Laura had spent some thoughtful hours upon her black lace dress
with results that astonished her family: it became a
ball-gown--and a splendidly effective one. She arranged her dark
hair in a more elaborate fashion than ever before, in a close
coronal of faintly lustrous braids; she had no jewellery and
obviously needed none. Her last action but one before she left her
room was to dispose of the slender chain and key she always wore
round her neck; then her final glance at the mirror--which fairly
revealed a lovely woman--ended in a deprecatory little "face" she
made at herself. It meant: "Yes, old lady, you fancy yourself very
passable in here all by yourself, don't you? Just wait: you'll be
standing beside Cora in a moment!"
And when she did stand beside Cora, in the latter's room, a moment
later, her thought seemed warranted. Cora, radiant-eyed, in high
bloom, and exquisite from head to foot in a shimmering white
dancing-dress, a glittering crescent fastening the silver fillet
that bound her vivid hair, was a flame of enchantment. Mrs.
Madison, almost weeping with delight, led her daughters proudly,
an arm round the waist of each, into her husband's room. Propped
with pillows, he reclined in an armchair while Miss Peirce
prepared his bed, an occupation she gave over upon this dazzling
entrance, departing tactfully.
"Look at these," cried the mother; "--from our garden, Jim, dear!
Don't we feel rich, you and I?"
"And--and--Laura," said the sick man, with the slow and imperfect
enunication caused by his disease; "Laura looks pretty--too."
"Isn't she adorable!" Cora exclaimed warmly. "She decided to be
the portrait of a young duchess, you see, all stately
splendour--made of snow and midnight!"
"Hear! hear!" laughed Laura; but she blushed with pleasure, and
taking Cora's hand in hers lifted it to her lips.
"And do you see Cora's crescent?" demanded Mrs. Madison. "What do
you think of _that_ for magnificence? She went down town this
morning with seven dollars, and came back with that and her party
gloves and a dollar in change! Isn't she a bargainer? Even for
rhinestones they are the cheapest things you ever heard of. They
look precisely like stones of the very finest water." They did--so
precisely, indeed, that if the resemblance did not amount to
actual identity, then had a jeweller of the town been able to
deceive the eye of Valentine Corliss, which was an eye singularly
learned in such matters.
"They're--both smart girls," said Madison, "both of them. And they
look--beautiful, to-night--both. Laura is--amazing!"
When they had gone, Mrs. Madison returned from the stairway, and,
kneeling beside her husband, put her arms round him gently: she
had seen the tear that was marking its irregular pathway down his
flaccid, gray cheek, and she understood.
"Don't. Don't worry, Jim," she whispered. "Those bright, beautiful
things!--aren't they treasures?"
"It's--it's Laura," he said. "Cora will be all right. She looks
out for--herself. I'm--I'm afraid for--Laura. Aren't you?"
"No, no," she protested. "I'm not afraid for either of them." But
she was: the mother had always been afraid for Cora.
. . . . At the dance, the two girls, attended up the stairway to
the ballroom by a chattering covey of black-coats, made a
sensational entrance to a gallant fanfare of music, an effect
which may have been timed to the premonitory tuning of instruments
heard during the ascent; at all events, it was a great success;
and Cora, standing revealed under the wide gilt archway, might
have been a lithe and shining figure from the year
eighteen-hundred-and-one, about to dance at the Luxembourg. She
placed her hand upon the sleeve of Richard Lindley, and, glancing
intelligently over his shoulder into the eyes of Valentine
Corliss, glided rhythmically away.
People looked at her; they always did. Not only the non-dancers
watched her; eyes everywhere were upon her, even though the owners
gyrated, glided and dipped on distant orbits. The other girls
watched her, as a rule, with a profound, an almost passionate
curiosity; and they were prompt to speak well of her to men,
except in trustworthy intimacy, because they did not enjoy being
wrongfully thought jealous. Many of them kept somewhat aloof from
her; but none of them ever nowadays showed "superiority" in her
presence, or snubbed her: that had been tried and proved
disastrous in rebound. Cora never failed to pay her score--and
with a terrifying interest added, her native tendency being to
take two eyes for an eye and the whole jaw for a tooth. They let
her alone, though they asked and asked among themselves the
never-monotonous question: "Why do men fall in love with girls
like that?" a riddle which, solved, makes wives condescending to
their husbands.
Most of the people at this dance had known one another as friends,
or antagonists, or indifferent acquaintances, for years, and in
such an assembly there are always two worlds, that of the women
and that of the men. Each has its own vision, radically different
from that of the other; but the greatest difference is that the
men are unaware of the other world, only a few of them--usually
queer ones like Ray Vilas--vaguely perceiving that there are two
visions, while all the women understand both perfectly. The men
splash about on the surface; the women keep their eyes open under
water. Or, the life of the assembly is like a bright tapestry: the
men take it as a picture and are not troubled to know how it is
produced; but women are weavers. There was a Beauty of far-flung
renown at Mrs. Villard's to-night: Mary Kane, a creature so made
and coloured that young men at sight of her became as water and
older men were apt to wonder regretfully why all women could not
have been made like Mary. She was a kindly soul, and never
intentionally outshone her sisters; but the perfect sumptuousness
of her had sometimes tried the amiability of Cora Madison, to whom
such success without effort and without spark seemed unfair, as
well as bovine. Miss Kane was a central figure at the dance,
shining tranquilly in a new triumph: that day her engagement had
been announced to Mr. George Wattling, a young man of no special
attainments, but desirable in his possessions and suitable to his
happiness. The pair radiated the pardonable, gay importance of
newly engaged people, and Cora, who had never before bestowed any
notice upon Mr. Wattling, now examined him with thoughtful
attention.
Finding him at her elbow in a group about a punch bowl, between
dances, she offered warm felicitations. "But I don't suppose you
care whether _I_ care for you to be happy or not," she added, with
a little plaintive laugh;--"you've always hated me so!"
Mr. Wattling was startled: never before had he imagined that Cora
Madison had given him a thought; but there was not only thought,
there was feeling, in this speech. She seemed to be concealing
with bravery an even deeper feeling than the one inadvertently
expressed. "Why, what on earth makes you think that?" he
exclaimed.
"Think it? I _know_ it!" She gave him a strange look, luminous yet
mysterious, a curtain withdrawn only to show a shining mist with
something undefined but dazzling beyond. "I've always known it!"
And she turned away from him abruptly.