THE STORM CENTRE OF MAGNETIC ATTRACTION
“Brother Bones,” said Interlocutor Ted Teasdale commandingly, with his
knuckles on his right knee and his elbow at the proper angle.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Interlocutor,” replied Willis Cunningham, whose
“black-face make-up” seemed marvellously absurd in connection with his
brown Vandyke.
“Brother Bones, when does everybody love a storm?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Interlocutor,” admitted Brother Bones Cunningham,
touching his kinky wig with the tip of one forefinger. “When does
everybody love a storm?”
Interlocutor Ted Teasdale roved his eye over the assemblage, of fifty or
more, in his own ballroom, and smiled in a superior fashion. The
ebony-faced semicircle of impromptu minstrels, banded together that
morning, leaned forward with anticipatory grins. They had heard the joke
in rehearsal. It was a corker!
“When it’s a Gail,” he replied, whereat Gail Sargent, at whom everybody
looked and laughed, flushed prettily, and the bones and tambos made a
flourish, and the Interlocutor announced that the Self Help Glee Club
would now sing that entrancing ditty, entitled “Mary Had a Little Calf.”
It was only in the blossom of the evening at Ted Teasdale’s country
house, the same being about eleven o’clock, and the dance was still to
begin. Lucile Teasdale’s vivid idea for making her house-party notable
was to induce their guests to amuse themselves; and their set had
depended upon hired entertainers for so long that the idea had all the
charm of distinct novelty. There had been an amazingly smart operetta
written on the spot by Willis Cunningham, and with musical settings by
Arlene Fosland. Rippingly clever thing! “The Tea Room Suffragettes!”
Ball afterwards, of course, until four o’clock in the morning. To-night
the minstrel show, and a ball; to-morrow night tableaux vivant, and a
ball; fancy dress this time, and all costumes to be devised from the
materials at hand by the wearer’s own ingenuity. Fine? No end of it! One
could always be sure of having a lively time around Lucile and Ted
Teasdale and Arly Fosland. Gerald Fosland was at this party. Fine chap,
Gerald, and beautifully decent in his attentions to Arly. Pity they were
so rotten bored with each other; but there you were! Each should have
married a blonde.
Gail Sargent fairly scintillated with enjoyment. She had never attended
so brilliant a house-party. Her own set back home had a lot of fun, but
this was in some way different. The people were no more clever, but
there were more clever people among them; that was it. There had been a
wider range from which to pick, which was why, in New York, there were
so many circles, and circles within circles.
Gail was sparkling all the time. There was a constant flash of wit, not
of a very high order, to be sure, nor exceptionally brilliant, which
latter was its chief charm. Some wit has to be taken so very seriously.
There were dashes into the brisk, exhilarating winter air, there were
lazy breakfasts, where three or four of the girls grouped in one room,
there was endless gaiety and laughter, and, above all, oceans and oceans
of flirtation. The men whom Lucile and Arly had collected were an
especial joy. They had all the accomplished outward symbols of fervour
without any of its oppressive insistence. Gail, as an agreeable duty to
her new found self, experimented with several of them, and found them
most amusing and pleasant, but nothing more disturbing.
Dick Rodley was the most persistent, and, in spite of the fact that he
was so flawlessly handsome as to excite ridicule, Gail found herself, by
and by, defending him against her own iconoclastic sense of humour. He
reached her after the minstrel show, while Houston Van Ploon and Willis
Cunningham were still struggling profanely with their burnt cork, and he
stole her from under the very eyes of Jack Lariby, while that smitten
youth was exchanging wit, at a tremendous loss, with caustic Arly
Fosland.
“Have you seen the new century plant in the conservatory?” Dick asked,
beaming down at her, his black eyes glowing like coals.
Gail’s eyelids flashed down for an instant, and the corners of her lips
twitched. Young Lariby had only been with her five minutes, but she had
felt herself ageing in that time.
“I love them,” she avowed, and glancing backward just once, she tiptoed
hastily away with the delighted Dick. That young man had looked deep
into the eyes of many women, and at last he was weary of being adored.
He led Gail straight to the sequestered corner behind the date palms,
but it was occupied by Bobby Chalmers and Flo Reynolds. He strolled with
Gail to the seat behind the rose screen, but it was fully engaged, and
he led the way out toward the geranium alcove.
