The Wishing Moon Part 26

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without the guest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if she could have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guest of the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle, on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, which was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. He complained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.

"Too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it--dress too well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. You need more background, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't have cream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and make a whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.

That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't--too much tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you need background. You can't get on without it."

"We do," said his host.

The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night, but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all the Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying the elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare hothouse flower.

You saw it in quick glimpses of pa.s.sing faces thrown into strong relief by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight; you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden, the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air.

You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusually keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.

You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.

If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or even entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the women's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide s.m.u.tty fingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you forget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen too closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.

There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons which the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for looking worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of the week before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secret conferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephone wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were the months before election, when the things that were going to happen began to happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talked politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even when they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached, the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.

No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh, cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the height of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware of the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the time or place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties or privileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take care of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident from her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she was sharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark head close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly, as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally agreeable to her.

"We miss Judy so much," she said sweetly.

"I can see just how much, dear," said Judith's mother more sweetly still.

"And it's so long since she's been here."

"She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not well to-night."

"But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening."

"He did."

"There he is." The third person singular, unqualified, could mean only one gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentleman was pa.s.sing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of the fact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fashioned waltz with elaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased as he pa.s.sed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though it was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had a blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated touch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint but relentless light of amus.e.m.e.nt in her narrowed eyes.

"Edie's had just one c.o.c.ktail too many."

"Yes." They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. The evening had reached the stage when he always had.

"He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear."

"I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil."

"I haven't seen him dance with you at all."

"He hasn't yet."

"No?" said Mrs. Burr, very casually.

"No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague."

"Don't you want me, dear? Well, Ranny always wants me."

Mr. Randolph Sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proof of this as he carried her off. If the Colonel's secretary had really been recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there, and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was the type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any longer, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced with Mr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose of dancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if their elaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they were really lovers.

Mrs. Clifford Kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into Mrs. Burr's empty place. Her dance with the Colonel was over. "My Lord's in fine form to-night," she confided without preliminary. "We're going to play blind-man's buff after the d.u.c.h.ess goes home." The d.u.c.h.ess was Mrs.

Grant, the Honourable Joe's wife, still the first lady of Green River, but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetly behind her back. "He told me the tiger story." This represented a triumph. Getting the Colonel's smoking-room stories at first hand instead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form of rivalry about which these ladies were frank with each other. "I got it out of Cliff first, anyway. He said he couldn't tell me, but he did. I made him. Where was Harry last night?"

"What do you mean?"

"Cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. Didn't Harry know about it?"

"What were they doing?"

"Just talking. The Colonel and I don't know who else. I heard two strange voices, and I didn't hear Harry's voice. Didn't Harry know?"

"I suppose so. What did they talk about?"

"Campaign stuff--prohibition or something. Cliff wouldn't tell me."

"Was Teddy Burr there?"

"I didn't hear him. What do you care?"

"I don't care."

"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help it now."

"Edith, don't go. Wait."

"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out in the library and meet him inside. The d.u.c.h.ess is getting jealous.

Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and old and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh, darling--" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her friend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away without waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh behind--"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybody been making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me.

Good-bye."

Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile at Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.

"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"

"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."

"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's the matter? Where's Harry?"

"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all I can to-night."

"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other boys away."

The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settled into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet word in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper of the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the general change. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they stayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her established privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. n.o.body seemed to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was a heavy, dull look about the pa.s.sing faces, a heaviness and staleness now about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the Colonel's parties, too.