The January Cotillion was always held in the very oldest hotel in
Lewisburg. All other really fashionable entertainments had long ago
ceased to be given there, for it was very far down-town, the heart of
the wholesale district had crept up around it, and its character had
somewhat changed of late years; but still, January after January, the
Cotillion Club continued to give its one yearly and important event
within these historic portals. And historic portals they truly were,
for the ancient hostelry went back long before the Civil War to trace
its beginnings. Dickens was said to have slept under its roof, on his
memorable visit to America; duels, in those days when such settlements
of affairs of honor were winked at by the law of the community, had not
only found the reasons for being duels within these walls, but had
actually been fought in that high-ceilinged old lobby. In one or two
places could still be seen the traces of bullet marks that had gone
wild. The most beautiful woman of her day in America had, in answer to
a laughing challenge that she do so, ridden her horse straight up those
broad front steps and into the dining-room. The stories in connection
with the old hotel were many and varied.
Its ball-room, unlike the ball-rooms in the newer hotels in town, was
on the second floor. It was popularly supposed to be built on springs
and had long been considered to be the best dancing floor in the South.
No one really remembered now who had first instituted the January
Cotillion; just what long ago leader of society had first had the idea.
But it was still kept up, just as it had been started, winter after
winter; and had so firmly established itself as the real social
tradition of Lewisburg that invitations to it were almost fought for,
and no one who had one, or could have one (saving Timothy) had ever
been known to decline it. Once a year the Lewisburg aristocracy left
its familiar haunts and betook itself to this old building by the
water's edge to spend an evening of gayety within its dingy walls.
There were other dances given here, it is true, by the Sons and
Daughters of the Morning, and the Pleasure Club, and the West End
Society; but they were frowned upon by the truly socially elect, not
one of whom would have wanted to be seen here by acquaintances as a
frivoler, except on the one consecrated evening of the year, the second
Tuesday in every January.
Arethusa had gathered all of this knowledge concerning the January
Cotillion, and she was quite properly impressed to have been invited to
attend.
The old ball-room had been made into fairyland for the Occasion, and as
Arethusa stood in between the tall fluted columns that flanked its
magnificent old doorway on either side, and looked about her, her eyes
sparkled with delight. The walls, so sadly in need of a renewal of
their frescoing, had been latticed with thin white strips to the edge
of the heavy molding on the ceiling, and in this lattice work was
twined smilax most lavishly. Bay trees and tall palms had been used to
make recesses like little rooms, in several places, and these each
seemed to fairly shriek at the beholder, "Do come and sit out a dance
in me! That's just what I was put here for! Oh, do come!"
The faded upholstery on the tall, high-backed chairs had been covered
over with slips of rose-colored chintz, and in each little recess had
been placed a matching sofa. It was a very bad color to be close to
Arethusa's hair, but so thoroughly pleasing to see that she never once
thought of the other side of it. The crystal-draped chandeliers had all
had their electric light bulbs shaded with big, pink tissue-paper
roses, and extra lights, similarly shaded, had been scattered
throughout the green and the lattice work on the walls. The whole room
was bathed in a soft, rosy glow. An orchestra played all unseen behind
a thick bank of palms on a little platform at the far end of the room.
It had quite the effect of music at a distance.
"Isn't it beautiful!" Arethusa drew a long, long breath of admiration.
"Oh, isn't it just beautiful!"
"Yes," replied Mr. Bennet. "The decorations are always rather good."
But his agreement altogether lacked a proper fervency, for he had a
wretched cold of the thoroughly uncomfortable kind, and he did not feel
fervent about anything in the world.
Arethusa was all solicitude. "You don't feel very well, do you? I'm so
sorry! Let's go sit down in one of those dear little places." They had
been rather early in their arrival at the January Cotillion, hardly
anybody was here as yet. "Wouldn't you like to?" She was almost
maternal in her desire to make him as comfortable as possible.
