neal was a thoroughly worldly old person who would have driven her social chariot over a hundred Vermilions, figuratively speaking, and felt a grim pleasure in doing it. The world is not precisely the place for the cultivation of the more tender feelings, or an undue love for your neighbor, and Martha O’Neal had long since forgotten that there might be really serious reasons for considering any one but herself.
So she gave her famous annual ball on that beautiful spring evening when the scent of the lilacs in her garden came in through the open windows. She had the house decorated with Easter lilies—it was Eastertide—and she had made her offering from the front pew in the most fashionable church in town, wearing her new bonnet while her head vibrated sufficiently to make the roses dance in weird mockery on its brim. She had remembered to mention, too, that she gave a thousand dollars a year to the church, because it is quite useless to hide your light under a bushel. Having done all these things she gave her ball on the Vermilions’ evening, and it was a very beautiful, a very select and a very famous affair, made more famous in the end by an incident which she had not foreseen.
Those poor Vermilions! They had spent many thousands, and yet people hurried away or came late, only to eat the supper; old Vermilion was a magnificent provider. Of course there were some who never went to the Vermilion’s at all, but always to Mrs. O’Neal’s; among these were the Temples and old Mrs. Allestree, who made a point to be present at Martha’s house, for she and Martha had been schoolmates and were still good friends, although nothing could have been moreamusing than the contrast; the one in her old-fashioned dress with her placid face and her kindly smile, and the other, tight-laced, over-burdened with satin and jewels, her old head wagging and quivering under its high white pompadour and its jewelledaigrette.
Her rooms were thronged; the dark polished floors, the old mahogany furniture, the glittering mirrors, the bewildering array of candles, tall candles and short candles, huge seven-armed silver candelabra, short, stout silver candlesticks, the masses of white lilies, the sweet, heavy odor of them; what a beautiful, dazzling, fanciful scene it was, when the lovely women in their rich dresses began to throng every room and corridor and even lingered laughing and talking on the wide stairs and in the gallery above which commanded the lower hall and the ballroom, where the fluted pillars were festooned with vines and crowned with capitals of roses. The old, old woman, with her white head and her false teeth and her gorgeous gown, receiving her guests, chattering and smiling and proud; truly the ruling passion is strong in death. She stood there nobly, heroically, cheerfully, though her tight satin shoes pinched her poor, old feet, and the draughts from the door sent a shiver of rheumatic pain acrossher poor, old, bare, shrivelled shoulders; and the wide expanse of her ample neck and bosom, clad in jewels and the imagination, felt the breeze too.
After awhile the guests from the fancy-ball began to drift in, a few at first in costume, and then more and more, until the ballroom took on the look of a harlequin show, and there was much gay laughter and criticism of each new arrival from those who had disdained the Vermilion ball or who had never been asked.
Mrs. Osborne came, beautiful and striking, dressed as an Eastern sorceress, and almost at once she had a circle around her in the corner of the conservatory, and was telling fortunes and interpreting dreams with all the arts of a charlatan and the charm of a lovely woman. The crimson tunic, the dark blue petticoat worked with gold, the shapely ankles with broad gold bracelets, the glittering scarfs which draped her shoulders and revealed her white arms, the dull gold band on her forehead, binding back the masses of glossy auburn hair, all combined to make her a charming and seductive picture. She told fortunes well; it is an alluring art, it shows pretty hands and delicate wrists, and the downward sweep of soft eyelashes, the arch of a whitebrow, besides that swift glance upward from bewilderingly lovely eyes—
The women looked at her over their shoulders and stiffened, while the men all had their fortunes told and found the lines on their palms of sudden and absorbing interest. One or two elderly women, the mothers of grown boys and girls, were seized with a sudden desire to go home, but it was no easy matter because the elderly gentlemen belonging to them, and also the fathers of grown boys and girls, found that corner too attractive to leave.
