I
At eleven o’clock the ballroom was crowded. Elsa Utterbourne, in a
handsome, severe, somehow almost boyish gown, was the centre of interest,
and about her revolved giddily the established dances of the year—a year
when all that was most _outré_ was also most popular.
Young interests and enthusiasms and hopes and despairs and infatuations
and intrigues merged and were stirred into a gay musical shuffle. All
the season’s debutantes were there and a great many of last season’s
debutantes; all the important marriageable young ladies, in fact, and
a few of the important unmarriageable older young ladies, and a great
many young married folks, with their air of unimpeachable _savoir-faire_
and often an inclination to be as scandalous as possible without quite
incurring the frown of the community; even a sprinkling of blithe young
divorcées, since connubial life can’t be expected to be a grand sweet
song in every single instance, and how can you always tell until you’ve
tried it whether married life with one mate will prove as nice as married
life with another mate—or in extreme cases, a state of unmarried life
with somebody else’s? In a word, the dance was an entire success.
Captain Utterbourne, looking immensely civilized and wholly unnautical,
sat all in a sort of cynical little slump on a davenport, his hands
lightly thrust into his pockets—a rather short, stockily built man with
somewhat thick neck and wrists, and a round full face. His eyes were
middling small under a sloping brow, while the nose was inclined to be
outstanding.
Having observed Elsa one is equipped in really superlative degree to
graduate to the Captain; for if ever there was a logic in relationship,
it demonstrated itself here! If Elsa’s eyes were unassailable, the
Captain’s whole face was unassailable. In fact he possessed what is
commonly known as a poker face—inscrutable, always superbly clean shaven;
a man of mystery and enigma; subtly terrifying.
As she sat beside him for a moment now, it became vividly apparent that
the Captain could not possibly be any one else but the father of Elsa,
just as Elsa could not possibly be any one else but the daughter of
the Captain. There was something restful in the very completeness of
heredity’s achievement—only it must be clearly grasped that whatever
was remarkable in Elsa was doubly and trebly remarkable in him. There
were muffling traits of the long-divorced mother in her—traits of vague
impulsiveness and even an elusive warmth; but in the Captain one found
everything sheer.
Their snatch of talk concerned a singularly handsome man standing not far
from them, leaning negligently yet with impeccable elegance against a
high-backed chair, and gently swaying a monocle, which never went to his
eye.
“At any rate, and even if Flora did arch her brows over his coming, you
can hardly deny that Mr. King is by all odds the most fascinating person
the present occasion has yielded,” drawled Captain Utterbourne in a tone
of subtle affection.
Nor was Elsa prepared to deny this. King had been wafted into the West
under the hushed though wholly laudatory auspices of her father. It was
a good deal of a mystery. There was something not altogether coherent
about his having been picked up at sea somewhere. But whatever the facts,
certain it was that his eyes, supremely blue and round, captured all on
whom their gaze rested, and that, in short, he was fascinating beyond
question or argument.
“Almost too good to be true,” admitted Elsa humorously “—like the
coloured postcards of Sorrento and Egypt and the Côte d’Azure.”
Her eyes drooped with whimsical appreciation. Suddenly she jumped up—“I
have it!”—and sped off.