II
At midnight Mrs. Brownley broke up the bridge by summoning the players to the dining room where there were iced drinks and sandwiches. Mrs. Brownley did that sort of thing extremely well. Men used to say with gratitude that she knew enough not to keep them up all night, and her informal buffet suppers closed the evening comfortably for them. It was a “young” crowd to-night—not young according to the standards of the débutante Brownleys but people between thirty and forty. The Stantons, whom everybody had everywhere because they were good company and perfectly fitting in any group. Emily Haight, who had become ash-blond and a little caustic with the decreasing possibilities of a good marriage but whom every one conceded had a good mind, who “read everything” and played a master hand of bridge. She had sat next to Walter Carpenter at dinner, as she inevitably was placed when they were in the same company, because they had known each other so well and long and because it seemed to be in the back of people’s mind that steady propinquity ought to produce results in emotion. He was quite the person for Emily—about her age, well-to-do, popular, keen-minded. But to-night at dinner he had devoted himself almost pointedly to Margaret Duffield. They had rallied him afterwards at the card table about his sudden interest in feminism and he had smiled his self-controlled smile and let them have their joke. He had played cards with Jerrold Haynes, another of Mrs. Brownley’s “intellectuals,” who had written a book once, and had it published (though never another), and who managed to concoct, with the help of Helen Flandon, almost all the clever remarks which were au courant in their particular circle. He and Carpenter had tried to make Margaret play bridge but she had told them that she couldn’t, reducing them to a three-handed game which they were ready to abandon at twelve o’clock.
Jerrold went as usual to Helen’s side. There was a friendship between them which bathed in a kind of half-serious worship on his part and a bantering comradeship on hers. They sat together in a corner of the long, oak-paneled dining room and made conversation about the others, conversation for the sake of clever words.
“Walter has made his way to the candle flame again. He seems to have been captured,” said Jerrold.
Helen looked across the room curiously. Gage and Walter were both talking to Margaret who was standing in a little glow of electric candle light. Helen remembered that in college Margaret had done her hair that same way, in a loose knot modeled after some sculptured Psyche.
“Don’t you think she is lovely?” she asked more in comment than question.
“Do you mean beautiful?”
“Well—what do you think?”
“I don’t quite think of her as a woman.”
“Silly stuff—”
“No, truly. Most women you sense. They either try to use their sex to allure or impress you or else they repress it for any one of a dozen reasons. She—somehow seems to lack it.”
“It’s not so easy as that, Jerrold, you phrase-maker. I’ve known her a long while and I have no idea whether she’s in love, has been in love, yearns after or fights against it. You guess boldly, but probably not well.”
“Maybe not. You must tell me if I am right and you find it out.”
There was a sound of motors in the drive outside, then high pitched voices, and Mrs. Brownley went out into the hall.
“Isn’t this early for the youngsters?” asked Gage.
They all laughed but though the conversation went on as before, an anticipation rested on them all. Against the background of the chattering voices in the hall, they seemed a little subdued, waiting.
Allison Brownley pushed her escort in. He seemed to be reluctant but she had her hands on his back and he came through the door, stumbling.
“We can come to the high brow party, can’t we?” cried Allison. “Can’t we have some food? We’re perfectly starved and there wasn’t a table to be had at the Rose Garden.”
“I knew you must have been driven out of everywhere to come home this early,” called Gage, “though of course young men in the banking business might benefit by somewhat earlier hours.”
The young man laughed awkwardly. He was a rather pale, small young man, badly dwarfed by Gage’s unusual bulk and suggesting a consciousness of it when he tried to draw Allison to the other end of the room. But she preferred Gage for the moment. She was not a pretty girl though she made that negligible. What was important about her was her vigor and her insolent youngness. Her hair was cut just below her ears and curled under in an outstanding shock and her scarlet evening dress and touches of rouge made Margaret, as she stood beside her, seem paler, older, without vigor. But she stood there only a moment, poised. Then the others, six of them, had invaded the dining room. Giggling, spurting into noisy laughter at unrevealed jokes, eating greedily, separating from the older people as if nothing in common could be conceived among them, they went to the farther end of the room, Allison with some youthfully insolent remark hurled back at Gage.
The others seemed suddenly conscious that it was midnight—the time when only extreme youth had a right to be enjoying itself. They took upon themselves the preliminary airs of departure. But Helen, separating herself from the group, went down the room to the young people.
They had settled into chairs and began to rise a little awkwardly but she did not let them, sitting down herself on the arm of Allison’s chair and bending to talk to them all. They burst into gales of laughter at something she said. Gage and Jerrold watched her from the other end of the room.
It was wonderful, thought Gage, how even beside those young faces, her beauty stood out as more brilliant. How her hair shone under those soft lights! How golden, mellow, she was in every gesture!
Jerrold, in need of some one to whom to comment, isolated Margaret.
“Watch your amazing friend,” he said, “those children made us feel old and stiff muscled. See how she is showing us that they are raw and full of angles.”
“Is it important?” asked Margaret.
“I suppose not. Except that it is a time when youth seems to be pretty securely on the throne of things. And I like to see it get a jolt.”