Everybody started for the floor.
H. R. left the stage and walked into the Goodchild box. Grace had been
receiving congratulations all the evening until she had convinced
herself that this was her dinner. It was all H. R. could do to force his
way through the plutocracy in the Imperial Box. Talking to Grace at the
same time were three young men who never before had accepted Mrs.
Goodchild's invitations to marry Grace. But Grace was now the
most-talked-of girl in all New York. And she was officially very
beautiful and Goodchild _pere_ was not enough. And Grace was very kind
to all of them. All empresses are kindly when they haven't Dyspepsia or
Dynamite Dreams. All unpleasant things seem to begin with a "D." There
is Death and Damnation; also Duty.
Mr. Goodchild frowned when he saw H. R. in the box. But when he saw that
H. R. never even looked at him he became really angry.
Mrs. Goodchild looked alarmed and hissed, "Don't you talk to him,
Grace!"
Grace, knowing herself desired by the most eligible young men in her
set, decided to squelch H. R. in public. H. R., however, walked past
everybody, looking neither to left nor right. Feeling themselves treated
as so many chairs or hat-racks, the elite of New York began to feel like
intruders.
Then, as an imperial mandate is given, H. R. said to Miss Goodchild:
"We're needed!"
He offered her his arm. The young men rose and made room for him. Duty
called, and they never interfered with duty.
Grace hypnotically obeyed, for H. R. was frowning. Together they walked
down to the floor of the Garden.
The Public Sentiment Corps did their duty. They had not yet received the
beer. They shouted, frenziedly:
"H. R.! H. R.! H. R.!"
The public took up the cheering. Thousands of outstretched hands reached
out for his. But H. R. merely bowed, right and left, and walked to the
middle of the floor.
"Smile at them!" he whispered, fiercely, to Grace.
She did. She knew then what it was to be a Queen. She felt an
overpowering kindliness toward all these delightful, simple people.
Reggie was not brilliant, but that wasn't expected of a Van Duzen. She
did not love Reggie, but she _liked_ him. As Mrs. Van Duzen she would
always have what she liked. She would never marry H. R.! It was
preposterous.
The band began to play. The crowd, instead of dancing, moved toward the
sides--to give H. R. room to dance.
Never before on Manhattan Island had such a triumph of personality
fallen to the lot of any man.
H. R. put his arm about Grace Goodchild. She shrank from the symbolism
of bondage.
"The world is looking on!" he admonished her.
Knowing that she danced very well, she now had but one fear--that her
partner might make her ridiculous.
But H. R. was the best dancer she had ever honored.
She felt her resolution not to marry him slipping away. He led divinely.
She felt that she herself had never danced so well in her life. He
brought out the best that was in her.
"Ever try the Rutgers Roll?" he whispered, tensely.
"N-no! she gasped.
"Let yourself go!"
When a woman lets herself go, all is over except the terms of the
capitulation. She let herself go desperately, because she was forced to
do it; fearfully, because of the appalling possibility of a fiasco.
She did not know how it was done. She had looped the loop and was still
dancing away--a new but unutterably graceful undulation of torso and
rhythmical leg work and exquisite sinuous motions of the arms and hands.
A storm of applause came to her ears, a hurricane steeped in saccharine.
A man who could dance like that was fit to be any girl's husband!
The elite flocked on the floor and began to indulge in old-fashioned
specialties, some of which were nearly a fortnight old. You heard
delighted remarks:
"That's Mrs. Vandergilt!"
"There goes Reggie Van Duzen!"
"Look at Katherine Van Schaick!"
Then the New York that Americans call ruffianly, impolite, vulgar,
selfish, spendthrift, money-loving, self-satisfied, and stupid, also
began to dance decorously! The veteran reporters did not believe their
eyes, but they made a note of the fact, nevertheless.