Hope Benham Part 18

And Peter was right. Dorothea fetched him through beautifully, and Peter didn't in the least mind her rattling. Indeed, he seemed to encourage it and to be amused by it; for Peter, I am afraid, was that kind of young man that Kate Van der Berg declared that her brother was _not_,--the young man who encourages rattling, to make fun of it. But whatever Peter did was very lazily done, and his fun-making was confined mostly to his own inward reflections, with now and then the dropping of a humorous word to some favorite companion. To be sure, this humorous word of Peter's had its full effect, for Peter was not a great talker, and as he was known to be a keen-witted fellow, whatever he did say was made much of. But Peter himself hadn't a bit of malice in him, and if he had his laugh now and then at some foolish rattler, I, for one, think the rattler deserved the laugh, and came off very easily at that; for, as Jimmy Dering said once of his cousin,--

"Girls of Dolly's sort have got to learn that people are not going to be careful of them and their feelings, unless _they_ are careful, to begin with."

And I will add that girls of Dolly's sort teach all girls how _not_ to do it,--how not to romp and rush and rattle, and make themselves objects of ridicule, in the fond delusion that they are objects of admiration, as Dolly did on this very night.

She began her rattle with Schuyler Van der Berg; she kept it up with Peter Van Loon and fine handsome Victor Graham, and concluded it at the end of the evening with Raymond Armitage, who was of a very different fibre from the others,--a harder, coa.r.s.er fibre altogether.

But Dolly found Raymond Armitage the most interesting of the four, for it was Raymond who to her mind was the most polite, the most attractive in his way of doing and saying things,--his way of listening admiringly to everything she said, of laughing and applauding all her blunt speeches and frisky ways. If Jimmy had not been so popular, and consequently so necessarily engaged in responding to this popularity, he would have noticed how Dolly was "carrying on," and have tried at least to check her; but when Jimmy was not talking with a little knot of boys and girls about boat-crews and foot-ball and the coming season's races, he was dancing with Hope, and in every pause of the dance he talked about music; and that entirely absorbed both of them. But there came at last the grand concluding dance that brought them all more closely together. It was that concluding dance that Kate Van der Berg had spoken of as the best fun of all. This dance had been introduced and taught by Miss Marr herself at the very start of her school, and was by this time perfectly well known to all her girls, and readily understood by any new guest of the evening under the guidance of his partner. It was an old French dance,--a "gavotte," so called. Miss Marr had told them its history. It was a kind of minuet that Marie Antoinette had introduced as a pendant to the minuet proper, adding other steps, and renaming it. She told them that another point in its history was, that the name was said to be derived from the town of Gap, whose inhabitants were called "Gavots" and "Gavottes," and that it was not unlikely that it was an old country dance of that region, and that Marie Antoinette made use of it in her re-arrangement, and also called it a _minuet de la cour_.

But wherever it had its origin, it was a charming dance, and Miss Marr had been taught it thoroughly in her early youth when she visited her French relations in France as a pretty French costume-party dance; and she in her turn had introduced various pretty changes, the prettiest and most novel being at the very end, where, swinging all around together, they pair off at last in regular appointed order, and pa.s.s through an archway of flowers, each pair receiving in this pa.s.sing a beautiful little basket, its woven cover of flowers concealing two New Year's gifts,--one a pretty trinket, a ring or brooch or bracelet, sent by some member of the pupil's family for the pupil herself; the other a comic accompaniment in the way of a gay mirth-provoking toy, to be bestowed upon the partner,--the guest of the pupil on this occasion,--these latter being furnished by Miss Marr, and most choicely selected, some of them coming from Paris and Vienna. The girls were quite as much interested in these funny toys as in their own trinkets; and when all had pa.s.sed the archway, there was a gathering together of the whole party, and a great frolic over the examination of the basket's contents; Kate almost forgetting the glow and sparkle of her new amethyst ring in the fun of the little gutta-percha man, who was made to wink and laugh and shake his fist at Victor when it was presented to him by Kate. And when Hope lifted her basket-cover and found beside the tiny Geneva watch sent to her by her father, the merry little figure of a girl playing a violin, while a woolly bear danced before her on a wooden stand, Jimmy, who was Hope's partner, with gay mimicry began to imitate the bear, and Kate cried out,--

"Wouldn't you, _wouldn't_ you though, _really_ like to dance to Hope's playing?" and quick as a flash, Jimmy answered, with a gallant little bow,--

"I'd like better to _listen_."

