There was a superb “First Part,” in which Mrs. Volney McMorris lightly and amiably matronized the bravest ladies of the “swim”—who had long been burning to inspect the splendors of the upper floor of the Elmleaf.
Among the forty guests of the “official” programme, were such undeniably good form clubmen as Potter, Wiltshire, Merriman, and Rutherstone. They and their gilded brothers suggested the names of willing goddesses, and so it was that Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys, the “staccato” Californian heiress—Mrs. Murray Renton, of Cleveland—and several other detached, semi-detached, and detachable women “of spotless reputation,” joyed with the host’s convives, dipped their laughing, rosy lips in his Roederer, and pattered with their lightly-treading feet over his airy domain of a wondrously refined luxury.
It was nearly one o’clock when the grave Bagley had closed the last carriage door and sent the two policemen away with “a heavenly smile on their faces”—and a five-dollar bill clutched in each brawny hand.
And then, on softly-rolling rubber wheels, came slipping along under the shadows of clubhouse and virtuous mansions of drowsy decorum, the pick of Cupid’s Dashing Free Lances—the very flower of the Light Infantry of Love. This “Pickett’s charge” of these demure Demi-Vierges was successful.
It was the solemn Bagley who marveled as he sped these “shining ones” on their way up the stair at the struggling odors of “Y’lang Y’lang,” “Atkinson’s White Rose,” “Wood Violets,” and “Peau d’Espagne.”
For days, that scented staircase recalled the “informal visit” of the regent moon, Miss Dickie Doubleday; the audacious Tottie Thistledown, the fair queen of light heels; Nannie Bell, the mignonne chanteuse, and several other disciples of the “partly” and, alas, the “altogether.” The girdle of Venus was en évidence that happy night.
It is true that the glass globes automatically shrank up in affright toward the ceiling, as these flashing-eyed birds fluttered in and burst upon the gay banquet “mid the bright bowls.” The Elmleaf never sheltered a lighter-hearted crew.
It was left to the imperturbable Bagley, next day, “to gather up the fragments,” and headaches, heartaches, and visions of “woven paces and waving arms,”—with sky-pointed toes and glimpses ne quid nimis of clocked stockings and sleek tricots, were fairly divided among the gallant swains who “did not go home till morning.”
It was in this jovial manner that Vreeland vindicated the public character of un homme galant, which his strange feverish-hearted patroness seemed to thrust upon him. And he wondered as he obeyed—but, the game went bravely on.
There were some seriously tender interludes in the “evening’s hilarity.” Miss Dickie Doubleday, in the empanchement de son âme