BETWEEN DANCES
There had been distinct proprietorship in Johnny's reference to the
dance, a hint of possessive admonition, a shade of anxiety to which
Maria Angelina was not insensitive.
He wanted her to excel. His pride was calling, unconsciously, upon her,
to justify his choice. The dance was an exhibition . . . competition. It
was the open market . . . appraisal. . . .
No matter how charming she might be in the motor rides with the four,
how pretty and piquant in the afternoon at the piano, how melodious in
the evenings upon the steps, the full measure of his admiration was not
exacted.
Sagely she surmised this. Anxiously she awaited the event.
It was her first real dance. It was her first American affair. Casually,
in the evenings at the Lodge, they had danced to the phonograph and she
had been initiated into new steps and amazed at the manner of them, but
there had been nothing of the slightest formality.
Now the Martins were entertaining over the week-end, and giving a dance
to which the neighborhood--meaning the neighborhood of the Martins'
acquaintance--was assembling.
And again Maria Angelina felt the inrush of fear, the overwhelming
timidity of inexperience held at bay by pride alone . . . again she knew
the tormenting question which she had confronted in that dim old glass
at the Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had heard of the adventure
before her.
She asked it that night of a different glass, the big, built-in mirror
of the dressing-room at the Martins given over to the ladies--a mirror
that was a dissolving kaleidoscope of color and motion, of bright
silks, bare shoulders and white arms, of pink cheeks, red lips and
shining hair.
Advancing shyly among the young girls, filled with divided wonder at
their self-possession and their extreme decolletage, Ri-Ri gazed at the
glass timidly, determinedly, fatefully, as one approaches an oracle, and
out from the glittering surface was flung back to her a radiant image of
reassurance--a vision of a slim figure in filmiest white, slender arms
and shoulders bare, dark hair not braided now, but piled high upon her
head--a revelation of a nape of neck as young and kissable as a baby's
and yet an addition of bewildering years to her immaturity.
To-night she was glad of the white skin, that was a gift from Mamma. The
white coral string, against the satin softness of her throat, revealed
its opalescent flush. She was immaculate, exquisite, like some figurine
of fancy--an image of youth as sweet and innocently troubling as a May
night.
"You're a love," said Ruth heartily, appearing at her side, very
stunning herself in jade green, with her smooth hair a miracle of
shining perfection.
"And you're--different," added Ruth in a slightly puzzled voice, looking
her small cousin over with the thoroughness of an inventory. "It must be
the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You've lost that little Saint Susy air."
"But there is no Saint Susy," Ri-Ri interposed gayly, lightly fingering
the dark curves of her hair.
Truly--for Johnny--she had done her darndest! Surely he would be
pleased.
"If you'd only let me cut that lower--you're simply swaddled in
tulle----"
Startled, Maria glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the
scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She
wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that
drape of net. . . .
"You have the duckiest shoulder blades," said Ruth.
"Oh--do _they_ show?" cried Maria Angelina in dismay. She twisted for a
view and the movement drew Ruth's glance along her lithe figure.
"We ought to have cut two inches more off," she declared, and now
Ri-Ri's glance fled down to the satin slippers with their crossed
ribbons, to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs above the
ankles. It seemed to her an utterly limitless exhibition. And Ruth was
proposing two more inches!
Apprehensively she glanced about to make sure that no scissors were in
prospect.
"But you'll do," Ruth pronounced, and in relief Maria Angelina
relinquished the center of the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery
that ran around three sides of the house.
It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina had seen no such chalet
in her childish summers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail she
gazed into the huge hall, cleared now for dancing. The furniture had
been pushed back beneath the gallery where it was arranged in intimate
little groups for future tete-a-tetes, except a few lounging chairs left
on the black bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one corner a screen of
pine boughs and daisies shut off the musicians from the streets, and in
the opposite corner an English man-servant was presiding over a huge
silver punch bowl.
To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian interiors, the note was
buoyantly informal. And the luxury of service in this informality was a
piquant contrast. . . . No one seemed to care what anything cost. . . .
They gave dances in a log chalet and sent to New York for the favors and
to California for the fruit. . . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured
wine of a value now incredible, since the supply could never be
replenished. . . .
Very different would be Lucia's wedding party in the Palazzo Santonini,
on that marvelous old service that Pietro polished but three times a
year, with every morsel of refreshment arranged and calculated
beforehand.
What miracles of economy would be performed in that stone-flagged
kitchen, many of them by Mamma's own hands! Suddenly Maria Angelina
found a moment to wonder afresh at that mother . . . and with a new
vision. . . . For Mamma had come from this profusion.
"They have a regular place at Newport." Ruth was concluding some unheard
speech behind her. "But they like this better. . . . This is the life,"
and with a just faintly discernible note of proprietorship in her air
she was off down the stairs.
