When Eleanor reached the Country Club on Friday night, she found a box of
flowers waiting for her in the dressing-room. It was the second box she
had received that day. The first bore the conspicuous label, "Wear-Well
Shoes," and contained a bunch of wild evening primroses wrapped in wet
moss. With this more sophisticated floral offering was a sealed note
which she opened eagerly:
_Mademoiselle Beaux Yeux_--[she read]:
Save all the dances after the intermission for me. I will reach L. at
nine-thirty, get out to the club for a couple of hours with you, and
catch the midnight express back to Chicago. Pin my blossoms close to
your heart, and bid it heed what they whisper.
H. P.
Eleanor read the note twice, conscious of the fact that a dozen envious
eyes were watching her. She considered this quite the most romantic thing
that had happened to her. For a man like Mr. Phipps to travel sixteen
hours out of the twenty-four just to dance with her was a triumph indeed.
It made her think of her old friend Joseph, in the Bret Harte poem, who
Swam the Elk's creek and all that,
Just to dance with old Folingsbee's daughter,
The Lily of Poverty Flat.
Not that Eleanor felt in the least humble. She had never felt so proud in
her life as she smiled a little superior smile and slipped the note in
her bosom.
"Not orchids!" exclaimed Kitty Mason, poking an inquisitive finger under
the waxed paper.
"Why not?" Eleanor asked nonchalantly. "They are my favorite flowers."
"But I thought the orchid king was in Chicago?"
"He is--that is, he was. He's probably on the train now. I have just had
a note saying he was running down for the dance and would go back
to-night."
The news had the desired effect. Six noses, which were being vigorously
powdered, were neglected while their owners burst forth in a chorus of
exclamations sufficiently charged with envious admiration to satisfy the
most rapacious débutante.
"I should think you'd be perfectly paralyzed trying to think of things to
talk to him about," said little Bessie Meed, who had not yet put her hair
up. "Older men scare me stiff."
"They don't me," declared Lou Pierce; "they make me tired. Sitting out
dances, and holding hands, and talking high-brow. When I come to a dance
I want to dance. Give me Johnnie Rawlings or Pink Bailey and a good old
jazz."
Eleanor pinned on her orchids and moved away. The girls seemed incredibly
young and noisy and crass. Less than six months ago she, too, was romping
through the dances with Jimmy and Pink, and imagining that a fox-trot
divided between ten partners constituted the height of enjoyment. Mr.
Phipps had told her in the summer that she was changing. "The little
butterfly is emerging from her chrysalis," was the poetic way he had
phrased it, with an accompanying look that spoke volumes.
Once on the dance floor, however, she forgot her superior mood and
enjoyed herself inordinately until supper-time. Just as she and Pink were
starting for the refreshment room, she caught sight of a familiar
graceful figure, standing apart from the crowd, watching her with level,
penetrating eyes.
"Pink, I forgot!" she said hastily; "I'm engaged for supper. I'll see you
later." And without further apology she slipped through the throng and
joined Harold.
"Let's get out of this," he said, lightly touching her bare arm and
piloting her toward the porch.
"But don't you want any supper?" asked Eleanor, amazed.
"Not when I have you," whispered Harold.
Eleanor gave a regretful glance at a mammoth tray of sandwiches being
passed, then allowed herself to be drawn out through the French window
into the cool darkness of the wide veranda.
"Let's sit in that car down by the first tee," Harold suggested. "It's
only a step."
Eleanor hesitated. One of the ten social commandments imposed upon her
was that she was never to leave the porch at a Country Club dance. That
the porch edge should be regarded as the limit of propriety had always
seemed to her the height of absurdity; but so far she had obeyed the
family and confined her flirtations to shadowy corners and dim nooks
under bending palms.
"What's the trouble?" Harold inquired solicitously. "The little gold
slippers?"
"No--I don't mind the slippers; but, you see, I'm not supposed to go off
the porch."
"How ridiculous! Of course you are going off the porch. I have only one
hour to stay, and I've something very important to tell you."
