The two friends walked through a sort of opera-bouffe to find her; music
playing, a swaying crowd, bright lights, bright eyes, pretty women, a
glimpse of dancers footing it over a polished floor in a room beyond--a
hundred colors flashing and changing, as the groups shifted, before the
eye could take in the composition of the picture. A sudden thrill of
exhilaration rioted in John's pulses, and he trembled like a child
before the gay disclosure of a Christmas tree. Meredith swore to himself
that he would not have known him for the man of five minutes agone. Two
small, bright red spots glowed in his cheeks; he held himself erect with
head thrown back and shoulders squared, and the idolizing Tom thought he
looked as a king ought to look at the acme of power and dominion. Miss
Hinsdale's word in the hallway was the geniuses touch: a bent, gray man
of years--a word--and behold the Great John Harkless, the youth of elder
days ripened to his prime of wisdom and strength! People made way for
them and whispered as they passed. It had been years since John Harkless
had been in the midst of a crowd of butterfly people; everything seemed
unreal, or like a ball in a play; presently the curtain would fall and
close the lights and laughter from his view, leaving only the echo of
music. It was like a kaleidoscope for color: the bouquets of crimson or
white or pink or purple; the profusion of pretty dresses, the brilliant,
tender fabrics, and the handsome, foreshortened faces thrown back over
white shoulders in laughter; glossy raven hair and fair tresses moving
in quick salutations; and the whole gay shimmer of festal tints and rich
artificialities set off against the brave green of out-doors, for the
walls were solidly adorned with forest branches, with, here and there
amongst them, a blood-red droop of beech leaves, stabbed in autumn's
first skirmish with summer. The night was cool, and the air full of
flower smells, while harp, violin, and 'cello sent a waltz-throb through
it all.
They looked rapidly through several rooms and failed to find her
indoors, and they went outside, not exchanging a word, and though
Harkless was a little lame, Tom barely kept up with his long stride.
On the verandas there were fairy lamps and colored incandescents over
little tables, where people sat chatting. She was not there. Beyond
was a terrace, where a myriad of Oriental lanterns outlined themselves
clearly in fantastically shaped planes of scarlet and orange and green
against the blue darkness. Many couples and groups were scattered over
the terrace, and the young men paused on the steps, looking swiftly from
group to group. She was not there.
“We haven't looked in the dancing-room,” said Tom, looking at his
companion rather sorrowfully. John turned quickly and they reentered the
house.
He had parted from her in the blackness of storm with only the flicker
of lightning to show her to him, but it was in a blaze of lights that
he saw her again. The dance was just ended, and she stood in a wide
doorway, half surrounded by pretty girls and young men, who were
greeting her. He had one full look at her. She was leaning to them all,
her arms full of flowers, and she seemed the radiant centre of all the
light and gaiety of the place. Even Meredith stopped short and exclaimed
upon her; for one never got used to her; and he remembered that whenever
he saw her after absence the sense of her beauty rushed over him anew.
And he believed the feeling on this occasion was keener than ever
before, for she was prettier than he had ever seen her.
“No wonder!” he cried; but Harkless did not understand. As they pressed
forward, Meredith perceived that they were only two more radii of
a circle of youths, sprung from every direction as the waltz ended,
bearing down upon the common focus to secure the next dance. Harkless
saw nothing but that she stood there before him. He feared a little that
every one might notice how he was trembling, and he was glad of the many
voices that kept them from hearing his heart knock against his ribs.
She saw him coming toward her, and nodded to him pleasantly, in just the
fashion in which she was bowing to half a dozen others, and at that a
pang of hot pain went through him like an arrow--an arrow poisoned with
cordial, casual friendliness.
She extended her hand to him and gave him a smile that chilled him--it,
was so conventionally courteous and poised so nicely in the manner of
society. He went hot and cold fast enough then, for not less pleasantly
in that manner did she exclaim: “I am very glad to see you, Mr.