"Didn't they find Newport rather chilly?" murmured the girl to whom she
had been talking. "Wasn't Mrs. M. a Smith or a Brown-Jones or
something----?"
"It was something in butterine," said another guest negligently and
swore, softly and intensely, at a shoulder strap. "Oh, _damn_ the
thing! . . . Well--flop if you want to. I've got nothing to hide."
"You know why girls hide their ears, don't you?" said the other voice,
and the second girl flung wearily back, "Oh, so they can have something
to show their husbands--I heard that in my cradle!"
"It _is_ rather old," its sponsor acknowledged wittily, and the pair
went clattering on.
Had America, Maria Angelina wondered, been like this in her mother's
youth? Was it from such speeches that her mother had turned, in
helplessness or distaste, to the delicate implications, the finished
innuendo of the Italian world?
Or had times changed? Were these girls truly different from their
mothers? Was it a new society?
That was it, she concluded, and she, in her old-world seclusion, was of
another era from these assured ones. . . . Again, for a moment the doubt
of her capacity to cope with these times assailed her, but only for a
moment, for next instant she caught Johnny Byrd's upturned glance from
the floor below and in its flash of admiration, as unstinted as a sun
bath, her confidence drew reanimation.
Later, she found that same warmth in other men's eyes and in the
eagerness with which they kept cutting in.
That cutting in, itself, was strange to her. It filled her with a
terrifying perspective of what would happen if she were _not_ cut in
upon--if she were left to gyrate endlessly in the arms of some luckless
one, eternally stuck. . . .
At home, at a ball, she knew that there were fixed dances, and programs,
in which engagements were jotted definitely down, and at each dance's
end a girl was returned respectfully to her chaperon where the next
partner called for her. Often she had scanned Lucia's scrawled programs
for the names there.
But none of that now.
Up and down the hall she sped in some man's arms, round and round, up
and down, until another man, agile, dexterous, shot between the couples
and claimed her. And then up and down again until some other man. . . .
And sometimes they went back to rest in the intimately arranged chairs
beneath the balcony, and sometimes stepped out of doors to saunter along
a wide terrace.
It was incredibly independent. It was intoxicatingly free. It was also
terrifyingly responsible.
And Maria Angelina, in her young fear of unpopularity, smiled so
ingenuously upon each arrival, with a shy, backward deprecatory glance
at her lost partner, that she stirred something new and wondering in
each seasoned breast, and each dancer came again and again.
But all of them, the new young men from town, the tennis champion from
Yale, the polo player from England, the lawyer from Washington, the
stout widower, the professional bachelor, all were only moving shapes
that came and went and came again and by their tribute made her
successful in Johnny's eyes.
Indeed, so well did they do their work that Johnny was moved to brusque
expostulation.
"Look here, Ri-Ri, I told you this was to be _my_ dance! With all those
outsiders cutting in--Freeze them, Ri-Ri. Try a long, hard level look on
the next one you see making your way. . . . Don't you _want_ to dance
with me, any more? Huh? Where's that stand-in of mine? Is it a little,
old last year's model?"
"But what am I to do----?"
"Fight 'em off. Bite 'em. Kick their shins. . . . Oh, Lord," groaned
Johnny, dexterously whirling her about, "there's another coming. . . .
Here's where we go. This way out."
Speedily he piloted her through the throng. Masterfully he caught her
arm and drew her out of doors.
She was glad to be out of the dance. His clasp had been growing too
personal . . . too tight. . . . Perhaps she was only oddly
self-conscious . . . incapable of the serene detachment of those other
dancers, who, yielding and intertwined, revolved in intimate harmony.
There was a moon. It shone soft and bright upon them, making a world of
enchantment. The long lines of the mountains melted together like a
violet cloud and above them a round top floated, pale and dreamy, as the
dome of Saint Peter's at twilight.
From the terrace stretched a grassy path where other couples were
strolling and Johnny Byrd guided her past them. They walked in silence.
He kept his hand on her arm and from time to time glanced about at her
in a half-constraint that was no part of his usual air.
At a curve of the path the girl drew definitely back.
"Ah no----"
"Oh, why not? Isn't it the custom?" He laughed over the often-cited
phrase but absently. His eyes had a warm, hurrying look in them that
rooted her feet the more stubbornly to the ground.
"Decidedly not." She turned a merriment lighted face to him. "To walk
alone with a young man--between dances--beneath the moon!"
Maria Angelina shuddered and cast impish eyes at heaven.
"Honestly?" Johnny demanded. "Do you mean to tell me you've never walked
between dances with young men?"
"I tell you that I have never even danced with a young man until----"
She flashed away from that memory. "Until I came to America. I am not
yet in Italian society. I have never been presented. It is not yet my
time."