"But why can't we sit here?" she insisted, indicating an unoccupied
bench.
"Because those ubiquitous youngsters will be clamoring for you the moment
the music begins. Haven't you had enough noise for one night? Perhaps you
prefer to go inside and be pushed about and eat messy things with your
fingers?"
"Now you are horrid!" Eleanor pouted. "I only thought----"
"You mean you _didn't_ think!" corrected Harold, putting the tip of his
finger under her chin and tilting her face up to his. "You just repeated
what you'd been taught to say. Use your brains, Eleanor. What possible
harm can there be in our quietly sitting out under the light of the
stars, instead of on this crowded piazza with that distracting din going
on inside?"
"Of course there isn't really."
"Well, then, come on"; and he led the way across the strip of dewy lawn
and handed her into the car.
Eleanor experienced a delicious sense of forbidden joy as she sank on the
soft cushions and looked back at the brilliantly lighted club-house. The
knowledge that in many of those other cars parked along the roadway other
couples were cozily twosing, and that not a girl among them but would
have changed places with her, added materially to her enjoyment.
It was not that Harold Phipps was popular. She had to admit that he had
more enemies than friends. But rumors of his wealth, his position, and
his talent, together with his distinguished appearance, had made him the
most sought after officer stationed at the camp. That he should have
swooped down from his eagle flight with Uncle Ranny's sophisticated group
to snatch her out of the pool of youthful minnows was a compliment she
did not forget.
"Well," he said, lazily sinking into his corner of the car and observing
her with satisfaction, "haven't you something pretty to say to me, after
I've come all these miles to hear it?"
Eleanor laughed in embarrassment. It was much easier to say pretty things
in letters than to say them face to face.
"There is one thing that I always have to say to you," she said, "and
that's thank you. These orchids are perfectly sweet, and the candy that
came yesterday----"
"Was also _perfectly_ sweet? Come, Eleanor, let's skip the formalities.
Were you or were you not glad to see me?"
"Why, of course I was."
"Well, you didn't look it. I am not used to having girls treat me as
casually as you do. How much have you missed me?"
"Heaps. How's the play coming on?"
"Marvelously! We've worked out all the main difficulties, and I signed up
this week with a manager."
"Not _really!_ When will it be produced?"
"Sometime in the spring. I go on to New York next month to make the final
arrangements. When do you go?"
"I don't know that I am going. I'm trying my best to get grandmother's
consent."
"You must go anyhow," said Harold. "I want you to have three months at
the Kendall School, and then do you know what I am going to do?"
"What?" she asked with sparkling eagerness.
"I am going to try you out in 'Phantom Love.' You remember you said if I
wrote a part especially for you that nothing in heaven or earth could
prevent your taking it."
"And _have_ you written a part especially for me?"
"I certainly have. A young Southern girl who moves through the play like
a strain of exquisite music. The only trouble is that the rôle promises
to be more appealing than the star's."
"That's the loveliest thing I ever heard of anybody doing!" cried
Eleanor, breathless with gratitude. "Does Papa Claude know?"
"Of course he knows. We worked it out together. I am going to find him a
small apartment, so he can be ready for you when you come. It shouldn't
be later than November the first."
Eleanor wore such a look as Joan of Arc must have worn when she first
heard the heavenly voices. Her shapely bare arms hung limp at her sides,
and her white face, with its contrasting black hair, shone like a
delicate cameo against the darkness.
Harold, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, kept lightly touching
and retouching his mustache.
"In the first act," he continued softly, "I've put you in the Red Cross
Uniform--the little blue and white one, you know, that you used to break
hearts in out at the camp hospital. In the second act you are to be in
riding togs, smart in every detail, something very chic, that will show
your figure to advantage; in the last act I want you exactly as you are
this minute--this soft clingy gold gown, and the gold slippers, and your
hair high and plain like that, with the band of dull gold around it. I
wouldn't change an inch of you, not from your head to your blessed little
feet!"
