IT fell out--most unseasonably for the Vermilions--that Mrs. O’Neal had
planned her annual reception for the same night as their fancy-ball.
All the world was sure to go to Mrs. O’Neal’s sooner or later, and it
broke up the mask-ball at an unusual hour, just before the champagne
began to take effect, which was, on the whole, rather a mercy to the
Vermilions, though they knew it not and suffered some keen pangs of
anger and jealousy. Mrs. O’Neal had, of course, done it on purpose,
Cynthia Vermilion said, and, perhaps she had! Mrs. O’Neal was a
thoroughly worldly old person who would have driven her social chariot
over a hundred Vermilions, figuratively speaking, and felt a grim
pleasure in doing it. The world is not precisely the place for the
cultivation of the more tender feelings, or an undue love for your
neighbor, and Martha O’Neal had long since forgotten that there might
be really serious reasons for considering any one but herself.
So she gave her famous annual ball on that beautiful spring evening
when the scent of the lilacs in her garden came in through the open
windows. She had the house decorated with Easter lilies--it was
Eastertide--and she had made her offering from the front pew in the
most fashionable church in town, wearing her new bonnet while her head
vibrated sufficiently to make the roses dance in weird mockery on its
brim. She had remembered to mention, too, that she gave a thousand
dollars a year to the church, because it is quite useless to hide your
light under a bushel. Having done all these things she gave her ball on
the Vermilions’ evening, and it was a very beautiful, a very select and
a very famous affair, made more famous in the end by an incident which
she had not foreseen.
Those poor Vermilions! They had spent many thousands, and yet people
hurried away or came late, only to eat the supper; old Vermilion was
a magnificent provider. Of course there were some who never went to
the Vermilion’s at all, but always to Mrs. O’Neal’s; among these were
the Temples and old Mrs. Allestree, who made a point to be present at
Martha’s house, for she and Martha had been schoolmates and were still
good friends, although nothing could have been more amusing than the
contrast; the one in her old-fashioned dress with her placid face and
her kindly smile, and the other, tight-laced, over-burdened with satin
and jewels, her old head wagging and quivering under its high white
pompadour and its jewelled _aigrette_.
Her rooms were thronged; the dark polished floors, the old mahogany
furniture, the glittering mirrors, the bewildering array of candles,
tall candles and short candles, huge seven-armed silver candelabra,
short, stout silver candlesticks, the masses of white lilies, the
sweet, heavy odor of them; what a beautiful, dazzling, fanciful scene
it was, when the lovely women in their rich dresses began to throng
every room and corridor and even lingered laughing and talking on the
wide stairs and in the gallery above which commanded the lower hall
and the ballroom, where the fluted pillars were festooned with vines
and crowned with capitals of roses. The old, old woman, with her white
head and her false teeth and her gorgeous gown, receiving her guests,
chattering and smiling and proud; truly the ruling passion is strong in
death. She stood there nobly, heroically, cheerfully, though her tight
satin shoes pinched her poor, old feet, and the draughts from the door
sent a shiver of rheumatic pain across her poor, old, bare, shrivelled
shoulders; and the wide expanse of her ample neck and bosom, clad in
jewels and the imagination, felt the breeze too.
After awhile the guests from the fancy-ball began to drift in, a few
at first in costume, and then more and more, until the ballroom took
on the look of a harlequin show, and there was much gay laughter
and criticism of each new arrival from those who had disdained the
Vermilion ball or who had never been asked.
Mrs. Osborne came, beautiful and striking, dressed as an Eastern
sorceress, and almost at once she had a circle around her in the corner
of the conservatory, and was telling fortunes and interpreting dreams
with all the arts of a charlatan and the charm of a lovely woman. The
crimson tunic, the dark blue petticoat worked with gold, the shapely
ankles with broad gold bracelets, the glittering scarfs which draped
her shoulders and revealed her white arms, the dull gold band on her
forehead, binding back the masses of glossy auburn hair, all combined
to make her a charming and seductive picture. She told fortunes well;
it is an alluring art, it shows pretty hands and delicate wrists,
and the downward sweep of soft eyelashes, the arch of a white brow,
besides that swift glance upward from bewilderingly lovely eyes--
The women looked at her over their shoulders and stiffened, while the
men all had their fortunes told and found the lines on their palms of
sudden and absorbing interest. One or two elderly women, the mothers of
grown boys and girls, were seized with a sudden desire to go home, but
it was no easy matter because the elderly gentlemen belonging to them,
and also the fathers of grown boys and girls, found that corner too
attractive to leave.
