Mandeville Ryder sat in a corner of the screened veranda, reading. It
was a good place for reading, cool and breezy; the electric lamp
afforded an excellent light, and his book was an interesting one. Twice
his young niece, Elaine Milner, had come out to entreat him to come in
and dance, but with a smile of lofty amusement he had refused. He said
he preferred reading.
Yet, as a matter of fact, he hadn’t read one page. From where he sat he
could look through the window, through the long room where the dancing
was going on, into the smaller room beyond, where sat his two sisters,
Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Milner, and with them Miss La Chêne. He could
look, and he did look.
Elaine was a pretty girl, and she had collected two or three rather
pretty young things and a proper number of young fellows. All in all,
they were a cheerful, well dressed, well mannered lot of young people,
and the spectacle of their harmless merriment might well have brought a
smile to the lips of any observer; yet Mandeville did not smile.
He was looking at Miss La Chêne, sitting there with the two ladies,
silent, decorous, and patient, in her plain little dark silk dress, the
very model of a companion. Only her enormous black eyes moved
restlessly, following the dancers with a look which Mandeville could
hardly endure.
“Poor little thing!” he said to himself. “_Poor_ little thing! It’s a
confounded shame!”
There wasn’t a girl there half so pretty as she, not a girl with
anything like her style, her charm, her grace. She was beyond measure
superior to all of them, yet there she had to sit, looking on.
“And I let her in for this!” young Ryder thought. “She has no business
being a companion, anyhow. By George, if she had half a chance!”
And, with a rather touching naïveté, he thought he could remedy all
this, could notably assist and hearten the poor little thing. He rose,
put down his book, entered the house, threaded his way among the
dancers, and presently stood beside Miss La Chêne’s chair. She raised
those big eyes to his face with a startled look.
“We’ll try a dance, eh?” said the lordly, blond-crested youth.
For a moment she hesitated. She knew she shouldn’t accept. Elaine
wouldn’t like it, Elaine’s mother wouldn’t like it, Mrs. Robinson
wouldn’t like it; but Miss La Chêne couldn’t resist. With another glance
at Mandeville she rose, he put his arm about her, and off they went.
And, as he put it, they stopped the show. He was a wonderful dancer, and
she was incomparable. They danced with the curious gravity of
professionals. They did not smile, they did not speak, except when he
gave a low, brief order for a change of step.
“Put on a tango!” said he, when the fox trot was ended.
Somebody did this, and now they had the floor to themselves. They
stepped out with splendid arrogance, in absolute accord, lithe, utterly
easy, utterly and disdainfully sure of themselves. Mandeville looked
down at the dark, glowing little creature before him with a fine fire in
his blue eyes.
“You’re the prettiest girl in the world!” he whispered. “And the
sweetest!”
Well, this went to her head. When the tango was at an end, young Lyons,
who was Elaine’s latest interest in life, came entreating Miss La Chêne
for a dance. She forgot all worldly wisdom and discretion, she forgot
everything, except that she was young and pretty, and that the
handsomest and most distinguished young man in the room--or perhaps in
the universe--had singled her out for his attentions, and that all the
other men admired her.
She _liked_ to be admired, and she _loved_ to dance. The music had got
into her blood. Her slender shoulders moved restlessly. She smiled, and
dimples showed in her olive cheeks. Her eyes were as bright as stars.
“I just will!” she thought. “I’ll have one happy evening, anyhow!”
She did. Penniless and obscure, in her plain, dark little dress, she had
come among these luxurious girls and eclipsed them all. Every one of the
young men was dazzled by her dainty coquetry, the faint foreign flavor
of her allurement. The girls were prodigiously civil. They jolly well
had to be, when this little intruder stood so high in favor with the
opposite sex.
And all this was due to Mandeville Ryder. He had raised her up from her
sorrowful obscurity. She made no secret of her gratitude. Her eyes were
forever seeking his, and she generally found him looking at her. They
smiled at each other with a sort of friendly understanding.
“He thinks he’s invented her,” said Elaine, to one of her friends.
But there came, of course, that moment so dear to sour and middle-aged
moralists--the moment when the party breaks up, the music stops, and
fatigue comes across laughing faces. The guests went away, and there was
nobody left but the family and Miss La Chêne. She had danced, and now
she must pay the piper; and his bill was likely to be a large one.
Elaine whispered something to her mother, Mrs. Milner whispered
something to Mrs. Robinson, and they all looked at Miss La Chêne in a
certain way. Mandeville had gone out on the veranda for a smoke, and she
had no friend here.
“You needn’t wait,” said Mrs. Robinson, in a tone she had never used
before.
V
There were two things the matter with Mandeville Ryder, and neither of
them was fatal. He was too young, and he was spoiled. He was a handsome
fellow, the only son of a well-to-do father; and he was so much run
after and so much flattered that he had acquired a manner and an outlook
lamentably toploftical. At heart, however, he was wholly honest,
generous, and chivalrous.
On the morning after the dance, he went off to the city, resolved not to
come back to his sister’s house, and not to think any more of Miss La
Chêne; but even before lunch time he had resolved that he would go back.
He was a conceited ass, he told himself, and a girl like Miss La Chêne
was too good for any man.
So back he went, arriving a little before the dinner hour. Perhaps he
was a little too consciously heroic in his determination to show the
greatest deference toward Miss La Chêne; but he soon got over that, for
he had no chance to display his heroism.
All the sparkle and gayety had gone from the poor girl. When he began to
speak to her, she answered him with a hurried little nervous smile, and
flitted away. He couldn’t even catch her eye. She fairly clung to Mrs.
