Flint Part 29

"Thanks," said Winifred, rather wearily, "I am not an epicure."

"Oh, but you can be trained to be!" Graham answered encouragingly. "It is mainly a question of practice, though I must say that I was born with the taste,--inherited from my father, I believe; and I've heard him tell how once when I was five years old I scolded the butler for sending up the Burgundy iced."

"How precocious!" murmured Winifred.

"Well, of course, that was unusual; but if children were taken young and had half the attention paid to their palates that folks give to their eyes and ears, with their fool drawing-teachers and music-masters in the attempt to enable them to bore somebody with their twopenny accomplishments, we should soon have a race of gourmets; and gourmets make cooks. No chef can do his best without appreciation. For the matter of that, a cook must be born,--he must have the feeling for his business. Now there was a fellow in England--My dear," he called out to his wife at the other end of the table, "was it Windermere or Gra.s.smere where we had those excellent breaded trout?"

"I forget," Mrs. Graham answered; "but I know it was the one where Wordsworth lived. Which was that, Mr. Flint?"

"Now don't interrupt us," Miss Wabash said in her loud, unshaded tones; "Mr. Flint has just consented to let me tell his fortune by his hand."

Flint looked rather foolish. He was in that awkward position where it seemed equally fatuous to a.s.sent or decline; but deciding on the former course, he held out his hand, saying, "Spare my character as far as you conscientiously can, Miss Wabash, and remember in extenuation of my shortcomings that I did not have the advantage of being brought up in Chicago."

All tete-a-tete conversation now ceased, and the attention of the company was riveted upon Flint and his neighbor. Winifred felt herself growing intensely nervous. She had no fear of Miss Wabash's extraordinary power of divination, but she had still less confidence in the delicacy of her perceptions, and she dreaded some remark which would embarra.s.s her through Flint's embarra.s.sment.

In her present high-strung condition, her apprehension made her a little faint for a moment. The centrepiece of orchids and roses seemed a vague ma.s.s of rather oppressive color and perfume. The women's faces and necks looked like reddish blobs with flashes of light where the jewels came. The broad white expanse of the men's shirt fronts alone retained a certain steadiness. Hastily she grasped her gla.s.s of champagne and drained it dry. It was the first wine she had tasted that night, and it braced her nerves at once. Fortunately no one observed her paleness, for everybody's attention was fixed upon Miss Wabash as she bent over Flint's open palm.

"A surprising hand!" that young lady was saying; "really in some ways quite the most interesting I ever came across. I must report it to Chiro. The fingers very pointed--that ought to indicate idealism, but the knots on the joints imply practical critical sense. It looks as though the mind were always grasping at some ideal and were held back by the critical faculty."

"Don't blink your points, Mamie!" called out the host, facetiously. At this allusion to sporting reminiscences, all the men laughed, but the women rather resented the interruption, as a frivolous treatment of a serious subject.

"You have learned your profession thoroughly," said Flint, coloring a little in spite of himself. "I shall begin to be afraid of you in earnest, if you are so discerning."

"Oh, I have only begun!" answered Miss Wabash, kindled by success to greater vivacity. "That thumb shows marked firmness (see, I can scarcely bend it back at all); perhaps, if I knew you better, I should say obstinacy."

Every one laughed.

"The fingers," she went on, "show more sensitiveness; and the mounds--oh, those mean a great deal! Mars is firm and prominent--what you undertake you will carry through, if it kills you and everybody else."

"What a fellow to buy on margin!" said the broker.

"He doesn't seem to have succeeded in getting married for all his perseverance," laughed Mr. Graham.

Winifred, in spite of her emotion, found time to reflect on the vulgarity of the phrase, and shivered a little. Flint colored, though he held his hand quite steady.

"Perhaps he'll buy her sixty," chuckled the broker, pleased with his technical wit.

"He'd better hurry up," said Miss Wabash, "for his life-line is short.

He's had experiences though. May I tell them, Mr. Flint?"

"I give you permission."

"Well, then, you were in love once a long time ago, but there were reasons why you couldn't marry, and so you gave up the affair and have never really cared for any one since; but two or three women have been desperately in love with you."

"Mademoiselle, respect the seal of the confessional!" said Flint, smiling, but drawing away his hand with a quick instinctive motion which did not escape Winifred.

"Ho! ho!" called out Graham, "perhaps there is more in palmistry than I thought. Go on, Mamie, and give us the history of the Salvation Army episode and the Hallelujah la.s.sie!"

