At Home with the Jardines Part 13

I said nothing, for the very excellent reason that there was really nothing to say. Mary has a way of being rather conclusive. There was no use in remonstrating or telling her not to, for she simply would not have obeyed me, so I forbore to give the order.

Flora heard Mary let Artie Beg in, and ran down the corridor to meet him. She was a vision in white--her graduation dress--with her snowy shoulders rising modestly from a tulle bertha. I paused in order to let her greet him first, and, to my consternation, before I could make known my presence, I heard her say, plaintively:

"Aren't you going to kiss me?"

Then with a stifled groan Artie flung his arms around her, pressing her to him as if he would never let her go. Then he pushed her away from him almost roughly, and Flora laughed a low, tantalizing laugh, and crept back to him to lean her head on his shoulder, and lay her arms around his neck.

I turned and fled. I fairly stampeded down the hall, running full tilt against Aubrey, and nearly folding him up.

"Oh! Oh!" I gasped, dancing up and down before him excitedly.

He seized both my hands.

"Hold still, Faith! What's the matter? Tell me!"

"They're engaged!" I wailed. "I'm too late! Cary has lost him!"

"Who?"

"Artie and Flora."

"What makes you think so?"

"He's kissing her! And she asked him to, just as if she had a right.

I would not think so much of it, if he had just grabbed her and kissed her without a word, for she looks too witching, and any man might lose his head, but for her to ask for it--oh, what shall I do!"

"Hold on! You say she asked him to--tell me just how."

I told him.

The Angel put both hands in his pockets and whistled.

"Don't worry," he said. "They're not engaged."

I felt relieved at once, for the Angel does not write books from guesswork. He _knows_ things.

But I was greatly confused at going back. Of course they did not know that I had seen and heard, and equally, of course, I could not tell them. But I had my confusion all to myself. Artie seemed about as usual (which he wouldn't have done if he had known that there was powder on his coat), and Flora was as cool as an iceberg.

It seems to me, as I look back, that that was the first time I suspected anything. It was almost uncanny to see her sitting there looking so shy and demure, when two minutes before she had begged a man to kiss her, and laughed that cool, tantalizing laugh, as of one who knew her power and revelled in the sight of her victim's struggles to escape.

I turned to Cary, my well-bred girl, my friend, with a feeling of relief, as if I had found a refuge. Cary flushed a little as she greeted Artie, and Flora's lip curled perceptibly.

I glanced at the Angel, and saw that he, too, had noticed it. But then, Aubrey sees everything. That is why he writes as he does. His manner as he greeted Cary was so cordial that it caused Artie to look up, and then, to my surprise, Artie got up from his chair, and came and stood by Cary and took her fan.

I wish you could have seen Flora's blue eyes turn green.

Then Bee and the Jimmies came, and, as usual, I straightway forgot everything else, and bent my energies toward playing the part of hostess so that Bee would not feel disgraced.

I followed her eye as it travelled over our gowns and around the apartment. Bee does not realize that she has silently appointed herself Superior General to the universe, so she was somewhat disconcerted, when, as she finally leaned back with a sigh which seemed to say, "This is really as well as anybody could do who didn't have me to consult with," to hear Aubrey say, slyly:

"Well, Bee, does it suit?"

Bee a.s.sumed her most Park Lane air, and replied:

"I don't know what you mean, Aubrey."

Then to avoid further pleasantries, Mary standing in the doorway, I marshalled them all out to the table.

Flora was between Aubrey and Artie, but I put Cary on the other side of Artie, while I took Jimmie by me, and mercilessly handed Mrs. Jimmie over to the "also rans."

Flora, who pretended jealousy of the Angel to veil her instinctive dislike of one who read her through and through, frankly turned her back on him, and tried all her wiles on Artie, which would not have disconcerted him, had not the Also Ran commenced to smile and attract Mrs. Jimmie's attention to it.

This brought Artie from his trance sufficiently to cause him to turn his attention to Cary, but it was so palpably forced that Cary devoted herself with ardour to Jimmie, and left Artie speechless.

Then something spurred Flora to do a foolish thing. She deliberately began to bait Cary--to say things to annoy her--to try to mortify her.

At first Cary refused to see what was evident to the rest of us. (Oh, my dinner-party was proving such a success!)

At this critical juncture, Mary appeared bearing the chafing-dish full of blazing, flaming peaches, and in watching me ladle the fiery liquid, hostilities were for the moment discontinued. Involuntarily, as Mary's satisfied countenance betokened her complete happiness at the successful culmination of the dinner, my eyes wandered to the dining-room windows. I had drawn the shades with my own hand, but some mysterious agent had been at work, for they were let fly to the very window-tops.

I glanced at Mary. She pressed her lips together with a whimsical twist, and surrept.i.tiously raised a finger in sly warning.

"Them rubbers are having a fit!" she murmured in my ear, as she deferentially took a blazing peach from me, and placed it before Flora with a look so black it seemed to say:

"If you get your deserts, you little blister, it would set fire to you!"

They were talking about love when I began listening again,--and Cary made some remark inaudible to me, which gave Flora the opportunity to say:

"Is it true, then, what I have heard? Were you ever disappointed in love?"

"Always!" said Cary, evenly.

Jimmie grinned and jogged my elbow.

"Isn't she a dandy?" he whispered. "Never turned a hair."

Flora flushed angrily because Artie laughed and looked appreciatively at Cary, as if really seeing her for the first time.

Every woman knows when that supreme moment comes--at least, every woman has who has liked a man before he has liked her. She feels it without looking at him. She knows it from the innermost consciousness of her being. "He is looking at me," says her heart, "for the first time, with the eyes which a man has for a woman."

Many a man has been selected first, as Cary selected Artie, and been wooed by her as modestly and legitimately as she did, without suspecting that he did not take the initiative every time.

So a little modest courage and restrained self-reliance crept into Cary's manner, which had never been there before, and I, believing implicitly in the Angel's _ipse dixit_ that Flora and the best man were not engaged, had visions of the first bridesmaid's winning her lost place with him, and, oh, making him pay for his neglect.

If man only knew how heavily a flouted woman, after she has safely won him, does make him pay for his bad taste, he would be more careful.

But Artie never knew. He sat there, listening to the biting words which pa.s.sed back and forth between Flora and Cary, without his modesty permitting him to realize that he was the stake these two clever girls were throwing mental dice for.

But Jimmie knew, for his blue eyes turned black, and his cigarettes burned out in two puffs, and his nervous hands clenched and unclenched in his wicked wish to say something to aggravate the affair. Finally, meeting my derisive grin, he wrenched my little finger under the table, under pretence of picking up my handkerchief, and whispered: