The Main Chance Part 11

"I'm sorry I can't congratulate you," he said grimly. "You have no business mixing up with their infernal idiocy. I've been expecting to hear that you'd refused." He grew hot as he went on. "Your father oughtn't to make you do such a thing."

"Warry!" She sat up straight and bent toward him in an att.i.tude of remonstrance; "you really mustn't! Why, I'm amazed at you!"

The enormity of the thing, as Raridan saw it, had grown on him since his talk with Saxton, and he did not relent; but he relaxed his severity for the moment, to a.s.sume an aggrieved air.

"Maybe I'm presuming too far on old acquaintance!" he said gloomily.

"I still have that copy of Aldrich you gave me once,--you remember that they

'Met as acquaintances meet, Smiling, tranquil-eyed-- Not even the least little beat Of the heart, upon either side!'

But,--should old acquaintance be forgot?" she hummed. He was still a spoilt boy who had to be coaxed into good humor.

"You know what I mean, Evelyn. I feel a particular interest in having you start right here, now that you've come home to stay. People will be surprised to hear of your taking a part like that; they want to take you seriously. You've been to college--"

"Oh, Warry!" she cried appealingly. "And are you to throw this at me? A few minutes ago you were complaining that people wouldn't take you seriously, but I'm afraid they want to take me much too seriously. I don't like it! In fact, I don't intend to have it!"

"But you don't mean to get down to a level with these girls who've been ground out of boarding schools, and who don't know anything? The kind that play badly on the piano, or sing worse, and come home to mix Fifth Avenue boarding school with Missouri River every-day life!"

"I'm really disappointed in you. I supposed you weren't like the others.

A few days ago some estimable women called here to get me to become a candidate for school commissioner. They talked beautifully to me. There was one of them, a Miss Morris--" Raridan extended his arms to Heaven, as if imploring mercy--"who told me that I was a bachelor of arts and that all kinds of things were therefore to be expected of me."

"But I don't mean that! It's just that sort of thing I think you ought to keep free from,--it's this awful publicity; it's making yourself public property! Women must keep out of such things. School commissioner!" His spirits were rising again and he laughed aloud.

"Wouldn't you vote for me?"

He stared. "You're not going to--"

"Decidedly not. I want you to understand, and everybody to find out that I'm a very ordinary being. I hope if I've learned anything in college it's common sense. I don't feel a bit interested in regulating the universe, or in getting more rights for women, or in politics of any kind, any more than every sane woman is interested in such things. About this carnival and the ball, I don't mind telling you that I dislike it particularly. But I'm going to do it for two reasons, to be much franker with you than you deserve; to please father, for whom I can do very little, and to set at rest this idea about my being a divinely gifted individual who has come home from college to rub up the universe with a witch cloth. And now, Warrick Raridan, we will, if you please, consider the incident closed; and if you are very good you may dance with me at the ball."

"Oh, the n.o.ble king will have first place there."

"Well, if you're the king you can't object," she said. "I'm sure I don't know who the king's to be--"

"Well, I do--"

"Then you needn't tell me, please. I want to be surprised."

"But he's likely to be somebody you won't care to know under any circ.u.mstances," he persisted. His contempt for the carnival and his rage at the thought of this girl being publicly identified with Wheaton rose in him and he grew morose again. Evelyn, seeing another storm, approaching and wis.h.i.+ng to restore his good humor, returned to her expected guests and her plans for entertaining them.

It must be confessed that in her heart Evelyn was one of those who, in Raridan's own phrase, did not take him seriously. She had seen more of him than of any other man. She had a great fondness for him, and she was glad to find that after her absences he always came to the house as if there had been no break, and took up their pleasant comrades.h.i.+p where they had left it. She had speculated not a little as to the violent flirtations which he carried on so openly, and had wondered whether he would sometime grow serious in one of them, and what manner of girl would finally steady him and win him to a real affection. She did not understand the mood that had swayed him, or that seemed about to sway him to-night; but a woman's natural instinct in such matters had warned her that he wanted to change their old att.i.tude toward each other, and she knew that she did not want to change it. She liked his gentleness, his humor and his generous impulses. She had seen enough of the world to know that the qualities which set him apart from most men were rare. His likings in themselves were unusual, and though they were not sincere enough for his own good, they const.i.tuted an element of charm in him.

His easy susceptibility was amusing; and it was no more marked in flirtations with girls than in dallyings with books or pictures or music. He was certainly a delightful companion, almost as satisfactory to talk to as a bright girl! She felt, though, that there was a real power in him; she could dramatize him in situations where he would be a leader of forlorn hopes on battlefields; but she stopped short of loving him; she had, she told herself, no idea of loving any one now; but neither did she wish to lose a friend who was so entirely agreeable and charming. She resolved as they sat talking of perfectly safe matters, that their old footing must be maintained, and she felt confident that she could manage this.

"Don't you like John Saxton very much?" he asked, and she felt that the day was saved when he would talk of another man. "I like him better all the time."

