TAME SKELETONS
It was Sunday night, and New Year's Eve. Gaspard was preparing, and
Molly and Dolly were serving a special dinner for Preston Eustace,
planned weeks before on his first arrival in New York.
Before the great logs--imported by Michael for the occasion--that
blazed in the fireplace, a round table was set, decorously draped in
the most immaculate of fine linen, and crowned with a wreath of holly
and mistletoe, from which extended red satin trailers with a present
from Nancy for each guest, on the end of each. All the impedimenta of
the restaurant was cleared away, and a couch and several easy chairs
that Nancy kept in reserve for such occasions were placed comfortably
about the room. Only the innumerable starry candles and branching
candelabra were reminiscent of the room's more professional aspect.
Billy and Caroline were the first to arrive,--Caroline in pale
floating green tulle, which accentuated the pure olive of her
coloring, and transported Billy from his chronic state of adoration to
that of an almost agonizing worship. Dick and Betty were next. He had
realized the possible awkwardness of the situation for her, and had
been thoughtful enough to offer to call for her. She was in defiant
scarlet from top to toe, and had never looked more entrancing. Preston
Eustace was to come in from Long Island where he was spending the
holidays with a married sister. Michael received the guests and did
the honors beamingly.
"Where's Nancy?" Dick asked, as, divested of his outer garments, he
appeared without warning in the presence of the lovers. "Don't bother
to drop her hand, Billy. I don't see how you have the heart to, she's
so lovely to-night."
"We don't know where Nancy is," Caroline answered for him. "It seems
to be all right, though. She's expected, Michael says."
"Where's Nancy?" Betty asked, in her turn, appearing on the threshold
with every hair most amazingly in place.
"Coming," Dick reassured her.
"Has anybody heard from her?" Betty asked.
"Michael has, I think."
"You aren't worried about her, are you?" Caroline asked.
"Yes, I am," Betty said.
"I thought you and Nancy were rather on the outs," Caroline suggested.
"It seems odd to have you worrying about her like her maiden aunt."
"You wait till you see her, you'll be worried about her, too."
"What's wrong?" Dick asked quickly.
"She's lost Sheila for one thing. That unspeakable Collier Pratt--I
hope he chokes on his dinner to-night, and I hope it's a rotten
dinner--has taken the child away."
"The devil he has."
There was a step on the rickety stair.
"Hush! There she is now," Caroline cried.
"No," Betty said quietly, listening. "That's not Nancy. That's your
brother, Caroline."
"I haven't heard his step for such a long time I've forgotten it,"
Billy said.
"I haven't heard it for a long time either," Betty said, her face
draining of its last bit of color.
"Promises to be one of those merry little meals when everybody present
is attended by a tame skeleton," Billy whispered, "except us,
Caroline."
"I don't feel that we have any right to be so happy with the whole
continent of Europe in the state it's in," Caroline whispered in
reply.
"I feel better about the continent of Europe than I did a while back,"
Billy said, contentedly.
"Hello, everybody," Preston Eustace said as Michael held the door for
him. "How's everything, Caroline?"
"All right," Caroline said. Then she added unnecessarily, "You--you
know Betty, don't you?"
"I used to know Betty," he said slowly.
The two looked at each other, with that look of incredulity with which
lovers sometimes greet each other after absence and estrangement.
"This can't be you," their eyes seem to be saying, "I've disposed of
you long since, God help me!"
"How do you do, Preston?" Betty said, giving him her hand. Then she
smiled faintly, and added with a caricature of her usual manner:
"Lovely weather we're having for this time of year, aren't we?"
"I'm very fond of you, Betty,"--Dick smiled as she sank into the chair
beside him and Preston turned to his sister. "I think you're a little
sport."
"I don't know how you can, Dicky," she smiled at him forlornly. "I've
got a bad black heart, and I play the wrong kind of games."
"Well, I see through them, so it's all right. What's this about
Nancy?"
"I'll tell you later," Betty said; "there she comes now."
Nancy, stimulated by massage and steam, her hair dressed by a
professional; powdered, and for the first time in her life rouged to
hide the tell-tale absence of her natural quickening color, came
forward to meet her guests in supreme unconsciousness of the pathos of
the effect she had achieved. She was dressed in snowy white like a
bride,--the only gown she had that was in keeping with the holiday
decorations, and she moved a little clumsily, as if her brain had
found itself suddenly in charge of an unfamiliar set of reflexes. Her
lids drooped over burning eyes that had known no sleep for many
nights, and every line and lineament of her face was stamped with
pain.
"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," she said. Her voice,
curiously, was the only natural thing about her. "I've been scouring
off every vestige of my work-a-day self, and that takes time. Thank
you for the roses, Dick, but the only flowers I could have worn with
this color scheme would have been geraniums."
"I'll send you some geraniums to-morrow."
"Don't," she said. "How do you do, Preston?"
She gave him a cold hand, and he stared at her almost as he had stared
at Betty. He was a tall grave-looking youth, with Caroline's straight
features and olive coloring, and a shock of heavy blond hair.
"I hope you'll like your party," Nancy hurried on. "Gaspard is
bursting with pride in it. I think it would be a nice thing to have
him in and drink his health after the coffee. He would never forget
the honor."
"My God!" Dick said in an undertone to Betty, "how long has she been
like this?"
"I'll tell you later," she promised him again.