“I’ve missed you so this evening,” he earnestly confided to her. “I was
two hours in the minstrel show. It was forever, Gail!” and he bent his
glowing eyes upon her. That was it! His wonderful eyes! They were
magnetic, compelling, and one would be dull who could not find a
response to the thrill of them.
“Where is the century plant?” He was a tremendously pleasant fellow.
When she walked through a crowded room with Dick, she knew, from the
looks of admiration, just what people were saying; that they were an
extraordinarily handsome couple.
“There is no century plant,” he shamelessly confessed.
“I knew it,” and she laughed.
“I don’t mind admitting that it was a point-blank lie,” he cheerfully
told her. “I wanted to get you out here alone, all to myself,” and his
voice went down two tones. He did do it so prettily!
“I’ve counted seven couples,” she gaily responded.
He tightened his arm where her hand lay in it, and she left it there.
“You’ve clinched Lucile’s reputation,” he stated. “She always has been
famous for picking good ones; but she saved you for the climax.”
“My happy, happy childhood days,” laughed Gail. “The boys used to talk
that way on the way home from school.”
“I don’t doubt it,” and Dick smiled appreciatively. “The dullest sort of
a boy would find himself saying nice things to you; but I shall stop
it.”
“Oh, please don’t!” begged Gail. “You are so delightful at it.”
He pounced on a corner half hidden by a tub of ferns. There was no bench
there, but it was at least semi-isolated, and he leaned gracefully
against the window-ledge, looking down at her earnestly as she stood,
slenderly outlined against the green of the ferns, in her gown of
delicate blue sparkling with opalescent flakes.
“That’s just the trouble,” he complained. “I don’t wish you to be aware
that I am saying what you call pretty things. I wish, instead, to be
effective,” and there was a roughness in his voice which had come for
the first time. She was a trifle startled by it, and she lowered her
eyes before the steady gaze which he poured down on her. Why, he was in
earnest!
“Then take me to Lucile,” she smiled up at him, and strolled in toward
the ballroom.
Willis Cunningham met them at the door.
“You promised me the first dance,” he breathlessly informed Gail. He had
been walking rapidly.
“Are they ready?” she inquired, stepping a pace away from Dick.
“Well, the musicians are coming in,” evaded Cunningham, tucking her hand
in his arm.
“I’ve the second one, remember, Gail,” Dick reminded her, as he glanced
around the ballroom for his own partner, but Gail distinctly felt his
eyes following her as she walked away with Cunningham.
“I know now of what your profile reminds me,” Cunningham told her; “the
Charmeaux ‘Praying Nymph.’ It is the most spiritually beautiful of all
the pictures in the Louvre.”
“I wonder which is the stronger emotion in me just now,” she returned;
“gratified vanity or curiosity.”
“I hope it’s the latter,” smiled Cunningham. “I recall now a gallery in
which there is a very good copy of the Charmeaux canvas, and I’d be
delighted to take you.”
“I’ll go with pleasure,” promised Gail, and Cunningham turned to her
with a grateful smile.
“I would prefer to show you the original,” he ventured.
“Oh, look at them tuning their drums,” cried Gail, and he thought that
she had entirely missed his hint, that the keenest delight in his life
would be to lead her through the Louvre, and from thence to a
perspective of picture galleries, dazzling with all the hues of the
spectrum, and as long as life!
He had other things which he wanted to say, but he calculatingly
reserved them for the day of the picture viewing, when he would have her
exclusive attention; so, through the dance, he talked of trifles far
from his heart. He was a nice chap, too.
Dick Rodley was on hand with the last stroke of the music, to claim her
for his dance. By one of those waves of unspoken agreement, Gail was
being “rushed.” It was her night, and she enjoyed it to the full.
Perhaps the new awakening in Gail, the crystallisation of which she had
been forced to become conscious, had something to do with this. Her
cheeks, while no more beautiful in their delicacy of colouring, had a
certain quality of translucence, which gave her the indefinable effect
of glowing from within; her eyes, while no brighter, had changed the
manner of their brightness. They had lost something of their sparkle,
which had been replaced by a peculiarly enticing half-veiled
scintillation, much as if they were smouldering, only to cast off
streams of brilliant sparks at the slightest disturbance; while all
about her was the vague intangible aura of magnetic attraction which
seemed to flutter and to soothe and to call, all in one.
Dick Rodley was the first to know this vague change in her; perhaps
because Dick, with all his experience in the social diversion of
love-making, was, after all, more spiritual in his physical perceptions.