And Mr. Bennet was quite agreeable to the idea of being made comfortable.
So they strolled almost the length of the ball-room to find a little
recess far enough away from the door, so that Arethusa could be sure
there would be no draught to make his cold worse.
The little recess she finally selected was so well screened with green
that their occupancy of it on the pink chintz-covered sofa was as
effectively hidden from the ball-room proper as if they had actually
been in some other apartment. This delighted Arethusa.
"We'll call This One ours," she said, with an air of proprietorship,
patting the sofa, "and we'll come back here and sit in it every now and
then."
"It would be nice to sit out a dance or two," suggested Mr. Bennet,
tentatively.
He was rather inclined to the opinion it would be quite beyond his
powers to dance the evening straight through.
His suggestion was received with ecstasy by the Romantic Arethusa. For
to sit in this rose-colored recess, side by side on a rose-colored sofa
with the Wonderful Mr. Bennet, with a rose-colored glow all over them,
while the orchestra played dreamy music afar off and the rest of the
world of the Cotillion whirled unconsciously by, appeared to Arethusa
as the most that any girl could ask of fate. There was nothing more
Perfect as a Situation to be offered to anyone, she was quite positive.
The January Cotillion, in these days of trots and one-steps and
hesitations, had of recent seasons become almost a misnomer for this
particular party. There was no cotillion at all about it, save for a
grand march of all the couples in the early part of the evening, and
the fact that favors had remained a feature. But why waste time in the
performance of slow figures when one might be joyfully trotting? Yet
tradition could by no means dispense with the favors; they were most
highly prized. And a feminine person who went through more than three
seasons of Lewisburg society without her share of spoils from the
January Cotillion, was indisputably a Rank Failure.
But Arethusa had no lack of favors from the very beginning of this
affair, thus indicating partners. Her spoils were amply sufficient for
her to show in proof that she was a Social Success, and not a Failure.
Mr. Bennet was not once forced to exert himself, when he felt so very
little like exertion, to find gentlemen who were willing to dance with
her; they flocked around her of their own accord. So instead of making
any effort to join the romp, after he had performed a Duty in the grand
march, he lolled against a pillar by the door and watched it all, which
was much more to his taste this particular evening.
A man detached himself, after awhile, from the group of "stags" in the
center of the room and strolled over to join Mr. Bennet.
"Don't seem to see you dancing much with the fair Arethusa," he said.
"What's the matter, Grid? Feeling anyways seedy?"
"Got a peach of a cold," replied Mr. Bennet.
"Which is plain to be seen, now that I look more closely. You're not
nearly so pretty with it, either. Rubs off considerable of your usual
irresistible bloom. Beauing Arethusa Worthington for a change, I
suppose?"
The afflicted one nodded.
"Well, she's one girl that I know that you never have to bother about
showing a time to; she has it all by herself. I'll hand it to her
there. So there's no real use in your sticking around up here. Come on
down with me and we'll play a round or two of pool. It'll be much
better for you than standing up here in this draughty hall."
Mr. Bennet demurred.
"Oh, come on! I've no business clearing out, either, but we won't stay
a minute.... It'll do you good."
Just what medicinal properties a game of pool may be said to possess
was not made plain, but Mr. Bennet seemed, after a moment or two of
thought, inclined to agreement with the idea. He cast a weather eye
about for Arethusa, but as her dancing partner had changed since he
last observed her, not five whole minutes before, he felt himself
perfectly safe in leaving her to her own devices for awhile, while he
sought more congenial occupation than that of a mere spectator of the
enjoyment of others.
Arethusa saw him, as he turned away from the ball-room door and his
shapely back disappeared down the hall, and her warm heart smote her at
the sight.
"He feels just perfectly rotten, I know!"
And she.... She was dancing around gayly, enjoying herself leaving him
so wretched and alone! She visioned him stretched out somewhere in
another room on a lumpy hotel sofa, suffering!
