HE maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on
discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling
the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an
overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie
can't go alone,” his mother told him from the landing below; “and do
hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat
his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as
thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He
slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal
the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone
buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and
uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken;
but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When,
finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an
iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle
of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at
frequent intervals.
On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy
fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey
them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door
with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints,
and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions,
the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty
country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with
orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue
circle under the swimming stars.
Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt
scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his
improvised studs failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of
a good time, I am,” he told Ellie satirically.
They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced
over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for
a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant
directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber
temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of _men_.
Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless
salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and
disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable,
their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed
women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of
cocktails.
Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat
and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained
amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously
proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was
made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their
shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to
them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of
Doctor Allhop's drugstore.
Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they
streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and
swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway.
The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready
chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which
he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the
long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool
spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command.
Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling
color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary
conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at
his back a girl said, softly, “please don't.”
Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her
side was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. “There he is!” Ellie
exclaimed; “Eliza... my brother, Anthony.”
He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar,
bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. “I made Ellie find you,” she
told him; “you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my
own party.”
He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having
been found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself
dancing, conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He
swung his partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple
that he shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza
Dreen's countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the
music ceased, she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was
savagely mopping his heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a
clear voice captured his attention. “A dreadful person,” it said, “...
like dancing with a locomotive... A regular Apache.”
He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift
concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she
was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar
he promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such
specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung
them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was
a sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the
porch's edge, at his side.