Luncheon came and went, but nothing actually tragic happened at it. Bob
didn’t make more than a dozen remarks that failed to add to his
popularity. He tried to be agreeable, because that was his nature. That
“even-tenor-of-his-way” condition made it incumbent on him—yes, made it
his sacred duty to be bright and amiable. So it was “Hence, loathed
Melancholy!” and a brave endeavor to be as jocund as the poet’s lines!
Only those little unfortunate moments—airy preludes to larger
misfortunes—had to occur, and just when he would flatter himself he was
not doing so badly.
For example, when Mrs. Augustus Ossenreich Vanderpool said: “Don’t you
adore dogs, Mr. Bennett?”
“No. I like them.” It became necessary to qualify that. “That is—not
the little kind.”
The lady stiffened. Her beribboned and perfumed five-thousand-dollar
toy-dogs were the idolized darlings of her heart. The children might be
relegated to the nursery but the canines had the run of the boudoir.
They rode with her when she went out in state while the French _bonne_
took the children for an airing. “And why are the ‘little kind’ excluded
from the realm of your approbation?” observed Mrs. Vanderpool coldly.
It was quite a contract to answer that. Bob wanted to be truthful; not
to say too much or too little; only just as much as he was in honor
bound to say. “I think people make too much fuss over them,” he answered
at last. That reply seemed quite adequate and he trusted the lady would
change the subject. But people had a way of not doing what he wanted
them to, lately.
“What do you call ‘too much fuss’?” pursued the lady persistently.
Bob explained as best he could. It was rather a thankless task and he
floundered a good deal as he went about it. He wasn’t going to be a bit
more disagreeable than he could help, only he couldn’t help being as
disagreeable as he had to be. The fact that Miss Gwendoline Gerald’s
starry eyes were on him with cold curiosity did not improve the lucidity
of his explanation. In the midst of it, she to whom he was talking,
seemed somehow to detach herself from him, gradually, not pointedly, for
he hardly knew just when or how she got away. She seemed just to float
off and to attach herself somewhere else—to the bishop or to a certain
judge Mrs. Ralston always asked to her house-parties that they might
have a judicial as well as an ecclesiastical touch—and Bob’s
explanation died on the thin air. He let it die. He didn’t have to speak
truth to vacancy.
Then he tangoed, but not with Miss Gwendoline Gerald. He positively
dared not approach that young lady. He didn’t tango because he wanted
to, but because some one set a big music-box going and he knew he was
expected to tango. He did it beautifully and the young lady was charmed.
She was a little dark thing, of the clinging variety, and Dickie had
gone with her some. Her father owned properties that would go well with
Dickie’s—there’d been some talk of consolidation, but it had never come
off. Papa was inclined to be stand-offish. Then Dickie began to get
attentive to the little dark thing, though nothing had yet come of that
either. Bob didn’t own any properties but the little dark thing didn’t
mind that. At tangoing, he was a dream. Properties can’t tango.
“You do it so well,” said the little dark thing breathlessly.
“Do I?” murmured Bob, thinking of a stately young goddess, now tangoing
with another fellow.
“Don’t you adore it?” went on the little dark thing, nestling as close
as was conventional and proper.
“I might,” observed Bob. That was almost as bad as the dog question. He
trusted the matter would end there.
She giggled happily. “Maybe you disapprove of modern dancing, Mr.
Bennett?”
“That depends,” said Bob gloomily. He meant it depended upon who was
“doing the modern” with the object of your fondest affections. If you
yourself were engaged in the arduous pastime with said object, you
would, naturally harbor no particular objections against said modern
tendencies, but if you weren’t?—
Bob tangoed more swiftly. His thoughts were so bitter he wanted to run
away from them. The irony of gliding rhythmically and poetically in
seeming joyous abandon of movement when his heart weighed a ton! If that
heaviness of heart were communicated to his legs, they would in reality
be as heavy as those of a deep-sea diver, weighted down for a ten-fathom
plunge.
And in thus trying to run away from his thoughts Bob whirled the little
dark thing quite madly. He couldn’t dance ungracefully if he tried and
the little dark thing had a soul for rhythm. It was as if he were trying
to run away with her. He fairly took away her breath. She was a panting
little dark thing on his broad breast now, but she didn’t ask him to
stop. The music-box ceased to be musical and that brought them to a
stop. The eyes of the little dark thing—her name was Dolly—sparkled,
and she gazed up at Bob with the respect one of her tender and
impressionable years has for a masculine whirlwind.
“You quite sweep one off one’s feet, Mr. Bennett,” she managed to
ejaculate.
