His impulse really had failed him. It had been to tell Miss Macroyd
about his adventure and frankly trust her with it. He had liked her at
several former meetings rather increasingly, because she had seemed open
and honest beyond the most of women, but her piggish behavior at the
station had been rather too open and honest, and the sense of this now
opportunely intervened between him and the folly he was about to commit.
Besides, he had no right to give Miss Shirley’s part in his adventure
away, and, since the affair was more vitally hers than his, to take it
at all out of her hands. The early-falling dusk had favored an unnoticed
advent for them, and there were other chances that had helped keep
unknown their arrival together at Mrs. Westangle’s in that squalid
carryall, such as Miss Shirley’s having managed instantly to slip
indoors before the man came out for Verrian’s suit-case, and of her
having got to her own appointed place long before there was any descent
of the company to the afternoon tea.
It was not for him now to undo all that and begin the laughing at the
affair, which she had pathetically intimated that she would rather some
one else should begin. He recoiled from his imprudence with a shock, but
he had the pleasure of having mystified Miss Macroyd. He felt dismissal
in the roving eye which she cast from him round the room, and he
willingly let another young man replace him at her side.
Yet he was not altogether satisfied. A certain meaner self that there
was in him was not pleased with his relegation even merely in his own
consciousness to the championship of a girl who was going to make her
living in a sort of menial way. It had better be owned for him that, in
his visions of literary glory, he had figured in social triumphs which,
though vague, were resplendent with the glitter of smart circles. He had
been so ignorant of such circles as to suppose they would have some use
for him as a brilliant young author; and though he was outwearing this
illusion, he still would not have liked a girl like Julia Macroyd, whose
family, if not smart, was at least chic, to know that he had come to
the house with a professional mistress of the revels, until Miss Shirley
should have approved herself chic, too. The notion of such an employment
as hers was in itself chic, but the girl was merely a paid part of the
entertainment, as yet, and had not risen above the hireling status. If
she had sunk to that level from a higher rank it would be all right,
but there was no evidence that she had ever been smart. Verrian
would, therefore, rather not be mixed up with her--at any rate, in the
imagination of a girl like Julia Macroyd; and as he left her side he
drew a long breath of relief and went and put down his teacup where he
had got it.
By this time the girl who was “pouring” had exhausted one of the two
original guards on whom she had been dividing her vision, and Verrian
made a pretence, which she favored, that he had come up to push the man
away. The man gracefully submitted to be dislodged, and Verrian remained
in the enjoyment of one of the girl’s distorted eyes till, yet another
man coming up, she abruptly got rid of Verrian by presenting him to yet
another girl. In such manoeuvres the hour of afternoon tea will pass;
and the time really wore on till it was time to dress for dinner.
By the time that the guests came down to dinner they were all able to
participate in the exchange of the discovery which each had made, that
it was snowing outdoors, and they kept this going till one girl had the
good-luck to say, “I don’t see anything so astonishing in that at this
time of year. Now, if it was snowing indoors, it would be different.”
This relieved the tension in a general laugh, and a young man tried
to contribute further to the gayety by declaring that it would not be
surprising to have it snow in-doors. He had once seen the thing done
in a crowded hall, one night, when somebody put up a window, and the
freezing current of air congealed the respiration of the crowd, which
came down in a light fall of snow-flakes. He owned that it was in
Boston.
“Oh, that excuses it, then,” Miss Macroyd said. But she lost the laugh
which was her due in the rush which some of the others made to open a
window and see whether it could be made to snow in-doors there.
“Oh, it isn’t crowded enough here,” the young man explained who had
alleged the scientific marvel.
“And it isn’t Boston,” Miss Macroyd tried again on the same string, and
this time she got her laugh.
The girl who had first spoken remained, at the risk of pneumonia, with
her arm prettily lifted against the open sash, for a moment peering out,
and then reported, in dashing it down with a shiver, “It seems to be a
very soft snow.”
“Then it will be rain by morning,” another predicted, and the girl tried
hard to think of something to say in support of the hit she had made
already. But she could not, and was silent almost through the whole
first course at dinner.
In spite of its being a soft snow, it continued to fall as snow and not
as rain. It lent the charm of stormy cold without to the brightness and
warmth within. Much later, when between waltzes some of the dancers went
out on the verandas for a breath of air, they came back reporting that
the wind was rising and the snow was drifting.
Upon the whole, the snow was a great success, and her guests
congratulated Mrs. Westangle on having thought to have it. The
felicitations included recognition of the originality of her whole
scheme. She had downed the hoary superstition that people had too much
of a good time on Christmas to want any good time at all in the week
following; and in acting upon the well-known fact that you never wanted
a holiday so much as the day after you had one, she had made a movement
of the highest social importance. These were the ideas which Verrian and
the young man of the in-doors snow-storm urged upon her; his name was
Bushwick, and he and Verrian found that they were very good-fellows
after they had rather supposed the contrary.
Mrs. Westangle received their ideas with the twittering reticence that
deceived so many people when they supposed she knew what they were
talking about.