At any rate he hovered near her at every opportunity throughout the
evening, and his own eyes, which had the natural trick of glowing, now
almost blazed when they met those of Gail. She liked him, and she did
not. She was thrown into a flutter of pleasure when he came near her,
she enjoyed a clash of wit, and of will, and of snappy mutual
attraction; then suddenly she wanted him away from her, only to welcome
him eagerly when he came back.
Van Ploon danced with her, danced conscientiously, keeping perfect time
to the music, avoiding, with practised adroitness, every possible
pocketing, or even hem contacts with surrounding couples, and acquitting
himself of lightly turned observations at the expiration of about every
seventy seconds. He was aware that Gail was exceptionally pretty
to-night, but, if he stopped to analyse it at all, he probably ascribed
it to her delicate blue dancing frock with its opalescent flakes, or her
coiffure, or something of the sort. He quite approved of her;
extraordinarily so. He had never met a girl who approached so near the
thousand per cent. grade of perfection by all the blue ribbon points.
It was while she was enjoying her second restful dance with Van Ploon
that Gail, swinging with him near the south windows, heard the honk of
an auto horn, and a repetition close after, and, by the acceleration of
tone, she discerned that the machine was coming up the drive at
break-neck speed. Moreover, her delicately attuned musical ear
recognised something familiar in the sound of the horn; perhaps tone,
perhaps duration, perhaps inflection, more likely a combination of all
three. Consequently, she was not at all surprised when, near the
conclusion of the dance, she saw Allison standing in the doorway of the
ballroom, with his hands in his pockets, watching her with a smile. Her
eyes lighted with pleasure, and she nodded gaily to him over Van Ploon’s
tall shoulder. When the dance stopped she was on the far side of the
room, and was instantly the centre of a buzzing little knot of dancers,
from out of which carefree laughter radiated like visible flashes of
musical sound. She emerged from the group with the arms of two
bright-eyed girls around her waist, and met Allison sturdily breasting
the currents which had set towards the conservatory, the drawing-rooms,
or the buffet.
“Nobody has saved me a dance,” he complained.
“Nobody expected you until to-morrow,” Gail smilingly returned,
introducing him to the girls. “I’ll beg you one of my dances from Ted or
somebody.”
She was so obviously slated to entertain Allison during this little
intermission, that Van Ploon, following the trio in duty bound, took one
of the girls and went away, and her partner led the other one to the
music room.
“I’ll have Lucile piece you out a card,” offered Gail, as they strolled
naturally across to the little glass enclosed balcony. “I don’t think I
can secure you one of Arly’s dances. She’s scandalously popular
to-night.”
“One will be enough for me, unless you can steal me some more of your
own,” he told her, glancing down at her, from coiffure to blue pointed
slippers, with calm appreciation. “You are looking great to-night,” and
his gaze came back to rest in her glowing eyes. Her fresh colour had
been heightened by the excitement of the evening, but now an added flush
swept lightly over her cheeks, and passed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she speculated, looking at her dance card.
“The next three are with total strangers, and of course I can’t touch
those,” she laughed. “The fourth one is with Willis Cunningham, and
after that is a brief wilderness again. I think one is all you get.”
“I’m lucky even to have that,” declared Allison in content. “The fourth
dance down. That will just give me time to punish the buffet. I’m hungry
as a bear. I started out here without my dinner.”
They stood at the balcony windows looking out into the wintry night.
There was not much to see, not even the lacing of the bare trees against
the clouded sky. The snow had gone, and where the light from the windows
cut squarely on the ground were bare walks, and cold marble, and dead
lawn; all else was blackness; but it was a sufficient landscape for
people so intensely concentrated upon themselves.
Her next partner came in search of her presently, and the music struck
up, and Allison, nodding to his many acquaintances jovially, for he was
in excellent humour in these days of building, and planning, and
clearing ground for an entirely new superstructure of life, circled
around to the dining room, where he performed savage feats at the
buffet. Soon he was out again, standing quietly at the edge of things,
and watching Gail with keen pleasure, both when she danced and when, in
the intermissions, the gallants of the party gravitated to her like
needles to a magnet. Her popularity pleased him, and flattered him.
Suddenly he caught sight of Eldridge Babbitt, a middle-aged man who was
watching a young woman with the same pleasure Allison was experiencing
in the contemplation of Gail.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” announced Allison, making his way to
Babbitt. “I have a new freightage proposition for the National Dairy
Products Consolidation.”
