A Man's Hearth Part 22

It was such a ball-room as Elsie Adriance never had glimpsed in either her Louisiana or restricted New York experiences. The women were costumed in the extreme fashions of a year when all fashion was extreme.

As the dancers swayed past in the graceful, hesitating steps of the last new waltz, there were revelations;--of low-cut draperies, of skirts transparent to the knees, with ribbon-laced slippers jewelled at heel and buckle glancing through the thin veil of tinted chiffon or lace. The scene had an Oriental frankness without being blatant or coa.r.s.e. At the tables there was much drinking of wine and liqueurs, but as yet no apparent intoxication. Some of the women who were not dancing smoked cigarettes as they chatted with their companions; not a few of these had white hair and were obviously matrons, respected and self-respecting.

"What do you think of it?" Adriance inquired, after watching his wife with mischief in his eyes.

"I don't know," she slowly confessed. "You know, I am an outlander. But I am not so stupid as to misunderstand too badly. These people are--all right?"

"Yes; most of them. This is the after-theatre crowd. Some are from the stage, some from the audience. That lady in green chiffon who looks as if she had forgotten to put on most of her clothes is the wife of one of my father's business a.s.sociates. Did you see her husband bow to us as we came in? The little black-eyed girl in the black velvet walking-suit, at the next table, is La Tanagra, who does cla.s.sic dances in a yard of pink veil. She is a very nice girl, too. Of course, some of them----" He shrugged.

The music stopped. Through a press of laughing, flushed people returning to their tables, a waiter wound a difficult pa.s.sage with the first course of the supper Adriance had ordered.

Guests entered the room in a thin, constant stream, as the hour advanced. But there was no sign of Masterson. Elsie wondered what he would say on finding her with Anthony. Would he be angry, indifferent, disconcerted? Perhaps he would not come alone.

A sharp, imperious clang of cymbals rang out abruptly, hushing the murmur of voices and laughter. Elsie started from her abstraction, and saw all eyes turned toward the centre of the room.

"Demonstration dance," smiled Adriance. "Now you'll see something!"

A short, dark man and a woman in yellow gauze through which showed her bare, dimpled knees, stood alone on the floor. At a second clang of cymbals they floated with the music into a strange, half-Spanish, half-savage dance; a dance vigorously, even crudely alive and swift as a flight. The woman was not beautiful, but she was incredibly graceful.

Her small, arched, flashing feet in their gilded slippers recalled a half-forgotten line to Elsie.

"'And her sandals delighted his eyes----'" she quoted aloud. "Do you remember that, Anthony?"

But Adriance was laughing at her.

"Infant!" he mocked. "Wait until you've seen it as often as I have, and then you will not let your supper grow cold. There, it's over!"

It was. The dance ended with the dancers in each other's arms, glances knit, lips almost touching. The applause was courteous. The audience, like Adriance, was too sophisticated to be readily excited. It really preferred to do its own dancing.

The preference was gratified during the next half hour. One-step, fox-trot and a Lulu Fado followed in smooth succession. The room was very full, now. One or two parties began to show too much exhilaration.

"I wish Fred would come," Adriance remarked, with a restive glance at the noisiest group. "I don't want you to be here much after midnight. I wonder----"

He was interrupted by a second crash of brazen cymbals that struck down the chatter and movement of the crowd. With the harsh, resonant clang, and continuing after it had ceased, came the soft chime of a clock striking twelve.

This time a more decided interest greeted the announcement. In fact, a distinct thrill ran through the room. Men and women abandoned forks and gla.s.ses, turning eagerly toward the entrance. A marked hush continued in the place.

"Some celebrity," Adriance interpreted, impatiently. "Confound Masterson's whims--why couldn't he have seen me at home? Now he can't get in until this is over."

The music had commenced--a tripping languorous ballet suite from a famous opera. Into the large, square arch of the doorway a girl drifted and stood.

She was a sullen, magnificent creature, as she faced the audience. Her full, red mouth was straight-lipped, returning no smile to the welcoming applause. It was not possible to imagine a dimple breaking the firm curve of her rouged cheek. Elsie thought she never had seen a woman so indisputably handsome, or so utterly lacking in feminine allure. Heaps of satin-black hair framed her face and were held by jewelled bandeaux; her corsage was dangerously low, retained in place by narrow strings of brilliants over her strong, smooth, white shoulders. Her skirts were those of the conventional ballet: billows of spangled rose-colored tulle. As she began to dance, her eyes, very large and dark behind their darkened lashes, swept the spectators with a sombre alertness. Elsie felt the glance pa.s.s across her and rest on Anthony. Yes, rest there, for an instant of fixed attention! But Adriance showed no change of expression to his wife's questioning regard; he watched the dancer with a placid interest, without evincing any sign of recognition.

