“Then I don’t believe I care to go.”
Clara, about to flare up, caught her mother’s eye and was silent.
“Clay, I want you to go,” said Lady Blachford hastily. “People want to see you before they forget what you look like. And for tonight let’s not talk about war or paint.”
In the end Clay went. A navy subaltern called for his sister at ten and he followed in lonesome state at half-past. After half an hour he had had all he wanted. Frankly, the dance seemed all wrong. He remembered Mrs. Severance’s ante-bellum affairs—staid, correct occasions they were, with only a mere scattering from the faster set, just those people who couldn’t possibly be left out. Now it all was blent, somehow, in one set. His sister had not exaggerated, practically every girl there was painted, over-painted; girls whom he remembered as curate-hunters, holders of long conversations with earnest young men on incense and the validity of orders, girls who had been terrifyingly masculine and had talked about dances as if they were the amusement of the feeble-minded—all were there, trotting through the most extreme steps from over the water. He danced stiffly with many who had delighted his youth, and he found that he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. He found that he had come to picture England as a land of sorrow and asceticism, and while there was little extravagance displayed tonight, he thought that the atmosphere had fallen to that of artificial gaiety rather than risen to a stern calmness. Even under the carved, gilt ceiling of the Severances there was strangely an impression of dance-hall rather than dance. People arrived and departed most informally and, oddly enough, there was a dearth of older people rather than of younger. But there was something in the very faces of the girls, something which was half enthusiasm and half recklessness, that depressed him more than any concrete thing.
When he had decided this and had about made up his mind to go, Eleanor Marbrooke came in. He looked at her keenly. She had not lost, not a bit. He fancied that she had not quite so much paint on as the others, and when he and she talked he felt a social refuge in her cool beauty. Even then he felt that the difference between her and the others was in degree rather than in kind. He stayed, of course, and one o’clock found them sitting apart, watching. There had been a drifting away and now there seemed to be nothing but officers and girls; the Severances themselves seemed out of place as they chattered volubly in a corner to a young couple who looked as if they would rather be left alone.
“Eleanor,” he demanded, “why is it that everyone looks so—well, so loose—so socially slovenly?”
“It’s terribly obvious, isn’t it?” she agreed, following his eyes around the room.
“And no one seems to care,” he continued.
“No one does,” she responded, “but, my dear man, we can’t sit here and criticize our hosts. What about me? How do I look?”
He regarded her critically.
“I’d say on the whole that you’ve kept your looks.”
“Well, I like that.” She raised her brows at him in reproof. “You talk as if I were some shelved, old play-about, just over some domestic catastrophe.”
There was a pause; then he asked her directly.
“How about Dick?”
She grew serious at once.
“Poor Dick—I suppose we were engaged.”
“Suppose!” he said, astonished. “Why it was understood by everyone. Both our families knew. I know I used to lie awake and envy my lucky brother.”
She laughed.
“Well, we certainly thought ourselves engaged. If war hadn’t come we’d be comfortably married now, but if he were still alive under these circumstances, I doubt if we’d be even engaged.”
“You weren’t in love with him?”
“Well, you see, perhaps that wouldn’t be the question, perhaps he wouldn’t marry me and perhaps I couldn’t marry him.”
He jumped to his feet, astounded, and her warning hush just prevented him from exclaiming aloud. Before he could control his voice enough to speak she had whisked off with a staff officer. What could she mean?—except that in some moment of emotional excitement she had—but he couldn’t bear to think of Eleanor in that light. He must have misunderstood—he must talk more with her. No, surely—if it had been true she wouldn’t have said it so casually. He watched her—how close she danced. Her bright brown hair lay against the staff officer’s shoulder, and her vivacious face was only two or three inches from his when she talked. All things considered Clay was becoming more angry every minute with things in general.
Next time he danced with her she seized his arm, and before he knew her intention, they had said good-byes to the Severances and were speeding away in Eleanor’s limousine.
“It’s a nineteen-thirteen car—imagine having a four-year-old limousine before the war.”
“Terrific privation,” he said ironically. “Eleanor, I want to speak to you—”
“And I to you. That’s why I took you away. Where are you living?”
“At home.”
“Well then we’ll go to your old rooms in Grove Street. You’ve still got them, haven’t you?”
Before he could answer she had spoken to the chauffeur and was leaning back in the corner smiling at him.
“Why Eleanor, we can’t do that—talk there—”
“Are the rooms cleaned?” she interrupted.
“About once a month I think, but—”
“That’s all that’s necessary. In fact it’ll be wonderfully proper, won’t be clothes lying around the room as there usually are at bachelor teas. At Colonel Hotesane’s farewell party, Gertrude Evarts and I saw—in the middle of the floor, well, my dear, a series of garments and—as we were the first to arrive we—”
“Eleanor,” said Clay firmly. “I don’t like this.”
“I know you don’t, and that’s why we’re going to your rooms to talk it over. Good heavens, do you think people worry these days about where conversations take place, unless they’re in wireless towers, or shoreways in coast towns?”
The machine had stopped and before he could bring further argument to bear she had stepped out and scurried up the steps, where she announced that she would wait until he came and opened the door. He had no alternative. He followed, and as they mounted the stairs inside he could hear her laughing softly at him in the darkness.
He threw open the door and groped for the electric light, and in the glow that followed both stood without moving. There on the table sat a picture of Dick. Dick almost as they had last seen him, worldly wise and sophisticated, in his civilian clothes. Eleanor was the first to move. She crossed swiftly over, the dust rising with the swish of her silk, and elbows on the table said softly:
“Poor old handsome, with your beautiful self all smashed.” She turned to Clay: “Dick didn’t have much of a soul, such a small soul.