At that moment Miss Gwendoline passed, a divine bud glowing on either
proud cheek. She caught the remark and looked at the maker of it. She
noted the sparkle in the eyes. The little dark thing was a wonder with
the men. She seemed to possess the knack—only second to Miss
Gwendoline, in that line—of converting them into “trailers.” Miss
Gwendoline, though, never tried to attain this result. Men became her
trailers without any effort on her part, while the little dark thing had
to exert herself, but it was agreeable work. She made Bob a trailer now,
temporarily. Miss Gwendoline turned her head slightly, with a gleam of
surprise to watch him trail. She had noticed that Bob had danced with
irresistible and almost pagan abandon. That argued enjoyment.
The little dark thing would “come in” ultimately for hundreds of
belching chimneys and glowing furnaces and noisy factories—quite a snug
if cacophonous legacy!—and Miss Gwendoline had only that day heard
rumors that Bob’s governor had fallen down and hurt himself on the
“street.” She, Miss Gwendoline, had not attached much importance to
those rumors. People were always having little mishaps in the “street,”
and then bobbing up richer than ever.
But now that rumor recurred to her more vividly in the light of Bob’s
trailing performance and the mad abandon of his tangoing. Of course, all
men are gamblers, or fortune-hunters, or something equally
reprehensible, at heart! Tendency of a cynical, selfish and
money-grabbing age! Miss Gwendoline was no moralist but she had lived in
a wise set, where people keep their eyes open and weigh things for just
what they are. Naturally a young man whose governor has gone on the
rocks (though only temporarily, perhaps), might think that belching
chimneys, though somewhat splotchy on the horizon and unpicturesque to
the eye, might be acceptable, in a first-aid-to-the-injured sense. But
Bob as a plain, ordinary fortune-hunter?— Somehow the role did not fit
him.
Besides, a fortune-hunter would not bruskly and unceremoniously have
refused _her_ invitation to ride in the trap. And at the recollection of
that affront, Miss Gwendoline’s violet eyes again gleamed, until for
sparkles they out-matched those of the little dark thing. However, she
held herself too high to be really resentful. It was impossible she
should resent anything so incomprehensible, she told herself. That would
lend dignity to the offense. Therefore she could only be mildly amused
by it. This was, no doubt, a properly lofty attitude, but was it a
genuine one? Was she not actually at heart, deeply resentful and
dreadfully offended? Pride being one of her marked characteristics, she
demanded a great deal and would not accept a little.
The sparkles died from the hard violet eyes. A more tentative expression
replaced that other look as her glance now passed meditatively over the
dark little thing. The latter had certainly a piquant bizarre
attraction. She looked as if she could be very intense, though she was
of that clinging-vine variety of young woman. She wore one of those
tango gowns which was odd, outre and a bit daring. It went with her
personality. At the same time her innocent expression seemed a mute,
almost pathetic little appeal to you _not_ to think it too daring.
As Miss Gerald studied the young lady, albeit without seeming to do so
and holding her own in a sprightly tango kind of talk, another thought
flashed into her mind. Bob might be genuinely and sentimentally smitten.
Why not? Men frequently fell in love with the little dark thing, and
afterward some of them said she had a “good deal of temperament.” Bob
might be on a temperament-investigating quest. At any rate, it was all
one to Miss Gerald. Life was a comedy. _N’est-ce-pas?_ What was it
Balzac called it? _La Comedie Humaine._
Meanwhile, other eyes than Miss Gerald’s were bent upon luckless Bob.
Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence looked as if they would like to have a word
with him. Mrs. Dan even maneuvered in his direction at the conclusion of
the dance while Bob watched her with ill-concealed apprehension. He
detected, also, an uncanny interest in Mrs. Clarence’s eyes as that
masterful lady eyed him and Mrs. Dan from a distance. Mrs. Dan almost
got him when—the saints be praised!—Mrs. Ralston, herself, tripped
blithely up and annexed him. For the moment he was safe, but only for
the moment.
A reckless desire to end it all surged through Bob’s inmost being. If
only his hostess would say something demanding an answer that would
incur such disapprobation on her part, he would feel impelled, in the
natural order of events, to hasten his departure. Maybe then (and he
thrilled at the thought), she might even intimate in her chilliest
manner that his _immediate_ departure would be the logical sequence of
some truthful spasm she, herself, had forced from him? He couldn’t talk
French to Mrs. Ralston now; he was in honor bound not to. He would have
to speak right up in the King’s English—or Uncle Sam’s American.
