And for one weak moment he thought, “I don’t believe I want any dinner. They’ll be sure to have refreshments at the Hawthorns’.” But he did go down.
Everything on the menu in French! He knew what some of the words meant, and he could have pronounced them splendidly to the girls, but pronouncing them to the waiter who had been fairly sputtering French to another waiter was different.
“Er—how is this today?”
The man stopped humming a little song up above Victor’s head, and asked meanly, ignoring his pointing finger:
“How is what, sir?”
How purposeful and efficient the other diners looked, how perfectly clear about everything. He finished his first course, moved his glass to hide a spot of gravy on the table cloth, and waited for his chocolate ice-cream.
He waited and waited. Other people who had come in after him finished their dinner and went. He wouldn’t stand it! He frowned, drumming on the table, and looked at his watch. Well, he had a long, long time before he need leave the hotel, but still he wasn’t going to sit there and be ignored. He tried to see his waiter among those who skated past with bowls of salad or tureens of soup, who set down the dishes with a flourish that was almost a caress.
He wouldn’t stand it another minute! And he said meekly to a waiter so young and inexperienced that he allowed his eye to be caught:
“Oh—would you mind telling my waiter I’m ready for my ice-cream now?”
And all of a sudden, for the first time, he really felt, he really believed that in two or three hours he was going to see Lucy. He could feel his heart thumping; he was dizzy, dreamy with happiness.
“Anything more, sir?”
“Oh-a—what?”
He must have eaten his ice-cream without ever noticing it, lost in thoughts of Lucy, for there was the saucer in front of him, with just a few pale brown streaks left in it.
He was almost on the Hawthorns’ steps before he decided that he was too early. So he took a long walk; and, when he came back, music was pouring from the open windows, carriages were rolling up and away, and a small crowd was watching gentlemen in crush hats and ladies in swansdown sortie des bals skim over the scarlet carpet from carriage to door. He followed them in more haughtily than any king.
Out of the blur, among all the people to whom he gave his beaming smile and dazzled blue gaze, he saw only Lucy—Lucy with her silky hair and apple-blossom skin, wearing a blue satin gown hand-painted with daisies, with a tight little basque buttoned down the front and a great, long grownup train pouring out from masses of puffs and drapings.
The pianist flung up his hands and scattered a shower of silver drops. Flute, harp, and violin awoke; and at last Victor and Lucy were dancing together.
One, two, three, and a one, two, three!
He wished it had been a waltz—there was something so brisk about a polka. And what a crowd! Bump! “Excuse me, Lucy!” Bump! “Excuse me!”
Flowers everywhere—roses, carnations, heliotrope. And masses and masses of lilies-of-the-valley—his were a drop in the sea, lost.
Bump!
“It’s such a jam, let’s go to the conservatory,” Lucy suggested a little breathlessly. “Doesn’t the fountain sound cool? Oh, Victor, thank you so much for the beautiful flowers—see, I’m wearing a little bunch of them, they’re so much bigger and sweeter than the ones that came from the florist’s!”
Her hand poised above his flowers among the laces at her bosom, touched them lightly as a hovering white butterfly. The darling! The darling! His heart swelled with gratitude and love.
“Why, they aren’t anything—really! I just thought—”
“Oh, dear, there’s the music—I must fly!”
“Lucy—how soon can I have another dance?”
“Oh, Victor, I’m terribly sorry, but—”
“Oh, that’s all right!” he assured her, too quickly, too eagerly.
“But I’ll introduce you to some nice girls.”
“Damn some nice girls!” he wanted to shout. But what he said was:
“That’ll be fine.”
“But didn’t I meet you at dinner?” asked the first nice girl.
“At dinner?”
“Yes, here at Lucy’s dinner tonight?”
“Oh—no! No, I couldn’t get here to dinner,” Victor assured her. “I was unavoidably detained.”
Bump!
“Suppose we go to the conservatory—it’s lots too crowded for dancing,” said the nice girl. She stole a look at her new pink satin slippers—he had danced all over them! She pulled up her gloves, settled her bangles, and unfurled her fan with the swansdown edge.
“Doesn’t the fountain sound cool, Mr.—eh—?”
He had never felt so forlorn and homesick in his life. The music rose and fell sadly—a waltz, this time. Stay with me, my love, my love! No, I cannot stay.
He squeezed his hands in their new white kid gloves between his knees. “The fountain sounds cool, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Maggie had said, “Don’t come home the day after the dance—stay two nights. As long as you’re in New York you might as well really see it. And if the Hawthorns ask you to spend a few days, just you do it!”
So no one was expecting him as he bumped up the porch steps with his bag the afternoon after the ball. The lilies-of-the-valley perfumed the air—he was almost surprised that they were still in bloom, it seemed so long since he left home yesterday morning. How strange to see the house when he was supposed to be miles and miles away, looking just as it would have looked if at this minute he had still been in New York. May’s flower scissors and a litter of wet stems and leaves, Lily’s old shade hat with its muslin bow, Maggie’s muddy overshoes, and Maggie herself coming up from the chicken-yard.
“Victor!” And then the delight changed to lamenting. “Oh, I told the butcher not to stop today!”
At her cry May and Lily came bursting out of the house to welcome him, to ask him a hundred questions.
“Have they an elegant house?”
“Didn’t
