Christmas night on Billy-goat Hill, and twinkling lights, beginning with
candles set in bottles in the humblest cottages in Bean Alley, dotted
the hillside here and there, until they all seemed to converge at one
brilliant spot on the summit, where a veritable halo of light hung above
the hilltop.
For Angora Heights was having a house-warming, and never since old Bob
Carsey brought home his young bride from Alabama, had such preparations
been known for a social function. All the carriages in the neighborhood
had been pressed into service, and a half dozen motors had been sent out
from town to convey the guests from the station to the house.
Within the mansion everything was magnificently new. Period rooms,
carried out with conscientious accuracy, opened into each other through
arcaded doorways. Massive gilt mirrors accentuated the wide spaces of
the hall, and repeated the lights of innumerable chandeliers. If a stray
memory or an old association had by any chance crept into the Christmas
ball, it would have found no familiar object on which to dwell. The
atmosphere was as formal and impersonal as that of a museum.
In the middle of the drawing-room, like a general issuing last orders
before a battle, stood Mrs. Sequin, her ample figure encased in an
armor of glistening black spangles, and her elaborately puffed coiffure
surmounted by an incipient helmet of blazing gems.
“Pull those portieres back a trifle,” she commanded, “and lower
that window from the top. Has Jimpson gone to the station for the
Queeringtons?”
“Yes, madam, half an hour ago,” answered the maid.
“The moment he returns tell him that he is to take the small wagon and
go back to the station at ten o'clock. The caterer has just 'phoned that
he is sending the extra ices out on the last train, but that he
cannot send another waiter. Jenkins, leaving the way he did, has upset
everything. I suppose it is too late to get anybody now; the special car
gets here at nine. What is that noise? It sounds like some one singing
in the dining-room.”
“It's the new furnace man, madam, that Mrs. Queerington sent. It looks
like he can't keep himself quiet.”
“I'll quiet him!” said Mrs. Sequin, who was as near irritation as full
dress would permit.
Phineas Flathers, having replenished the fire, was pausing a moment to
admire himself in the Dutch mirror above the mantel when Mrs. Sequin
startled him by inquiring peremptorily if he was the new man.
“I am,” said Phineas with pronounced deference, “_the_ new man and
_a_ new man. Regenerated, born again, mam, the spirit of evil having
departed from me.”
Mrs. Sequin gasped. “What is your name?”
“Flathers, mam.”
“Dreadful! I will call you Benson.”
“Benson it is. Better men than me have changed their names. There was
Saul now, Saul of Tarsus--”
“Turn the drafts off in the furnace and don't come up-stairs again on
any account. But no,--wait a moment.” Mrs. Sequin's keen eye swept him
from head to foot. “Have you ever had any experience in serving?”
Phineas, whose only claim to serving was that “they also serve who only
stand and wait,” dropped his eyes.
“Only the communion, mam, and the collection. But I ain't above lending
a hand, mam. You'd do as much for me. I was just saying to the lady in
the kitchen, that anybody was fortunate to work for a person with as
generous a face as yours.”
“Clean yourself up, and put on Jenkins' coat, and if another waiter
is absolutely necessary, they can call on you,” directed Mrs. Sequin
hurriedly, then calling to the maid, “Has Miss Margery come down yet?”
“She's in the library, mam.”
Margery, pale and listless, turned from the window as her mother
entered.
“I was just watching for Miss Lady,” she said; “it will be rather
amusing to see her and Connie at their first big party.”
“I hope she won't wear that childish dress she was married in. It is
all right for Connie to affect white muslin and blue ribbons, but Cousin
John's wife ought to wear something that makes her look older. Why,
with that short gown, and the way she wears her hair, she looks like a
schoolgirl!”
“She looks very beautiful.”
“Of course she does, but what good does it do her? Here at the end of
four months she has made practically no headway. Not that she didn't
have every opportunity! People were quite ready to take her up, but she
simply wouldn't let them. What can you expect of a person who says that
bridge and boned gowns make her back ache? She hasn't an idea in her
head beyond the Doctor, the children and a lot of paupers. I must say
I am terribly disappointed in her. But then I ought to be used to
disappointments by this time. What will she be when she's middle-aged?”