Of course, such a consummation—Bob’s being practically _forced_ to take
his departure—was extremely unpleasant and awful to contemplate, yet
worse things could happen than that—a whole string of them, one right
after another!
However, he had no such luck as to be ordered forthwith off the
premises. He didn’t offend Mrs. Ralston at all. That lady was very nice
to him (or otherwise, from Bob’s present view-point) and did most of the
talking herself. Perhaps she considered that compliment (?) Bob had
bestowed upon her at the Waldorf sufficient to excuse him for a while
from further undue efforts at flattery. At any rate, she didn’t seem to
take it amiss that Bob didn’t say a lot more of equally nice things in
that Chesterfieldian manner and with such a perfect French accent.
But he “got in bad” that afternoon with divers and sundry other guests
of Mrs. Ralston. Mrs. Augustus O. Vanderpool and Miss Gerald weren’t the
only ones who threw cold glances his way, for the faux pas he made—that
he _had_ to make—were something dreadful. For example, when some one
asked him what he thought of Miss Schermerhorn’s voice, he had to say
huskily what was in his mind:
“It is rather too strident, isn’t it?” No sugar-coating the truth! If he
had said anything else he would have been compromising with veracity; he
would not have spoken the thought born in his brain at the question. Of
course, some one repeated what he said to Miss Schermerhorn, who came
from one of the oldest families, was tall and angular, and cherished
fond illusions, or delusions, that she was an amateur nightingale. The
some one who repeated, had to repeat, because Miss Schermerhorn was her
dearest friend and confidante. Then Miss Schermerhorn came right up to
Bob and asked him if he had said it and he was obliged to answer that he
had. What she said, or thought, need not be repeated. She left poor Bob
feeling about as big as a caterpillar.
“How very tactful of Mr. Bennett!” was all Miss Gerald said, when Miss
Dolly related to her the little incident.
“That’s just what I adore in him!” gushed the temperamental little
thing. “He doesn’t seem to be afraid of saying anything to anybody. He’s
so delightfully frank!”
“Frank, certainly!” answered Miss Gerald icily.
“Anyhow, he’s a regular tango-king!” murmured Miss Dolly dreamily.
“I’m so glad _you_ approve of him, dear!” said Miss Gerald with an
enigmatic smile. Perhaps she implied the temperamental little thing
found herself in a class, all by herself, in this regard.
The latter flew over to Bob. If he was so “frank” and ingenuous about
Miss Schermerhorn, perhaps he would be equally so with other persons.
Miss Dolly asked him if he didn’t think the bishop’s sermons “just too
dear?” Bob did not. “Why not?” she persisted. Bob had just been reading
_The Outside of the Pot_. “Why not?” repeated Miss Dolly.
“Antediluvian!” groaned Bob, then turned a fiery red. The bishop,
standing on the other side of the doorway, had overheard. Maybe Miss
Dolly had known he stood there for she now giggled and fled. Bob wanted
to sink through the floor, but he couldn’t.
“So, sir, you think my sermons antediluvian?” said the bishop, with a
twinkle of the eye. _He_ never got mad, he was the best old man that way
that ever happened.
“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, by rote.
“Thank you,” said the bishop, and rubbed his nose. Then he eyed Bob
curiously. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. That made Bob feel awful, but
he couldn’t retract. The truth as he saw it!—He felt as if he were
chained to the wheel of fate—the truth as he saw it, though the heavens
fell!
“Of course, that’s only my poor insignificant opinion,” he murmured
miserably.
“Every man’s opinion is entitled to respect,” said the bishop.
“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, more miserably still.
The bishop continued to study him. “You interest me, Mr. Bennett.”
“Do I?” said Bob. “I’m rather interesting to myself just now.”
“You evidently agree with the author of _The Outside of the Pot_?”
“That’s it.” Weakly.
“Well, cheer up,” said the bishop, and walked away.
Later in the day the judge might have been heard to say to the bishop
that “that young Bennett cub is a good-for-nothing jackanapes”—from
which it might be inferred Bob had somehow managed to rub the judge’s
ermine the wrong way.
“Ha! ha!” laughed the bishop. “Did some one ask him what he thought of
judges?”
But the judge did not laugh. His frown was awful.
“Or was it about the ‘recall’? Or the relation of judges and
corporations?”
The judge looked stern as Jove. “Ass!” he muttered.
“Maybe he’s a progressive,” returned the bishop. “The world seems to be
changing. Ought we to change with it, I wonder?”
“I don’t,” snapped the judge. “If the world to-day is producing such
fatuous blockheads, give me the world as it was.”
