A Court of Inquiry Part 2

Camellia went to her room--the white room. This time I had no fears for the embroidered linen on my dressing-table or for the purity of my white wall. I repaired to my own room--_to dress for dinner_. As I pa.s.sed the porch door on my way I looked out. The Gay Lady had vanished--so had the Skeptic. The Philosopher was walking up and down--in white ducks. He hailed me as I pa.s.sed.

"See here," he said under his breath. "I thought you people were all guying in that talk about dressing for dinner while--while Miss Camellia is here. But the Skeptic has gone to do it--if he's not bluffing. Is it true? Do you mean it? We--that is--we haven't been dressing for dinner--except, of course, you ladies seem always to--but that's different. And it's awfully hot to-night," he added plaintively.

"Don't do it," said I hurriedly. "I don't know any reason why we should--in the country--in July."

He looked at me doubtfully. "But is the Skeptic going to--really?"

"I presume he really is. You see--he has met Camellia before. He knows how she will be looking when she comes down. He admires Camellia very much, and he might possibly feel a little odd--in tennis flannels----"

"It's queer," murmured the Philosopher. "But perhaps I'd better not be behind in the procession, even if I wilt my collar." He fingered lovingly the soft, rolled-over collar of his white shirt, with its loose-knotted tie, and sighed again. Then he moved toward the stairs.

We were all on the porch when Camellia came down. The Gay Lady had put on a white muslin--the finest, simplest thing. The Philosopher, pushing a finger between his collar and his neck, to see if the wilting process had begun, eyed the Gay Lady approvingly. "Whatever she wears," he whispered to her, "she can't win over you."

The Gay Lady laughed. "Yes, she can," she declared.

She did. Camellia was a vision when she came floating out upon the porch. The Philosopher was glad he had on his dinner-coat--I saw it in his eye. The Skeptic's tanned cheek turned a reddish shade--he looked as if he felt pigeon-toed. The Gay Lady held her pretty head high as she smiled approval on the guest. Camellia's effect on the Gay Lady was to make her feel like a school-girl--she had repeatedly avowed it to me in private.

Camellia never seemed conscious of her fine attire--that could always truthfully be said. Although on the present occasion she was dressed as d.u.c.h.esses dress for a lawn-party, she seemed supremely unconscious of the fact. The only trouble was that the rest of us could not be unconscious of it.

The dinner moved slowly. We all did our best, including the Philosopher, whose collar was slowly melting, so that he had to keep his chin well up, lest it crush the linen hopelessly beneath. The Skeptic joked ceaselessly, but one could see that all the time he feared his cravat might be awry. The dinner itself was a much more formal affair than usual--somehow that always seemed necessary when Camellia was one's guest. We were glad when it was over and we could go back to the cool recesses of the porch.

The next morning Camellia wore an unpretentious dress of white--one which made the thing the Gay Lady had worn at dinner the evening before seem to her memory poor indeed. Later in the morning the Skeptic took Camellia boating on the river, and she went up and dressed for it in a yachting suit of white flannel. It was some slight consolation that she came back from the river much bedraggled about the skirts, for the boat had sprung a leak and all the Skeptic's gallantry could not keep her dry. But this necessitated a change before luncheon, and some of us were nearly unable to eat with Camellia sitting there in the frock she had put on at the last minute. She was a dream in the pale pink of it, and the Skeptic appeared to be losing his head. On the contrary, the Philosopher was seen to examine her thoughtfully through the eyegla.s.ses he sometimes wears for reading, and which he had forgotten to remove.

On the morning of the third day I discovered the Gay Lady mending a little hole in the skirt of a tiny-flowered dimity, her bright eyes suspiciously misty.

"I'm a g-goose, I know," she explained, smiling at me through the mist, "but it does make me absurdly envious. My things look so--so--_duddy_--beside hers."

"They're not duddy!" I cried warmly. "But I know what you mean. My very best gown, that I had made in town by Lautier herself, seems countrified. Don't mind. Our things will look quite right again--next week."