"But--but don't the sub debs have any good times over there? Don't you
have dances of your own? Don't you meet fellows? Don't you know
anybody?" Johnny demanded with increasing amazement at each new shake of
her head.
"Oh, come," he protested. "You can't put that over me. I'll bet you've
got a bagful of fellows crazy about you. Don't you ever slip out on an
errand, you know, and find some one waiting round the corner----?"
"You are speaking of the customs of my maid, perhaps," said Maria
Angelina with becoming young haughtiness. "For myself, I do not go upon
errands. I have never been upon the streets alone."
Johnny Byrd stared. With a supreme effort of credulity he envisaged the
fact. Perhaps it was really so. Perhaps she was just as sequestered and
guileless and inexperienced as that. It was ridiculous. It was amusing.
It was--somehow--intriguing.
With his hand upon her bare arm he drew her closer.
"Ri-Ri--honest now--is this the first----?"
She drew away instinctively before the suppressed excitement of him. Her
heart beat fast; her hands were very cold. She knew elation . . . and
panic . . . and dread and hope.
It was for this she had come. Young and rich and free! What more would
Mamma ask? What greater triumph could be hers?
"I'd like to make a lot of other things the first, too," muttered
Johnny.
To Ri-Ri it seemed irrevocable things were being said. But she still
held lightly away from him, resisting the clumsy pull of his arm. He
hesitated--laughed oddly.
"It ought to be against the law for any girl to look the way you do,
Ri-Ri." He laughed again. "I wonder if you know how the deuce you _do_
look?"
"Perhaps it is the moonlight, Signor."
"Moonlight--you look as if you were made of it. . . . I could eat you
up, Ri-Ri." His eyes on her red little mouth, on her white, beating
throat. His voice had an odd, husky note.
"Don't be such a little frost, Ri-Ri. Don't you like me at all?"
It was the dream coming true. It was the fairy prince--not the false
figure she had set in the prince's place, but a proud revenge upon him.
This was reality, fulfillment.
She saw herself already married to Johnny, returning proudly with him
to Italy. She saw them driving in a victoria, openly as man and wife--or
no, Johnny would have a wonderful car, all metal and bright color. They
would be magnificently touring, with their luggage strapped on the side,
as she had seen Americans.
She saw them turning into the sombre courtway of the old Palazzo
Santonini and, so surely had she been attuned to the American note, she
could presage Johnny's blunt disparagement. He would be astonished that
they were living upon the third floor--with the lower apartment let. He
would be amused at the servants toiling up the stairs from the kitchens
to the dining hall. He would be entertained at the solitary tub. He
would be disgusted, undoubtedly, at the candles. . . .
But of course Mamma would have everything very beautiful. There would be
no lack of candles. . . . The chandeliers would be sparkling for that
dinner. There would be delicious food, delicate wines, an abundant
gleam of shining plate and crystal and embroidered linens.
And how Lucia would stare, how dear Julietta would smile! She would buy
Julietta the prettiest clothes, the cleverest hats. . . . She would give
dear Mamma gold--something that neither dear Papa nor Francisco knew
about--and to dear Papa and Francisco she would give, too, a little
gold--something that dear Mamma did not know about.
For once Papa could have something for his play that was not a roast
from his kitchen nor clothes from his daughters' backs nor oats from his
horses!
Probably they would be married at once. Johnny was free and rich--and
impatient. She did not suspect him of interest in a long wooing or
betrothal. . . . And while she must appear to be in favor of a return
home, first, and a marriage from her home, the American ceremony would
cut many knots for her--save much expense at home. . . .
She saw herself proudly exhibiting Johnny, delighting in his youth, his
blonde Americanism, his smartly cut clothes, his conqueror's assurance.
Meanwhile Maria Angelina was still standing there in the moonlight, like
a little wraith of silver, smiling with absent eyes at Johnny's muttered
words, withdrawing, in childish panic, from Johnny's close pressing
ardor. She knew that if he persisted . . . but before her soft
detachment, her half laughing evasiveness of his mood, he did not
persist. He seemed oddly struggling with some withholding uncertainties
of his own.
"Oh, well, if that's all you like me," said Johnny grumpily.
It was reprieve . . . reprieve to the irrevocable things. Her heart
danced . . . and yet a piqued resentment pinched her.
He had been able to resist.
She knew subtly that she could have overcome that irresolution. . . .
But she was not going to make things too easy for him--her Santonini
pride forbade!
"We must go back," she told him and exulted in his moodiness.
And for the rest of the evening his arm pressed her, his eyes smiled
down significantly upon her, and when she confronted the great mirror
again it was to glimpse a girl with darkly shining eyes and cheeks like
scarlet poppies, a girl in white, like a bride, and with a bride's high
pride and assured heart.
She slept, that night, composing the letter to dear Mamma.