Judge Temple, observing it with his shrewd common sense, smiled with
much secret amusement and looked about to see if Rose saw it, for
Rose would understand though she had not his sense of humor. But he
discovered Rose greeting William Fox with an expression on her sweet
young face which startled him. She was smiling and speaking easily, he
saw that, but what was it in her eyes, her lips, which seemed almost
too subtle to interpret? The judge stopped talking to his nearest
neighbor and looked at his own child oddly; could it be? Then he looked
at Fox and there he read something too, the look of a man in pain,
physical or mental, a pain which he meant to hide. The old judge had
been to the supper-table and was standing at the door when he saw
them; he quite forgot the plate in his hand, he almost let a strawberry
roll off on to the floor when he heard Mrs. Allestree’s voice.
“Dear me, judge, do remember that I’m wearing my one evening gown and
strawberries stain!” and she laughed as she saw his start; “there, see
what it is to be a philosopher out for an evening with a frivolous old
woman!”
“My dear Jane,” replied the judge--he had gone to school with Mrs.
Allestree--; “I’d forgotten that it wasn’t a strawberry vine. Do you
remember those we stole from old Mr. White’s patch a thousand years
ago?”
“Do I?” the old woman sighed; “Stephen,” she said, “how much nicer they
were than these! I wonder if I stole some now--”
“I should send you to jail,” he retorted, twinkling, “the second
offense, you know!”
“You stole those yourself!” she replied indignantly, “I was only
accessory after the fact! Who in the world is that?” she added,
catching her breath and craning her neck to peep through the throng.
It was Margaret White. She had just come from the fancy-ball where it
had been her whim to appear as Ophelia. Perhaps her conscience had
pinched her for her treatment of Mrs. Vermilion in Allestree’s studio,
or it had merely pleased her to go. It was often impossible to find
the key to her conduct. At any rate she had gone, and she came late to
Mrs. O’Neal’s, where she was to meet her husband, for he had refused
to go in costume to the Vermilions’. He was a man of too heavy common
sense to trick himself out in fancy dress, and on that one point he
knew his own limitations; he had never been able to play a part to his
own satisfaction, and he had too high an opinion of Wicklow White to
belittle him with a failure. So it happened that he had already had his
fortune told by the enchantress in the conservatory when a ripple of
excitement from the ballroom reached him.
When Mrs. Allestree spoke the crowd had parted to let Margaret pass
through it. She wore a flowing, soft, white gown, thin, clinging,
revealing her neck and arms and the long slim lines of her figure;
her hair, which was beautiful and an unusual tint of pale brown, was
unbound and hanging, trimmed with flowers, while her arms were full of
them.
There was a silence; every eye was on her, and there was an
instantaneous recognition of her remarkable fitness for the part; the
delicate, subtle beauty of her face, her brilliant eyes, with the
dusky shadows below them, the longing, the pain, the uninterpreted
feeling of her expression, her wild hair, her slim, graceful figure,
the appealing beauty of her slender white hands as she held them out,
offering rosemary and rue and daisies, was she really an actress born
or--the very nymph herself? That mystic atmosphere of tragedy which
sometimes seemed to pervade her being had at last found an expression
at once visible and beautiful.
It was her whim to play the part out, and people watched her,
fascinated; those who did not approve of her, those who disliked her,
as well as those who fell under her spell, watched her with undisguised
eagerness. She drew all eyes and knew it. She looked up and saw her
husband standing in the door of the conservatory; their eyes met with a
challenge; they had quarrelled woefully over her coming in this dress,
and it only needed the sight of him to kindle her wilful daring, her
abominable obstinacy. Some one called her by name and spoke to her but,
unheeding, she began to sing Ophelia’s song, throwing flowers as she
walked slowly, very slowly down the crowded room.
“Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny!” she sang.
There was a little breathless applause, but she met it with a vacant
look, coming on, tossing a rose here, a lily there, to be caught by
some ready hand.
