Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

Neither glowed with delight at his advent, although Andy seemed only to be rattling off common-places, in peculiarly voluble style. Morris asked for the next waltz; Miss Wood glanced shyly up at her companion, dropped her eyes demurely, and believed she would rest until the cotillon. Then, after a few more small necessaries of social life about the beauty of the girls, the heat of the rooms, and the elegance of the flowers, she permitted Andy to drift easily towards the door that opened on the dim-lit coolness of the conservatory.

As they turned away, Rose Wood sent one sharp glance of her gray eyes glinting into Morris’s; then hers fell, and even he could find only bare common-place in her words:

“So many little dangers, you know, Mr. Morris – at a ball. One cannot be too prudent.”

He did not answer; but the look that followed her graceful figure had very little of flattery in it.

“Curse that Chambertin!” he muttered in his moustache. “I warned him against the second pint at dinner. Andy couldn’t be fool enough, though,” he added, with a shrug, and moved slowly towards the dancing-room.

The critical group, still around the big punch-bowl, looked after him curiously.

“He’s not soft on the old girl, is he?” queried Mr. de Silva Street.

“Never!” chuckled Mr. Wetherly Gage. “Morris is too well up in Bible lore to marry his grandmother!”

“And he don’t have to,” put in Mr. Trotter Upton, with a sage wink. “I’d back Van against the field to win the Allmand purse, hands down, if he’d only enter. But he won’t; so you’re safe, Silvey, if you’ve got the go in you. But Lord! Van’s too smart to carry weight for age! Why, you may land me over the tail-board, if the woman that hitches him double won’t have to throw him down and sit on him, Rarey fashion!”

And the speaker, remarking sotto voce, that here was luck to the winner, drained his glass with a smack, set it down, and lounged into the smoking-room. There he lazily lit one of Mr. Allmand’s full-flavored Havanas, and thoughtfully stored his breast pocket with several more.

III

Meanwhile, the horsey pundit’s offered odds seemed not so wisely laid.

In the great room a crowded waltz was in progress; and Morris saw Blanche Allmand standing on the opposite edge of the whirling circle. Her head and her dainty slipper were keeping time to the softly accented music; while a comical expression – half anger, half mischief – emphasized the nothing she was saying to her companion.

Van caught her eye and, adept that he was in the social signal-service, took in the situation at a glance. He slightly raised his eyebrows and barely moved his lips; she assented with the smallest of nods and a happy flush; and, a moment later, he had edged around the masses of bumping humanity and offered his arm.

“My waltz, I believe,” he said, with the ease of the heir-apparent of Ananias. “I was unlucky enough, in losing the first turn, not to grudge Major Bouncey the rest.”

“You deserve to lose the whole for coming late,” the girl answered, drawing her arm from her partner’s with that pretty reluctance which makes society’s stage-business seem born in woman. “It was just too good of Major Bouncey to take your place and save my being a wall-flower.” And, not pausing for that gallant soldier’s labored disclaimer, the graceful pair glided away to the graceful time of ‘La Gitana’ waltz.

“Horrid bore, that Bouncey,” Blanche panted in the first pause. “Don’t stop near him! He does all his dancing on my insteps; and I dare not stop for fear of his still more dreadful spooning.”

“You would not have me blame him? A better balanced brain might well lose its poise, with such temptation!” And the man looked down on her with very eloquent eyes.

There was a pause. Then Van Morris bent his head, and the eyes still more strongly emphasized the words:

“Blanche, do you know how dangerously lovely you are?”

The girl’s frank eyes dropped beneath the strong light in his; but there was not a shade of consciousness in the soft laugh that prefaced her reply:

“Ah! I’ve a cheval-glass and this is my first ball. So I suppose I know how ‘dangerous’ I am! Then, too, that awful Bouncey called me a lily of the valley!”

“It is the purest flower made by God’s hand,” were Morris’s simple words; but the vibrant tone came from deeper than the lips, now close pressed together.

“But I know I’m not,” Blanche retorted, merrily, “for they drink only dew, and I am quite wild for Regent’s punch!”

They were at the refreshment room, now nearly deserted. Once more the man’s eyes grew darker and deeper, as they met the girl’s frank blue ones.

“And yet, not purer,” he said, unheeding the interruption, “than the heart you, little girl, will soon give to some – ”

He stopped abruptly; but the eyes added more than the words left unsaid.

