“Blanche, do you remember how long I have known you?” Morris asked, suddenly breaking the silence. “Ever since you were like this; a close, callow bud, giving but vague promise of the glorious flowering of your womanhood! I watched the opening of every petal of your mind and tried to peer through them into the heart of the flower. But they sent you away; and now your return dazzles me with the brilliance and beauty of the full bloom. This was the past —this is the present!”
And reaching up, the man suddenly snapped off the glowing blossom from the cactus and held it before the girl, close to the pale camellia bud he had plucked before.
She raised her beautiful face, crowned with its halo-like glory of hair, full to him; and the expression it took was graver and more womanly than before. But still no agitation reflected in the candid eyes that looked steadily into his, and the voice, more softly pitched, had no tremor in it, as she answered:
“Please think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the débutante who must be fed, à la Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment.”
“Take sentiment – I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us sometimes above our baser worldly nature – out of life, and it is not worth the living,” Morris said earnestly. “That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!”
“Perhaps you are right,” she answered, quietly. “We are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are so different from him.”
Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying.
It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.
He himself could scarcely have told what thoughts were framing themselves in his mind; what words had almost formed themselves on his tongue. There are moments in life, when we live at the rate of hours; and Van Morris was certainly going the pace, mentally, for those ten seconds of silence, before the echo of the girl’s voice ceased vibrating on his ear. He was vaguely conscious, some ten seconds later still, that rarely had a calm, well-posed man of the world found himself quite so dizzy, from combined effects of a quick waltz, a flower-laden atmosphere, and a rounded arm pressing only restfully upon his own.
Suddenly that pressure grew sharp and decided. They stopped abruptly at a sharp turn of the walk.
On a somewhat too small rustic seat, under the fruit-laden boughs of an orange tree, and comfortably screened thereby from the gleam of the tinted lantern, sat Miss Rose Wood and Mr. Andrew Browne.
Their two heads were rather close together; their two hands were suspiciously distant, as though by sudden movement; and the lady’s fan had fallen at her feet, most à propos to the crunch of the gravel, under approaching feet.
But only Blanche – less preoccupied with her thoughts than her companion – had caught the words, “Dismiss carriage – escort home,” before Miss Wood’s fan had happened to drop at her feet.
What there might be in those words to drop the color out of rosy cheeks, or to clench white little teeth hard together, it might well puzzle one to guess. But the face that had not changed under the strong music of Van Morris’s voice, now grew deadly white an instant; then flooded again with surging rush of color.
But very quickly, though with perfect self-possession, Miss Wood had risen and advanced one step, to arrange Blanche’s lace, with the words:
“Your berthé is loose, darling!”
Then, as she inserted the harmless, unnecessary pin, she whispered in the shell-like ear:
“Don’t scold me, loved one! Indeed, I was not flirting. I only came out here to keep him from the —champagne punch!”
Blanche made no reply to this whispered confidence; nor did she seem especially grateful for the grace done to her toilette. She never so much as glanced at Andy Browne. He, also, had risen, after picking up the dropped fan, with not effortless grace; and now stood smiling, with rather meaningless, if measureless, good nature upon the invaders.
And Van Morris was all pose and savoir faire once more. He might have been examining Blanche on her progress in algebra, for all the consciousness in his manner as he complimented Miss Wood on her peculiarly deft management of that dangerous weapon, the pin. But there was no little annoyance in the whispered aside to his friend:
“Don’t drink any more to-night, Andy. Don’t!”
“All right, Van; I promise,” responded the other, with the most beaming of smiles. “Tell you the truth, don’t think I need it. Heat of the room, you know – ”
“And the second pint of Chambertin at dinner,” finished Morris, as Miss Wood – the toilette and her confidence both completed – slipped her perfectly gloved hand into Andy’s arm again.
Precisely, then, three sharp notes of the cornet cut through the stillness under the flowers. It was followed by the indescribable sound, made only by the rush of many female trains towards one spot. Like the chronicled war-horse, Andy shook his mane at the first note; Miss Wood nodded beamingly over her shoulder at the second; and the pair were hastening off by the time the third died away.
Blanche showed no disposition to take the vacated seat.
“The German is forming,” she said, “and I am engaged to that colt-like Mr. Upton.”
Only at the door of the conservatory she paused.
“Does Mr. Browne ever drink too much wine?” she asked abruptly.
Van never hesitated one second. He lied loyally. “Why, never, of course,” he deprecated, in the most natural tone. “With rare exceptions. But what deucedly sharp eyes she has,” he added, mentally, as Mr. Upton informed them that “the bell had tapped,” and took Blanche off.
Almost at the same moment, a waiter rushed by with a wine-cooler and glasses; and he heard the pompous butler direct:
“Set it by Mr. Browne’s chair. He leads in ler curtillyun!”
Morris half started to countermand the order. Then he reconsidered and leaned against the doorway.
“He can’t mean to drink it, after his promise to me,” he thought. “Anyway, he might get something worse. Besides, I am not his guardian; and,” he added very slowly, a strange smile hovering about his lips, “I can scarcely keep my own head to-night.”
Somehow he, best dancer in town as he was, had no partner to-night. The sight before him had no novelty; and Mr. Trotter Upton’s vivacious prancing somewhat irritated him, in spite of the amusement at himself he felt at the sensation.
“Didn’t think I was so far gone as to be jealous of Trotter,” he muttered.
Then he slipped into the hat-room and was quickly capped and cloaked for that precious boon to the bored, the exit sans adieu.
It was a raw, searching Christmas morning into which Van Morris stepped, as he softly closed the door of the Allmand mansion and turned up his fur collar against “a nipping and an eager air.”
Even in that fashionable section the streets already showed somewhat of the bustle of the busy to-morrow. Belated caterers’ carts spun by; early butchers’ and milk-wagons rumbled along, making their best speed towards distant patrons. Here and there, gleams from gas-lit windows slanted athwart the frosty darkness, punctuated by ever-recurrent flaring of street lamps. Not infrequent groups of muffled men – some jovial with reminiscent scenes of pleasure left behind, and some hilarious from what they brought along with them – passed him, as he strode rapidly along the echoing flags, too intent on his own thoughts to notice any of them.
Suddenly, from beneath one of the gloom punctuators opposite, a woman’s voice cut the air sharply:
“Please let me pass!”
Morris,