On my first day in long trousers I may have been more ill at ease than I
was that Sunday evening at the Ellerslys'; but I doubt it.
When I came into their big drawing-room and took a look round at the
assembled guests, I never felt more at home in my life. “Yes,” said I
to myself, as Mrs. Ellersly was greeting me and as I noted the friendly
interest in the glances of the women, “this is where I belong. I'm
beginning to come into my own.”
As I look back on it now, I can't refrain from smiling at my own
simplicity--and snobbishness. For, so determined was I to believe what
I was working for was worth while, that I actually fancied there were
upon these in reality ordinary people, ordinary in looks, ordinary in
intelligence, some subtle marks of superiority, that made them at a glance
superior to the common run. This ecstasy of snobbishness deluded me as to
the women only--for, as I looked at the men, I at once felt myself their
superior. They were an inconsequential, patterned lot. I even was better
dressed than any of them, except possibly Mowbray Langdon; and, if he
showed to more advantage than I, it was because of his manner, which, as I
have probably said before, is superior to that of any human being I've ever
seen--man or woman.
“You are to take Anita in,” said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that
I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in
front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting
beside her; I had interrupted their conversation.
“Hello, Blacklock!” said Langdon, with a quizzical, satirical smile with
the eyes only. “It seems strange to see you at such peaceful pursuits.”
His glance traveled over me critically--and that was the beginning of my
trouble. Presently, he rose, left me alone with her.
“You know Mr. Langdon?” she said, obviously because she felt she must say
something.
“Oh, yes,” I replied. “We are old friends. What a tremendous swell he
is--really a swell.” This with enthusiasm.
She made no comment. I debated with myself whether to go on talking of
Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do with
matters down town--and Monson had impressed it upon me that down town was
taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for another and
suitable topic.
She sat, and I stood--she tranquil and beautiful and cold, I every instant
more miserably self-conscious. When the start for the dining-room was
made I offered her my left arm, though I had carefully planned beforehand
just what I would do. She--without hesitation and, as I know now, out of
sympathy for me in my suffering--was taking my wrong arm, when it flashed
on me like a blinding blow in the face that I ought to be on the other side
of her. I got red, tripped in the far-sprawling train of Mrs. Langdon, tore
it slightly, tried to get to the other side of Miss Ellersly by walking in
front of her, recovered myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked
on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every
red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the
whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant
boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to
behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that
particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without the
least trouble.
It was with a sigh of profound relief that I sank upon the chair between
Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon, safe from danger of making “breaks,”
so I hoped, for the rest of the evening. But within a very few minutes
I realized that my little misadventure had unnerved me. My hands were
trembling so that I could scarcely lift the soup spoon to my lips, and my
throat had got so far beyond control that I had difficulty in swallowing.
Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon were each busy with the man on the other
side of her; I was left to my own reflections, and I was not sure whether
this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to my torment, I grew
angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and down and across the
big table noted all these self-satisfied people perfectly at their ease;
and I said to myself: “What's the matter with you, Matt? They're only men
and women, and by no means the best specimens of the breed. You've got more
brains than all of 'em put together, probably; is there one of the lot that
could get a job at good wages if thrown on the world? What do you care
what they think of you? It's a damn sight more important what you think of
them; as it won't be many years before you'll hold everything they value,
everything that makes them of consequence, in the hollow of your hand.”
But it was of no use. When Miss Ellersly finally turned her face toward
me to indicate that she would be graciously pleased to listen if I had
anything to communicate, I felt as if I were slowly wilting, felt my throat
contracting into a dry twist. What was the matter with me? Partly, of
course, my own snobbishness, which led me to attach the same importance to
those people that the snobbishness of the small and silly had got them in
the way of attaching to themselves. But the chief cause of my inability
was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its proper
value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by nature,
and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that he had
been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had unconsciously
absorbed his attitude; I was like a fellow who, after cramming hard for
an examination, finds that all the questions put to him are on things he
hasn't looked at. I had been making an ass of myself, and that evening
I got the first instalment of my sound and just punishment. I who had
prided myself on being ready for anything or anybody, I who had laughed
contemptuously when I read how men and women, presented at European courts,
made fools of themselves--I was made ridiculous by these people who, as I
well know, had nothing to back their pretensions to superiority but a
barefaced bluff.
Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to
myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner
was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew,
the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of
things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me
deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has
accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect
must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone,
sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into
the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my
discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in.
Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look,
finally seated himself beside me. “I hope you'll stay after the others have
gone,” said he. “They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and
talk.”
All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that
I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I
really cared about. “Very well,” said I, in reply to him.
He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into
the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the
drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring
the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss
Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was
looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat
studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed
wonderful--too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that
moment, for one so plain and rough as I. “Incredible,” thought I, “that she
is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife--but again, has she
any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human
creatures?” Her slender white arms, her slender white shoulders, the bloom
on her skin, the graceful, careless way her hair grew round her forehead
and at the nape of her neck, the rather haughty expression of her small
face softened into sweetness and even tenderness, now that she was talking
at her ease with one whom she regarded as of her own kind--“but he isn't!”
I protested to myself. “Langdon--none of these men--none of these women,
is fit to associate with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me
who can.” And I had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her
away--home--to the home she could make for me out of what I would shower
upon her.
At last Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that
indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held
her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it
as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in
and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners,
and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me--and like his
wife. I saw that she, too, was frowning. She looked beautiful that evening,
in spite of her too great breadth for her height--her stoutness was not
altogether a defect when she was wearing evening dress. While she seemed
friendly and smiling to Miss Ellersly, I saw, whether others saw it or not,
that she quivered with apprehension at his mildly flirtatious ways. He
acted toward any and every attractive woman as if he were free and were
regarding her as a possibility, and didn't mind if she flattered herself
that he regarded her as a probability.
In an aimless sort of way Miss Ellersly, after the Langdons had
disappeared, left the drawing-room by the same door. Still aimlessly
wandering, she drifted into the library by the hall door. As I rose, she
lifted her eyes, saw me, and drove away the frown of annoyance which came
over her face like the faintest haze. In fact, it may have existed only in
my imagination. She opened a large, square silver box on the table, took
out a cigarette, lighted it and holding it, with the smoke lazily curling
up from it, between the long slender first and second fingers of her white
hand, stood idly turning the leaves of a magazine. I threw my cigar into
the fireplace. The slight sound as it struck made her jump, and I saw that,
underneath her surface of perfect calm, she was in a nervous state full as
tense as my own.
“You smoke?” said I.
“Sometimes,” she replied. “It is soothing and distracting. I don't know how
it is with others, but when I smoke, my mind is quite empty.”
“It's a nasty habit--smoking,” said I.
“Do you think so?” said she, with the slightest lift to her tone and her
eyebrows.
“Especially for a woman,” I went on, because I could think of nothing else
to say, and would not, at any cost, let this conversation, so hard to
begin, die out.
“You are one of those men who have one code for themselves and another for
women,” she replied.
“I'm a man,” said I. “All men have the two codes.”
“Not all,” said she after a pause.
“All men of decent ideas,” said I with emphasis.
“Really?” said she, in a tone that irritated me by suggesting that what I
said was both absurd and unimportant.
“It is the first time I've ever seen a respectable woman smoke,” I went on,
powerless to change the subject, though conscious I was getting tedious.
“I've read of such things, but I didn't believe.”
“That is interesting,” said she, her tone suggesting the reverse.
“I've offended you by saying frankly what I think,” said I. “Of course,
it's none of my business.”
“Oh, no,” replied she carelessly. “I'm not in the least offended.
Prejudices always interest me.”
I saw Ellersly and his wife sitting in the drawing-room, pretending to
talk to each other. I understood that they were leaving me alone with her
deliberately, and I began to suspect she was in the plot. I smiled, and my
courage and self-possession returned as summarily as they had fled.
“I'm glad of this chance to get better acquainted with you,” said I. “I've
wanted it ever since I first saw you.”
As I put this to her directly, she dropped her eyes and murmured something
she probably wished me to think vaguely pleasant.
“You are the first woman I ever knew,” I went on, “with whom it was hard
for me to get on any sort of terms. I suppose it's my fault. I don't know
this game yet. But I'll learn it, if you'll be a little patient; and when I
do, I think I'll be able to keep up my end.”
She looked at me--just looked. I couldn't begin to guess what was going on
in that gracefully-poised head of hers.
“Will you try to be friends with me?” said I with directness.
She continued to look at me in that same steady, puzzling way.
“Will you?” I repeated.
“I have no choice,” said she slowly.