Harkless, so extremely glad! And so delighted to find you looking strong
again! Do tell me about all our friends in Plattville. I should like to
have a little chat with you some time. So good of you to find me in this
melee.”
And with that she turned from the poor fellow to Meredith. “How do you
do. Cousin Tom? I've saved the next dance for you.” Then she distributed
words here and there and everywhere, amongst the circle about
her--pretty Marquise with a vengeance! “No, Mr. Swift, I shall not make
a card; you must come at the beginning of a dance if you want one. I
cannot promise the next; it is quite impossible. No, I did not go as
far north as Mackinac. How do you do, Mr. Burlingame?--Yes, quite an
age;--no, not the next, I am afraid; nor the next;--I'm not keeping a
card. Good evening, Mr. Baird. No, not the next. Oh, _thank_ you, Miss
Hinsdale!--No, Mr. Swift, it is quite impossible--I'm so sorry. Cousin,
the music is commencing; this is ours.”
As she took Meredith's arm, she handed her flowers to a gentleman beside
her with the slightest glance at the recipient; and the gesture and look
made her partner heartsick for his friend; it was so easy and natural
and with the air of habit, and had so much of the manner with which a
woman hands things to a man who partakes of her inner confidences. Tom
knew that Harkless divined the gesture, as well as the identity of the
gentleman. They started away, but she paused, and turned to the latter.
“Mr. Macauley, you must meet Mr. Harkless. We leave him in your care,
and you must see that he meets all the pretty girls--you are used to
being nice to distinguished strangers, you know.”
Tom put his arm about her, and whirled her away, and Harkless felt as if
a soft hand had dealt him blow after blow in the face. Was this lady of
little baffling forms and small cold graces the girl who had been his
kind comrade, the girl who stood with him by the blue tent-pole, she who
had run to him to save his life, she who walked at his side along the
pike? The contrast of these homely scenes made him laugh grimly. Was
this she who had wept before him--was it she who had been redolent of
kindness so fragrantly natural and true--was it she who said she “loved
all these people very much, in spite of having known them only two
days”?
He cried out upon himself for a fool. What was he in her eyes but a
man who had needed to be told that she did not love him! Had he not
better--and more courteously to her--have avoided the meeting which was
necessarily an embarrassment to her? But no; he must rush like a Mohawk
till he found her and forced her to rebuff him, to veil her kindness in
little manners, to remind him that he put himself in the character of a
rejected importunate. She had punished him enough, perhaps a little too
cruelly enough, in leaving him with the man to whom she handed bouquets
as a matter of course. And this man was one whose success had long been
a trumpet at his ear, blaring loudly of his own failure in the same
career.
It had been several years since he first heard of the young editor of
the Rouen “Journal,” and nowadays almost everybody knew about Brainard
Macauley. Outwardly, he was of no unusual type: an American of affairs;
slight, easy, yet alert; relaxed, yet sharp; neat, regular, strong; a
quizzical eye, a business chin, an ambitious head with soft, straight
hair outlining a square brow; and though he was “of a type,” he was not
commonplace, and one knew at once that he would make a rattling fight to
arrive where he was going.
It appeared that he had heard of Harkless, as well as the Carlow editor
of him. They had a few moments of shop, and he talked to Harkless as a
brother craftsman, without the offense of graciousness, and spoke of his
pleasure in the meeting and of his relief at Harkless's recovery, for,
aside from the mere human feeling, the party needed him in Carlow--even
if he did not always prove himself “quite a vehement partisan.” Macauley
laughed. “But I'm not doing my duty,” he said presently; “I was to
present you to the pretty ones only, I believe. Will you designate your
preferred fashion of beauty? We serve all styles.”
