The Main Chance Part 15

"Beautiful! charming! An enchanting entertainment!"

"Is that for you and Warry, too? He always has to approve everything here."

"Oh, I can't speak for him," John answered; "we don't necessarily always agree."

"I'll have to find out later, from him. You and Warry appear to be fast friends, and he talks a great deal. What has he told you about me?"

"He said you were kind to strange young men; but that wasn't information."

"You'll do, I think. Here comes Warry now."

Raridan came along looking for a country girl whose brother he knew, and with whom he had engaged the dance which was now in progress.

"I think she's hiding from me," he complained to Mrs. Whipple, "but the G.o.ds are kind; I can talk to you. The general is a generous man." He regarded critically a great bunch of red roses which she held in her lap. "That's why the florist didn't have any for me."

"Oh, these are Evelyn's," explained Mrs. Whipple. "She asked me to keep them for her--the king's gift, you know. I feel highly honored."

"By the king? Impossible! I'll give you something nice to let me drop them into the alley."

"Is it as bad as that? Well, good luck to you!"

He stood with his hands in his pockets looking musingly out over the heads of the dancers. Mrs. Whipple eyed him attentively.

"You know you always tell me all of them," she persisted; but he was following a fair head and a pair of graceful shoulders and ever and anon a laughing face that flashed into sight and then out of range. His rural friend's sister loomed before him, in an att.i.tude of dejection against the wall, and he hastened to her with contrition, and made paradise fly under her feet.

Saxton was doing his best with the square dances, and had finished a quadrille with Evelyn, who had thereafter asked him to sit out a round dance with her; still Raridan did not come near them. He was busy with Evelyn's guests or immolating himself for the benefit of the country wallflowers. Supper was served at midnight in an annex of the hall.

"Here's where we forget to be polite," Raridan announced. "If we die in the struggle I hope you fair young charges will treasure our memories."

The king and queen and the high powers of the knights enjoyed the distinction of sitting at a table where they were served by waiters, while the mult.i.tude fought for their food.

"If you lose our seats while we're gone," Raridan warned Miss Marshall and Miss Warren, "you shall have only six olives apiece." He led Saxton in a descent upon an array of long tables at which men were harpooning sandwiches and dipping salad. The successful raiders were rewarded by the waiters with cups of coffee to add to their perils as they bore their plates away. There was a great clatter and buzz in the room. On the platform where the distinguished personages of the carnival sat there was now much laughing.

"Margrave's pretty noisy to-night," observed Raridan, biting into his sandwich, and sweeping the platform with a comprehensive glance.

"You mustn't forget that this is a carnival," replied Saxton. He had followed his friend's eyes and knew that it was not the horse-laugh of Margrave that troubled him, but the vista which disclosed both Wheaton and Evelyn Porter.

"Mr. Raridan's really not so funny as Evelyn said he was," remarked Belle Marshall.

"The truth is," Raridan answered, rallying, "that I'm getting old. Miss Porter remembers only my light-hearted youth."

"Well, let's revive our youth in another food rush," suggested Saxton.

They repeated their tactics of a few minutes before, returning with ice-cream, which the waiters were cutting from bricks for supplicants who stood before them in Oliver Twist's favorite att.i.tude.

"Mr. Saxton's a terrible tenderfoot," lamented Raridan, when they returned from the charge. "He was giving your ice-cream, Miss Warren, to an old gentleman, who stood horror-struck in the midst of the carnage."

"You'd think we rehea.r.s.ed our talk," Saxton objected. "He wants me to tell you that he got the poor old gentleman not only food for all his relations, but took away other people's chairs for him, as well."

"Lying isn't a lost art, after all," said Raridan.

As they returned to the hall they met a crowd of the n.o.bility who were descending from their high seats.

"So sorry to have deserted you all evening," said Evelyn to her girl friends as they came together in a crush at the door; "but the worst is over." She looked up curiously at Raridan, who seemed purposely to have turned away to talk to Captain Wheelock, and was commenting ironically on the management that made such a mob possible. There was only a moment for any interchange, but she was sure now that Raridan was avoiding her and it touched her pride.

"I hope you won't forget our dance, Mr. Saxton," she said, struggling to follow a young man who had come to claim her. Raridan turned again, but hung protectingly over Miss Marshall, whom the noisy Margrave seemed bent on crushing. Raridan had not asked Evelyn to dance, though she had been importuned by every other man she knew, and by a great many others whom she did not know. As the gay music of a waltz carried her down the hall with a proud youngster who had been waiting for her, the lightness of her heart was gone for the moment. She remembered Raridan's curious mood on the night before her friends came, and his unfriendliness to the idea of her taking part in the carnival. She was piqued that he had studiously avoided her to-night. The others must have noticed it. Warry needed discipline; he had been spoilt and she meant to visit punishment upon him. She did not care, she told herself; whether Warry Raridan liked what she did or not.

But something of the glory of the evening had departed. She was really growing tired, and several of the youths who came for dances were told that they must sit them out, and she welcomed their chatter, throwing in her yes and no occasionally merely to impel them on. Wheaton had grown a little afraid of her after the glow of his royal honors had begun to fade. It is often so with players in amateur theatricals, who think they are growing wonderfully well acquainted during rehearsals; but after the performance is concluded, they are surprised to find how easily they slip back to the old footing of casual acquaintance. There was a flutter about Evelyn at the last, when her father made bold to ask her when she would be ready to go.

"The girls have already gone," he said, replying to her question. When they were in the carriage together and were rolling homeward, she gave a sigh of relief.

"Are you glad it's over?" asked her father.

"Yes, I believe I am."

"Well, they all said fine things about you, girl. I guess I've got to be proud of you." This was his way of saying that he was both proud and grateful.

As they reached the entrance to the Hill they pa.s.sed another carriage just leaving the grounds. Saxton put his head out of the window and called a cheery good night, and Evelyn waved a hand to him.

"It was Warry and Saxton," said Mr. Porter. "I thought they'd stop to talk it over."

Evelyn had thought so too, but she did not say so.

CHAPTER XII

A MORNING AT ST. PAUL'S

Wheaton ran away from the livelier spirits of the Knights of Midas, who urged him to join in a celebration at the club after the ball broke up.

He pleaded the necessity of early rising and went home and to bed, where, however, he slept little, but lay dreaming over the incidents of the night, particularly those in which he had figured. Many people had congratulated him, and while there was an irony in much of this, as if the whole proceeding were a joke, he had taken it all in the spirit, in which it had been offered. He felt a trifle anxious as to his reception at the breakfast table as he dressed, but his mirror gave him confidence. The night had been an important one for him, and he could afford to bear with his fellows, who would, he knew, spare him no more than they spared any one else in their chaff.

They flaunted at him the morning papers with portraits of the king and queen of the ball bracketed together in double column. He took the papers from them as he replied to their ironies, and casually inspected them while the Chinaman brought in his breakfast.

"Didn't expect to see you this morning," said Caldwell, the Transcontinental agent, stirring his coffee and winking at Brown, the smelter manager. "You society men are usually shy at breakfast."

Wheaton put down his paper carelessly, and spread his napkin.

"Oh, a king has to eat," said Brown.

"Well," said Wheaton, with an air of relief, "it's worth something to be alive the morning after."

But they had no sympathy for him.

"Listen to him," said Caldwell derisively, "just as if he didn't wish he could do it all over again to-night."

"Not for a million dollars," declared Wheaton, shaking his head dolefully.