According to agreement, Belinda arrived in Newport two weeks later, the
day before the ball. When she came downstairs next evening, dressed for
the occasion, Sophy thought that she had never seen so palpitantly
gorgeous a creature. It was not her gown that was gorgeous, but the
beauty that it illumined like sunlight catching a cloud. Belinda had
told her step-mother that the regular dress of debutantes was "not her
style." "I should look perfectly absurd in white or blue with rosebuds,"
she had said, with acumen. So she had selected a costume of shaded
apricot chiffon. The rich, fruit-coloured stuff made her breast and arms
look white as peeled almonds.
An old necklace of brilliants and topaz lay like flecks of sunlight on
her milky throat. Belinda never wore modern jewelry. She had an
astonishing gift for decking her own rather extravagant beauty in
precisely the right way. A twist of golden tissue was threaded in and
out through her burnished hair, and held in place by a clot of topazes.
These jewels hid one ear, and their brilliant hardness cut against her
cheek. It is impossible to describe the strange allurement of the
glowing, yellow gems, thus pressed against the soft damask of the young
cheek. An Eastern woman gets this effect by wearing heavy bangles that
dent the flesh of the upper arm. Sophy could not explain why this
cluster of topaz over Belinda's ear seemed to savour of perverseness--of
an adroit and cunning perverseness. It was certainly charming--yet it
repelled her. She reminded herself listlessly that Belinda's whole
personality rather repelled her. It was a matter of temperamental
aversion--for she felt sure that she also repelled Belinda.
Perhaps for this reason they were particularly civil to each other. And
Sophy had certainly been kindness itself about this ball and the girl's
visit to her. She had even chosen her gown for the evening with
reference to Belinda's. She was all in black and silver. She looked
pale--not her best. Those warm, dusky stains were too marked under her
eyes. She felt at ebb-tide. But Belinda was like a great, joyous,
sunlit, inrushing wave.
"You are very beautiful in that gown, Belinda," Sophy said. "You look
like sunlight."
"And you look like moonlight--on lilies," said Belinda, who could say
very pretty things when she chose. Yet as she said it she was thinking
how glad she was that she herself was red-rose rather than lily! How
typically a splendid tiger-lily she seemed in her orange gown, she could
not have imagined. The black mole on her throat was just like the mark
on a tiger-lily leaf.
When Loring joined them, he said:
"What the deuce! You look like a mandarin orange in all that yellow,
Linda!..." But his eyes said something else. Belinda was quite
satisfied. When he added fretfully: "Why d'you stick that lump of jewels
over one ear, like that? This isn't Turkey or Hindustan...." she was
more pleased than ever. She knew that the hard glitter against her soft
cheek allured him, and that his pettishness only meant that he didn't
wish to be allured. But his reasoned wishes didn't matter in the least
to her. It was the unreasoning, uncontrollable wish at the depths of his
nature that she meant to call forth. "Love" she named this Wish. The
pride of the eye and the lust of life seemed the true glories of being
to Belinda. Her creed was simple. To love, to enjoy, to laugh with all
the strength of one's body--these were the exhilarating ends of
existence.
The ball went merrily. Belinda had the success that might easily have
been predicted. In contrast with her, the other young girls seemed like
pale-hued flowers on some tapestry at whose centre glows a rich blossom
worked in gold. She danced and danced without getting dishevelled or
red, or pale. She looked the embodied Joy of Living, as she swayed
tirelessly, a faint, secret smile just parting her lips, her head thrown
slightly back. And the young men with whom she danced seemed also washed
out and inadequate beside her--very insufficient twigs to support the
radiant, full-blown blossom of her beauty.
But as the evening wore on, though she still smiled, a little flame of
anger and disappointment began to burn her heart. Morry was evidently
hard-set against her. Not once had he asked her to dance. It was very
shabby of him. It was cowardly. She knew very well that he was afraid of
her. She loved his fear of her, but she hated this dull, "proper," tame
resistance that wouldn't dare even one dance with her. Then suddenly her
spirits leaped. There would be the Cotillion. He would _have_ to dance
with her some time during the Cotillion! Her opportunity came with the
"Mirror figure." She sat on a little gilded chair in the middle of the
ballroom, one gold-shot foot thrust out. She was more than ever like
Lorelei, as she sat there with the little silver mirror in her hand,
coolly touching her tossed hair into place, while she waited for the
swains to kneel foolishly before her.
