Cornelia was left to no better counsels than those of Charmian
Maybough, and these were disabled from what they might have been at
their best, by Cornelia's failure to be frank with her. If she was
wronging Charmian by making her a half-confidant only, she could not be
more open with her than with Ludlow, and she must let her think that
she had told him everything until she had told him everything.
She did honestly try to do so, from time to time; she tried to lead him
on to ask her what it was he had kept her from telling him in that
first moment of their newly confessed love, when it would have been
easier than it could ever be again. She reproached him in her heart for
having prevented her then; it seemed as if he must know that she was
longing for his help to be frank; but she never could make that cry for
his help pass her lips where it trembled when she ought to have felt
safest with him. She began to be afraid of him, and he began to be
aware of her fear.
He went home after parting with her that first night of their
engagement too glad of all that was, to feel any lack in it; but the
first thought in his mind when he woke the next morning was not that
perfect joy which the last before he fell asleep had been. His
discomfort was a formless emotion at first, and it was a moment before
it took shape in the mistake he had made, in forbidding Cornelia to
tell him what she had kept from him, merely because he knew that she
wished to keep it. He ought to have been strong enough for both, and he
had joined his weakness to hers from a fantastic impulse of generosity.
Now he perceived that the truth, slighted and postponed, must right
itself at the cost of the love which it should have been part of. He
began to be tormented with a curiosity to know what he could not ask,
or let her suspect that he even wished to know. Whether he was with her
or away from her, he always had that in his mind, and in the small
nether ache, inappeasable and incessant, he paid the penalty of his
romantic folly. He had to bear it and to hide it. Yet they both seemed
flawlessly happy to others, and in a sort they seemed so to themselves.
They waited for the chance that should make them really so.
Cornelia kept on at her work, all the more devotedly because she was
now going home so soon and because she knew herself divided from it by
an interest which made art seem slight and poor, when she felt secure
in her happiness, and made it seem nothing when her heart misgave her.
She never could devolve upon that if love failed her; art could only be
a part of her love henceforward. She could go home and help her mother
with her work till she died, if love failed her, but she could never
draw another line.
There was going to be an exhibition of Synthesis work at the close of
the Synthesis year, and there was to be a masquerade dance in the
presence of the pictures. Charmian was the heart and soul of the
masquerade, and she pushed its claims to the disadvantage of the
exhibition. Some of the young ladies who thought that art should have
the first place, went about saying that she was for the dance because
she could waltz and mask better than she could draw, and would rather
exhibit herself than her work, but it was a shame that she should make
Miss Saunders work for her the way she did, because Miss Saunders,
though she was so overrated, was really learning something, thanks to
the Synthesis atmosphere; and Charmian Maybough would never learn
anything. It was all very well for her to pretend that she scorned to
send anything to a school exhibition, but she was at least not such a
simpleton as to risk offering anything, for it would not be accepted.
That, they said, was the real secret of her devotion to the masquerade
and of her theory that the spirit of the Synthesis could be expressed
as well in making that beautiful, as in the exhibition. Charmian had
Cornelia come and stay with her the whole week before the great event,
and she spent it in a tumult of joyful excitement divided between the
tremendous interests of Ludlow's coming every night to see Cornelia,
and of having them both advise with her about her costume. Ludlow was
invited to the dance, and he was to be there so as to drive home with
her and Cornelia.
In the mean time Charmian's harshest critics were not going to be
outdone, if they could help it, in any way; they not only contributed
to the exhibition, but four or five days beforehand they began to stay
away from the Synthesis, and get up their costumes for the masquerade.
Everything was to be very simple, and you could come in costume or not,
as you pleased, but the consensus was that people were coming in
costume, and you would not want to look odd.
The hall for the dancing was created by taking down the board
partitions that separated three of the class-rooms; and hanging the
walls with cheese-cloth to hide the old stains and paint-marks, and
with pictures by the instructors. There was a piano for the music, and
around the wall rough benches were put, with rugs over them to save the
ladies' dresses. The effect was very pretty, with palettes on nails,
high up, and tall flowers in vases on brackets, and a life-study in
plaster by one of the girls, in a corner of the room. It all had the
charm of tasteful design yielding here and there to happy caprice; this
mingling of the ordered and the bizarre, expressed the spirit, at once
free and submissive, of the place. There had been a great deal of
trouble which at times seemed out of all keeping with the end to be
gained, but when it was all over, the trouble seemed nothing. The
exhibition was the best the Synthesis had ever made, and those who had
been left out of it were not the least of those in the masquerade; they
were by no means the worst dressed, or when they unmasked, the
plainest, and Charmian's favorite maxim that art was all one, was
verified in the costumes of several girls who could not draw any better
than she could. If they were not on the walls in one way neither were
they in another. After they had wandered heart-sick through the
different rooms, and found their sketches nowhere, they had their
compensation when the dancing began.
The floor was filled early, and the scene gathered gayety and
brilliancy. It had the charm that the taste of the school could give in
the artistic effects, and its spirit of generous comradery found play
in the praises they gave each other's costumes, and each other's looks
when they were not in costume. It was a question whether Cornelia who
came as herself, was lovelier than Charmian, who was easily
recognizable as Cleopatra, with ophidian accessories in her dress that
suggested at once the serpent of old Nile, and a Moqui snake-dancer.
Cornelia looked more beautiful than ever; her engagement with Ludlow
had come out and she moved in the halo of poetic interest which
betrothal gives a girl with all other girls; it was thought an
inspiration that she should not have come in costume, but in her own
character. Ludlow's fitness to carry off such a prize was disputed; he
was one of the heroes of the Synthesis, and much was conceded to him
because he had more than once replaced the instructor in still-life
there. But there remained a misgiving with some whether Cornelia was
right in giving up her art for him; whether she were not recreant to
the Synthesis in doing that; the doubt, freshly raised by her beauty,
was not appeased till Charmian met it with the assertion that Cornelia
was not going to give up her art at all, but after her marriage was
coming back to study and paint with Ludlow.
Charmian bore her honors graciously, both as the friend of the new
fiancee, and as the most successful mask of the evening. In her pride
and joy, she set the example of looking out for girls who were not
having a good time, and helping them to have one with the men of her
own too constant following, and with those who stood about, wanting the
wish or the courage to attach themselves to any one. In the excitement
she did not miss Cornelia, or notice whether Ludlow had come yet. When
she did think of her it was to fancy that she was off somewhere with
him, and did not want to be looked up. Before the high moment when one
of the instructors appeared, and chose a partner fur the Virginia Reel,
Charmian had fused all the faltering and reluctant temperaments in the
warmth of her amiability. Nobody ever denied her good nature, in fact,
whatever else they denied her, and there were none who begrudged her
its reward at last. She was last on the floor, when the orchestra,
having played as long as it had bargained to, refused to play any
longer, and the dance came to an end. She then realized that it was
after twelve, and she remembered Cornelia. She rushed down into the
dressing-room, and found her sitting there alone, bonneted and wrapped
for the street. There was something suddenly strange and fateful about
it all to Charmian.
"Cornelia!" she entreated. "What is the matter? What has become of Mr.
Ludlow? Hasn't he been here to-night?"
Cornelia shook her head, and made a hoarse murmur in her throat, as if
she wished to speak and could not. There seemed to be some sort of
weight upon her, so that she could not rise, but Charmian swiftly made
her own changes of toilet necessary for the street, and got Cornelia
out of doors and into her coupe which was waiting for them, before the
others descended from the dancing-room, where the men staid to help the
janitor put out the lights. As the carriage whirled them away, they
could hear the gay cries and laughter of the first of the revellers who
came out into the night after them.