She grew so distraught as this vision broadened in its scope as to the
Misery of the Wonderful Mr. Bennet, that she missed step with Billy
Watts, with whom she was dancing, entirely. She then stepped squarely
on his foot, and missed the time again. And it was not only once or
twice she did this most unpardonable thing, but three distinct times in
quick succession.
Billy stopped short in the middle of the floor, disgusted.
"See here, Arethusa, what's the matter with you? I've asked you the
same question about sixty times, and you've just been climbing all over
me!"
Billy had somewhat adopted Timothy's tone with Arethusa. They were the
oldest and best of friends by now, and he gave himself all the
privileges of such a friend. Arethusa liked it ... generally.
She was most apologetic.
"I'm sorry, Billy." (She knew him quite well enough after these weeks
to drop the formal, "Mr. Watts.") "I wasn't thinking about my feet just
then. I was worrying about Mr. Bennet, He's real sick tonight, and he
just went out somewhere. Do you reckon I'd better go see what's the
matter with him?"
"Well, of all things!" Billy seized her forcibly around the waist and
swung her back into the throng of dancers. "There's nothing the matter
with that nut! He's probably off enjoying himself in his own sweet
way."
But Arethusa wrenched herself away from his grasp; her quick anger
flared.
"You just take that back right now, Billy Watts! Mr. Bennet's not a
nut. And he's sick, he told me so himself! If you don't take it back, I
won't dance another step with you, not one!"
Billy laughed, good-naturedly. "I didn't say he wasn't sick, did I? But
you don't have to trail around after him nursing him; he's plenty old
enough, and ugly enough to take care of himself."
"Billy Watts! You are perfectly horrid!"
"Oh, come on, Arethusa, and stop getting all up in the air over
nothing!" He took hold of her again, but she jerked angrily away.
"Don't be a goose," he added, "everybody in the room's looking at you!"
"I don't care a bit if they are!"
"Do you want me to run out and look up your sick friend and hold his
head or anything? I will, if it'll please you very much! Because I sure
didn't mean to set you off like this! Come on now, Arethusa, and be a
better sport!"
This offer to go look after the suffering Mr. Bennet, although of a
wording hardly as respectful as she considered seemly, mollified
Arethusa to the extent of finishing out this dance with Billy. But it
was not at all necessary that he actually carry out his offer when the
dance was really over, for just as the last strains of music were
sounding, Mr. Bennet re-appeared from the direction of the hall.
Arethusa left Billy abruptly, standing open-mouthed in the middle of
the floor at the suddenness of her departure, and without a single word
of apology for leaving him, to greet Mr. Bennet with outstretched hands
and anxious inquiry into the state of his immediate physical being. The
answer was reassuring and one calculated to raise her spirits. Mr.
Bennet believed he felt much better. Arethusa beamed.
"Do you want to dance this with me?" asked Mr. Bennet, then; for just
at that very moment the music started once more.
"Do you feel well enough to be dancing?" Anxiety and solicitude were in
voice and manner.
"Yes, indeed. It seems to me I haven't danced with you to amount to
anything this evening. And I couldn't let it all slip by that way.
What's the use of being here with you, if other men have all the
pleasure?"
Arethusa blushed.
And off they started together to the sound of a waltz that could not
have helped but make the stiffest possible person dance like an angel,
no matter how badly he might have danced before hearing this particular
tune. It was a strain of melody with a haunting tinge of delicious
melancholy. It aroused all sorts of queer, indistinct little longings,
and aching memories of other happy times irretrievably past. Its sound
seemed meant to dream by, or to make love by; ordinary speech seemed a
real sacrilege while it quivered in the air.
Mr. Bennet had a little way when he danced with Arethusa (or when he
danced with any girl alive for that matter, although she did not know
this) of making it seem as though he thought that they were the one and
only couple in all Christendom who had ever danced together for the
dance to amount to anything worth remembering; as though she were the
only girl he had ever really cared to dance with; and as though now,
with bodies tuned to the one strain of those violins sobbing their soft
refrain over and over, he had reached Paradise with the girl in his
arms.