“She'll never be middle-aged,” Margery smiled; “she'll go on being young
and making people around her feel young. Father says she is the only
person he knows who makes him forget his age. By the way, where is
Father?”
“Delayed in town as usual. He'll probably motor out when the evening is
half over and be too tired to be polite. I've never seen him so upset.
Of course it's your broken engagement. He says we may have to close the
house, now that we've gotten into it, and go abroad to reduce expenses,
but of course that's ridiculous! That reminds me, did the Hortons send
regrets?”
“She did,” said Margery absently.
“Oh, dear, that means he'll be here! He's so horribly fastidious, he's
sure to make remarks about my putting an Italian loggia on a Louis XVI
drawing-room. It does seem that with all the time and money we've spent
on this place--Isn't that the carriage?”
“Yes, I hear Miss Lady laughing.”
As the front door swung open two bundled-up figures hurried into the
hall, bringing a gust of youth and merriment along with the keen night
air.
“I hope we are the first guests,” cried Miss Lady, shaking a scarf from
her head, “because we have had an accident. We both fell down. Connie
slipped on the step and I sat down on top of her. There was an awful rip
and we don't know whose it is! I'm afraid to take my coat off!”
“But where is the Doctor?” cried Mrs. Sequin in dismay.
“Father would love to have come,” began Connie glibly, but Miss Lady
broke in: “I don't think he really wanted to come, Mrs. Sequin. He said
he would be ever so much happier up in his study, playing pinocle, than
sitting out here in a straight-back gilt chair eating ice cream. Perhaps
you think I oughtn't to have come without him?”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Sequin. “I get perfectly exasperated when
Cousin John does this way. There were at least a half dozen people I'd
promised to introduce to him. If he had no consideration for me he ought
to have for you. He has been keeping you at home entirely too much. He
forgets that you are twenty years his junior; he expects you to act as
if you were forty.”
“No, he doesn't,” protested Miss Lady loyally; “the Doctor never expects
anything of anybody that isn't right. He urged me to come, didn't he,
Connie?”
But Connie was absorbed in a trailing flounce that hung limply about her
feet.
“Look!” she cried tragically; “it's torn clear across the front. What
shall I do?”
“Margery's gowns would all be too long for you,” said Mrs. Sequin,
viewing the rent through her lorgnette, “perhaps Marie can do something
with this.”
“I won't wear it all tacked up!” cried Connie on the verge of tears;
“I'll go home first--”
“No, you won't,” said Miss Lady; “this is your first grown-up party and
you've been counting on it for weeks. You are going to change dresses
with me. I don't mind a bit being hiked up a little, and, besides,
nobody's going to notice me.”
“That's perfectly absurd!” exclaimed Mrs. Sequin indignantly; “you
_must_ remember who you are, and that everybody is noticing you. Why
can't _you_ wear one of Margery's dresses, and let Connie have yours?”
“All right, I'll wear anything you say. Don't you dare cry, Connie! I'll
never forgive you if you make your nose red. Listen! The musicians are
tuning up! May I have the first waltz, madam?” and seizing Mrs. Sequin
by her plump gloved hands, she danced that august person down the long
hall.
“Let me go, you ridiculous child,” laughed Mrs. Sequin, hurrying her
up the steps; “the motors are coming up the hill now. Make her look as
pretty as you can, Marie, and hurry!”
At a distance the brilliant, moving lights of automobiles and the dimmer
ones of carriages could be seen approaching, and very soon under the
blaze of the porch lights, hurrying figures in furs, rustling satin, and
soft velvets were being ushered formally into the big reception hall.
Mrs. Sequin, mounted on her highest social stilts, stood with Margery in
the alcove, so carefully planned for another occasion. A ball to be
sure was a poor substitute for a wedding, but Mrs. Sequin was not one to
waste her energies on vain regret. The ball was going to be a success;
already the rooms were filling rapidly with the people Mrs. Sequin most
desired to see. Old Mrs. Marchmont had risen from a sick bed to drive
out from town and bare her ancient bones in honor of the occasion. Mrs.