Again Blanche dropped her eyes quickly; but her color never heightened, nor did the soft laces nestling over the graceful bust move at all quicker than the waltz might warrant. Van’s face still bent over her with earnest expression, as she sipped the glass of punch he handed her; but neither spoke until they had crossed the corridor and passed another door into the conservatory.

IV

The soft, warm air, heavy with the breath of the “Grand Duke” and of orange blossoms; the tremulous half-light from colored lamps hung amid the leaves; the dead stillness of the place, broken only by the plash of the fountain falling back into its moss-covered basin, all contrasted deliciously with the hot, dusty atmosphere and giddy buzzing under the flaring gas-jets left behind.

They strolled slowly down the gravelled walk, between rows of huge tubs, moist and flower-laden with the products of almost every clime. Here gleamed the glossy leaves of the Southern grandiflora; the rare wax plant crept along the wall beyond, its pink, starry blooms gleaming delicately among the thick, artificial-seeming leaves; while, as though in honor of the happily-timed birthnight of the fair young mistress of all, a gorgeous century plant had opened its bud in a glory of form and color, magnificent as rare.

“Blanche, do you remember how long I have known you?” Morris asked, suddenly breaking the silence. “Ever since you were like this; a close, callow bud, giving but vague promise of the glorious flowering of your womanhood! I watched the opening of every petal of your mind and tried to peer through them into the heart of the flower. But they sent you away; and now your return dazzles me with the brilliance and beauty of the full bloom. This was the past —this is the present!”

And reaching up, the man suddenly snapped off the glowing blossom from the cactus and held it before the girl, close to the pale camellia bud he had plucked before.

She raised her beautiful face, crowned with its halo-like glory of hair, full to him; and the expression it took was graver and more womanly than before. But still no agitation reflected in the candid eyes that looked steadily into his, and the voice, more softly pitched, had no tremor in it, as she answered:

“Please think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the débutante who must be fed, à la Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment.”

“Take sentiment – I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us sometimes above our baser worldly nature – out of life, and it is not worth the living,” Morris said earnestly. “That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!”

“Perhaps you are right,” she answered, quietly. “We are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are so different from him.”

Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying.

It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.

He himself could scarcely have told what thoughts were framing themselves in his mind; what words had almost formed themselves on his tongue. There are moments in life, when we live at the rate of hours; and Van Morris was certainly going the pace, mentally, for those ten seconds of silence, before the echo of the girl’s voice ceased vibrating on his ear. He was vaguely conscious, some ten seconds later still, that rarely had a calm, well-posed man of the world found himself quite so dizzy, from combined effects of a quick waltz, a flower-laden atmosphere, and a rounded arm pressing only restfully upon his own.

Suddenly that pressure grew sharp and decided. They stopped abruptly at a sharp turn of the walk.

On a somewhat too small rustic seat, under the fruit-laden boughs of an orange tree, and comfortably screened thereby from the gleam of the tinted lantern, sat Miss Rose Wood and Mr. Andrew Browne.

Their two heads were rather close together; their two hands were suspiciously distant, as though by sudden movement; and the lady’s fan had fallen at her feet, most à propos to the crunch of the gravel, under approaching feet.

But only Blanche – less preoccupied with her thoughts than her companion – had caught the words, “Dismiss carriage – escort home,” before Miss Wood’s fan had happened to drop at her feet.

What there might be in those words to drop the color out of rosy cheeks, or to clench white little teeth hard together, it might well puzzle one to guess. But the face that had not changed under the strong music of Van Morris’s voice, now grew deadly white an instant; then flooded again with surging rush of color.

But very quickly, though with perfect self-possession, Miss Wood had risen and advanced one step, to arrange Blanche’s lace, with the words:

“Your berthé is loose, darling!”

Then, as she inserted the harmless, unnecessary pin, she whispered in the shell-like ear:

“Don’t scold me, loved one! Indeed, I was not flirting. I only came out here to keep him from the —champagne punch!”

Blanche made no reply to this whispered confidence; nor did she seem especially grateful for the grace done to her toilette. She never so much as glanced at Andy Browne. He, also, had risen, after picking up the dropped fan, with not effortless grace; and now stood smiling, with rather meaningless, if measureless, good nature upon the invaders.