“Thank you,” the other answered, hurriedly. “I met a number last
night--quite a number, indeed.” He had seen them only in dim lights,
however, and except Miss Hinsdale and the widower, had not the faintest
recognition of any of them, and he cut them all, except those two, one
after the other, before the evening was over; and this was a strange
thing for a politician to do; but he did it with such an innocent eye
that they remembered the dark porch and forgave him.
“Shall we watch the dancing, then?” asked Macauley. Harkless was already
watching part of it.
“If you will. I have not seen this sort for more than five years.”
“It is always a treat, I think, and a constant proof that the older
school of English caricaturists didn't overdraw.”
“Yes; one realizes they couldn't.”
Harkless remembered Tom Meredith's fine accomplishment of dancing;
he had been the most famous dancer of college days, and it was in the
dancer that John best saw his old friend again as he had known him, the
light lad of the active toe. Other couples flickered about the one
John watched, couples that plodded, couples that bobbed, couples that
galloped, couples that slid, but the cousins alone passed across the
glistening reflections as lightly as October leaves blown over the
forest floor. In the midst of people who danced with fixed, glassy eyes,
or who frowned with determination to do their duty or to die, and
seemed to expect the latter, or who were pale with the apprehension of
collision, or who made visible their anxiety to breathe through the nose
and look pleased at the same time, these two floated and smiled
easily upon life. Three or four steep steps made the portly and
cigarette-smoking Meredith pant like an old man, but a dance was a
cooling draught to him. As for the little Marquise--when she danced, she
danced away with all those luckless hearts that were not hers already.
The orchestra launched the jubilant measures of the deux-temps with a
torrent of vivacity, and the girl's rhythmic flight answered like a sail
taking the breeze.
There was one heart she had long since won which answered her every
movement. Flushed, rapturous, eyes sparkling, cheeks aglow, the small
head weaving through the throng like a golden shuttle--ah, did she know
how adorable she was! Was Tom right: is it the attainable unattainable
to one man and given to some other that leaves a deeper mark upon him
than success? At all events the unattainable was now like a hot sting
in the heart, but yet a sting more precious than a balm. The voice of
Brainard Macauley broke in:
“A white brow and a long lash, a flushing cheek and a soft eye, a voice
that laughs and breaks and ripples in the middle of a word, a girl you
could put in your hat, Mr. Harkless--and there you have a strong man
prone! But I congratulate you on the manner your subordinates operate
the 'Herald' during your absence. I understand you are making it a
daily.”
Macauley was staring at him quizzically, and Harkless, puzzled, but
without resentment of the other's whimsey, could only decide that the
editor of the Rouen “Journal” was an exceedingly odd young man. All at
once he found Meredith and the girl herself beside him; they had stopped
before the dance was finished. He had the impulse to guard himself from
new blows as a boy throws up his elbow to ward a buffet, and, although
he could not ward with his elbow, for his heart was on his sleeve--where
he began to believe that Macauley had seen it--he remembered that he
could smile with as much intentional mechanism as any wornout rounder of
afternoons. He stepped aside for her, and she saw what she had known but
had not seen before, for the thickness of the crowd, and this was that
he limped and leaned upon his stick.
“Do let me thank you,” he said, with a louder echo of her manner of
greeting him, a little earlier. “It has been such a pleasure to watch
you dance. It is really charming to meet you here. If I return to
Plattville I shall surely remember to tell Miss Briscoe.”
At this she surprised him with a sudden, clear look in the eyes, so
reproachful, so deep, so sad, that he started. She took her flowers
from Macauley, who had the air of understanding the significance of such
ceremonies very well, and saying, “Shan't we all go out on the terrace?”
placed her arm in Harkless's, and conducted him (and not the others)
to the most secluded corner of the terrace, a nook illumined by one
Japanese lantern; to which spot it was his belief that he led her. She
sank into a chair, with the look of the girl who had stood by the blue
tent-pole. He could only stare at her, amazed by her abrupt change to
this dazzling, if reproachful, kindness, confused by his good fortune.