Robinson, hiding in the shadow of that regal lady. She was so pale, so
subdued, so startlingly changed from the charming little creature of the
evening before, that Mandeville was worried.
It never occurred to him that he was responsible for this lamentable
change, and he went ahead, making a sufficiently unpleasant situation
worse and worse by his well meant efforts. At the dinner table he tried
to bring the pale and downcast Miss La Chêne into the conversation, and
wondered at her very brief answers and her flat, small voice. He knew
that she _could_ talk.
“I’ll try a dance with you, Elaine,” he said to his niece, benevolently,
after dinner.
“No, _thank_ you, Mandy,” said she, with a very peculiar smile.
“Well, what about you, Miss La Chêne?” he asked, in all innocence.
There was a terrific silence.
“N-no, thank you, Mr. Ryder,” she finally managed.
The wisdom of the past is very clearly demonstrated in the story of
_Cinderella_. You will remember that that long-suffering girl maintained
a canny silence regarding her _succès fou_ at the court balls until the
prince had made a frank declaration of his honorable intentions.
Otherwise her life between balls, with those stepsisters and that
stepmother, would have been unendurable--as Miss La Chêne’s life was
now. Naturally Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Milner did not like to see their
adored and only brother making an idiot of himself about a girl who was
just a little nobody, and naturally they firmly believed it was all the
girl’s fault. They didn’t actually _say_ anything, but they managed
remarkably well with implications.
Miss La Chêne could not defend herself. Never before in her brief life
had she shown herself deficient in spirit or in proper pride, but now a
terrible humility had come over her. She thought Mandeville Ryder was so
marvelous that he couldn’t possibly be interested in her. She thought he
hadn’t really meant it when he said she was the prettiest girl in the
world, and the sweetest. She thought he hadn’t really looked at her like
that. How was it possible, when the most beautiful and charming and
brilliant girls were all competing for his favor? No--he had only been
kind to her, because it was his dear, splendid way to be kind to every
one.
And, after all, his kindness had brought her nothing but misery. It
seemed to her sometimes that she couldn’t bear the slights and the
innuendoes of Mrs. Milner and Mrs. Robinson another moment; and yet she
couldn’t quite make up her mind to go back to some cheap little boarding
house, to wait there until she could find another position, possibly
worse than this--and never, never to see Mandeville Ryder any more. She
generally cried after she got into bed at night.
As for young Mandeville, he generally sat out on the veranda alone,
smoking, and meditating in a very miserable way. Miss La Chêne as a
dancing partner, gay and sparkling and lovely, had charmed him, but Miss
La Chêne subdued and obviously unhappy touched him to the heart. What
was the matter with her?
A week went by, and then the household was thrown into turmoil by a
dramatic and tremendous reconciliation between Mrs. Robinson and her
husband. Mrs. Robinson enjoyed it very much, Mr. Robinson not quite so
much. Indeed, he had a pretty sheepish look when his wife sat beside him
on the sofa, weeping, with her head on his shoulder, and announced to
the assembled family:
“Lucian and I are going to make a fresh start, and all the miserable,
miserable past is to be as if it had never been!”
That evening Elaine sang Tosti’s “Good-by” for them:
“Hark, a voice from the far-away!
‘Listen and learn,’ it seems to say;
‘All the to-morrows shall be as to-day,
All the to-morrows shall be as to-day!’”
Her dancing eyes met Mandeville’s. He was obliged to get up and walk
over to the window, to hide a reluctant and irresistible grin; but Mrs.
Robinson noticed nothing. She had no sense of humor. She was too
intense.
The next evening Robinson brought out his wife’s jewel case from the
city, and, knowing what was expected of him in any reconciliation, he
brought also a gift--a diamond pendant on a gold chain. It was
impossible for Mrs. Robinson not to show to the other members of the
household this proof of her husband’s penitent devotion. She took it
downstairs, and Mrs. Milner and Elaine hastened to her, and they all
three stood by the piano lamp, vehemently admiring the glittering thing.
Robinson was rather pleased with himself; but then, unfortunately, he
caught sight of little Miss La Chêne standing outside the charmed
circle, pointedly disregarded by the others, and trying her valiant best
to look as if she didn’t care. Though he was years and years older than
Mandeville, and most bitterly experienced, the same dangerous notion
came into Mr. Robinson’s head--the wish to be kind to the luckless young
creature. He remembered how nice she had been to him, how kind and jolly
over that impromptu tea, how loyal and discreet in never mentioning it
to Mrs. Robinson.
He crossed the room to her side, and stood there, talking to her. Miss
La Chêne, in the joy and comfort of being spoken to like a real, human
girl, came to life. Her face grew bright and piquant again, and she said
funny, amusing things that made Robinson laugh. They both forgot their
terribly precarious positions, and were happy and cheerful.
Mrs. Robinson saw this; and that evening, when she went upstairs to her
room, she discovered that one of her bracelets was missing from the
jewel case. She had given the case to Miss La Chêne unlocked, and no one
else had touched it.
“I c-can’t tell her!” thought the thrice-wretched Robinson. “Not now! If
I’d mentioned it in the beginning--but now, after all this t-time! If
she knew that we had t-tea together, and that I t-took the infernal
case! I can’t stand another of these rows--I simply c-can’t! I’ll make
it right, somehow.”
So he persuaded his outraged wife not to summon policemen, or
detectives, or sheriffs that night, but to wait until the morning. Then
he pretended to go to sleep, but it was a long time before sleep really
came to him. He felt certain that Miss La Chêne would not betray him,
and he felt equally certain that to count upon her loyalty was about as
contemptible a thing as his sorry weakness had ever led him into doing.