Part 33 (2/2)
”What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
She smiled.
”Not what you thought I meant,” she said gently. ”Now, drive away, please.”
As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called Anne to him.
”Say, Anne,” he said, ”is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is he?
”Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?”
”Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, d.a.m.ned fool.
He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell.
Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot, let me tell you.”
”Why, father!” exclaimed the girl. ”I could cry! We are having that dinner for him to-night, and--and oh--”
She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room.
”Mother,” she said, ”Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening.”
”Very well,” said Mrs. Wellington placidly; ”we will have to have the play--without Hamlet, nevertheless.”
”But what shall I do?”
”You might ask McCall.”
”Mother! Please! What can we do?”
”Frankly, I don't know, Anne,” said Mrs. Wellington. ”I confess that this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without brains--although they are of a sort.”
Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting season--or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes--is not more impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night.
CHAPTER XXII
THE BALL BEGINS
Mrs. Wellington's genius for organization was never better exemplified than next day, when preparations for the ball set for the night, began.
At the outset it was perfectly apparent that she was not bent on breaking records--which feat, as a matter of fact, would merely have been overshadowing her best previous demonstrations of supremacy in things of this sort. There was to be no splurge. With a high European n.o.bleman to introduce, she had no intention of having the protagonist in the evening's function overshadowed by his background. She was a student of social nuances--say rather, a master in this subtle art, and she proceeded with her plans with all the calm a.s.surance of a field marshal with a dozen successful campaigns behind him.
Early in the day, Dawson and Buchan and Mrs. Stetson were in conference with her in her office and a bit later the servants, some thirty or forty of them, were a.s.sembled in their dining-room and a.s.signed various duties, all of which were performed under the supervising eye of Mrs.
Wellington, her daughter, or Sara Van Valkenberg. No decorative specialist, or other alien appendage to social functions on a large scale, was in attendance, and, save for the caterer's men, who arranged a hundred odd small tables on the verandas, and the electricians, who hung chandeliers at intervals above them, the arrangements were carried out by the household force.
Under the direction of Anne Wellington--whose mind seemed fully occupied with the manifold details of the duties which her mother had a.s.signed to her--Armitage and a small group hung tapestries against the side of the house where the tables were, and then a.s.sisted the gardener and his staff in placing gladiolas about the globes of the chandeliers.
Small incandescent globes of divers colors were hidden among the flowers in the gardens and an elaborate scheme of interior floral decoration was carried out. Before the afternoon was well along, all preparations had been completed and the women had gone to their rooms, where later they were served by their maids with light suppers.
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