“'_If_ you go back to Plattville!'” she said in a low voice. “What do
you mean?”
“I don't know. I've been dull lately, and I thought I might go somewhere
else.” Caught in a witchery no lack of possession could dispel, and
which the prospect of loss made only stronger while it lasted, he took
little thought of what he said; little thought of anything but of the
gladness it was to be with her again.
“'Somewhere else?' Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Have you no sense of responsibility? What is to become of your paper?”
“The 'Herald'? Oh, it will potter along, I think.”
“But what has become of it in your absence, already? Has it not
deteriorated very much?”
“No,” he said; “it's better than it ever was before.”
“What!” she cried, with a little gasp.
“You're so astounded at my modesty?”
“But please tell me what you mean,” she said quickly. “What happened to
it?”
“Isn't the 'Herald' rather a dull subject? I'll tell you how well Judge
Briscoe looked when he came to see me; or, rather, tell me of your
summer in the north.”
“No,” she answered earnestly. “Don't you remember my telling you that I
am interested in newspaper work?”
“I have even heard so from others,” he said, with an instant of dryness.
“Please tell me about the 'Herald'?”
“It is very simple. Your friend, Mr. Fisbee, found a substitute, a
relative six feet high with his coat off, a traction engine for energy
and a limited mail for speed. He writes me letters on a type writer
suffering from an impediment in its speech; and in brief, he is an
enterprising idiot with a mania for work-baskets.”
Her face was in the shadow.
“You say the--idiot--is enterprising?” she inquired.
“Far more enterprising and far less idiot than I. They are looking
for oil down there, and when he came he knew less about oil than a
kindergarten babe, and spoke of 'boring for kerosene' in his first
letter to me; but he knows it all now, and writes long and convincing
geological arguments. If a well comes in, he is prepared to get out an
extra! Perhaps you may understand what that means in Plattville, with
the 'Herald's' numerous forces. I owe him everything, even the shares in
the oil company, which he has persuaded me to take. And he is going to
dare to make the 'Herald' a daily. Do you remember asking me why I had
never done that? It seemed rather a venture to try to compete with the
Rouen papers in offering State and foreign news, but this young
Gulliver has tacked onto the Associated Press, and means to print a
quarto--that's eight pages, you know--once a week, Saturday, and a
double sheet, four pages, on other mornings. The daily venture begins
next Monday.”
“Will it succeed?”
“Oh, no!” he laughed.
“You think not?” Her interest in this dull business struck him as
astonishing, and yet in character with her as he had known her in
Plattville. Then he wondered unhappily if she thought that talking
of the “Herald” and learning things about the working of a country
newspaper would help her to understand Brainard Macauley.
“Why have you let him go on with it?” she asked. “I suppose you have
encouraged him?”
“Oh, yes, I encouraged him. The creature's recklessness fascinated me. A
dare-devil like that is always charming.'”
“You think there is no chance for the creature's succeeding with the
daily?”
“None,” he replied indifferently.
“You mentioned work-baskets, I think?”
He laughed again. “I believe him to be the original wooden-nutmeg man.
Once a week he produces a 'Woman's Page,' wherein he presents to the
Carlow female public three methods for making currant jelly, three
receipts for the concoction of salads, and directs the ladies how to
manufacture a pretty work-basket out of odd scraps in twenty minutes.
The astonishing part of it is that he has not yet been mobbed by the
women who have followed his directions.”
“So you think the daily is a mistake and that your enterprising idiot
should be mobbed? Why?” She seemed to be taking him very seriously.
“I think he may be--for his 'Woman's Page.'”
“It is all wrong, you think?”
“What could a Yankee six-footer cousin of old Fisbee's know about
currant jelly and work-baskets?”
“You know about currant jelly and work-baskets yourself?”
“Heaven defend the right, I do not!”
“You are sure he is six feet?”
“You should see his signature; that leaves no doubt. And, also, his
ability denotes his stature.”