Sophy, who had not danced this evening, stood near a doorway watching
her. To her, the girl in her apricot draperies, looking at herself in
the silver glass with such perfect _disinvolture_, seemed suddenly like
a beautiful Falsehood who had stolen Truth's mirror and was trying to
see what it revealed. For somehow, as she had watched her during the
evening, the intuitive conviction had come to her that Belinda was very
false. And yet Belinda was perfectly true--to herself. What to Sophy
would have seemed falseness, would have seemed to Belinda "being true to
herself." She really thought it "being true to herself" to take Morris
for herself, if she could, by any means within the limits of
conventional propriety and at any cost to any one--but herself and,
within reason, him.
Young men by the score came and knelt at the golden shoes of Belinda.
She sent them all away, with the most charming effrontery. Then Sophy
saw Loring approach. He looked pale and sulky.
She watched the two curiously. It seemed as if Belinda were going to
flout Morris also. But all at once she laughed, and pressed the mirror
against his upturned face. It was an odd gesture--almost like a caress.
Sophy thought that it displeased her because of something in it that she
could only characterise as "bad form." The next moment, she saw Morris
pull the girl rather roughly up into his arms, and waltz off with her.
A woman standing near by said spontaneously: "What a beautiful couple
they make!"
Yes. Sophy saw that, too. They were really quite wonderful floating
about to the sensuous rhythm in each other's arms. And all at once the
thought flashed to her: "How well they suit each other in every way!"
She stood gazing after them--singling them out from the whirling throng.
And her thought returned to her, enlarged, more distinct: "He ought to
have married her ... not me." The more she watched them, the more this
thought possessed her. Belinda would not have bored him with ideals.
Belinda would not have been bored herself by the "social stunt" as
exacted in New York and Newport. Belinda would have found that visit to
England "bully fun." She would have joined with him in "poking up the
highbrows." Nor would Belinda have objected to wine-bred love--of this,
somehow, Sophy felt particularly sure. Yes; in all things they would
have been fittingly mated. In age, in taste, in habits, in temperament.
Just here Loring himself passed by her on his way out of the room. The
waltz was over. He walked rapidly like a man towards some object. His
face was white and set and his eyes black. Sophy could not know that he
was drunk, not with wine but with Belinda. She slipped out into the hall
after him. Only some servants were standing about--not near them. She
detained him an instant, her hand on his arm. "Morris--don't be
vexed...." she said very low. "But don't take any more--just this
evening. Your cousin's first ball...."
He flung off her hand. His face worked. "For God's sake, go your way,"
he said, in a violent whisper, "and let me go mine! I'm tired of
squatting on the steps of the temple. Let up on me, for God's sake! _I_
don't interfere with _you_!..."
He was gone. And obeying a very natural if reprehensible impulse, he
drank a glass more of champagne than he had intended to before Sophy
spoke.
She turned and went quietly back towards the ballroom. To-morrow she
would think things out more clearly. Certainly they could not continue
as they were now. She had not meant to "nag." Yet she had nagged. Sophy
had rare largenesses in her. She was neither as hurt nor as angered by
Loring's words as most women would have been. She had reached that very
chill room in Love's House, where it is easy to put one's self in
another's place.
"But I can't go on like this ... not _all_ my life," she thought
wearily. Yet she saw no way out. The thought of divorce never occurred
to her. She hated divorce as she hated other vulgarities. Yet,
illogically enough, this view of the matter was only applied to her own
case. She heartily and thoroughly approved of it for others. She even
thought that marriage should be a civil contract, dissolvable by the
mutual consent of both parties, or by the resolution even of one.
A woman of whom she was rather fond--Helen Van Raalt--spoke to her
suddenly, touching her shoulder from behind.
"Sophy, dear, I'm _dreadfully_ sorry to be so late! I had to take May to
Fanny's party first, you know. And we've only _just_ got away. And I've
brought an old friend of yours along with me--my cousin--Marco
Amaldi...."