Except for a passing glimpse in Dublin, Tom never saw Lily Whitelaw
till in December he met her at the ball at which Hildred Ansley came
out. As to going to this ball he had his usual fit of funk, but Hildred
had insisted.
"But, Tom, you must. You're the one I care most about."
"I shouldn't know what to do."
"I'll see to that. You'll only have to do what I tell you."
"And I haven't got an evening coat with tails."
"Well, get one. If you look as well in it as you do in your
dinner-jacket outfit--and you'd better have a white waistcoat, a silk
hat, and a pair of white gloves. What'll happen to you when you get
there you can leave to me. Now that I know you look so well, and dance
so well, you'll give me no trouble at all."
Her kindness humbled him. He felt the necessity of taking it as
kindness and nothing more. Knowing too that he must school his own
emotions to a sense of gratitude, he imagined that he so schooled them.
With the five hundred dollars he had earned through the summer added
to what remained of Honey's legacy, he had enough for his current year
at Harvard, with a margin over. The tailed evening coat, the white
waistcoat, the silk hat, the gloves, he looked upon as an investment.
He went to the ball.
It was given at the Shawmut, the new hotel with a specialty in this
sort of entertainment. The ballroom had been specially designed so as
to afford a spectacle. A circular cup, surrounded by a pillared gallery
for chaperons and couples preferring to "sit out," you descended into
it by one of four broad shallow staircases, whence the _coup d'oeil_
was superb.
By being more or less passive, he got through the evening better than
he had expected. Knowing scarcely anyone, he fell back on his formula.
"I mustn't be conscious of it. I must take not knowing anyone for
granted, as I should if I were in a crowd at a theater, or the lobby of
this hotel. If I feel like a stray cat I shall look like a stray cat.
If I feel at ease I shall look at ease."
In this he was supported by the knowledge of wearing the right thing.
Even Guy, whom he had met for a minute in the cloakroom, had been
surprised into a compliment.
"Gee whiz! Who do you think you are? The old lady's been afraid you'd
look like an outsider. Now she'll be struck silly. Lot of girls here
that you'll put their eye out."
When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute in which to whisper,
"Tom, you're the Greek god you read about in novels. Don't feel shy.
All you need do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your rôle is the
romantic unknown." She returned after the next bout of "receiving."
"You and I will have the supper dance. I've insisted on that, and
mother's given in. Don't get too far out of reach, so that I can put my
hand on you when I want you."
He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one else would dance
with and to whom some member of the Ansley family introduced him.
When not dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned against
a convenient pillar and looked on. It was what he best liked doing.
Liking it, he did it well. He could hear people ask who he was. He
could hear some Harvard fellow answer that he was the Whitelaw Baby.
Once he heard a lady say, as she passed behind his back, "Well, he does
look like the Whitelaws, doesn't he?"
The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw baby to the public mind
in connection with the ball given a few weeks earlier to "bring out"
Lily Whitelaw. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, making
the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their parents suffer again. The
fact that Tad and Lily Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to
the presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his good looks, his
natural dignity, together with the mystery as to who he was, made him
in a measure the figure of the evening.
From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he recognized Lily in
the swirl below, a slim, sinuous creature in shimmering green. All her
motions were serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might also
have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager to be noticed. Whatever
was outrageous in the dances of that autumn she did for the benefit of
her elders.
When she turned toward him he could see that she had an insolent kind
of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled beauty that seemed lowering because
of her heavy Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In
thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had sung when he stayed
with them at Dublin in the spring, "Is she kind as she is fair? For
beauty lives by kindness." Lily's beauty would not. It was an imperious
beauty, willful and inconsiderate.
He saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if dancing were an incident
and not an occupation. She had left more important things to do it;
she would go back to more important things again. While she was at it
she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the evening's work, but as
something of no consequence. She was in tissue of gold like an oriental
princess, a gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a
protection against draughts was sometimes thrown over her shoulders,
but more often across her arm.
He noticed the poise of her head. No other head in the world could
have been so nobly held, so superbly independent. Its character was
in its simplicity. Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark
hair was brushed back from forehead and temples into a knot which
made neatness a distinction. Distinction was the chief beauty in the
profile, with its rounded chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and
a nose deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconsciousness of self,
were betrayed in all her attitudes and movements. Merely to watch her
roused in him a dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself by
regretting that Lily hadn't been like this.
Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to him again as she
drank champagne and smoked cigarettes at supper. The party at her
table, which was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was jovial
and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he knew by sight at Harvard,
drank freely, laughed loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily
too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan.