"What do you suppose she will wear to-night?" sighed she.

"Heaven only knows," I answered feebly.

What she wore was a French frock which finished us all. I had fears for the sanity of the Skeptic. I was sure he did not know what he was eating. He could not, of course, sit with his hands in his trousers'

pockets, from time to time giving his loose change a warning jingle, to remind himself that he could not buy her handkerchiefs. But the Philosopher appeared to retain his self-control. I caught his scientific eye fixed upon the pearl necklace Camellia wore. It struck me that the Philosopher and the Skeptic had temporarily exchanged characters.

In the late afternoon, at the end of the sixth day, Camellia left us.

The Skeptic and the Philosopher came to dinner in flannels--it had grown slightly cooler. The Gay Lady and I wore things we had not worn for a week--and I was sure the Gay Lady had never looked prettier. After dinner, in the early dusk, we sat upon the porch. For some time we were more or less silent. Then the Skeptic, from the depths of a bamboo lounging chair, his legs stretching half-way across the porch in a relaxed att.i.tude they had not worn for a week, heaved a sigh which seemed to struggle up from the depths of his interior.

The Philosopher rolled over in the hammock, where he had been reposing on his back, his hands clasped under his head, and looked scrutinizingly at his friend.

"Don't take it too hard," he counselled gently. "It's not worth it."

"I know it," replied the Skeptic with another sigh. "But I wish I were worth--millions."

"Oh, no, you don't," argued the Philosopher.

The Gay Lady and I exchanged glances--through the twilight. We would have arisen and fled, but the Skeptic caught at my skirts.

"Don't go," he begged. "I'm not really insane--only delirious. It'll wear off."

"It will," agreed the Philosopher.

"I suppose," began the Skeptic, after some further moments of silence, "that it's really mostly clothes."

"She's a very charming girl," said the Gay Lady quickly. "I don't blame you."

"Honestly," said the Skeptic, sitting up and looking at her, "don't you think her clothes are about all there is of her?"

"No," said the Gay Lady stoutly.

"Yes," said the Philosopher comfortably.

"Yes--and no," said I, as the Skeptic looked at me.

"A girl," argued the Philosopher, suddenly pulling himself out of the hammock and beginning to pace the floor, "who could come here to this unpretentious country place with three trunks, and then wear their contents----Look here"--he paused in front of me and looked at me as piercingly as somewhat short-sighted blue eyes can look in the twilight--"did she ever wear the same thing twice?"

"I believe not," I admitted.

"A girl who could come to a place like this and make a show figure of herself in clothes that any fool could see cost--Caesar, what must they cost!--and change four times a day--and keep us dancing around in starched collars----"

"You didn't have to----"

"Yes, we did--pardon me! We did, not to be innocently--not insolently--mistaken for farm hands. I tell you, a girl like that would keep a man humping to furnish the wherewithal. For what," continued the Philosopher, growing very earnest--"what, if she'd wear that sort of clothes here, would she consider necessary for--for--visiting her rich friends? Tell me that!"

We could not tell him that. We did not try.

The Gay Lady was pinching one of her little flowered dimity ruffles into plaits with an agitated thumb and finger. I was sure the Skeptic's present state of mind was of more moment to her than she would ever let appear to anybody.

The Skeptic rose slowly from his chair.

"Will you walk down the garden path with me?" he asked the Gay Lady.

They sauntered slowly away into the twilight.

The Philosopher came and sat down by me.

"He's not really hit," said he presently; "he's only temporarily upset.

I was a trifle bowled over myself. She's certainly a stunning girl. But when I try to recall what she and I talked about when we sat out here together, at such times as he was willing to leave her in my company, I have really no recollection. When it was too dark to see her clothes--or her smile--I remember being once or twice distinctly bored.

Now--the Gay Lady--don't you think she always looks well?"

"Lovely," I agreed heartily.

"I may not know much about it, being a man," said he modestly, "but I should naturally think the Gay Lady's clothes cost considerably less than Miss Camellia's."