The two long winding lines of gaily attired young people joined forces
and the procession came marching down the hall by fours, by eights, by
sixteens, and Abner sat against the wall next to Edith Whyland and
watched the shifting spectacle with a sort of fearful joy. Eudoxia Pence,
seated against the opposite wall, glanced across at him, when occasion
once offered, and nodded and smiled, as if to say, "Isn't it lovely!
Isn't it fascinating!" and Abner, in sudden alarm, recomposed his
tell-tale face and frowningly responded with a grave bow.
Abner wore his double-breasted frock-coat and his white lawn tie; and
Edith Whyland, who had come in a plain dark reception costume to stand in
a row near the door with the wives of the professors at the Art Academy,
now sat with him and brought him as far into drawing as might be with the
abounding masculine figures in evening dress. Many of these appeared in
the march itself, along with the sailors, the Indian chiefs and the young
blades out of Perugino. Giles passed by as a Florentine noble of the late
Quattrocento, in a black silk robe that muffled his slight indifference
to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his
plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily
announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a
Druid priestess, and Miss Wilbur, the miniaturist, showed forth as Madame
Le Brun, without whose presence no fancy-dress ball could be regarded as
complete.
High above the marching host rose dozens of the tall conical head-dresses
of mediaeval France with their dependent veils. A great Parisian painter
had just been exhibiting some mural decorations in the galleries of the
Academy, and half the girls, from the life class down, wore
candle-extinguishers on their heads and trailed full robes of startlingly
figured chintz--a material that was expected to effect to the charitable
eye and the friendly imagination the richness of brocade. Many of the
younger men too had succumbed to the same influence and appeared in long
skin-tight hose and bobby little doublets edged with fur.
"How can they? How can they?" wondered Abner.
The music abruptly changed its tempo and the march broke up into a waltz.
Through the swirling dancers a single figure, clad in violet and green,
zigzagged across to Eudoxia Pence and bowed over her for a word or two.
Eudoxia moved her lips and spread out her plump hands deprecatingly and
shook her head with a smile.
"I should hope she _wouldn't_," thought Abner;--"not with a little squirt
like that."
The figure immediately zigzagged back, with the same effect of eager,
inquiring haste. It paused before Abner and Mrs. Whyland and suddenly
sidled up. Abner recognised Adrian Bond.
"Clytie?" said Bond. "Has anybody seen or heard anything of Clytie
Summers?"
"Well, well," said Mrs. Whyland, looking him over; "you are enrolled
among the Boutet de Monvel boys too, are you?"
Bond ran his eye down his slim legs with fatuous complacency and fingered
the fur fringe of his doublet and pushed his steep flat-topped cap over
to a different angle. Abner looked at him with contemptuous amazement and
would not even speak.
"Her aunt hasn't heard a word from her for a week," said Bond. "That
settlement has claimed her, body and soul. All she does is to write home
for more clothes. I expect she has completely forgotten all about our
little affair to-night. I thought of course she was going to march with
me, but----"
And he darted away to resume his quest.
"She will come," said Mrs. Whyland. "And her cap will be higher and her
veil longer and the pattern of her brocade bigger and more startling than
anybody else can show."
Little O'Grady moved past with a Maid of Astolat, who wore white
cloth-of-gold and carried a big lily above each ear and dropped a long
full-flowered stalk over her partner's shoulder. Medora drifted by in
company with a Mexican vaquero. Her white garments fluttered famously
against the other's costume of yellow and black. She had let down her
abundant dark hair and then carelessly caught it up again and woven into
it a garland of mistletoe. She smiled on Abner with a plaintive, weary
lifting of her eyebrows; she appeared to be "creating atmosphere" again,
just as on the afternoon when he had first seen her pouring tea. She
seemed a long way off. The occasion itself removed her one stage from
him, and her costume another, and her bearing a third. Was this the same
girl who had so dexterously snatched open the stove door in that
farm-house kitchen and had been so active, as revealed by glimpses from
the corridor, in beating up pillows and in casting sheets and coverlets
to the morning air?
The waltz suddenly ended and the Mexican renounced Medora only a few
steps beyond Abner. She came along and took a vacant chair next to Edith
Whyland.
"Are you enjoying it?" she asked Abner.
"It is very instructive; it is most typical," he replied.
The orchestra presently began again, but Medora remained in her place.
"Aren't you dancing this time?" asked Mrs. Whyland.
"Yes," replied Medora deliberately; "I'm dancing with Mr. Joyce."
She handed Edith her card. Abner looked across to her with a startled,
puzzled expression.
"So you are," said Mrs. Whyland. "J-o-y-c-e," she read, and handed the
card back.
"I don't care for the redowa, anyway," Medora explained; "and I didn't
want to dance with the man that was moving along in my direction to ask
me. It was the only vacant line. What could I do? I looked about and saw
you"--to Abner--"standing by the door----"
"I suppose I was tall enough to see," said Abner, feeling very huge and
uncomfortable.
"A tower of strength, a city of refuge," suggested Mrs. Whyland.
"Precisely," said Medora. "So I snatched a pencil out of Adrian Bond's
hand--he had just put himself down four times----"
"What impudence!" thought Abner savagely.
"--and scribbled this,"--dropping her eye on the card. "I hope you don't
mind my having taken your name?" she concluded.
A sudden gust of gallantry swept over Abner. "Let me have the card," he
said. "I have given my autograph a good many times"--looking at the faint
pencilling--"but I don't recognise this." He drew out a lead-pencil and
rewrote the name big and black above the other. "There," he said,--"a
souvenir of the occasion." He handed the card back with the authentic
autograph of a distinguished author. His name there wiped out not merely
one scribble but all, even to the impertinent four traced by
insignificant Bond. A man who could pen such a signature need have no
regret for not being a carpet-knight besides.
Medora took back her card, highly gratified; her cavalier had made a long
stride ahead. Abner himself rejoiced at his dexterity in asserting the
man--almost the man of gallantry, at that--under the shield of the
writer. Mrs. Whyland kindly refrained from entering upon an analysis to
determine just what percentage of egotism was to be detected in Abner's
act, and felt emboldened by such unlooked-for graciousness and by the
sustaining presence of Medora to ask a favour for herself--that "evening"
was still in her mind.
"You _will_ read, won't you?" pleaded Medora.
"After my return from the East," acquiesced Abner.
The two women looked at each other, well pleased.