Judge Temple, observing it with his shrewd common sense, smiled with much secret amusement and looked about to see if Rose saw it, for Rose would understand though she had not his sense of humor. But he discovered Rose greeting William Fox with an expression on her sweet young face which startled him. She was smiling and speaking easily, he saw that, but what was it in her eyes, her lips, which seemed almost too subtle to interpret? The judge stopped talking to his nearest neighbor and looked at his own child oddly; could it be? Then he looked at Fox and there he read something too, the look of a man in pain, physical or mental, a pain which he meant to hide. The old judge had been to the supper-tableand was standing at the door when he saw them; he quite forgot the plate in his hand, he almost let a strawberry roll off on to the floor when he heard Mrs. Allestree’s voice.
“Dear me, judge, do remember that I’m wearing my one evening gown and strawberries stain!” and she laughed as she saw his start; “there, see what it is to be a philosopher out for an evening with a frivolous old woman!”
“My dear Jane,” replied the judge—he had gone to school with Mrs. Allestree—; “I’d forgotten that it wasn’t a strawberry vine. Do you remember those we stole from old Mr. White’s patch a thousand years ago?”
“Do I?” the old woman sighed; “Stephen,” she said, “how much nicer they were than these! I wonder if I stole some now—”
“I should send you to jail,” he retorted, twinkling, “the second offense, you know!”
“You stole those yourself!” she replied indignantly, “I was only accessory after the fact! Who in the world is that?” she added, catching her breath and craning her neck to peep through the throng.
It was Margaret White. She had just come from the fancy-ball where it had been her whim to appear as Ophelia. Perhaps her conscience hadpinched her for her treatment of Mrs. Vermilion in Allestree’s studio, or it had merely pleased her to go. It was often impossible to find the key to her conduct. At any rate she had gone, and she came late to Mrs. O’Neal’s, where she was to meet her husband, for he had refused to go in costume to the Vermilions’. He was a man of too heavy common sense to trick himself out in fancy dress, and on that one point he knew his own limitations; he had never been able to play a part to his own satisfaction, and he had too high an opinion of Wicklow White to belittle him with a failure. So it happened that he had already had his fortune told by the enchantress in the conservatory when a ripple of excitement from the ballroom reached him.
When Mrs. Allestree spoke the crowd had parted to let Margaret pass through it. She wore a flowing, soft, white gown, thin, clinging, revealing her neck and arms and the long slim lines of her figure; her hair, which was beautiful and an unusual tint of pale brown, was unbound and hanging, trimmed with flowers, while her arms were full of them.
There was a silence; every eye was on her, and there was an instantaneous recognition of her remarkable fitness for the part; the delicate, subtle beauty of her face, her brilliant eyes, withthe dusky shadows below them, the longing, the pain, the uninterpreted feeling of her expression, her wild hair, her slim, graceful figure, the appealing beauty of her slender white hands as she held them out, offering rosemary and rue and daisies, was she really an actress born or—the very nymph herself? That mystic atmosphere of tragedy which sometimes seemed to pervade her being had at last found an expression at once visible and beautiful.
It was her whim to play the part out, and people watched her, fascinated; those who did not approve of her, those who disliked her, as well as those who fell under her spell, watched her with undisguised eagerness. She drew all eyes and knew it. She looked up and saw her husband standing in the door of the conservatory; their eyes met with a challenge; they had quarrelled woefully over her coming in this dress, and it only needed the sight of him to kindle her wilful daring, her abominable obstinacy. Some one called her by name and spoke to her but, unheeding, she began to sing Ophelia’s song, throwing flowers as she walked slowly, very slowly down the crowded room.
“Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny!” she sang.
There was a little breathless applause, but she met it with a vacant look, coming on, tossing a rose here, a lily there, to be caught by some ready hand.
Mrs. Wingfield, unhappily, stood in her path. She had been watching her approach with an expression which needed no explanation, but she could not be content with silent disapproval, she rushed upon her fate. “Why, how do you do, Mrs. White,” she said, in her audible voice, “I really didn’t know it was you; I thought it must be some actress!”