As he talked Eleanor forgot him completely. She was busy visualizing the
different costumes, even going so far as to see herself slipping through
folds of crimson velvet to take insistent curtain calls. Already in
imagination she was rich and famous, dispensing munificent bounty to the
entire Martel family. Then a disturbing thought pricked her dream and
brought her rudely back to the present. As long as her grandmother
regarded her going to New York as a foolish whim, a passing craze, she
might be wheedled into yielding; but at the first suggestion of a
professional engagement, her opposition would become active and violent,
Eleanor sighed helplessly and looked at Harold.
"What shall I do if grandmother refuses to send me?" she asked
desperately.
"You can let me send you," he said quietly. "It's folly to keep up this
pretense any longer, Eleanor. You love me, don't you?"
"I--I like you," faltered Eleanor, "better than almost anybody. But I am
never going to marry; I don't think I shall ever care for anybody--that
way."
He watched her with an amused practised glance. "We won't talk about it
now," he said lightly. "We will talk instead of your career. You remember
that night at Ran's when you recited for me? I can hear you now saying
those lines:
'Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won
I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay.'
For days I was haunted by the beauty and subtlety of your voice, the
unconscious grace of your poses, your little tricks of coquetry, and the
play of your eyebrows."
"Did you really see all that in me the first night?"
"I saw more. I saw that, if taken in time, you were destined to be a
great actress. I swore then and there that you should have your chance,
and that I should be the one to give it to you."
"But----"
"No. Don't answer me now. You are like a little bud that's afraid to open
its petals. Once you get out of this chilling atmosphere of criticism and
opposition, you will burst into glorious bloom."
"But it would mean a terrible break with the family. I don't believe I
can----"
"Yes, you can. I know you better than you know yourself. If Madam
Bartlett persists in refusing to send you to New York, you are going to
be big enough to let me do it."
He was holding her hand now, and talking with unusual earnestness.
Eleanor thought she had never seen a greater exhibition of magnanimity.
That he was willing to give all and ask for nothing, to be patient with
her vacillations, and understand and sympathize with what everybody else
condemned in her, touched her greatly. She turned to him impulsively.
"I'll do whatever you say," she said. "You and Papa Claude go ahead and
make the arrangements, and I promise you I'll come."
Harold Phipps should have left it there; but Eleanor was never more
irresistible than when she was in a yielding mood, and now, when she
lifted starry eyes of gratitude, he tumbled off his pedestal of noble
detachment, and drew her suddenly into his arms.
In an instant her soft mood vanished. She scrambled hastily to her feet
and got out of the car.
"I am going in," she said abruptly. "I'm cold."
Harold laughingly followed. "Cold?" he repeated in his laziest tone. "My
dear girl, you could understudy the North Pole! However, it was my
mistake; I'm sorry. Shall we go in and dance?"
For the next half-hour he and Eleanor were the most observed couple on
the floor. The "ubiquitous youngsters," seeing his air of proprietorship,
forbore to break in, and it was not until the last dance that Pink
Bailey, looking the immature college boy he was, presented himself
apologetically to take Eleanor home.
"Bring your car around, and she will be ready," said Harold loftily. Then
he turned to Eleanor, "I shall expect a letter every day. You must keep
me posted how things are going."
They were standing on the club-house steps now, and she was looking
dreamily off across the golf links.
"Did you hear me?" he said impatiently.
"Oh, I was listening to the whip-poor-wills. They always take me back to
Valley Mead. Write every day? Heavens, no. I hate to write letters."
"But you'll write to me, you little ingrate! I shall send you such nice
letters that you'll have to answer them."
A vagrant breeze, with a hint of autumn, blew Eleanor's scarf across his
shoulder, and he tenderly replaced it about her throat.
"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously.
Eleanor, under cover of the crowd that was surging about them, felt a
sudden access of boldness.
"Not so cold as some people think," she said mischievously; then, without
waiting for further good-by, she sped down the steps and into the waiting
car.