Bartrum had taken possession of the most becoming corner in the library
and was holding gay court there; the young people were thronging from
one room to another; everybody was laughing and chatting and exclaiming
over the charms of the new house. In fact the complacency of the hostess
over her achievement was only surpassed by the curiosity of the guests
who were confirming with their own eyes the wild rumors which had been
current of the Sequins' extravagance.
Mr. Horton, the local architect who had not been considered of
sufficient renown to make the plans for the house, wandered from room to
room on a quiet tour of inspection. Mrs. Sequin's fears of his judgment
were not without cause, for Mr. Horton was one of those critics whose
advice one always ignores but whose approval one ardently desires. He
was a trim, immaculate person with short, pointed beard, and narrow,
critical eyes that always seemed to be taking measurements. Passing from
the Dutch dining-room, with its blue tile, and old pewter, he paused in
the doorway of the drawing-room where the dancing had already begun. His
glance, taking in everything from the gilded fluting of the panels to
the bronze heads on the upright lines of the marble mantels, rested at
last upon an object which evidently gave his critical taste complete
satisfaction.
A young girl had paused near him and was eagerly watching the dancers.
She presented a harmony in green and gold, from her shining hair caught
in a loose coil low on her neck, to her small gold slippers that tapped
time to the music. The clinging gown of pale green that fell in loose
lines from her shoulders was veiled in deep-toned lace, revealing her
round white throat and long shapely arms, bare from shoulder to finger
tips. Horton smiled unconsciously as he watched her eager, responsive
face, and felt the suppressed vitality in every movement of her slender
body.
“Who is she?” he asked of Cropsie Decker, who stood near.
“Who's who?”
“That radiant young thing in green. She doesn't belong in a ballroom,
she belongs in a forest with ivy leaves in her hair. By Jove, look at
the lines of her, and the freedom of her movements. I haven't seen such
arms in years!”
Cropsie followed his glance: “Oh, that's the new Mrs. Queerington,--the
wife of John Jay, you know.”
“But I mean the young girl going through the door there, with the
wonderful hair, and the profile?”
“That's Mrs. Queerington. Isn't she a stunner? Everybody's talking about
her to-night. I'll introduce you if you like.”
Horton followed him around the outer edge of the dancers, still
confident that Cropsie had made a mistake. But when he was duly
presented there was no longer room for doubt.
“I hope I'm not too late to claim a dance,” he said. “I always make it
a point to dance but once during an evening, and that with the most
beautiful woman on the floor. I hope you aren't going to let these young
sharks cut me out of my dance?”
Miss Lady lifted a pair of sparkling, excited eyes to his. From the
moment when she had appeared, half timidly in her borrowed feathers
and taken refuge under Mrs. Sequin's experienced wing, she had been the
sensation of the evening. Adroitly conveyed from one group to another
she had left enthusiasm in her wake. She was evidently enjoying to the
utmost the novelty of receiving homage from one black-coated courtier
after another, and of hearing delightful things about herself. The only
apparent drawback to her pleasure was when she was compelled to say as
she did now:
“Thank you ever so much, but I'm not dancing.”
“Not dancing?” repeated Mr. Horton, not unmindful of the whiteness of
her shoulders against the dark marble of a neighboring pedestal,--'“Why
not?”
“The Doctor and I have given up dancing.”
“Oh, so he doesn't allow you to dance?”
“Allow me?” she lifted her level brows, smiling. “He simply doesn't care
for it.”
“And you don't care for it either?”
“Oh, yes, I do, I care for it too much. That's why I'm not dancing.”
“But you _are_ dancing. You've been dancing ever since you came in. I've
watched you. Mightn't you just as well be dancing with me, as dancing by
yourself?”
She laughed and shook her head, but her foot continued to pat the time,
and her eyes followed the swaying couples that swung past.
“What's the Doctor's objection?” Mr. Horton urged.
“He thinks it's undignified for married women to dance, and I guess I
do, too, only--” Miss Lady sighed,--“you see, I keep forgetting that I
_am_ a married woman!”