Margaret looked at her blankly, then she put her head on one side. “‘Well, God ’ild you!’” she exclaimed, “‘they say the owl was a baker’s daughter.’”
Mrs. Wingfield turned painfully scarlet. There was a titter, an audible and wavering titter around her. Alack, there were only too many who remembered, with the memory of society, that her father had dealt in loaves and fishes!
But Margaret had passed on; she handed a flower to Fox as she passed, rosemary for remembrance; she gave a rose to Rose Temple and to the judge a sprig of rue with a little malicious smile.
“Call it herb of grace o’ Sundays!” she said lightly, and the judge laughed good humoredly with the others, for he knew that his stiff, old-fashioned manners and customs were often meat for jests.
After all, it was not so bad, people were obviously entertained; White began to draw a breath of relief, he tried to signal to her to stop. But Margaret was not done, instead, the very spirit of defiance seemed to possess her. She suddenly knelt in the centre of the room and began to make a wreath of flowers, singing Ophelia’s lament, her sweet, high voice carrying far in the great rooms. The throng of gayly dressed women drew farther away, the circle widened, necks were craned, those behind stood on tip-toe.
It was too much for Wicklow White, he could endure no more; he walked abruptly across the space. “Margaret,” he said, in a low peremptory voice, “this is too much, we must go home!”
She looked up and shook back her soft, wild hair as she tossed a flower at him.
“‘For bonny, sweet Robin is all my joy!’” she sang maliciously.
He crimsoned and bit his lip. Again some one applauded; there was a slight murmur of talk.
Margaret rose abruptly from her knees andbegan to laugh, herself again, gay, debonair, indifferent. “What a fool I can be to entertain you,” she said, her delicate face bright as a child’s.
People gathered about her at once; she was congratulated, praised, but in the corners others disapproved and thought her a little mad. Mrs. Osborne glanced meaningly at her nearest friend and tapped her forehead, and Mrs. Wingfield laughed furiously.
“What a delightful side-show!” she said; “they say White will lose his place—no wonder!”
The throng had closed up again, the gay murmur of talk rose; the musicians were just beginning to play a waltz and the ballroom was filling with dancers.
Margaret, laughing and talking gayly, stood in the door. Fox, looking across at her, experienced a feeling of deep amazement. What an actress a woman can be! It seemed to him that he had dreamed that scene in White’s house, that it was impossible, untrue, a phantasm of his troubled brain. Then, as he watched her, pondering on a woman’s unfathomable moods, he saw a sudden gray whiteness spread over her face like a veil, her eyelids quivered, her lips parted and she swayed.
In an instant he had reached her and caught her as she fell. Judge Temple helped him hush the stir it made, and he carried her quietly and swiftly down stairs to a reception room below where he could get help at once.
Half an hour later Judge Temple took Rose home.
“What was it, father?” she asked, as they got into the carriage; “I didn’t see it and I just heard that Margaret fainted. Mrs. O’Neal kept us all dancing, she didn’t want it known.”
The judge looked thoughtfully out of the window. He was not thinking of Margaret. “She is better now, they got her home in a little while. I believe White did his best in spite of that scene,” he said; “she has heart disease; the doctor intimated to me that she might go just like that if she keeps this up—but people live a long time with Margaret’s kind of heart trouble; I knew one man who had it for twenty years and finally died of stale cucumbers. A beautiful creature, a very beautiful creature, I’ll admit it!”
Rose made an effort, she must learn to hide her heart, she who had never hidden anything! “Father, may I go to her dressmaker?” she asked archly.
“No!” he said sharply, “nor walk in her ways—the most extraordinary creature! Jane Allestree tells me there’ll be a divorce, and no wonder!”
Rose was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “Gerty said so.”
The judge leaned back in his corner and passed his hand over his eyes. “Ah!” he ejaculated and relapsed into silence.