“You believe that ability is in proportion to height, do you not?” There
was a dangerous luring in her tone.
His memory recalled to him that he was treading on undermined ground, so
he hastened to say: “In inverse proportion.”
“Then your substitute is a failure. I see,” she said, slowly.
What muffled illumination there was in their nook fell upon his face;
her back was toward it, so that she was only an outline to him, and he
would have been startled and touched to the quick, could he have known
that her lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears as she spoke the
last words. He was happy as he had not been since his short June day;
it was enough to be with her again. Nothing, not even Brainard Macauley,
could dull his delight. And, besides, for a few minutes he had forgotten
Brainard Macauley. What more could man ask than to sit in the gloom with
her, to know that he was near her again for a little while, and to talk
about anything--if he talked at all? Nonsense and idle exaggeration
about young Fisbee would do as well as another thing.
“The young gentleman is an exception,” he returned. “I told you I owed
everything to him; my gratitude will not allow me to admit that his
ability is less than his stature. He suggested my purchase of a quantity
of Mr. Watts's oil stock when it was knocked flat on its back by two
wells turning out dry; but if Mr. Watts's third well comes in, and young
Fisbee has convinced me that it will, and if my Midas's extra booms the
stock and the boom develops, I shall oppose the income tax. Poor old
Plattville will be full of strangers and speculators, and the 'Herald'
will advocate vast improvements to impress the investor's eye.
Stagnation and picturesqueness will flee together; it is the history
of the Indiana town. Already the 'Herald' is clamoring with Schofields'
Henry--you remember the bell-ringer?--for Main Street to be asphalted.
It will all come. The only trouble with young Fisbee is that he has too
much ability.”
“And yet the daily will not succeed?”
“No. That's too big a jump, unless my young man's expressions on the
tariff command a wide sale amongst curio-hunters.”
“Then he is quite a fool about political matters?”
“Far from it; he is highly ingenious. His editorials are often the
subtlest cups of flattery I ever sipped, many of them showing assiduous
study of old files to master the method and notions of his eagle-eyed
predecessor. But the tariff seems to have got him. He is a very
masculine person, except for this one feminine quality, for, if I may
say it without ungallantry, there is a legend that no woman has ever
understood the tariff. Young Fisbee must be an extremely travelled
person, because the custom-house people have made an impression upon him
which no few encounters with them could explain, and he conceives the
tariff to be a law which discommodes a lady who has been purchasing
gloves in Paris. He thinks smuggling the great evil of the present
tariff system; it is such a temptation, so insidious a break-down of
moral fibre. His views must edify Carlow.”
She gave a quick, stifled cry. “Oh! there isn't a word of truth in what
you say! Not a word! I did not think you could be so cruel!”
He bent forward, peering at her in astonishment.
“Cruel!”
“You know it is a hateful distortion--an exaggeration!” she exclaimed
passionately. “No man living could have so little sense as you say
he has. The tariff is perfectly plain to any child. When you were in
Plattville you weren't like this--I didn't know you were unkind!”
“I--I don't understand, please----”
“Miss Hinsdale has been talking--raving--to me about you! You may not
know it--though I suppose you do--but you made a conquest last night.
It seems a little hard on the poor young man who is at work for you in
Plattville, doing his best for you, plodding on through the hot days,
and doing all he knows how, while you sit listening to music in the
evenings with Clara Hinsdale, and make a mock of his work and his trying
to please you----”
“But I didn't mention him to Miss Hinsdale. In fact, I didn't mention
_anything_ to Miss Hinsdale. What have I done? The young man is making
his living by his work--and my living, too, for that matter. It only
seems to me that his tariff editorials are rather humorous.”
She laughed suddenly--ringingly. “Of course they are! How should I know?