Flint cursed inwardly, cursed everything and almost everybody, himself most of all. What was he here for? What if Graham _was_ the chief stockholder in the "Trans-Continental," he was a coa.r.s.e-grained sensualist, with whom no gentleman should a.s.sociate. (This estimate by no means did Graham justice, but Flint was not in a judicial mood.) Then this crack-brained girl with her foolish fake of a theory--and he had been idiot enough to fall into this trap, and now Winifred would think he had boasted of Nora Costello as a conquest, perhaps bragged about saving her life. Oh, the whole thing was past endurance!

Meanwhile everything around moved on mechanically. He heard his host say impatiently, "My dear, if you keep that epigramme of lamb waiting much longer, we'd better give up dining and take to holding hands all round."

At this there was a general taking up of forks and a subdued buzz of conversation. It was rather a relief when the candle-shade took fire and Flint had an excuse for rising to seize it before the butler could reach it.

The dinner ended at last, though it seemed as if it never would. As he held aside the velvet curtains for the ladies to pa.s.s, Flint strove to catch Winifred's eyes, to judge, if he might, what impression Graham's remark had made; but Blathwayt held her in talk till the threshold was reached, and the curtain dropped behind her without a glance in Flint's direction.

She held her head a little higher than usual as she moved beside Mrs.

Graham into the music-room. A wave of contempt was sweeping over her, as she reviewed the dinner, its gilding, its gluttony, and its unspeakable dulness, and she felt that she had sold her birthright of self-respect for a mess of pottage.

Miss Wabash sat down at the piano and sang "Oh, Promise Me," and one or two other gems from DeKoven's latest opera, and then the ladies adjourned once more to the library.

The Grahams' library was a large square room, diversified by two shallow bay-windows such as only a corner house permits. It was ceiled and finished in heavy Flemish oak, and the walls above the low bookcases were hung with tapestry. Easy-chairs and softly upholstered divans filled every nook and corner. It was really, Winifred decided, an ideal library,--or would have been if there had been any books behind the silk curtains hung over the shelves.

As they entered the room Miss Wabash drew Winifred to a seat near herself on the sofa.

"Green mint or Chartreuse?" the hostess asked, as the little ice-filled gla.s.ses were set on the low table by her side.

Winifred declined the cordials, but sat sipping the coffee out of the tiny Dresden cup, while she listened to the wearisome plat.i.tudes of Mrs. Graham and her guests. From time to time her eye was caught by the flashing of the jewelled pendulum of the clock on the mantel, in the drawing-room across the hall, and her mind dwelt ironically on some lines she had read somewhere:--

"Ah! who with clear account remarks The ebbing of Time's gla.s.s, When all his sands are diamond sparks That dazzle as they pa.s.s!"

She smiled a derisive little smile, all to herself, as she thought how small a power lay in jewelled pendulums to make a brilliant evening, and she felt a certain thrill of pride at the thought that her a.s.sociations lay in a world removed from all this smothering materialism. The lavish sumptuousness which till now had appealed to her rather strongly, seemed suddenly tainted with vulgarity, and her thoughts wandered half unconsciously to the bare little room where she had gone to see Nora Costello. The name brought a slight quickening of her pulses, and she wanted time to think over things alone.

As the men came in from the dining-room Miss Anstice's carriage was announced, and she rose to bid her hostess good-night.

"Must you run away so early, my dear?"

"Thank you, yes; I promised Papa to come home early. He likes to see me before he goes to bed, and to hear an account of my evening."

"You will be at home at five to-morrow, and I may bring Captain Blathwayt?"

"Any friend of yours, of course," murmured Winifred, in a tone which could hardly have proved encouraging to the vanity or incipient sentiment of the guardsman.

"If you will permit me," said Flint to Graham as Winifred came down the stairs, "I will put Miss Anstice into her carriage, and then come back for that last cigar."

Never in his life had Flint so raved against his own lack of readiness as now, when he felt the pa.s.sing moments slipping by, and could find no words to set himself right in the eyes of the woman he loved,--the woman whose little gloved hand rested on his arm. Judge then of his feeling when, smiling up into his eyes with perfect friendliness, Winifred said under her breath, "Why do we go there--you and I? They really aren't our kind at all."

The remark carried with it full a.s.surance that no words uttered by Hartington Graham had power to shake for an instant her faith in the man whom she had called her friend; but beyond that her confident use of the word _our_, as if their interests and a.s.sociations were the same, thrilled him with a sort of intoxication.

"Oh, thank you!" was all that he could find to say to express his complicated state of mind.

"I do not deserve any thanks at all," Winifred answered. "I ought to be well scolded for speaking slightingly of people whom I have just been visiting. I do not often do such ill-mannered things, and I should not have said it to any one but you."

Again Flint thrilled at the unconscious flattery.

"Will you come in to-morrow afternoon?" she asked, as he shut the carriage door.

"To meet Captain Blathwayt? No, thank you."