IV
Mandeville Ryder sat in a corner of the screened veranda, reading. It was a good place for reading, cool and breezy; the electric lamp afforded an excellent light, and his book was an interesting one. Twice his young niece, Elaine Milner, had come out to entreat him to come in and dance, but with a smile of lofty amusement he had refused. He said he preferred reading.
Yet, as a matter of fact, he hadn’t read one page. From where he sat he could look through the window, through the long room where the dancing was going on, into the smaller room beyond, where sat his two sisters, Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Milner, and with them Miss La Chêne. He could look, and he did look.
Elaine was a pretty girl, and she had collected two or three rather pretty young things and a proper number of young fellows. All in all, they were a cheerful, well dressed, well mannered lot of young people, and the spectacle of their harmless merriment might well have brought a smile to the lips of any observer; yet Mandeville did not smile.
He was looking at Miss La Chêne, sitting there with the two ladies, silent, decorous, and patient, in her plain little dark silk dress, the very model of a companion. Only her enormous black eyes moved restlessly, following the dancers with a look which Mandeville could hardly endure.
“Poor little thing!” he said to himself. “Poor little thing! It’s a confounded shame!”
There wasn’t a girl there half so pretty as she, not a girl with anything like her style, her charm, her grace. She was beyond measure superior to all of them, yet there she had to sit, looking on.
“And I let her in for this!” young Ryder thought. “She has no business being a companion, anyhow. By George, if she had half a chance!”
And, with a rather touching naïveté, he thought he could remedy all this, could notably assist and hearten the poor little thing. He rose, put down his book, entered the house, threaded his way among the[Pg 198] dancers, and presently stood beside Miss La Chêne’s chair. She raised those big eyes to his face with a startled look.
“We’ll try a dance, eh?” said the lordly, blond-crested youth.
For a moment she hesitated. She knew she shouldn’t accept. Elaine wouldn’t like it, Elaine’s mother wouldn’t like it, Mrs. Robinson wouldn’t like it; but Miss La Chêne couldn’t resist. With another glance at Mandeville she rose, he put his arm about her, and off they went.
And, as he put it, they stopped the show. He was a wonderful dancer, and she was incomparable. They danced with the curious gravity of professionals. They did not smile, they did not speak, except when he gave a low, brief order for a change of step.
“Put on a tango!” said he, when the fox trot was ended.
Somebody did this, and now they had the floor to themselves. They stepped out with splendid arrogance, in absolute accord, lithe, utterly easy, utterly and disdainfully sure of themselves. Mandeville looked down at the dark, glowing little creature before him with a fine fire in his blue eyes.
“You’re the prettiest girl in the world!” he whispered. “And the sweetest!”
Well, this went to her head. When the tango was at an end, young Lyons, who was Elaine’s latest interest in life, came entreating Miss La Chêne for a dance. She forgot all worldly wisdom and discretion, she forgot everything, except that she was young and pretty, and that the handsomest and most distinguished young man in the room—or perhaps in the universe—had singled her out for his attentions, and that all the other men admired her.
She liked to be admired, and she loved to dance. The music had got into her blood. Her slender shoulders moved restlessly. She smiled, and dimples showed in her olive cheeks. Her eyes were as bright as stars.
“I just will!” she thought. “I’ll have one happy evening, anyhow!”
She did. Penniless and obscure, in her plain, dark little dress, she had come among these luxurious girls and eclipsed them all. Every one of the young men was dazzled by her dainty coquetry, the faint foreign flavor of her allurement. The girls were prodigiously civil. They jolly well had to be, when this little intruder stood so high in favor with the opposite sex.
And all this was due to Mandeville Ryder. He had raised her up from her sorrowful obscurity. She made no secret of her gratitude. Her eyes were forever seeking his, and she generally found him looking at her. They smiled at each other with a sort of friendly understanding.
“He thinks he’s invented her,” said Elaine, to one of her friends.
But there came, of course, that moment so dear to sour and middle-aged moralists—the moment when the party breaks up, the music stops, and fatigue comes across laughing faces. The guests went away, and there was nobody left but the family and Miss La Chêne. She had danced, and now she must pay the piper; and his bill was likely to be a large one.
Elaine whispered something to her mother, Mrs. Milner whispered something to Mrs. Robinson, and they all looked at Miss La Chêne in a certain way. Mandeville had gone out on the veranda for a smoke, and she had no friend here.
“You needn’t wait,” said Mrs. Robinson, in a tone she had never used before.