Immensely humorous! And the good creature knows nothing beyond smuggling
and the custom-house and chalk marks? Why, even _I_--ha, ha, ha!--even
_I_--should have known better than that. What a little fool your
enterprising idiot must be!--with his work-baskets and currant jelly
and his trying to make the 'Herald' a daily!--It will be a ludicrous
failure, of course. No doubt he thought he was being quite wise, and
was pleased over his tariff editorials--his funny, funny editorials--his
best--to please you! Ha, ha, ha! How immensely funny!”
“Do you know him?” he asked abruptly.
“I have not the honor of the gentleman's acquaintance. Ah,” she rejoined
bitterly, “I see what you mean; it is the old accusation, is it? I am a
woman, and I 'sound the personal note.' I could not resent a cruelty
for the sake of a man I do not know. But let it go. My resentment is
personal, after all, since it is against a man I do know--_you_!”
He leaned toward her because he could not help it. “I'd rather have
resentment from you than nothing.”
“Then I will give you nothing,” she answered quickly.
“You flout me!” he cried. “That is better than resentment.”
“I hate you most, I think,” she said with a tremulousness he did not
perceive, “when you say you do not care to go back to Plattville.”
“Did I say it?”
“It is in every word, and it is true; you don't care to go back there.”
“Yes, it is true; I don't.”
“You want to leave the place where you do good; to leave those people
who love you, who were ready to die to avenge your hurt!” she exclaimed
vehemently. “Oh, I say that is shameful!”
“Yes, I know,” he returned gravely. “I am ashamed.”
“Don't say that!” she cried. “Don't say you are ashamed of it. Do you
suppose I do not understand the dreariness it has been for you? Don't
you know that I see it is a horror to you, that it brings back your
struggle with those beasts in the dark, and revivifies all your
suffering, merely to think of it?” Her turns and sudden contradictions
left him tangled in a maze; he could not follow, but must sit helpless
to keep pace with her, while the sheer happiness of being with her
tingled through his veins. She rose and took a step aside, then spoke
again: “Well, since you want to leave Carlow, you shall; since you do
not wish to return, you need not.--Are you laughing at me?” She leaned
toward him, and looked at him steadily, with her face close to his. He
was not laughing; his eyes shone with a deep fire; in that nearness he
hardly comprehended what she said. “Thank you for not laughing,” she
whispered, and leaned back from him. “I suppose you think my promises
are quite wild, and they are. I do not know what I was talking about, or
what I meant, any better than you do. You may understand some day. It
is all--I mean that it hurts one to hear you say you do not care for
Carlow.” She turned away. “Come.”
“Where?”
“It is my turn to conclude the interview. You remember, the last time it
was you who--” She broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her
hands. “Ah, that!” she exclaimed. “I did not think--I did not mean to
speak of that miserable, miserable night. And _I_ to be harsh with you
for not caring to go back to Carlow!”
“Your harshness,” he laughed. “A waft of eider.”
“We must go,” she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a
thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached
out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night
before his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet
generosity; his thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that
hand he had likened to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in
his own. And as they had so often stood together in their short day and
their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading
silence between them. A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran
through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through
the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the
silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells,
all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their
ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of
hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers
listening, a hundred years ago.
“I care for only one thing in this world,” he said, tremulously. “Have
I lost it? I didn't mean to ask you, that last night, although you
answered. Have I no chance? Is it still the same? Do I come too late?”
The butterfly fluttered in his hand and then away.
She drew back and looked at him a moment.
“There is one thing you must always understand,” she said gently, “and
that is that a woman can be grateful. I give you all the gratitude there
is in me, and I think I have a great deal; it is all yours. Will you
always remember that?”
“Gratitude? What can there--”
“You do not understand now, but some day you will. I ask you to remember
that my every act and thought which bore reference to you--and there
have been many--came from the purest gratitude. Although you do not see
it now, will you promise to believe it?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“For the rest--” She paused. “For the rest--I do not love you.”
He bowed his head and did not lift it.
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“I understand,” he answered, quietly.