In the early morning--it might have been two o'clock--Tom found himself
accidentally near her when Hildred happened to be passing.
"Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. He's got the same name as
yours, hasn't he? Tom, do ask her to dance."
With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each other. Without a
glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly,
"I'm not going to dance any more. I'm going to look for my brother and
go home."
A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, where a rowdy note had
come over the company, gave an indication of Tad's whereabouts. Tom
suggested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily walked away
without answering.
Hildred hurried back. "I'm sorry. I saw what she did. Try not to mind
it."
"Oh, I don't. I decided long ago that one couldn't afford to be done
down by that sort of thing. It pays in the end to forget it."
"One of these days she'll be sorry she did it. Your innings will come
then."
"I'm not crazy for an innings. But time does avenge one, doesn't it?"
He nodded toward the ballroom floor, where Lily, with a stalking,
tip-toeing tread was pushing a man backward as if she would have pushed
him down had he not recovered his balance and begun pushing her. "It
avenges one even for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn't going to
dance any more."
"Well, she's changed her mind. That's all. Come and take a turn with
me."
The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not precisely new to him,
but for the first time he dared to wonder if it could be significant.
By all the canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. She
could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, he had reasoned
hitherto, because she was so far above him. She was the Queen; he was
only Ruy Blas, a low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself
loving her, if there was something so sterling and womanly in her
nature that he couldn't help loving her, that would be his own
look-out. He had made up his mind to that before the end of his three
weeks in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie then had carried
him over all the places which in the nature of things he might have
found difficult, doing it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim
in common. Only they had no aim in common! Between him and her there
could be nothing but pity and kindness on the one side, with humility
and devotion on the other.
He had felt that till to-night. He had felt it to-night up to the
minute of hearing those words, "Come and take a turn with me." The
difference was in her voice. It had tones of comfort and encouragement.
More than that, it had tones of comprehension and concern. She entered
into his feelings, his struggles, his sympathies, his defeats. In
the very way in which she put one hand on his shoulder and placed
the other within his own he thought there might be more than the
conventional gesture of the dance.
"You don't know how much I appreciate your coming to-night," she said,
when she found an opportunity. "If you hadn't come I should have felt
it as much as if father, or mother, or Guy hadn't come. More, I think,
because--well, I don't know why--_because_. I only believe that I
should have. It's been an awful bore to you, too."
"No, it hasn't. I've seen a lot. I like to get the hang of--of this
sort of thing. I don't often get a chance."
"I thought of that. It seemed to me that the experience would be
something. Everything's grist that comes to your mill, so that the more
you see of things the better."
That was all they said, but when he left her she held his hand, she let
him hold hers, till their arms were stretched out to full length. Even
then her eyes smiled at him, and his smiled down into hers.
Having seen other people go, he decided to slip away himself. But in
the cloakroom he found Tad, white and sodden in a chair, his hands
thrust into his trousers' pockets, his legs stretched wide apart in
front of him. No one was there but the cloakroom attendant who winked
at Tom, as one who would understand the effect of too much champagne.
"Too young a head. Ought to be got home."
"I'll take him. Know where he lives. Going his way. Ask some one to
call us a taxi."
Tad made no remonstrance as they helped him into his overcoat, and
rammed his hat on his head. He knew what they were doing. "Home!" he
muttered. "Home bes' place! Bed! God, I cou' go to sleep right now."
He did go to sleep in the taxi, his head on Tom's shoulder. Tom held
him up, with his arm around his waist. Once more he had the feeling
that had stirred in him before, of something deeper than the common
human depths, primitive, pre-social, antedating languages and laws.
"He's not my brother," he declared to himself, "but if he were...." He
couldn't end that sentence. He could only feel glad that, since the boy
_had_ to be taken home, the task should have fallen to him.
At Westmorley Court, where Tad now had his quarters, there was no
difficulty of admittance. In his own room he submitted quietly to being
undressed. Tom even found a suit of pajamas, stuffing the limp form
into it. He got him into bed; he covered him up. Winding his watch, he
put it on the night-table. All being done, he stooped over the bed to
lift the arm that had flung aside the bedclothes, and put it under them
again.
He staggered back. There flashed through his mind some of the stories
by which Honey had accounted for the loss of his eye. His own left eye
felt smashed in and shattered. He was sick; he was faint. He could
hardly stand. He could hardly think. The room, the world, were flying
into splinters.
"You damn sucker! Get out of this!"
By the time Tom had recovered himself Tad was settling to sleep.