THE COSTUME BALL
So Christmas Eve came, and the costume ball at the Townes’. There were,
as Baldy had told Jane, just six of them at dinner. Cousin Annabel was
still in bed, and it was Adelaide Laramore who made the sixth. Edith
had told Mrs. Follette frankly that she wished Adelaide had not been
asked.
“But she fished for it. She always does. She flatters Uncle Fred and he
falls for it.”
Baldy brought Evans and Mrs. Follette in his little Ford. They found
Mrs. Laramore and Frederick already in the drawing-room. Edith had not
come down.
“She is always late,” Frederick complained, “and she never apologizes.”
Baldy, silken and slim, in his page’s scarlet, stood in the hall and
watched Edith descend the stairs. She seemed to emerge from the shadows
of the upper balcony like a shaft of light. She was all in silvery
green, her close-clinging robe girdled with pearls, her hair banded
with mistletoe.
He met her half-way. “You shouldn’t have worn it,” he said at once.
“The mistletoe? Why not?”
“You will tempt all men to kiss you.”
“Men must resist temptation.”
“Well, queens command,” he smiled at her, “and queens ask----”
She was doubtful of his meaning. “Do you think that I would ever ask
for kisses?”
“You may. Some day.”
Her blue eyes burned. “I think you don’t quite know what you are
saying.”
“I do, dear lady. But we won’t quarrel about it.”
She switched to less dangerous topics. “I’m late for dinner. Is Uncle
Fred roaring?”
“More or less. And Mrs. Laramore is purring.”
They rather wickedly enjoyed their laugh at the expense of an older
generation, and went in together to find Frederick icy with indignation.
Waldron announced dinner, and Frederick with Mrs. Follette on his arm
preceded the others. Baldy and Edith came last.
“How many dances are you going to give me?”
“Not as many as I’d like. Being hostess, I shall have to divide myself
among many.”
“Cut yourself up into little stars as it were. Well, you know what
Browning says of a star? ‘Mine has opened its soul to me--therefore I
love it’!”
His tone was light, but her heart missed a beat. There was something
about this boy so utterly engaging. He had set her on a pedestal, and
he worshipped her. When she said that she was not worth worshipping, he
told her, “You don’t know----”
She was unusually silent during dinner. With Evans on one side of her
and Baldy on the other she had little need to exert herself. Baldy was
always adequate to any conversational tax, and Evans, in spite of his
monk’s habit, was not austere. He was, rather, like some attractive
young friar drawn back for the moment to the world.
He showed himself a genial teller of tales--and capped each of
Frederick’s with one of his own. His mother was proud of him. She
felt that life was taking on new aspects--this friendship with the
Townes--her son’s increasing strength and social ease--the lace gown
which she wore and which had been bought with a Dickens’ pamphlet. What
more could she ask? She was serene and satisfied.
Adelaide, on the other side of Frederick Towne, was not serene and
satisfied. She was looking particularly lovely with a star of diamonds
in her hair and sheer draperies of rose and faintest green. “I am
anything you wish to call me,” she had said to Frederick when she came
in--“an ‘Evening Star’ or ‘In the Gloaming’ or ‘Afterglow.’ Perhaps ‘A
Rose of Yesterday’----” she had put it rather pensively.
He had been gallant but uninspired. “You are too young to talk of
yesterdays,” he had said, but his glance had held not the slightest
hint of gallantry. She felt that she had, perhaps, been unwise to
remind him of her age.
She was still more disturbed, when, towards the end of dinner, he rose
and proposed a toast. “To little Jane Barnes, A Merry Christmas.”
They all stood up. There was a second’s silence. Evans drank as if he
partook of a sacrament.
Then Edith said, “It seems almost heartless to be happy, doesn’t it,
when things are so hard for her?”
Adelaide interposed irrelevantly, “I should hate to spend Christmas in
Chicago.”
There was no response, so she turned to Frederick. “Couldn’t Miss
Barnes leave her sister for a few days?”
“No,” he told her, “she couldn’t.”
She persisted, “I am sure you didn’t want her to miss the ball.”
“I did my best to get her here. Talked to her at long distance, but she
couldn’t see it.”
“You are so good-hearted, Ricky.”
Frederick could be cruel at moments, and her persistence was
irritating. “Oh, look here, Adelaide, it wasn’t entirely on her
account. I want her here myself.”
She sat motionless, her eyes on her plate. When she spoke again it was
of other things. “Did you hear that Delafield is coming back?”
“Who told you?”
“Eloise Harper. Benny’s sister saw Del at Miami. She is sure he is
expecting to marry the other girl.”
“Bad taste, I call it.”
“Everybody is crazy to know who she is.”
“Have they any idea?”
“No. Benny’s sister said he talked quite frankly about getting married.
But he wouldn’t say a word about the woman.”
“I hardly think he will find Edith heart-broken.” Towne glanced across
the table. Edith was not wearing the willow. No shadow marred her
lovely countenance. Her eyes were clear and shining pools of sweet
content.
Her uncle was proud of that high-held head. He and Edith might not
always hit it off. But, by Jove, he was proud of her.