Mrs. Wingfield, unhappily, stood in her path. She had been watching her
approach with an expression which needed no explanation, but she could
not be content with silent disapproval, she rushed upon her fate. “Why,
how do you do, Mrs. White,” she said, in her audible voice, “I really
didn’t know it was you; I thought it must be some actress!”
Margaret looked at her blankly, then she put her head on one side.
“‘Well, God ’ild you!’” she exclaimed, “‘they say the owl was a baker’s
daughter.’”
Mrs. Wingfield turned painfully scarlet. There was a titter, an audible
and wavering titter around her. Alack, there were only too many who
remembered, with the memory of society, that her father had dealt in
loaves and fishes!
But Margaret had passed on; she handed a flower to Fox as she passed,
rosemary for remembrance; she gave a rose to Rose Temple and to the
judge a sprig of rue with a little malicious smile.
“Call it herb of grace o’ Sundays!” she said lightly, and the judge
laughed good humoredly with the others, for he knew that his stiff,
old-fashioned manners and customs were often meat for jests.
After all, it was not so bad, people were obviously entertained; White
began to draw a breath of relief, he tried to signal to her to stop.
But Margaret was not done, instead, the very spirit of defiance seemed
to possess her. She suddenly knelt in the centre of the room and began
to make a wreath of flowers, singing Ophelia’s lament, her sweet, high
voice carrying far in the great rooms. The throng of gayly dressed
women drew farther away, the circle widened, necks were craned, those
behind stood on tip-toe.
It was too much for Wicklow White, he could endure no more; he walked
abruptly across the space. “Margaret,” he said, in a low peremptory
voice, “this is too much, we must go home!”
She looked up and shook back her soft, wild hair as she tossed a flower
at him.
“‘For bonny, sweet Robin is all my joy!’” she sang maliciously.
He crimsoned and bit his lip. Again some one applauded; there was a
slight murmur of talk.
Margaret rose abruptly from her knees and began to laugh, herself
again, gay, debonair, indifferent. “What a fool I can be to entertain
you,” she said, her delicate face bright as a child’s.
People gathered about her at once; she was congratulated, praised,
but in the corners others disapproved and thought her a little mad.
Mrs. Osborne glanced meaningly at her nearest friend and tapped her
forehead, and Mrs. Wingfield laughed furiously.
“What a delightful side-show!” she said; “they say White will lose his
place--no wonder!”
The throng had closed up again, the gay murmur of talk rose; the
musicians were just beginning to play a waltz and the ballroom was
filling with dancers.
Margaret, laughing and talking gayly, stood in the door. Fox, looking
across at her, experienced a feeling of deep amazement. What an
actress a woman can be! It seemed to him that he had dreamed that
scene in White’s house, that it was impossible, untrue, a phantasm of
his troubled brain. Then, as he watched her, pondering on a woman’s
unfathomable moods, he saw a sudden gray whiteness spread over her face
like a veil, her eyelids quivered, her lips parted and she swayed.
In an instant he had reached her and caught her as she fell. Judge
Temple helped him hush the stir it made, and he carried her quietly and
swiftly down stairs to a reception room below where he could get help
at once.
* * * * *
Half an hour later Judge Temple took Rose home.
“What was it, father?” she asked, as they got into the carriage; “I
didn’t see it and I just heard that Margaret fainted. Mrs. O’Neal kept
us all dancing, she didn’t want it known.”
The judge looked thoughtfully out of the window. He was not thinking of
Margaret. “She is better now, they got her home in a little while. I
believe White did his best in spite of that scene,” he said; “she has
heart disease; the doctor intimated to me that she might go just like
that if she keeps this up--but people live a long time with Margaret’s
kind of heart trouble; I knew one man who had it for twenty years and
finally died of stale cucumbers. A beautiful creature, a very beautiful
creature, I’ll admit it!”
Rose made an effort, she must learn to hide her heart, she who had
never hidden anything! “Father, may I go to her dressmaker?” she asked
archly.
“No!” he said sharply, “nor walk in her ways--the most extraordinary
creature! Jane Allestree tells me there’ll be a divorce, and no wonder!”
Rose was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “Gerty said so.”
The judge leaned back in his corner and passed his hand over his eyes.
“Ah!” he ejaculated and relapsed into silence.