Running Water Part 14

Sylvia went into the dining-room across the narrow hall, where a cold supper was laid upon a round table. In spite of her resolve to see all things in a rosy light, she grew conscious, in spite of herself, that she was disappointed in her father's friends. She was perplexed, too. He was so clearly head and shoulders above his a.s.sociates, that she wondered at their presence in his house. Yet he seemed quite content, and in a most genial mood.

"You sit here, Sylvia, my dear," he said, pointing to a chair.

"Wallie"--this to the youth Hine--"sit beside my daughter and keep her amused. Barstow, you on the other side; Parminter next to me."

He sat opposite Sylvia and the rest took their places, Hine sidling timidly into his chair and tortured by the thought that he had to amuse this delicate being at his side.

"The supper is on the table," said Garratt Skinner. "Parminter, will you cut up this duck? Hine, what have you got in front of you? Really, this is so exceptional an occasion that I think--" he started up suddenly, as a man will with a new and happy idea--"I certainly think that for once in a way we might open a bottle of champagne."

Surprise and applause greeted this brilliant idea, and Hine cried out:

"I think champagne fine, don't you, Miss Skinner?"

He collapsed at his own boldness. Parminter shrugged his shoulders to show that champagne was an every-day affair with him.

"It's drunk a good deal at the clubs nowadays," he said.

Meanwhile Garratt Skinner had not moved. He stood looking across the table to his daughter.

"What do you say, Sylvia? It's an extravagance. But I don't have such luck every day. It's in your honor. Shall we? Yes, then!"

He did not wait for an answer, but opened the door of a cupboard in the sideboard, and there, quite ready, stood half a dozen bottles of champagne. A doubt flashed into Sylvia's mind--a doubt whether her father's brilliant idea was really the inspiration which his manner had suggested. Those bottles looked so obviously got in for the occasion.

But Garratt Skinner turned to her apologetically, as though he divined her thought.

"We don't run to a wine cellar, Sylvia. We have to keep what little stock we can afford in here."

Her doubt vanished, but in an instant it returned again, for as her father came round the table with the bottle in his hand, she noticed that shallow champagne gla.s.ses were ready laid at every place. Garratt Skinner filled the gla.s.ses and returned to his place.

"Sylvia," he said, and, smiling, he drank to her. He turned to his companions. "Congratulate me!" Then he sat down.

The champagne thawed the tongues of the company, and as they spoke Sylvia's heart sank more and more. For in word and thought and manner her father's guests were familiar to her. She refused to acknowledge it, but the knowledge was forced upon her. She had thought to step out of a world which she hated, against which her delicacy and her purity revolted, and lo! she had stepped out merely to take a stride and step down into it again at another place.

The obsequious attentiveness of Captain Barstow, the vanity of Mr.

Parminter and his affected voice, suggesting that he came out of the great world to this little supper party, really without any sense of condescension at all, and the behavior of Walter Hine, who, to give himself courage, gulped down his champagne--it was all horribly familiar.

Her one consolation was her father. He sat opposite to her, his strong aquiline face a fine contrast to the faces of the others; he had an ease of manner which they did not possess; he talked with a quietude of his own, and he had a watchful eye and a ready smile for his daughter.

Indeed, it seemed that what she felt his guests felt too. For they spoke to him with a certain deference, almost as if they spoke to their master.

He alone apparently noticed no unsuitability in his guests. He sat at his ease, their bosom friend.

Meanwhile, plied with champagne by Archie Parminter, who sat upon the other side of him, "Wallie" Hine began to boast. Sylvia tried to check him, but he was not now to be stopped. His very timidity p.r.i.c.ked him on to extravagance, and his boasting was that worst form of boasting--the vaunt of the innocent weakling anxious to figure as a conqueror of women.

With a flushed face he dropped his foolish hints of Mrs. This and Lady That, with an eye upon Sylvia to watch the impression which he made, and a wise air which said "If only I were to tell you all."

