Part 22 (1/2)

After the exhibition there was a dance. The Brewsters, even Mrs.

Zelotes, remained to see the last of Ellen's triumph. Mrs. Zelotes was firmly convinced that Ellen's appearance excelled any one's in the hall. Not a girl swung past them in the dance but she eyed her white dress scornfully, then her rosy face, and sniffed with high nostrils like an old war-horse. ”Jest look at that Vining girl's dress, coa.r.s.e enough to strain through,” she said to f.a.n.n.y, leaning across Andrew, who was sitting rapt, his very soul dancing with his daughter, his eyes never leaving her one second, following her fair head and white flutter of muslin ruffles and ribbons around the hall.

”Yes, that's so,” a.s.sented f.a.n.n.y, but not with her usual sharpness.

A wistful softness and sweetness was on her coa.r.s.ely handsome face.

Once she reached her hand over Andrew's and pressed it, and blushed crimson as she did so. Andrew turned and smiled at her. All that annoyed Andrew was that Ellen danced with Granville Joy often, and also with other boys. It disturbed him a little, even while it delighted him, that she should dance at all, that she should have learned to dance. Andrew had been brought up to look upon dancing as an amus.e.m.e.nt for Louds rather than for Brewsters. It had not been in vogue among the aristocracy of this little New England city when he was young.

Mrs. Zelotes watched Ellen dance with inward delight and outward disapproval. ”I don't approve of dancing, never did,” she said to Andrew, but she was furious once when Ellen sat through a dance.

Towards the end of the evening she saw with sudden alertness Ellen dancing with a new partner, a handsome young man, who carried himself with more a.s.surance than the school-boys. Mrs. Zelotes. .h.i.t Andrew with her sharp elbow.

”Who's that dancing with her now?” she said.

”That's young Lloyd,” answered Andrew. He flushed a little, and looked pleased.

”Norman Lloyd's nephew?” asked his mother, sharply.

”Yes, he's on here from St. Louis. He's goin' into business with his uncle,” replied Andrew. ”Sargent was telling me about it yesterday.

Young Lloyd came into the post-office while we were there.” f.a.n.n.y had been listening. Immediately she married Ellen to young Lloyd, and the next moment she went to live in a grand new house built in a twinkling in a vacant lot next to Norman Lloyd's residence, which was the wonder of the city. She reared this castle in Spain with inconceivable swiftness, even while she was turning her head towards Eva on the other side, and prodding her with an admonis.h.i.+ng elbow as Mrs. Zelotes had prodded Andrew. ”That's Norman Lloyd's nephew dancing with her now,” she said. Eva looked at her, smiling.

Directly the idea of Ellen's marriage with the young man with whom she was dancing established full connections and ran through the line of Ellen's relatives as though an electric wire.

As for Ellen, dancing with this stranger, who had been introduced to her by the school-master, she certainly had no thought of a possible marriage with him, but she had looked into his face with a curious, ready leap of sympathy and understanding of this other soul which she met for the first time. It seemed to her that she must have known him before, but she knew that she had not. She began to reflect as they were whirling about the hall, she gazed at that secret memory of hers, which she had treasured since her childhood, and discovered that what had seemed familiar to her about the young man was the face of a familiar thought. Ever since Miss Cynthia Lennox had told her about her nephew, the little boy who had owned and loved the doll, Ellen had unconsciously held the thought of him in her mind. ”You are Miss Cynthia Lennox's nephew,” she said to young Lloyd.

”Yes,” he replied. He nodded towards Cynthia, who was sitting on the opposite side from the Brewsters, with the Norman Lloyds and Lyman Risley. ”She used to be like a mother to me,” he said. ”You know I lost my mother when I was a baby.”

Ellen nodded at him with a look of pity of that marvellous scope which only a woman in whom the maternal slumbers ready to awake can compa.s.s. Ellen, looking at the handsome face of the young man, saw quite distinctly in it the face of the little motherless child, and all the tender pity which she would have felt for that child was in her eyes.

”What a beautiful girl she is,” thought the young man. He smiled at her admiringly, loving her look at him, while not in the least understanding it. He had asked to be presented to Ellen from curiosity. He had not been at the exhibition, and had heard the school-master and Risley talking about the valedictory. ”I didn't know that you taught anarchy in school, Mr. Harris,” Risley had said. He laughed as he said it, but Harris had colored with an uneasy look at Norman Lloyd, whose face wore an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt. ”Perhaps I should have,” he began, but Lloyd interrupted him. ”My dear fellow,” he said, ”you don't imagine that any man in his senses could take seriously enough to be annoyed by it that child's effusion on her nice little roll of foolscap tied with her pretty white satin ribbon?”

”She is just as sweet as she can be,” said Mrs. Norman, ”and I thought her composition was real pretty. Didn't you, Cynthia?”

”Very,” replied Cynthia.

”What your are worrying about it for, Edward, I don't see,” said Mrs. Norman to the school-master.

”Well, I am glad if it struck you that way,” said he, ”but when I heard the applause from all those factory people”--he lowered his voice, since a number were sitting near--”I didn't know, but--” He hesitated.

”That the spark that would fire the mine might be in that pretty little beribboned roll of foolscap,” said Risley, laughing. ”Well, it was a very creditable production, and it was written with the energy of conviction. The Czar and that little school-girl would not live long in one country, if she goes on as she has begun.”

It was then that young Lloyd, who had just come in, and was standing beside the school-master, turned eagerly to him, and asked who the girl was, and begged him to present him.

”Perhaps he'll fall in love with her,” said Mrs. Norman, directly, when the two men had gone across the hall in quest of Ellen. Her husband laughed.

”You have not seen your aunt for a long time,” Ellen said to young Lloyd, when they were sitting out a dance after their waltz together.

”Not since--I--I came on--with my father when he died,” he replied.

Again Ellen looked at him with that wonderful pity in her face, and again the young man thought he had never seen such a girl.

”I think your aunt is beautiful,” Ellen said, presently, gazing across at Cynthia.