"You'd like to listen and to dance, too, if you could hear Hope play the Gungl' waltzes; you couldn't keep your feet still," added Kate.

"Oh, if I _could_ hear you play, Miss Benham!" and Jimmy turned eagerly to Hope. "There are _no_ waltzes I like so well as those. I'm coming in to-morrow afternoon to bring my cousin some music that I've brought on for her from her old teacher in Boston, and she is going to try it with me in the music-room here at half-past three o'clock. Miss Marr has kindly given us permission, and oh, would you, _could_ you, Miss Benham, join us at four o'clock and play _one_ of the Gungl' waltzes, just one?

It would give me such pleasure."

"I--I don't know that Miss Marr would--"

"Oh, I am sure she would; I'll ask her.--Miss Marr," and Jimmy put out a detaining hand, as Miss Marr at that moment was pa.s.sing, and in three minutes more his request was made and granted. Hope had her full permission to join the two in the music-room the next afternoon and play the Gungl' waltzes if she would like to do so.

"And you _will_ like, won't you?" pleaded Jimmy, in his _naive_ boyish way.

Hope hesitated a second; then, with a little laugh, a.s.sented to his pleading. All this had been a little aside, in the midst of the hum and buzz of the frolic; and then, just then, it was, that suddenly, over the ordinary clamor, Dorothea's voice rose in a noisy laugh above everything, and her exclamation, "I told you I'd get even with you!" was heard from end to end of the hall.

Jimmy started as he heard it.

"What _is_ Dolly carrying on like that for?" he thought.

Miss Marr, too, started forward, with the same thought. And there was Dolly, still laughing loudly, and shaking a carnival figure of paper, free of the last sc.r.a.p of its contents of sugary snow, over the person of Mr. Raymond Armitage, her gay threat of getting even with him the culmination of some joke that had pa.s.sed between them. Miss Marr, as she started forward, had evidently an intention of putting a decided check upon Miss Dorothea then and there; but a look at Jimmy's face, and his half-uttered "Oh, if Dolly _would_ think what she's about!" seemed to change Miss Marr's intention somewhat, as it tempered her feeling; for as she caught sight of the boy's face, she said to herself,--

"Poor little fellow, I won't add to his discomfort by speaking now."

And so Dolly went on in her wild way unchecked except by Jimmy's, "Don't, Dolly, don't! You 're making _such_ a noise, and everybody's looking at you."

But Dolly only laughed at this. She was having a very jolly time. She fancied it was a very successful time, and that she was really the belle of the evening, because Raymond Armitage plied her with flattery, and because a good many of the others watched her with what she supposed were entirely admiring glances. Getting glimpses of herself, too, in a large long mirror occasionally, she saw that she had never looked better; and, in fact, she did look very handsome, with her clear, bright complexion, her silky black hair and brilliant eyes, framed in golden yellow, and "all those daffodils," as Peter Van Loon had said. Yes, she was looking very handsome; they all recognized this,--all these young fellows who looked at her, and laughed and chatted with her, and criticised her as "a rattler."

CHAPTER XVII.

The next afternoon at half-past three o'clock Jimmy made his appearance punctually at Miss Marr's, and was received with great satisfaction by his cousin.

"It's such luck that you got Hope to come and play with us. I must say you know how to manage people, Jimmy," cried Dolly, gleefully, after she had greeted him.

"Play _with_ us! She's coming to play _for_ us, or for me, the Gungl'

waltzes."

"Oh, well, she'll play that duet with me now, and you'll play our accompaniment."

"I shall do no such thing. I am going to play _your_ accompaniment now.

Miss Benham isn't coming in until four, and after she plays the waltzes I shall go away. As if I should take advantage of her kindness in such a manner! And how _you_ can think of doing it, I can't understand, Dolly."

"Yes, now begin to find fault with me!"

"Find fault with you! I should think I might. You do such things, Dolly.

Last night, now, everybody was looking at you."

"Why shouldn't they? A cat may look at a king, and I had an awfully pretty gown, Jimmy;" and Dolly began to hum the closing bars of the gavotte.

Jimmy saw how she understood, or _mis_understood things, and burst out,--

"Look here, Dolly, don't you fancy now that those fellows were thinking of your good looks and nothing else all the time they watched you. I know fellows better than you do. I don't say they didn't _like_ your looks, that they didn't admire you, but I _do_ say they didn't admire the way you went on."