Garratt Skinner opened a fresh bottle of champagne--the supply by now was getting low--and came round the table with it. As he held the neck of the bottle to the brim of Hine's gla.s.s he caught an appealing look from his daughter. At once he lifted the bottle and left the gla.s.s unfilled. As he pa.s.sed Sylvia, she said in a low voice:

"Thank you," and he whispered back:

"You are quite right, my dear. Interest him so that he doesn't notice that I have left his gla.s.s empty."

Sylvia set herself then to talk to Wallie Hine. But he was intent on making her understand what great successes had been his. He _would_ talk, and it troubled her that all listened, and listened with an air of admiration. Even her father from his side of the table smiled indulgently. Yet the stories, or rather the hints of stories, were certainly untrue. For this her wanderings had taught her--the man of many successes never talks. It seemed that there was a conspiracy to flatter the wretched youth.

"Yes, yes. You have been a devil of a fellow among the women, Wallie,"

said Captain Barstow. But at once Garratt Skinner interfered and sharply:

"Come, come, Barstow! That's no language to use before my daughter."

Captain Barstow presented at the moment a remarkable gradation of color.

On the top was the bald head, very s.h.i.+ny and white, below that a face now everywhere a deep red except where the swollen veins stood out upon the surface of his cheeks, and those were purple, and this in its turn was enclosed by the black square beard. He bowed at once to Garratt Skinner's rebuke.

"I apologize. I do indeed, Miss Sylvia! But when I was in the service we still clung to the traditions of Wellington by--by George. And it's hard to break oneself of the habit. 'Red-hot,'" he said, with a chuckle.

"That's what they called me in the regiment. Red-hot Barstow. I'll bet that Red-hot Barstow is still pretty well remembered among the boys at Cheltenham."

"Swearing's bad form nowadays," said Archie Parminter, superciliously.

"They have given it up at the clubs."

Sylvia seized the moment and rose from the table. Her father sprang forward and opened the door.

"We will join you in a few minutes," he said.

Sylvia went down the pa.s.sage to the room at the back of the house in which she had been presented by her father to his friends. She rang the bell at once and when the servant came she said:

"I gave you a letter to post this evening. I should like to have it back."

"I am sorry, miss, but it's posted."

"I am sorry, too," said Sylvia, quietly.

The letter had been written to Chayne, and gave him the address of this house as the place where he might find her if he called. She had no thought of going away. She had made her choice for good or ill and must abide by it. That she knew. But she was no longer sure that she wished Captain Chayne to come and find her there.

CHAPTER X

A LITTLE ROUND GAME OF CARDS

Sylvia sat down in a chair and waited. She waited impatiently, for she knew that she had almost reached the limits of her self-command, and needed the presence of others to keep her from breaking down. But her native courage came to her aid, and in half an hour she heard the steps of her father and his guests in the pa.s.sage. She noticed that her father looked anxiously toward her as he came in.

"Do you mind if we bring in our cigars?" he asked.

"Not at all," said she; and he came in, carrying in his hand a box of cigars, which he placed in the middle of the table. Wallie Hine at once stumbled across the room to Sylvia; he walked unsteadily, his features were more flushed than before. She shrank a little from him.

But he had not the time to sit down beside her, for Captain Barstow exclaimed jovially:

"I say, Garratt, I have an idea. There are five of us here. Let us have a little round game of cards."

Sylvia started. In her heart she knew that just some such proposal as this she had been dreading all the evening. Her sinking hopes died away altogether.

This poor witless youth, plied with champagne; the older men who flattered him with lies; the suggestion of champagne made as though it were a sudden inspiration, and the six bottles standing ready in the cupboard; and now the suggestion of a little round game of cards made in just the same tone! Sylvia had a feeling of horror. She had kept herself unspotted from her world, but not through ignorance. She knew it. She knew those little round games of cards and what came of them, sometimes merely misery and ruin, sometimes a pistol shot in the early morning. She turned very pale, but she managed to say:

"Thank you. I don't play cards."