It was with tardy and reluctant steps that Randolph obeyed, but he had not to go far to meet the engaging Betsey. That young lady, watching her beau from afar, saw Muriel led to a seat, and himself, after a few words of conversation, turn in her direction; and with the inspiration of conquering beauty, she divined that it was to her his steps were tending. And yet the steps seemed lagging even after they were disencumbered of the partner. They positively seemed to falter. Ah! poor young man, the beau was diffident--needed encouragement; and he should have it. It seemed to her tender heart to be no time for standing on punctilio. The young man suffered; and it was for her. That was enough.
She turned her steps to meet him as he came--meet him half-way, I might have said, had I been censorious--and as he came in view she smiled, smiled like a brimming tea-cup filled with sugar and water; and she spread her hands in welcome, spread them, that is, as to the fingers, she did not move the wrists, for, notwithstanding the certainty of beauty's intuitions, there is still the possibility that one may be mistaken, as Betsey had been ere now--and she stood with her eyes fixed on Randolph's countenance.
The look met him full in the face as he came before her, struck him as the jets from the fire-engines may have struck the Parisian mob which General La Moricière so cleverly dispersed without the help of steel or gunpowder; and he would have run away, but he could not. Not only was Betsey before him, but Muriel was somewhere behind, and both would have seen his demoralization. Betsey's eyes were beaming on him with a peculiar radiance. They swam, it seemed to him, in a shining wateriness, and with a light in which the green rays and the yellow blended as they do in an over-ripe gooseberry where the sun is shining, looking luscious, and not too cool--inviting, to those whose tastes that way incline.
The greetings between these two were not prolonged--the one had been ordered to give a dance, the other was eager to encourage a beau. There was a bow and a word or two. Miss Betsey's head lay back on her short neck as the gentleman's arm slid around her waist. Then, as she laid her little fat hand on his arm, her head rolled over to the other shoulder, and she found herself in the ecstasies of the mazy dance. She drew a long breath of delight, and leant just a trifle heavier on the strong encircling arm, when--crash! sharps and flats. Another chord--the music ceased, and--oh, bathos--she found herself standing on the train of a lady's gown, who was regarding her with a scowl, while she herself was pinned to the ground from behind in the same way, and she could not but dread how the hoof-marks would look on her geranium poplin.
It was Randolph's turn now to draw a breath of relief, and he looked over his shoulder to where he had left his little friend--little, not obviously in stature, but only because she still wore short frocks, though counting for more to him than all the grown-up ladies in the room. The feeling of holiday, however, was of short duration; he could read disappointment on Muriel's features, and when he gazed towards her as claiming thanks for what he had done at her behest, she looked another way, ignoring the demand. It was little satisfaction he could look for during the rest of the evening if Muriel were disobliged, and her present demand was one of those disinterested ones which must be fulfilled specifically and cannot be made up for, or "squared" by attentiveness in other ways; therefore, as one who can not make a better of it, he turned to Betsey, regretting that their dance had been cut short prematurely, and begging that the next might be his.
Betsey was nothing loth. The beau must be very far gone indeed, she thought, and she could not but cast a backward and regretful glance of her mind to Joe Webb, Gerald Herkimer, and several others, taking them all pell-mell and quite "promiskis," as she pronounced the word. However, she could only have one, she knew that; and she intended to take whoever offered first, if he was eligible, and not run risks by "fooling" after the rest. So much for being practical-minded and not idiotically in love, except with one's own sweet self!
Randolph resigned himself to work out his dance conscientiously, but without enthusiasm. Her waist was so far down that he would have to stretch to get steering leverage upon this rather compact partner, and as has happened before to many a tall youth with a stumpy fair one, he had a presentiment that his arm would ache before the exercise was concluded. In walking round the room, however, before the solemnity commenced, he caught so pleasant a smile of thanks from Muriel over his lady's head that he was consoled, and set himself manfully to perform the task before him; the more so, perhaps, that Muriel was sitting, and though he would not have owned to grudging her a pleasure, it pleased him best when she danced with himself. He had kept more than half his card free from engagements, that she might have plenty of dances, and his mother was looking for an opportunity to take him to task for the horrid way in which he was neglecting her guests. He would have been less content could he have looked back and seen the alacrity with which she rose a moment later when Gerald Herkimer came forward to claim her. Of all the "fellows" in the room; Gerald was the only one as to whose standing in Muriel's good graces he had a misgiving.
The dance began, and Randolph found he had not under-estimated the work before him. Betsey was positively festive, exuberant and unconfined, on the very top rung of her gamut of feeling, as she bounced and caracoled along. She could dance, of course--every Canadian woman can dance--but she possessed a solid massiveness peculiar to herself, and really remarkable in one of her size. Randolph found there was little he could do but merely hold on. Strain and adjust himself as he might, the centre of their joint equilibrium would not be brought under his control. Betsey seemed totally inelastic, and her ballast was in her heels. "Hefty" was the word a Vermont cattle dealer had used to describe her action after a dance at St. Euphrase. Deviously she pranced, a filly whom no rein ever invented could be hoped to guide; and as the rapture of the music wore into her soul, she threw herself back on poor Randolph's arm with an abandon and an entirety which made it feel strained and paralyzed for long after.
"Oh, Mr. Jordan," she cried, when at last the poor fellow was compelled to stop; "you seem fairly done up and out of breath. For me, now, I feel fresher, I do declare, than when we started off."
"Small wonder," thought Randolph, "after making me all but carry you completely round the room;" but he said nothing, merely looking at the half-paralyzed hand and finger's of his strained arm, and wondering how long it would be before he should be able to use them.