“You certainly make other people want to forget it,” then his eyes
dropped before the childlike candor of her gaze. “Come now, Mrs.
Queerington, aren't you taking matrimony a little seriously?”
“Perhaps I am, but I'm new, you know, and I've an awful lot to
learn.”
“Hasn't it ever occurred to you that the Doctor might have something to
learn?”
“No,” she said brightly, “he knows everything. I sometimes wish he
didn't. I'd be proud if I could teach him even _that_ much!” and she
measured off the amount on the tip of her little finger.
“Perhaps he isn't as good a pupil as you are. You should take him to see
'Harnessing a Husband,' at the Ardmore this week.”
“A play? I'd love to go to the theater just once.”
“You've never been? How extraordinary! Come with Mrs. Horton and me on
Friday night and let us share your first thrill.”
“May I?” Miss Lady began eagerly, then checking herself, “I'm afraid the
Doctor doesn't care much about the modern stage. He used to enjoy
seeing the great actors, but he says the plays they put on now bore him
fearfully. Mayn't we come to call sometime instead?”
“As you like,” said Mr. Horton, shrugging, “but I hope you realize that
you are spoiling that learned husband of yours. Instead of adapting
yourself to him, make him adapt himself to you. Come now, isn't it about
time for you to reform? Why not begin by finishing this dance with me?”
Still she laughed and shook her head. “It isn't that I don't want to!
I'd rather dance than do anything in the world--except ride horseback.”
“I might have known you were a horsewoman. Do you ride much?”
“Not now.”
“The Doctor doesn't care for it, I suppose?”
She flashed a questioning glance at him, then she looked away:
“No,” she said, “he doesn't care for it.”
Cropsie Decker, who had been hovering in her vicinity, now came up and
claimed the next number.
“There's a bully little corner in the conservatory where we can sit out
this waltz. You won't mind if I carry her off, Mr. Horton?”
“Not if she takes to heart some of the wise things I've been telling
her,” said Horton, looking at her through his narrow eyes and pulling at
his small, fair mustache. “Au revoir, Madame Beaux Yeux!”
Miss Lady did not move from the spot where he left her. Out under the
palms in the hall, the orchestra was beginning one of Strauss' most
distracting waltzes; her fingers tapped the time. Suddenly she held out
her hand to Cropsie.
“I can't stand it another minute! I've got to dance once if I never
dance again!”
Every eye in the ballroom followed the slender figure, as it circled
in and out among the throng. Miss Lady danced with the grace and
abandonment of a child. She had given herself utterly to the joy of
the moment. She was letting herself go for the first time since her
marriage, following the glad impulse of her heart, and dancing as a
Bacchante might have danced alone on a moonlight night in some forest
glade.
When at last the music stopped Cropsie drew her into the conservatory.
“Here, come around this palm, quick! They'll all be after you for the
next dance. Gerald Ivy is charging around now looking for you, and so is
Mr. Horton. Sit there in the window and cool off!”
She sank laughing and breathless on the window sill. All the
exhilaration of the dance was in her eyes, her lips were parted, her
cheeks flushed, and a strand of loosened hair fell across her shoulder.
It was at this moment that wheels sounded on the driveway below, caused
her to lean idly out to see who was coming. A wagon stopped at the side
entrance, and a man alighted. Uncle Jimpson's voice was heard asking a
question, then came the other man's voice, in quick, incisive answer.
Miss Lady, sitting motionless, looking down, turned suddenly from
the window. The color had left her face and her hand trembled visibly
against the curtain.
“What's the matter?” cried Cropsie; “are you ill? Did you dance too
long?”
“It's nothing, I'm all right. That is I will be--”
“Can't I get you some water, or an ice, or call Mrs. Sequin?”
“No, no, please! It's nothing. I'll slip off to the dressing-room until
I feel better. I can go through here up the side stairs.”
“Wait, I'll go with you. You are as white as if you'd seen a ghost!”
But before he could join her she had disappeared into mysterious regions
where he dared not follow.