She shrank away from them and went into the main room.
For a moment she was dazed before the babel of tongues and the medley of gay dresses. Someone was playing the piano and everybody seemed trying to talk as loud as possible to be heard above it. She felt somehow a stranger and an alien.
She began to look about for someone she knew.
Off at the other side of the room were a group of young people, three of them old schoolmates of Marion's. Mechanically she made her way toward them, half hoping they might welcome her to their midst. There was Isabel Cresson. She used to help Isabel with her algebra and geometry problems in school. She had never been especially intimate with her, but at least she was not a stranger.
But when she arrived at the corner where the young people had established themselves she was not met with cordiality. Anna Reese and Betty Bryson bowed to her, but Isabel Cresson only stared.
"Oh, why you're Marion Warren, aren't you?" she said with a condescending lift of her eyebrows. "How are you? It's ages since I've seen you. I thought you must have moved away."
Marion tried to explain that her father had been ill and she had not been able to be out, but Isabel was not listening. She had merely swept Marion with a disconcerting glance which made her suddenly aware that her dress was out of date, and her shoes were shabby, and then turned her eyes back to the young men with whom she had been talking when Marion arrived.
Marion mechanically finished her sentence about her father's recent death, feeling most uncomfortable and wishing she had not explained at all. Isabel turned her glance back toward her long enough to say, "Oh, too bad. I'm sorry, I'm sure," and then got up and moved across to the other side of the circle to speak to one of the young men. She did not excuse herself nor say she would be back. She did not suggest introducing Marion to the young men. No one made any attempt to move or include her in their circle. She dropped down in a chair just behind them, too hurt and bewildered to get herself away from them immediately.
The girls and men chattered on for some minutes ignoring her utterly. Once she heard Isabel say with a light laugh in response to something one of the men had said:
"Yes, one meets so many common people at a church affair, don't you think? I've coaxed Uncle Rad to let us go to some more exclusive church out in a suburb you know, or uptown, but he doesn't see it. He was born and brought up in this church and nothing will do but we've all got to come. I've struck, however. I simply can't stand the affairs they have here constantly. I only came to-night because I was asked to sing. Say Ed, did you hear that Jefferson Lyman is home ? That's another reason I came. They say he is coming here to-night just for old times' sake. I don't much believe it but I took the chance."
"And who is Jefferson Lyman?" asked the young man who was evidently a newcomer in town.
"Oh, mercy, don't you know Jeff? Why he's an old sweetheart of mine. We used to be crazy about each other when we were kids. Walked back and forth to school together and all that. Jeff's been abroad for five or six years, and they say he's tremendously sophisticated. I'm just dying to see him."
"But who is he ? Does he live around here ? Not one of the Lymans, from the Lyman firm? "
"Sure, boy! " said Isabel. " He's the Lyman himself, all there is left. Didn't you know it? His father and his uncle are both dead. That's why he's come home. He's to be the head of the firm now. He's young, too, for such a position. But he's been abroad a lot. That makes a difference. I'm simply crazy to see him and renew our acquaintance. Yes, he went abroad for the war, of course, was in aviation, won a lot of medals and things; and then he stayed over there, looking after the firm's interests part of the time, travelling and studying. He's a great bookworm, you know. But he's stunningly handsome, if he hasn't changed, and he's no end rich. My soul! He owns the whole business and it's been going ever since the ark, hasn't it? He's got a house in town right on the avenue with a picture gallery in it; that house next the Masonic Club, yes, that's it, and an estate out beyond the township line on a hillside where you can see for miles, and a whole flock of automobiles, and an army of servants, and a seashore place up in New England with a wonderful garden right out on the beach almost, among the rocks. Oh, it's perfectly darling. We motored past it last summer on our trip. I'd adore to live in it! "
"Gracious!" said Betty Bryson. "If he's got all that why does he come to a church social? I'm sure I wouldn't bother to if I had all that."
"Well, perhaps he won't come," said Isabel. ''I'm sure I wouldn't either. But they say he's interested in the church because his father helped to found it, and he always comes when he's home and there's anything unusual going on. You know this is the minister's twenty-fifth anniversary, and there's just a chance he may come. I should think he'd be disillusioned, though, wouldn't you ? All these common people. Why some of them aren't even dressed up decently! " and Isabel lowered her voice and cast a covert glance about. Marion somehow felt she was looking at her. She rose suddenly and made her swift way toward the kitchen. She would look up the woman who had asked her to come and say she would have to go home, she was not feeling well or something. She simply could not go around among those dressed-up girls. She would drop something, surely, feeling like this. Oh, why had she been led to come to a scene like this? Why did they have things of this sort anyway? There was no worship in it, and what else could people want of it? How terrible those girls had been. Cruel and terrible. And Isabel Cresson, how she had changed and coarsened. Her lips and cheeks were painted. What a difference it made in her. She used to be a pretty girl with lovely golden curly hair, and now it was all cut off, close, like a boy's. That might be pretty on some people, perhaps, but Isabel looked too big and old for it.
Marion's pale cheeks were flushed now, and her tired eyes bright with distress. She had never had quite such an experience as this, being turned down by an old schoolmate. One who had been under obligation to her, too. In the old days. What was the trouble? Wasn't she dressed right?
She glanced down at her plain brown dress, made in the fashion of two years ago. It was still fresh and good, but of course the fashion was behind the times. Why hadn't she realized that she needed to furbish up her wardrobe before going out into the world? She must attend to that before she went anywhere, even to church again. But what kind of people were they all to look down on an old acquaintance just because she was oddly dressed? She had been shut away from the world so long that she had got far away from the sense of worldliness. How odd it was that just dress made so much difference. And what a silly she was. Was she going to cry right there in the church before all those people? Oh, Jennie and Tom had been all wrong! She was not fit to go out anywhere. She was all tired out and needed to stay at home and rest and just be quiet.
She was edging her way through the merry crowds toward the church kitchen now, hoping to make her excuses and get away, when the minister loomed In her way and greeted her with a royal smile, and his wife put a comforting arm around her and began talking In a low tone saying dear things about her father; telling her just how she had felt when her father was taken away. The tight lines of suffering around Marion's delicate lips relaxed a little and she began to look almost happy. Then with a swoop Mrs. Shuttle, the chairman of the entertainment committee arrived:
"Well, here you are at last, Marion Warren!" she exclaimed in a loud voice that made Marion shrink. ''We've been looking all over the place for you. We want you terribly in the kitchen right away. The woman we hired to wash dishes hasn't come yet. She's always late nowadays. She's got a little baby and can't leave early, and we find the Christian Endeavor used the glasses and ice cream plates at their last social and just left them in the closet dirty! Isn't that the limit ? Something ought to be done about that. And see, we're almost ready to serve and not enough ice-cream plates nor glasses. You wouldn't mind washing a few for us would you, Marion? I told them I thought you wouldn't. We're almost wild back there in the kitchen. Come on! "
So Marion vanished into the kitchen and was presently established