“All right. Come along.”
CHAPTER XXIII
The band was in a small gallery, built originally for musicians, at the left of the stair. As the manor house was still dependent upon gas the hall was illuminated by pine torches, safely ensconced in tall vases. The minuet, which had terminated in a romp, was over, and the guests were crowded about a punch-bowl which had been wheeled in on a buffet-wagon.
The girls had accepted the idea of bygone costumes with enthusiasm, but the men had required a good deal of persuasion. Bylant’s friends had protested at what would look like giving their countenance to a brand of fiction they despised, and at sacrificing their earnest modernism for even a night. But after they saw the contents of the chests at Bylant’s rooms they succumbed: either out of inherent boyishness or man’s secret love of plumage. There were four of them: Fellowes Merton, dramatic critic, Max Durand, columnist, De Witt Turner, stern realist in fiction, Potts Dawes, high priest of vers libre. Each was obliged to wear the costume that fitted him, approximately; and Turner, who was a very tall heavy man, went out and bought flounces of white cambric and sewed them to the edges of his court uniform’s sleeves and knee-breeches. They were all obliged to invest in long silk stockings, and applied the largest buckles they could find to their evening pumps.
Polly’s young men sulkily took what was left, and having less imagination than the others, announced that they felt like tame monkeys. Bylant sent the fanciest of the costumes to Mrs. Pelham’s house, and Geoffrey cursed his friend and vowed he would not wear it. But he did.
He had not appeared in time for the minuet, and Gita, who was standing apart, saw him as he entered and for a moment did not recognize him. He wore a long coat of pale blue satin, richly embroidered, over a white satin vest reaching to his knees, white silk stockings, satin shorts and black pumps. There were deep lace ruffles at the wrists and a jabot hung from his high stock. His white wig was tied with a blue ribbon, and altogether he looked as little like a hard-working surgeon of the twentieth century as possible. She noticed swiftly that his eyebrows were darker than she had thought, and that the blue of his eyes was intensified by the costume.
It was evident that he had entered into the spirit of the masquerade, for his habitual expression of nervous concentration had been replaced by—mingled boyish wonder and delight in his unexpected good looks? Gita knew that even as a boy he had been serious and ambitious and known few of the common impulses of youth.
He came forward smiling and shook Gita’s hand, then remembered his part and would have raised it to his lips, but she drew it away hastily.
“I wonder if you are my great-great-grandfather or my great-great-greatest?” she asked gayly.
“Your brother, perhaps. Your wig looks every bit as old as mine.”