Nan laughed. “How that would please her! The dress is plain and unobtrusive—and absolutely perfect in every line! It makes what I’m wearing look so fussy I want to go home and change it! Jane has a genius for knowing how to look like a picture. I suppose that’s the artist in her. Do you know, I think the people who are asked here to-night feel particularly flattered by an invitation from Jane? Isn’t that quite an achievement—for a shopkeeper?”
“That word doesn’t seem to apply to her, somehow,” said Black, and changed the subject rather abruptly. Two minutes later he had left Miss Lockhart, to greet one of his elderly parishioners, a rich widow who bore down upon him in full sail. Nan Lockhart looked after him with an amused expression about her well-cut mouth.
“You didn’t like my calling her a shopkeeper. And you don’t intend to discuss any girl with me or anybody else, do you, Mr. Black?” she said to herself. “All right—be discreet, like the saint you are supposed to be—and really are, for the most part, I think. But you’re pretty human, too. And Fanny Fitch is wearing a frock and hat to-night that I think even you will be forced to notice.”
It was not long before she had an opportunity to test the truth of this prediction. The room filled rapidly, the narrow street outside becoming choked with cars. Among the early comers were Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Lockhart and Miss Fitch. As Fanny appeared in the ever lengthening line of arrivals, Nan found herself waiting with interest for the moment when she should reach Jane Ray and Robert Black, who, as it chanced just then, stood near each other.
No doubt but Miss Fitch was a charmer. Even Nan was forced to admit that she had never seen Fanny more radiant. As she glanced from Fanny to Jane and back again the comparison which occurred to her was that between a gray-blue pigeon and a bird of Paradise! And yet—there was nothing dull about Jane—and nothing flaunting about Fanny. It was not a matter of clothes and colour after all, it was an affair of personality. Jane was beautifully distinguished in appearance—Nan had chosen the right words to describe her—and Fanny was exquisitely lovely to look at. And there you were—simply nowhere in estimating the two, unless you had something more to go by than looks. Nan, with intimate knowledge of Fanny Fitch and an acquaintance with Jane Ray which offered one of the most interesting attractions she had ever felt toward a member of her own sex, found herself wondering how any man who should chance on this evening to meet them both for the first time might succeed in characterizing them, afterward, for the benefit, say, of an invalid mother!
It was great fun, and as good as a play, she reflected, to see Jane and Fanny meet. If there was the slightest touch of condescension in Fanny’s manner as she approached her hostess, it had no choice but to disappear before Jane’s adorable poise. Nobody could condescend to Jane. It wasn’t that she didn’t permit it—it simply couldn’t exist in the presence of that straightforward young individuality of hers. From the top of her satiny smooth, high-held, dark head, to the toe of the smart little slipper which matched the blue of her gown, she was quietly sure of herself. And beside her some of the town’s most aristocratic matrons and maids looked decidedly less the aristocrat than Jane!
Around the edges of the room moved the guests, in low-voiced smiling orderliness, scanning the posters, large and small, so cunningly displayed, with every art of concealed lighting to show them off. The appeal of some was only in the flaming patriotism of the vigorous lines and brilliant colouring; in others all the cunning of the painter’s brush had wrought to produce a restrained yet thrilling effect hardly second to that of a finished picture. The subjects were taken from everywhere; from the trenches, from No Man’s Land, from civilian homes, from the cellars of the outcasts and exiles. And as the people whom Jane had invited to this strange exhibit moved on and on, past one heart-stirring sketch to another, the smiles on many lips died out, and now and then one saw more than a hint of rising tears quickly suppressed. Those who could look at that showing, unmoved, were few.
And yet, presently when Burns was upon his platform, offering his first poster for sale, though it went quickly, it was at no high price. Following this, he took the least appealing; and so on, in due course, and the bids still ran low. Little by little, however, he forced them up—considerably more by the tell-tale expression upon his face, when he was dissatisfied with a bid, than by what he said. As an auctioneer, Red had begun his effort a little disappointingly to those who expected his words, backed by his personality, to do great things from the start. The explanation he gave to Jane Ray, in a minute’s interval, was undoubtedly the true one.
“If they were all men, I could bully them into it. Somehow, these well-dressed women stifle me. I’m not used to facing them, except professionally. What’s the matter? Shall I let go and fire straight, at any risk of offending? They ought to be offering five times as much, you know. They simply aren’t taking this thing seriously, and I don’t know how to make them.”
“If you can’t make them, I don’t know who could. Yes, speak plainly—why not? We ought not to be getting tens and twenties for such posters as those last three—each one should have brought a hundred at least. Try this one next, please.”