“The trouble is,” said the bishop, again rubbing his nose, “can we get
it back? Hasn’t it left us behind and are we ever going to catch up?”
“Fudge!” said the judge. He and the bishop were such old friends, he
could take that liberty.
Another of the sterner sex—one of Mrs. Ralston’s guests—looked as if
he, too, could have said: “Fudge!” His lips fairly curled when he
regarded Bob. He specialized as a vivisectionist, and he was a great
authority. Now Bob loved the “under-dog” and was naturally kind and
sympathetic. He had been blessed—or cursed—with a very tender heart
for such a compact, well-put-up, six foot or so compound of hard-headed
masculinity. Miss Dolly—imp of mischief—again rather forced the talk.
It must be wonderful to cut things up and juggle with hind legs and
kidneys and brains and mix them all up with different animals, until a
poor little cat didn’t know if it had a dog’s brain or its own? And was
it true that sometimes the dogs me-owed, and when a cat started to purr
did it wag its tail instead? This was all right from Miss Dolly, but
when the conversation expanded and Bob was appealed to, it was
different. “Wouldn’t _you_ just love to mix up the different ‘parts’?”
asked Miss Dolly, and put a rabbit’s leg on a pussy, just to watch its
expression of surprise when it started to run and found itself only able
to jump, or half-jump? That got honest Bob—who couldn’t have carved up
a poor dumb beast, to save his life—fairly involved, and before he had
staggered from that conversational morass, he had offended Authority
about two dozen times. Indeed, Authority openly turned its back on him.
Authority found Bob impossible.
These are fair samples of a few of his experiences. And all the while he
had an uneasy presentiment that Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were waiting
to get him and have _their_ innings. Now, Mrs. Dan would bestow upon him
a too sweet smile between games of tennis; then Mrs. Clarence would
drift casually in his direction, but something would happen that would
prevent a heart-to-heart duologue, and she would as casually drift away
again. These hit-and-miss tactics, however, gradually got on Bob’s
nerves, and in consequence, he who was usually a star and a cracker jack
at the game, played abominable tennis that afternoon—thus enhancing his
unpopularity with divers partners who simply couldn’t understand why he
had fallen off so. Indeed, about every one he came in contact with was
profoundly dissatisfied or disgusted with Bob. Miss Gerald, who usually
played with him, now firmly but unostentatiously, avoided him, and
though Bob couldn’t blame her, of course, still the fact did not tend to
mitigate his melancholy.
How different in the past!—that glorious, never-to-be-forgotten past!
Then he had inwardly reveled and rejoiced in her lithe movements—for
with all her stateliness and proud carriage, she was like a young
panther for grace. Now as luckless Bob played with some one else, a
tantalizing college ditty floated through his brain: “I wonder who’s
kissing her now?”
Of course, no one was. She wasn’t that kind. Though some one, some day,
would! It was in the natural order of things bound to occur, and Bob, in
fancy, saw those disdainful red lips, with some one hovering over, as he
swung at a white ball and sent it—well, not where he should have.
“You are playing very badly, partner,” a reproving voice reminded him.
Bob muttered something. Confound that frivolous haunting song! He would
dismiss the dire and absurd possibility. Some one else was with her,
though, and that was sufficiently poignant. There were several of the
fellows tremendously smitten in that quarter. Fine, husky athletic
chaps, too! Some of them quite expert at wooing, no doubt, for devotees
of house-parties become educated and acquire finesse. They don’t have to
tell the truth all the time, but on the contrary, are privileged to
prevaricate in the most artistic manner. They can gaze into beautiful
eyes and swear that they have “never before,” and so on. They can
perform prodigies of prevarication and “get away” with them. Bob played
now even worse than before.
The sun got low at last, however, and wearily he retired to his room, to
change his garments for dinner. Incidentally, he surveyed himself in the
mirror with haunting earnestness of gaze. Had he grown perceptibly
older? He thought he could detect a few lines of care on his erstwhile
unsullied brow, and with a sigh, he turned away to array himself in the
customary black—or “glad rags”—which seemed now, however, but the
habiliments of woe. Then he descended to receive a new shock; he found
out that Mrs. Ralston had assigned Mrs. Dan to him, to take in to
dinner. Drearily Bob wondered if it were mere chance that he had drawn
Mrs. Dan for a dinner prize, or if Mrs. Dan herself had somehow brought
about that, to her, desired consummation. As he gave Mrs. Dan his arm he
saw Mrs. Clarence exchange glances with the commodore’s good lady. Mrs.
Ralston went in with the monocle man.