Part 26 (1/2)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without the guest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if she could have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guest of the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle, on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, which was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. He complained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.

”Too many pretty women,” he said, ”or they work too hard at it--dress too well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. You need more background, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't have cream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and make a whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.

That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't--too much tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you need background. You can't get on without it.”

”We do,” said his host.

The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night, but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all the Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying the elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare hothouse flower.

You saw it in quick glimpses of pa.s.sing faces thrown into strong relief by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight; you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden, the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air.

You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusually keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.

You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.

If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or even entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the women's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide s.m.u.tty fingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you forget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen too closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.

There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons which the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for looking worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of the week before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secret conferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephone wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were the months before election, when the things that were going to happen began to happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talked politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even when they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached, the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.

No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh, cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the height of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware of the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the time or place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties or privileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take care of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident from her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she was sharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark head close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly, as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally agreeable to her.

”We miss Judy so much,” she said sweetly.

”I can see just how much, dear,” said Judith's mother more sweetly still.

”And it's so long since she's been here.”

”She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not well to-night.”

”But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening.”

”He did.”

”There he is.” The third person singular, unqualified, could mean only one gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentleman was pa.s.sing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of the fact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz with elaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased as he pa.s.sed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though it was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had a blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated touch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint but relentless light of amus.e.m.e.nt in her narrowed eyes.

”Edie's had just one c.o.c.ktail too many.”

”Yes.” They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. The evening had reached the stage when he always had.

”He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear.”

”I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil.”

”I haven't seen him dance with you at all.”

”He hasn't yet.”

”No?” said Mrs. Burr, very casually.

”No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague.”