Babbitt brightened visibly. He had been missing something keenly these
past two days, and now all at once he realised what it was; business.
“I can’t see any possible new angle,” returned Babbitt cautiously, and
with a backward glance at the dashing young Mrs. Babbitt. He headed
instinctively for the library.
Laughingly Gail finished her third dance down. She had enjoyed several
sparkling encounters in passing with Dick Rodley, and she was buoyantly
exhilarated as she started to stroll from the floor with her partner.
She had wanted to find cherub-cheeked Marion Kenneth, and together they
walked through the conservatory, and the dining room, and the deserted
billiard room, with its bright light on the green cloth and all the rest
of the room in dimness. There was a narrow space at one point between
the chairs and the table, and it unexpectedly wedged them into close
contact. With a sharp intake of his breath, the fellow, a ruddy-faced,
thick-necked, full-lipped young man who had followed her with his eyes
all evening, suddenly turned, and caught her in his embrace, and,
holding back her head in the hollow of his arm, kissed her; a new kiss
to her, and horrible!
Suddenly he released her, and stepped back abruptly, filled with
remorse.
“Forgive me, Miss Sargent,” he begged.
Gail nodded her numb acceptance of the apology, and turning, hurried out
of the side door to the veranda. Her knees were trembling, but the
fresh, cold air steadied her, and she walked the full length of the wide
porch, trying instinctively to forget the sickening humiliation. As she
came to the corner of the house, the sharp winter wind tore at her,
smote her throat, clutched at her bare shoulders, and stopped her with a
sharp physical command. She drew her gauzy little dancing scarf around
her, and held it tightly knotted at her throat, and edged closer to the
house. She was near a window, and, advancing a step, she looked in. It
was the library, and Allison sat there, so clean and wholesome looking,
with his pink shaven face and his white evening waistcoat, and his dark
hair beginning to sprinkle with grey at the temples. He was so sturdy
and so strong and so dependable looking, as he sat earnestly talking
with Babbitt. Allison said something, and they both smiled; then Babbitt
said something and they both threw back their heads and laughed, while
Allison, with one hand in his pocket, waved his other hand over a
memorandum pad which lay between them. Gail hurried to the front door
and rang the bell.
“Hello, Gail,” greeted the cheery voice of Allison, as she came in. “My
dance next, isn’t it?”
His voice was so good, so comforting, so reassuring.
“I think so,” she replied, standing hesitantly in the doorway, and
thankful that the lights were canopied in this room.
Allison drew the memorandum pad toward him, and rose.
[Illustration: She was glad to be alone, to rescue herself from the
whirl of anger and indignation and humiliation which had swept around
her]
“By the way, there’s one thing I forgot to tell you, Babbitt, and it’s
rather important.” He hesitated and glanced toward the door. “You’ll
excuse me just half a minute, won’t you, Gail?”
She had noticed that assumption of intimate understanding in him before,
and she had secretly admired it. Now it was a comfort and a joy.
“Surely,” she granted, and passed on in to the library alcove, a
sheltered nook where she was glad to be alone, to rescue herself from
the whirl of anger, and indignation, and humiliation—above all,
humiliation!—which had swept around her. What had she done to bring this
despicable experience upon herself? What evil thing had there been in
her to summons forth this ugly spectre? She had groped almost
deliberately for that other polarity which should complete her, but this
painful moment was not one of the things for which she had sought. She
could not know, but she had passed one of the inevitable milestones. The
very crystallisation which had brightened and whetted her to a keen zest
in her natural destiny, had attracted this fellow, inevitably. Her face
was hot and cold by turns, and she was almost on the point of crying, in
spite of her constantly reiterated self-admonishment that she must
control herself here, when Allison came to the door of the alcove.
“All right, Gail,” he said laconically.
She felt suddenly weary, but she rose and joined him. When she slipped
her hand in his arm, strong, and warm, and pulsing, she was aware of a
thrill from it, but the thrill was just restfulness.
“You look a little tired,” judged the practical Allison, as they
strolled, side by side, into the hall, and he patted the slender hand
which lay on his arm.
“Not very,” she lightly replied, and unconsciously she snuggled her hand
more comfortably into its resting place. A little sigh escaped her lips,
deep-drawn and fluttering. It was a sigh of content.