“No, she’s not heart-broken,” Adelaide’s cool tone disturbed his
reflections, “she is getting her heart mended.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are an attractive pair, little Jane and her brother. And the boy
has lost his head.”
“Over Edith? Oh, well, she plays around with him; there’s nothing
serious in it.”
“Don’t be too sure. She’s interested.”
“What makes you insist on that?” irritably.
“I know the signs, dear man,” the cat seemed to purr, but she had claws.
And it was Adelaide who was right. Edith had come to the knowledge
that night of what Baldy meant to her.
As she had entered the ballroom men had crowded around her. “Why,” they
demanded, “do you wear mistletoe, if you don’t want to pay the forfeit?”
Backed up against one of the marble pillars, she held them off. “I do
want to pay it, but not to any of you.”
Her frankness diverted them. “Who is the lucky man?”
“He is here. But he doesn’t know he is lucky.”
They thought she was joking. But she was not. And on the other side of
the marble pillar a page in scarlet listened, with joy and fear in his
heart. “How fast we are going. How fast.”
There was dancing until midnight, then the curtains at the end of the
room were drawn back, and the tree was revealed. It towered to the
ceiling, a glittering, gorgeous thing. It was weighted with gifts for
everybody, fantastic toys most of them, expensive, meaningless.
Evans, standing back of the crowd, was aware of the emptiness of it
all. Oh, what had there been throughout the evening to make men think
of the Babe who had been born at Bethlehem?
The gifts of the Wise Men? Perhaps. Gold and frankincense and myrrh?
One must not judge too narrowly. It was hard to keep simplicities in
these opulent days.
Yet he was heavy-hearted, and when Eloise Harper charged up to him,
dressed somewhat scantily as a dryad, and handed him a foolish monkey
on a stick, she seemed to suggest a heathen saturnalia rather than
anything Christian and civilized.
“A monkey for a monk,” said Eloise. “Mr. Follette, your cassock is
frightfully becoming. But you know you are a whited sepulchre.”
“Am I?”
“Of course. I’ll bet you never say your prayers.”
She danced away, unconscious that her words had pierced him. What
reason had she to think that any of this meant more to him than it did
to her? Had he borne witness to the faith that was within him? And was
it within him? And if not, why?
He stood there with his foolish monkey on his stick, while around him
swirled a laughing, shrieking crowd. Why, the thing was a carnival, not
a sacred celebration. Was there no way in which he might bear witness?
Edith had asked him to sing the old ballads, “Dame, get up and bake
your pies,” and “I saw three ships a-sailing.” Evans was in no mood for
the dame who baked her pies on Christmas day in the morning, or the
pretty girls who whistled and sang--on Christmas day in the morning.
When all the gifts had been distributed the lights in the room were
turned out. The only illumination was the golden effulgence which
encircled the tree.
In his monk’s robe, within that circle of light, Evans seemed a
mystical figure. He seemed, too, appropriately ascetic, with his gray
hair, the weary lines of his old-young face.
But his voice was fresh and clear. And the song he sang hushed the
great room into silence.
“O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie,
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep,
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth,
The everlasting light,
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.”
He sang as if he were alone in some vast arched space, beneath spires
that reached towards Heaven, behind some grille that separated him from
the world.
“For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O, morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King
And peace to men on earth.”
And now it seemed to him that he sang not to that crowd of upturned
faces, not to those men and women in shining silks and satins, not
to Jane who was far away, but to those others who pressed close--his
comrades across the Great Divide!
So he had sung to them in the hospital, sitting up in his narrow
bed--and most of the men who had listened were--gone.
“O, holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray,
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell:
‘Oh come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.’”
As the last words rang out his audience seemed to wake with a sigh.
Then the lights went up. But the monk had vanished!
* * * * *
Evans left word with Baldy that he would go home on the trolley. “I am
not quite up to the supper and all that. Will you look after Mother?”
“Of course. Say, Evans, that song was top notch. Edith wants you to
sing another.”
“Will you tell her I can’t? I’m sorry. But the last time I sang that
was for the fellows--in France. And it--got me----”
“It got me, too,” Baldy confided; “made all this seem--silly.”
So Evans left behind him all the youth and laughter and
light-heartedness, and took the last trolley out to Castle Manor. He
had a long walk after the ride, but the cold air was stimulating, the
sky was full of stars and the night was very still. Oh, how good it was
to be out in that still and star-lighted night!
When he reached Castle Manor he passed the barn on his way to the
house. He opened the door and looked in. There was a lantern, faintly
lit, and he could see the cows resting on their beds of straw--great
dim creatures, smelling of milk and hay--calm-eyed, inscrutable.
He entered and sat down. He felt soothed and comforted by the
tranquillity of the dumb beasts--the eloquent silence.
He was glad he had escaped from the clamor of the costume ball--from
Eloise and her kind.
Yet the Man born at Bethlehem had not escaped. He had gone among the
multitudes--speaking.
Well ... it couldn’t be expected, could it, that men in these days
would say to a girl like Eloise Harper, “For unto you is born this day
in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord”?
People didn’t say such things in polite society ... and if they didn’t,
why not? And if they did, would the world listen?