"Yes; people are saying agreeable things about him. But he's pretty serious, isn't he?"

"Well, that makes him a good companion for me, you know. Acute gaiety is diagnosed as my chief trouble," he said, a little bitterly. He was trying to feel his way back to the talk of an hour ago, but she had resolved not to have it so.

"It's very nice of you to be kind to him."

"If you mean that I bring him up here, that isn't kindness, it's just ordinary decent humanity."

He was cheerful again, and he went away a.s.suring her that he would be at the station to meet the approaching visitors the following afternoon. He abused himself, as he went down the hill toward the electric lights of the city, for having permitted Evelyn to defeat him in what he had intended to say. He stopped on the long viaduct that spanned the railway tracks and looked moodily down on the lights of the switch targets and the signal lanterns of the trainmen. Then he turned his eyes toward the Porter house which stood darkly against the starlit sky among the trees.

As he looked a light flashed suddenly in the tower. He laughed softly to himself as he turned with a quickened step on his way.

"Maybe it's Evelyn, and maybe it's the cook; but any lady in a tower!

The thought of it doth please me well."

CHAPTER X

A WRECKED CANNA BED

Raridan was at the station to meet Evelyn's guests, as he had promised.

He had established a claim upon their notice on the occasion of one of his visits to Evelyn at college, and he greeted them with an air of possession which would have been intolerable in another man. He pressed Miss Warren for news of the Connecticut nutmeg crop, and hoped that Miss Marshall had not lost her accent in crossing the Missouri, while he begged their baggage checks and waved their minor impedimenta into the hands of the station porters.

Wise men, long ago, abandoned the hope of accounting for college friends.h.i.+ps in either s.e.x, and there was nothing proved in Evelyn's case by her choice of these young women as her intimate friends. Annie Warren was as reserved and quiet as Evelyn could be in her soberest moments; Belle Marshall was as frank and friendly as Evelyn became in her lightest moods. Evelyn had been the beauty of her cla.s.s; her two friends were what is called, by people that wish to be kind, nice looking. Annie Warren had been the best scholar in her cla.s.s; Belle Marshall had been among the poorest; and Evelyn had maintained a happy medium between the two. And so it fortunately happened that the trio mitigated one another's imperfections.

Evelyn had summoned her guests at this time princ.i.p.ally to have their support through the carnival. They made light of the perplexities and difficulties of Evelyn's own partic.i.p.ation when she unfolded them; there would be a lot of fun in it, they thought, and they deemed it, too, a recognition of Evelyn's fine qualities. They were fresh from college and they could see nothing in the carnival and the coronation of the carnival's queen that was inconsistent with a girl's dignity; it ranked at least with some of the festivals of girl's colleges. The whole matter presently resolved itself into the question of clothes, and Evelyn's coronation gown was laid before them and duly praised.

"It is worth while," declared Miss Marshall, "to have a chance to wear clothes like that just once in your life."

Evelyn had discussed with her father ways and means of entertaining her guests; he was anxious for her to celebrate her home-coming with a great deal of entertaining. He preferred large functions, perhaps for the reason that he could lose himself better in them than in small gatherings, in which his responsibilities as host could not be dodged.

In a large company he could take one or two of his old friends into a corner and enjoy a smoke with them. He wished Evelyn to give a lawn party before the blight of fall came upon his flowers and shrubbery; but she persuaded him to wait until after the carnival. He still felt a little guilty about having asked Evelyn to appear in this public way, but she showed no resentment; she was honestly glad to do anything that would please him. The ball was near at hand and she proposed that they give a small dinner in the interval.

"I'll ask Warry and Mr. Saxton." People were already coupling Saxton's name with Raridan's.

"Oh, yes, that's all right."

"I don't want very many; I'd like to ask the Whipples;" she went on, with the anxious, far-away look that comes into the eyes of a woman who is weighing dinner guests or matching fabrics.

"Can't you ask Wheaton?" ventured Mr. Porter cautiously from behind his paper. Men grow humble in such matters from the long series of rejections to which they are subjected by the women of their households.

"If you say so," Evelyn a.s.sented. "He isn't exciting, but Belle Marshall can get on with anybody. I'm out of practice and won't try too many.

Mrs. Whipple will help over the hard places."

Finally, however, her party numbered ten, but it seemed to Wheaton a large a.s.semblage. He had never taken a lady in to dinner before, but he had studied a book of etiquette, and the chapter on "Dining Out" had given him a hint of what was expected. It had not, however, supplied him with a fund of talk, but he was glad to find, when he reached the table, that the company was so small that talk could be general, and he was thankful for the shelter made for him by the light banter which followed the settling of chairs. Saxton went in with Evelyn, who wished to make amends for his clumsy reception on the occasion of his first appearance in the house.

"I'm glad you could come to our board once without being snubbed by the maid," she said to John, when they were seated.

"I came under convoy of Mr. Raridan this time. I find that he is pretty hard to lose."