She looked at him long, and then, suddenly, her hand to her heart, gave
a little, pitying, tender cry and moved toward him. At this he raised
his head and smiled sadly. “No; don't you mind,” he said. “It's all
right. I was such a cad the other time I needed to be told; I was
so entirely silly about it, I couldn't face the others to tell them
good-night, and I left you out there to go in to them alone. I didn't
realize, for my manners were all gone. I'd lived in a kind of stupor,
I think, for a long time; then being with you was like a dream, and the
sudden waking was too much for me. I've been ashamed often, since, in
thinking of it--and I was well punished for not taking you in. I thought
only of myself, and I behaved like a whining, unbalanced boy. But I had
whined from the moment I met you, because I was sickly with egoism and
loneliness and self-pity. I'm keeping you from the dancing. Won't you
let me take you back to the house?”
A commanding and querulous contralto voice was heard behind them, and a
dim, majestic figure appeared under the Japanese lantern.
“Helen?”
The girl turned quickly. “Yes, mamma.”
“May I ask you to return to the club-house for supper with me? Your
father has been very much worried about you. We have all been looking
for you.”
“Mamma, this is Mr. Harkless.”
“How do you do?” The lady murmured this much so far under her breath
that the words might have been mistaken for anything else--most
plausibly, perhaps, for, “Who cares if it is?”--nor further did she
acknowledge John's profound inclination. Frigidity and complaint of
ill-usage made a glamour in every fold of her expensive garments; she
was large and troubled and severe. A second figure emerged from behind
her and bowed with the suave dignity that belonged to Brainard Macauley.
“Mr. Macauley has asked to sit at our table,” Mrs. Sherwood said to
Helen. “May I beg you to come at once? Your father is holding places for
us.”
“Certainly,” she answered. “I will follow you with Mr. Harkless.”
“I think Mr. Harkless will excuse you,” said the elder lady. “He has
an engagement. Mr. Meredith has been looking everywhere for him to take
Miss Hinsdale out to supper.”
“Good-night, Miss Sherwood,” said John in a cheerful voice. “I thank you
for sitting out the dance with me.”
“Good-night,” she said, and gave him her hand. “I'm so sorry I shan't
see you again; I am only in Rouen for this evening, or I should ask you
to come to see me. I am leaving to-morrow morning. Good-night.--Yes,
mamma.”
The three figures went toward the bright lights of the club-house. She
was leaning on Macauley's arm and chatting gaily, smiling up at him
brightly. John watched her till she was lost in the throng on the
veranda. There, in the lights, where waiters were arranging little
tables, every one was talking and moving about, noisily, good-humored
and happy. There was a flourish of violins, and then the orchestra swung
into a rampant march that pranced like uncurbed cavalry; it stirred the
blood of old men with militant bugle calls and blast of horns; it
might have heralded the chariot of a flamboyant war god rioting out of
sunrise, plumed with youth. Some quite young men on the veranda made
as if they were restive horses champing at the bit and heading a
procession, and, from a group near by, loud laughter pealed.
John Harkless lifted to his face the hand that had held hers; there was
the faint perfume of her glove. He kissed his own hand. Then he put that
hand and the other to his forehead, and sank into her chair.
“Let me get back,” he said. “Let me get back to Plattville, where I
belong.”
Tom Meredith came calling him. “Harkless? John Harkless?”
“Here I am, Tom.”
“Come along, boy. What on earth are you doing out here all alone? I
thought you were with--I thought some people were with you. You're
bored to death, I know; but come along and be bored some more, because I
promised to bring you in for supper. Then we'll go home. They've saved a
place for you by Miss Hinsdale.”
“Very well, lad,” answered Harkless, and put his hand on the other's
shoulder. “Thank you.”
The next day he could not leave his bed; his wounds were feverish and
his weakness had returned. Meredith was shaken with remorse because
he had let him wander around in the damp night air with no one to look
after him.