The music stopped.
Arethusa sighed with a funny little catch of her breath. "That ... that
sounded just like Heaven," she said, softly.
Mr. Bennet bent his handsome head. "Was it only the music?" he asked.
He could not help asking it, and asking it just exactly as he did.
Arethusa laughed, it was a most subdued little sound of embarrassment,
and her only answer. And partly the spell of that wonderful music, and
partly her quaint worship of the man standing beside her, made her wish
to get away from the crowd and their chattering talk of nothings for a
wee while.
"Let's go sit in our little room," she suggested, with a bit of
emphasis on the "our."
An encore to that waltz was starting just as they reached the entrance
to the green recess, and Mr. Bennet hesitated. "Shall we go back and
try this?"
But Arethusa shook her head.
She had a vague feeling that no other Waltz in all her life, no matter
how many more she might dance hereafter, was ever going to be as
perfect as the One just danced had been. And she could not spoil its
memory by so immediately dancing another waltz to the very same tune.
So they went instead into the little recess and sat down on the
rose-colored sofa, side by side, and without saying a word for a long
time. Such music demanded silence, especially when listened to in such
a setting. And the rose-colored lights threw the softest sort of glow
all over them.
Mr. Bennet reclined a little in his corner of the sofa, with his feet
gracefully outstretched and his ankles crossed, his arms folded,
watching Arethusa, for her head was downcast and turned away from him,
and she could not know that he was watching her. He smiled a bit as he
always did whenever he watched her this way when she was not noticing.
But Arethusa may have felt his look, although she did not turn around
to really see it, or it may have been those shy little thoughts of him
which were at the moment filling her head which caused it, for a soft
flush suddenly ran all over her neck, and even up behind her ears. Mr.
Bennet's smile broadened, perceptibly.
If anyone had asked him just then what he thought of Arethusa, he would
have said that she was a very pretty girl, in his opinion; the
prettiest girl, in fact, that he had known for some time. Mr. Bennet
had even found himself wondering, on several occasions lately, if he
was not beginning to think too much of Arethusa and her prettiness;
just a little bit more than was quite wise, from his own point of view.
There was very open admiration in his face as he studied her now. He
noticed the tiny curls at the back of her neck, warm from dancing to be
twisted in the tightest little rings; they were the most babyish
looking little curls he had ever seen, he thought. And he distinctly
liked that proud little way she carried her head. He moved just a
trifle, then, so that he could see more of her face; how her
extraordinarily long lashes swept her cheek, and her adorable nose,
which was ever so slightly retroussee. Timothy, in some of those
moments when Arethusa was inclined to be most trying, had called it a
"pug nose," but Mr. Bennet's ideas were much more poetical. And he
could see her mouth, with her red lips curved in a slight smile;
Arethusa had a very pretty mouth.
And then quite suddenly, without himself having any really preconceived
idea that he was going to do such a thing, Mr. Bennet leaned over and
kissed Arethusa. He kissed her square on her sweet mouth.
And almost immediately, he kissed her the second time.
Arethusa had been startled by his first kiss, very naturally; it had
broken rudely into her shy dreams to scatter them far away and bring
her back to reality. But she returned his second salutation with all of
her young soul. Then she sprang up from the sofa, gently disengaging
herself from the arm he had half slipped around her.
"Now, you mustn't kiss me any more," she said, with a quaint air of
authority.
Mr. Bennet was somewhat startled by this, himself; and then rather
amused. He had hardly intended to do so again, being a trifle ashamed
of himself already, but Arethusa's reasons for anything were always
original.
"Why not?" he enquired.
"Because...." She blushed deeply, rosy-red.
"Because what?"
"Because...." She looked down for just a moment, then raised her head
with an adorable air of dignity most becoming, "you mustn't kiss me any
more until after we're married. Aunt 'Liza always says a girl mustn't!"