It was a curious dance, as singularly stripped of womanly allure as the girl's beauty. Yet it was graceful and clever. She bent and swayed through the measures, circling the room with a studied coquetry cold as indifference; posing now and then with a rose she lifted to touch lips or cheek. The audience looked on with a sustained tension of interest that the performance did not seem to warrant. Elsie noticed that the men laughed or evinced faint embarra.s.sment if the dancer leaned toward them, but the women clapped enthusiastically and sent smiling glances. What was it that these people knew, but which she and Anthony did not? There was something----

Just opposite the Adriances the dancer had slipped in executing an intricate and difficult step. She staggered, catching herself, but not before she had reeled heavily against Elsie's chair.

"Pardon!" she panted, her voice low. "The floor is too polished!"

For a moment her eyes looked full into Elsie's, and they were not dark, but a very bright blue. The brush of her naked arm and shoulder left a streak of white powder on the other's sleeve; a heavy fragrance of heliotrope shook from her garments. Before Adriance could rise she was gone.

"Confounded clumsiness!" he exclaimed, with suppressed anger. "Did she hurt you, Elsie?"

"No. Oh, no! Anthony, I know her--I knew her eyes."

He stared at his wife.

"You know her!"

"I recognized her eyes. I do not know who she is, I cannot think; yet I know her. She knew me, too; I saw it in her face. And I believe she knows you."

"Elsie!"

"She looked---- Wait; she is finishing!"

The music was indeed rising to a finale. The dancer glided to the central arch through which she had entered, poised on the verge of taking flight, then raised both hands to her head.

The black wig came off with the sweeping gesture. The dancer was a man, whose short-clipped auburn hair tumbled in boyish disorder about his powdered forehead. But there was no look of boyhood in his face, as he turned it toward Adriance's table; the familiar, reckless face of Fred Masterson.

The room was in an uproar of laughter and applause. But the dancer disappeared without acknowledging or pausing to enjoy his success; indeed, as if escaping from it.

When Elsie ventured to look at her husband, he had one hand across his eyes. He dropped it at once, but avoided her gaze as if the humiliation were his own.

"Finish your coffee," he bade, his voice roughened by a dry hoa.r.s.eness.

"I want to get out of this--to get home."

"We have not spoken to Mr. Masterson," she hesitatingly reminded him.

"He asked us to meet him."

"I suppose I have seen what he wanted me to see."

The waiter was beside them again, checking her answer. It seemed to Elsie that the man eyed Anthony with a furtive and malicious comprehension. Had he ever seen Tony Adriance with Mrs. Masterson, she wondered? Did he imagine--she thrust away the thought.

"After all, dear, aren't we prejudiced?" she essayed, unconvinced and unconvincing reason. "Isn't it really as if he were an actor?"

"No, it isn't! You know it's not. It isn't what he does that these people applaud; they applaud because he does it. He succeeds by making a show of himself, his name, his position. The grotesqueness of his being here succeeds, not his work. Well--are you ready?"

"Yes," she answered, submissive to his mood.

He paid the check, and they pa.s.sed out. Elsie recovered her hat and coat from the maid, in the dressing-room below. She was too preoccupied to notice the attendant's inquisitive scrutiny, or the frank stare of a fair-haired girl who was making up her complexion with elaborate care before one of the mirrors. It would not have occurred to her, if she had, that word had pa.s.sed down the staff of servants that the quiet girl in black was Mrs. Tony Adriance. But without knowing her own plain attire had the reflected l.u.s.tre of cloth-of-gold, she was too feminine not to embrace with a glance of faintly wistful admiration the furs, velvets and shining satins of the wraps left in this place by the other women. No preoccupation could quite ignore that array. There was one coat of gray velvet that matched her own eyes, lined with poppy-hued silk that matched her lips. A trifle dismayed by her own frivolity, she hastened out from the place of temptation. Anthony was waiting for her.

CHAPTER XV

THE OTHER MAN'S ROAD

The damp cold of a March night closed chillingly around the two, as they pa.s.sed through the revolving door into the street. The restaurant did not face on Broadway, the street of a million lights; for a moment they seemed to have stepped into darkness, after the dazzle of light just left. Adriance turned away from the vociferous proffers of taxicabs, with an economy prompted by Elsie's guiding hand rather than his own prudence. Indeed, his great amazement and vicarious shame for Masterson left him with slight attention for ordinary matters.