With the serving of the first course of dinner--Gaspard's wonderful
_Purée Mongol_--an artist's dream of all the most delicate vegetables
in the world mingled together as the clouds are mingled, the tensity
in the air seemed to break and shatter about them in showers of
brilliant, artificial mirth, which presently, because they were all
young and fond of one another and their group had the habit of
intimacy, became less and less strained and unreal.
Nancy's tired eyes lost something of their unnatural glitter, and
Betty seemed more of a woman than a scarlet sprite, while Caroline's
smile began to reflect something of the real gladness that possessed
her soul. Dick and Billy took up the burden of the entertainment of
the party, and gave at least an excellent imitation of inspirational
gaiety.
"This _filet of sole_," Billy observed as he sampled his second course
appreciatively, "is common or barnyard flounder,--and the shrimp and
the oyster crab, and that mushroom of the sea, and the other little
creature in the corner of my plate who shall be nameless, because I
have no idea what his name is,--are all put in to make it harder."
"Gaspard is using some of the simpler native products now instead of
the high-priced imported ones," Nancy said eagerly, "and he is getting
wonderful results, I think."
"Flounder _a la Française_ is all right," Dick said.
"Our restaurant has reformed," Betty said. "We're running it on a
strictly business basis."
"And making money?" Dick asked quickly.
"We're not losing much," Betty said. "That's a great improvement."
"Some of those little girls from the publishing houses look paler to
me than they did," Nancy said. "I wish I could give them hypodermics
of protein and carbohydrates."
"Give me the name and address of any of your customers that worry
you," Dick said, "and I'll buy 'em a cow or a sugar plum tree or a
flivver or anything else they seem to be in need of."
"Don't those things tend to pauperize the poor?" Caroline's brother
put in gravely.
"Sure they do," Billy agreed, "only Nancy has kind of given up her
struggle not to pauperize them."
"I started in with some very high ideals about scientific service,"
Nancy explained. "I was never going to give anybody anything they
hadn't actually earned in some way, except to bring up the average of
normality by feeding my patrons surreptitious calories. I had it all
figured out that the only legitimate charity was putting flesh on the
bones of the human race,--that increasing the general efficiency that
way wasn't really charity at all."
"You don't believe that now?" Preston Eustace asked.
"I don't know what I believe now."
"What is scientific charity, anyhow?" Dick looked about inquiringly.
"There ain't no such animal," Billy contributed.
"It's substituting the cool human intellect for the warm human heart,
I guess," Betty said dreamily.
"But that so often works," Caroline said.
"I was never going to make any mistakes," Nancy said. "I was going
to keep my fists scientifically shut, and my heart beatifically
open." She hesitated. "I--I was going to swing my life, and my
undertakings--right." It became increasingly hard for her to
speak, and a little gasp went round the table. "I've--I've made
nothing--nothing but mistakes," she finished piteously.
"But you've rectified them," Betty put in vigorously. "Nancy, dear,
I've never known you to make a mistake that you haven't rectified, and
that is more than I can say of any other person in the world."
"Sirloin and carrots," Caroline said, as the next course came in.
"I'll wager you've cut the price of this dinner in two by judicious
ordering."
"There's nothing else but field salad," Nancy said, still piteously,
"and raspberry _mousse_."
"Nancy, you'll break my heart," Betty said, wiping her eyes frankly,
but Nancy only looked at her wonderingly, wistfully, preoccupied and
remote, while Preston Eustace gazed at Betty as if he too would find a
welcome relief in shedding a heavy tear or two.
"Collier Pratt has broken her heart, Dick," Betty told him in the
limousine on the way home. "It's been going on ever since the first
time she saw him. Down at the restaurant we've all known it. She's
been eating at his table every night for months, and Gaspard and
everybody else in the place, in fact, has been a slave to his lightest
whim. I've always disliked him intensely, myself."
"Why didn't you tell me before, Betty?"
"It wasn't my business to tell you. I thought it was coming off, you
know."
"What was coming off?"
"Their affair. I thought it was past my meddling."
"Do you mean to say that you thought Nancy was going to marry Collier
Pratt--_Nancy_?"
"Why, yes, if I hadn't I--I wouldn't have acted up the way I did in
your rooms that night."
But Dick neither heard nor understood her.
"Do you mean to say that you think Collier Pratt has been making love
to her?"
"I think so."
"But the damned scoundrel is married."
"Oh!" Betty cried. "_Oh!_--I didn't know that."
"I've known it--I've always known it," Dick said. "I never dreamed
that Nancy had any special interest in him."
"Well, she had. She's going through everything, Dick, even Sheila--you
know how she loved Sheila?"
"I know," Dick said grimly. "Do you mind going on home alone, Betty?
You'll be perfectly safe with Williams, you know."
"Of course not. What are you going to do, Dick? Are you going to
Nancy?"
"No, I'm not going to Nancy."
Betty, looking at him more closely, realized for the first time that
she was sitting beside a man in whom the rage of the primitive animal
was gaining its ascendency. His breath was coming in short stertorous
gasps, his hands were clinched, the purplish color was mounting to his
brows, but he still went through the motions of a courteous
leave-taking.
"Where are you going, Dick?" she asked again, as he stood on the curb
where he had signaled Williams to leave him, with the door of the car
in his hand, staring down at it, and for the moment forgetting to
close it.
"I'm going to find Collier Pratt," he said thickly. Then with a slam
that splintered the hinge of the door he was holding he crashed it in
toward the car.