"Married!" The thoroughly startled Mr. Bennet sank backward on the pink
sofa. "Why...."
"Yes," repeated Arethusa. Then something in his expression suddenly
frightened her; her face went chalk white. "Why.... Why did you....
Didn't you...."
"I think you've misunderstood me," began Mr. Bennet, gently, "I didn't
mean...." Then he stopped awkwardly. For once in his life the Wonderful
Mr. Bennet was at an utter loss for the words with which to continue a
conversation with a lady.
"You ki ... kissed me," said Arethusa.
But Mr. Bennet made no reply. It was a Fact which it was unnecessary
to confirm, and could not be denied.
"And di ... didn't you ... you mean," she continued slowly, "that you
wanted to marry me?" She brought each word of this question out with
difficulty. "I thought me ... men never kissed girls that way unless
they wanted to marry them?" This last was also an interrogation.
"No," replied Mr. Bennet, uncomfortably, "not necessarily."
She began backing away from him, her eyes fixed upon him, wide with a
sort of horror.
"My dear child...."
"I'm not your dear child!" Arethusa was suddenly so angry that she
trembled with rage from head to foot. "Don't come anywhere near me,"
she exploded, as Mr. Bennet started towards her.
She stuck her hands straight out in front of her as if to push him
away, and Mr. Bennet stopped short where he was.
"If you'll let me explain," he said, "I think I can. I didn't.... That
is, I'm just as sorry as I can be. And I really didn't mean a single
thing!" But this was a very wrong beginning.
It made matters, already bad enough, very much worse. He had Kissed her
and he had Not Meant a Single Thing! There was Deep Disgrace for
Arethusa in this simple declaration.
Now Arethusa's rearing by Miss Eliza had been according to a few very
simple Rules for Conduct, which were nevertheless as ironbound and
unalterable as the most complicated laws that were ever framed. And one
of those Rules was that no really Nice girl would ever permit herself
to be kissed by a man unless she had every intention of marrying him
immediately or was already married to him. Miss Eliza had often said
that she would far rather see Arethusa dead and cold in her coffin than
to see her the sort of girl who thought so little of herself as to kiss
a man she was not to marry. This was really at the bottom of Arethusa's
expressed objection to being kissed by Timothy on those occasions when
such unexpected conduct of his had so displeased her. She had no
intention of ever marrying Timothy, whatever his own intentions might
have been; therefore, it seemed to Arethusa, according to this Miss
Elizian Guide for the Proper Behavior of Nice Young Ladies, it was
wrong for him to salute her in any such fashion, or for her to permit
him to. It is true that she had kissed Timothy herself under the stress
of such excitement as arrivals and departures, but such salutations
were really in a class quite apart, and of their own.
Into the Kiss she had given Mr. Bennet, Arethusa had put her
construction of the meaning of his unexpected action founded upon these
ideas of kisses, and her sentiments in regard to him, and all the
thoughts and dreams about him in which she had linked their two selves
together: only to find that Mr. Bennet himself had no such ideas of
kisses, and had evidently had no such thoughts and dreams. Is there any
one to wonder at her sudden feeling of humiliation? She rubbed fiercely
at her lips with the back of one hand, as if to remove the visible and
outward sign of her feeling of Disgrace. Then the color surged back
into her face; and once more, hot Rage mounted high, flashing its
signal from her stormy eyes and quick breathing.
"I hate you!" she exclaimed, suddenly, "Oh ... _I hate you_!"
"Please listen to me just a moment, Arethusa. I...."
"Don't say anything to me!" She stamped one foot with angry emphasis.
"I won't listen! I don't want to hear anything you have to say! And
Timothy was exactly right about you! Oh...!"
She flung herself face downward on the rose-colored sofa and began to
sob violently, her shoulders quivering; burying her head farther and
farther back into the corner of the sofa until it seemed more like a
piled up heap of party finery huddled there than an actual girl.
