I met Grace Morris for the first time at Mrs. Hatfield's musical
tea--a unique affair at which the half-dozen world-famous artists our
hostess had engaged for the afternoon strove vainly to make their
music heard above the care-free voices of her guests. I had isolated
myself behind a potted palm in the great music-room, and was trying to
distinguish the strains of Mischa Elman's playing from the
conversational high notes around me when a deprecating little laugh
sounded in my ear.
"It's no use," said a clear, languid young voice. "We might as well
chat, too. But first _do_ rise on your toes, look over the purple
plume on the fat woman's hat, and catch one glimpse of Elman's
expression! He thinks we're all insane, or that he is."
I did not follow this stimulating suggestion. Instead I looked at the
speaker. She was a typical New York society girl of twenty-three, or
possibly twenty-four, dressed to perfection and bored to extinction,
her pale, pretty features stamped with the avid expression of the
chronic seeker of new sensations.
"You're Miss Iverson, aren't you?" she went on, when I had smiled my
acknowledgment of her swift service across the conversational net. "My
brother pointed you out to me at the theater the other night. He wants
us to meet. He's one of your editors on the _Searchlight_, you
know--Godfrey Morris."
In another minute we were chatting with as little compunction as the
ruthless throng around us, and while we talked I studied Miss Morris.
I knew a great deal about her. She had only recently returned from
Germany, where for two years she had been studying singing with
Lehmann. She had an exquisite voice, and, though it was understood
that she would make no professional use of it, she had already sung at
several concerts given in behalf of charities that appealed to her.
She possessed a large fortune, inherited from her grandfather; her
brother Godfrey had inherited one of equally impressive proportions,
but its coming had not interrupted the daily and nightly grind of his
editorial work. Evidently the Morrises, despite their languid air,
sprang from energetic stock. It was whispered that Miss Morris's
energies occasionally lent themselves to all-night tango parties, and
late suppers with Bohemian friends in operatic and dramatic worlds
whose orbits hardly touched the exclusive one in which she dwelt; but
thus far there had been nothing more significant than a few raised
eyebrows to emphasize this gossip.
"I'm lucky to meet you," she ran on now. "It saves writing a note.
Mother and I want you to dine with us Thursday evening of next week,
at our hotel. We haven't gone to housekeeping. We're at the Berkeley
for the winter, because Godfrey has an apartment there. Can you
come?--I'm so glad. At eight, then."
A ravishing strain of music reached us. Simultaneously the voice of
the fat woman with the purple plume uttered the final notes of the
recital she had been pouring into the ears of the acquaintance on her
left. "Then, and not till then," she shouted, "I found that the
unhappy woman _lived on the West Side_!"
Miss Morris's eyes and mine exchanged a look that carried us a long
way forward on the road of friendship.
"I wouldn't miss these musicales for the world," she murmured. "Isn't
Mrs. Hatfield unique? Look at her now, out in the dining-room, putting
a layer of French pastry over Amato's perfectly good voice! He won't
be able to sing for a week. Oh, Elman has finished. Do you know him?
No? Then come and meet him."
Miss Morris interested me, and I was sorry to say good-by to her when
we parted, and genuinely disappointed when I reached the Berkeley the
following Thursday night, to learn that she was not to be with us at
dinner. Her mother lost no time in acquainting me with this
distressing fact.
"Grace wants me to apologize for her, and to tell you how _very_ sorry
she is to miss you," Mrs. Morris drawled at once, as she came forward
to receive me.
She was a charming woman of fifty, with white hair, a young face, and
the figure of a girl of twenty. Under the controlled calm of her
manner a deep-seated nervousness struggled for expression. She had her
daughter's languor, but none of her cool insolence or cynicism; in the
look of her gray eyes I caught a glint oddly like that in the eyes of
her son.
"Grace was looking forward to your coming," she went on, as she seated
herself on a davenport facing the open fire, and motioned me to a
place beside her. "But an hour ago she received a note from a friend
who is in town only for the night. There was something very urgent in
it, and Grace rushed off without stopping to explain. My son Godfrey
will be with us--and we hope Grace will be back before you leave."
As if in response to his cue, "my son Godfrey" appeared, looking
extremely handsome in his evening clothes, and rather absurdly pleased
to find his mother and me so deep in talk that we did not hear him
approach.
"Friends already, aren't you?" was his comment on the effective
tableau we made, and as we descended in the elevator to the hotel
dining-room he explained again how glad he was to have his mother and
sister home after two years of absence, and to bring us together at
last.
The little dinner moved on charmingly, but before an hour had passed
I realized that my host and hostess were under some special strain.
Mrs. Morris wore a nervous, expectant look--the look of one who is
listening for a bell, or a step long overdue. Several times I saw
Godfrey glance toward the door, and once I caught a swift look that
passed between him and his mother--a look charged with anxiety. Both
obviously tried to throw off their care, whatever it was, and to a
degree they succeeded. I was sending my spoon into the deep heart of a
raspberry-ice when a servant leaned over the back of my chair and
confidentially addressed me.
"Beg pardon, miss," he murmured, deprecatingly. "But if it's Miss
Iverson, a person wants Miss Iverson on the wire."