"'The way I went on'? What do you mean?"

"_You_ know,--the way you giggled, and tossed your head, and 'made eyes,' as the French people say, at that Armitage fellow. I didn't happen to be near you to notice what you were doing until the last of the evening, but that was enough. I knew, by what I _did_ see, how you'd been going on, for I've seen you at a party before, Dolly."

"Oh, I know what you mean; you mean that I flirt. I've heard that before, Jimmy. _I_ can't help it if I have more attention than other girls, just because I'm lively, and know how to talk."

"Flirt! yes, that's what you call it,--that giggling, and tossing your head, and saying pert things. It's like a girl at a Park Beach picnic,--what you call 'flirting.' It is vulgar, and that's what all the fellows I know think of it; and while _you_ think they are paying you admiring attentions, they're just having fun at your expense; and it makes me ashamed, for you are my cousin, and--"

"And you are the most conceited boy that ever lived. You think you know _everything_, and you don't know _any_thing about society. A girl is always older than a boy in all society matters; everybody says so; and though you're sixteen, and I'm only fifteen, I'm a whole year ahead of you,--you're just a _little boy_ to _me_. One of my sister's friends, a _man_ who knows, said to me, _this_ vacation, that I seemed to be eighteen rather than fifteen."

Jimmy stared at his cousin for a moment in sheer astonishment; then he exclaimed,--

"Dolly! what _are_ you thinking of, not to see--"

"Oh, I know what you're going to say,--not to see that it is I who am conceited."

"And where did you get all that stuff in your head about society; and what idiot told you you seemed to be eighteen rather than fifteen?"

"It was no idiot," triumphantly; "it was Mr. George Atherton."

"George Atherton. Oh, then it is you who are the idiot not to see that Mr. Atherton was poking fun at you, or else he meant that you _looked_ eighteen with your height and size altogether. But it is of no use talking to you, I see that."

"No, it isn't of the slightest use. We've wasted time now,--the time we ought to be trying this nocturne; and, if you please, Master Jimmy," and Dolly bowed, with a patronizing air, "we'll begin to play, or we sha'n't get through before Hope comes in."

Jimmy stared again. He was seeing Dolly in a new phase. Instead of flying into a pa.s.sion, instead of turning upon him with tears and reproaches, she stood her ground with a semblance of cool superiority that astonished him. What did it mean? Was she getting so spoiled and puffed up by her vanity that the truths he had placed before her went for nothing against the flattery that she provoked? He knew that Dolly was not very finely sensitive, was what he called "dense;" but he had never thought that her good sense could be obscured by this density to the extent of making her positively impervious to criticism, as she seemed to be now. But such really was the fact. Not finely sensitive at the start, as I have endeavored to show, Dolly was full of self-confidence, and also full of animal spirits. With such a combination of qualities, it was not strange that she should be convinced that her own way was the only right way, and when led by her vanity through a little additional flattery, this conviction became so strong that no amount of criticism or opposition could move her. It would be only through some individual experience, some suffering in connection with this experience of having her own way, that Dolly would be likely to have her eyes opened to her own mistakes, and be able to see where she had blundered and what her blunders meant to others, as well as herself. Fresh, however, from what she thought her success of the night before, even Jimmy's words of protest, which usually moved her either to anger or tears, had no effect upon her. For the time she felt herself vastly superior to Jimmy in years and judgment, and from this standpoint she had met his criticism with a calmness that he could not at first understand. Of course this a.s.sumption of superiority was not a little irritating to Jimmy, modest though he was; and as he sat there playing the accompaniment to the nocturne, and pausing at almost every bar to correct Dolly's false notes, he was also pondering over her false notes in more important directions, and puzzling himself with suppositions as to her present att.i.tude.

They were in the last pa.s.sages of the piece, and Dolly was listening to his corrections in an absent-minded way that exasperated him, when the door opened, and there was Hope, with her violin, followed by Myra Donaldson, who was to play her accompaniment. Dolly did not wait to finish the bar she was sc.r.a.ping at, but jumped up at sight of Hope, with a "Oh, there you are, and you've got that dear little violin. Isn't it a beauty, Jimmy? See here!" and with one of her quick, confident movements, she took the instrument--one could almost say she s.n.a.t.c.hed it--from Hope's hands, and held it out to her cousin, pointing to the shape and the beautiful red coloring with its dark veining, repeating, as she did so,--

"See! isn't it beautiful?"