This was truly Dreadful!
Mr. Bennet stood, man-fashion, helplessly above her, with an
overpowering desire to flee far from those tears; and yet with a strong
conviction, at the same time, that he ought to stay and at least
attempt a justification of what had been so sadly misconstrued, if
there was any earthly way in which it could be justified. He was
willing to say, or to do, anything which she might demand of him, to
straighten it out. The sobs decreased in intensity and so Mr. Bennet
spoke.
"Arethusa...." he began.
Then Arethusa's sobs stopped altogether as abruptly almost as they had
begun, and she rose majestically from the sofa, keeping her
tear-stained face averted.
"I asked you not to speak to me. And I'm going home," not once did she
look, even in his direction. "By myself," she added, positively.
"I can't let you do a thing like that...."
"It has nothing whatever to do with what _you_ can't let, and I shall
scream out loud right here, if you start to try to follow me!"
"Will you let me apologize then, at least, before you go? If you insist
on going?"
"No, you can't apologize. I don't want a single one of your apologies."
Mr. Bennet felt as weak as the proverbial water in the face of such
personified determination as was Arethusa. He meekly permitted her to
leave the little recess of palms and to fly across the ball room floor
while he stood as one hypnotized without moving. When he had recovered
his powers of locomotion sufficiently to follow, she was just coming
out of the dressing room door wrapped in her green cloak. The sight of
the green cloak almost unnerved him again. He had not dreamed that the
child would carry out her wild plan of going home. He had thought that
she might retire to the dressing-room for awhile, but that she would
surely recover before many moments were flown. He took one or two
half-hearted steps forward. The Wonderful Mr. Bennet had no precedent
established for his guidance in this predicament. He was all at sea; no
such situation had ever befallen him before. Arethusa was the only lady
he had ever taken to a Party who had gone home without him. Would
decided pursuit be too undignified; or could he risk a Scene?
Arethusa caught a glimpse of him in his uncertain regard of her, as he
stood near the ball-room entrance, and off she flew like the wind in the
direction she judged the stairs to be, luckily finding them right
there; for she could not risk the waiting for the elevator to come up
and get her. He should not be given the slightest opportunity to speak
to her again!
She plunged madly down one long flight of wide steps, broken by several
landings, to find herself in the wide old lobby, where the startled
night clerk was aroused from his dozing, for this ancient inn was far
from lively at this hour of the night especially in this part of it, by
her sudden entrance; and he went to hunt for Clay at her breathless
request. Very fortunately, for Arethusa's impulsive departing, he had
not driven off anywhere, but was easily located by the obliging clerk
among a small group of chauffeurs who were lounging in the barber shop;
while Arethusa waited impatiently in the lobby, casting fearful glances
in the direction of first the stairs and then the elevator, fully
expectant of seeing Mr. Bennet appear from either direction. Clay was
slightly mystified at this sudden summons, so early in the evening, but
like a good chauffeur and the friend of Arethusa's which he so truly
was, he asked no questions; and unfastened the back door for her,
having driven in the back way without a word of comment. Arethusa knew
that Ross and Elinor would still be up at this early hour, within
hearing of the opening of the front door, and she wanted to slip into
the house without their knowledge. She was quite sure that their
interrogations would fall fast and furious; a natural curiosity which
would have to be gratified as to the Reason for this unexpectedly early
return from the Real Event of the Season.
It was a Silent and Miserable Maiden who thus went home so prematurely
from what was to have been the most Marvelous Affair ever attended,
huddled back into one corner of the limousine; and it was a still more
Silent and Miserable Maiden who crept softly up the back stairs and
sought her room, where she undressed entirely in the dark and climbed
immediately into bed.
And the grey hours of the dawning found her still wakeful under the
same green silk coverlid beneath which she had slept so many, many
nights with Happy Dreaming of the Wonderful Mr. Bennet and his very
great Charm.