Gwynne walked away in a state of exaltation that obliterated from his mind all such sordid and petty considerations as twenty-four hundred dollars of rent in arrears. At the end of the avenue he turned to look back, and saw a light spring up in the bedroom window he knew to be Mrs. Pallinder's; he walked on slowly, watching it with what high-coloured and high-flown fancies! Miranda, I am afraid, is a name that defeats the muse; but Gwynne continued in this Romeo attitude and meditation until he crashed into a weary, homing labourer, a resident of Bucktown, most probably, faring along through the twilight with a whitewash bucket and brushes.
"Hy-yah! Keerful, cahn't yo'? Yo' 'd oughta look whar yo's g'wine, boss!"
Gwynne started at the words; he ought to look where he was going! He went on, slowly, frowning a little, with his head bent.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lent dragged or slipped or scurried along according to the varying tempers of those that watched it go; of late years the speed of its passage has increased noticeably, it seems to me; successive Lents shove one another off the stage with an alarming celerity. But most of us voted it dismally slow in those days. A church entertainment was given, in which Mrs. Pallinder figured in tableaux as Ruth, with white draperies, her hair bound up with fillets, and a sheaf of wheat (it was really pampas grass) in her beautiful bare white arms. She looked, undoubtedly, as much like Ruth as she had like Astarte; that is to say, not at all. But people were unfeignedly delighted this time, and not without reason; the curtain had to be rung up repeatedly on "Ruth and Boaz." I thought, to be truthful, that her features seemed hard and sharp in the strong calcium-light; perhaps she was a little too old to impersonate a character like Ruth. But Teddy Johns assured me vehemently that she was ideal. "Beau'ful creature, Mis' Pallinder—hic—s'prisin'—Ruth—'Starte—Greek Slave—no, no, didn't mean that, of course—hic—Greek statue—always doin' somethin'—Pallinders, somethin' new, all time!" he said, meeting me in the passageway of Trinity Parish House, where the entertainment was given. I do not know where he had been; it is generally difficult to draw young men to church-tableaux, and there were not many there. Teddy had an air of surprise at finding himself in the audience; his face was very much flushed, he laughed loud and inappropriately; and Judge Lewis came with a grave face, and took him by the arm and pulled him away, muttering some apology to me. Judge Lewis was a vestryman; I saw him talking to some of the others afterwards, and their grey heads wagged solemnly; the judge could not have been telling one of those humorous anecdotes for which he was so celebrated.
It was not long after this that Mazie at last came home; and she lived up to the reputation that Teddy had given the Pallinders of always doing something new. Doctor Vardaman assured her gallantly that she was like the angel that came down and stirred up the Pool of Bethesda—"we were all stagnating," said the old gentleman, in his kind mock-serious manner; and Mazie smiled and lifted her eyes at him, without, I dare say, understanding in the least where or what the Pool of Bethesda was. She brought with her Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter; and, following upon their arrival, Mrs. Pallinder collected her house party. Most of the young people she asked caught eagerly at the invitation; you may laugh, or perhaps jeer, but house parties were not then the affair of everyday occurrence they have since become—not in our corner of the world, certainly. We all felt, delightedly, as if we were living in an English novel—one of "The Duchess'" for choice.
"You know we're going to have private theatricals in the ballroom," Mazie told everybody. "The girls and men in the house will all be in it, so we can have rehearsals any time. And papa is going to have a stage built with footlights and a curtain. We'll ask everyone, of course, and dance afterwards. I bought the favours for the german in New York coming home, you know. They're simply too sweet for any use."
("I baought the favuhs foh the juhman in New Yawhk, yuh knaow. Theah simply too sweet foh any use," was the way she said it, but I shall not attempt to reproduce Mazie's speech. It had a kind of drawling vivacity; and the final sentence was in the slang of the day—very fresh and spirited it sounded then, too!)