Maggie was by turns quite silent and very talkative. When Paul and Etta were speaking together she never looked at them, but fixedly at her own plate, at a decanter, or a saltcellar. When she spoke she addressed her remarks—valueless enough in themselves—exclusively to the man she disliked, Claude de Chauxville.
There was something amiss in the pretty little room. There were shadows seated around that pretty little table à quatre, beside the guests in their pretty dresses and their black coats; silent cold shadows, who ate nothing, while they chilled the dainty food and took the sweetness from the succulent dishes. These shadows had crept in unawares, a silent partie carrée, to take their phantom places at the table, and only Etta seemed able to jostle hers aside and talk it down. She took the whole burden of the conversation upon her pretty shoulders, and bore it through the little banquet with unerring skill and unflinching good humor. In the midst of her merriest laughter, the clever gray eyes would flit from one man’s face to the other. Paul had been brought here to ask her to marry him. Claude de Chauxville had been invited that he might be tacitly presented to his successful rival. Maggie was there because she was a woman and made the necessary fourth. Puppets all, and two of them knew it. And some of us know it all our lives. We are living, moving puppets. We let ourselves be dragged here and pushed there, the victim of one who happens to have more energy of mind, a greater steadfastness of purpose, a keener grasp of the situation called life. We smirk and smile, and lose the game because we have begun by being anvils, and are afraid of trying to be hammers.
But Etta Sydney Bamborough had to deal with metal of a harder grain than the majority of us. Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to assume the humble role of anvil because he had no choice. Maggie Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen slowly, like the best fruit.
During the drive to the opera house the two women in Etta’s snug little brougham were silent. Etta had her thoughts to occupy her. She was at the crucial point of a difficult game. She could not afford to allow even a friend to see so much as the corners of the cards she held.
In the luxurious box it was easily enough arranged—Etta and Paul together in front, De Chauxville and Maggie at the other corner of the box.
“I have asked my friend Karl Steinmetz to come in during the evening,” said Paul to Etta when they were seated. “He is anxious to make your acquaintance. He is my—prime minister over in Russia.”
Etta smiled graciously.
“It is kind of him,” she answered, “to be anxious to make my acquaintance.”
She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying back mentally over half a dozen years. She had never had much to do with the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality. Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.
“At what time,” she asked, “is he coming in?”
“About half-past nine.”
Etta had a watch on a bracelet on her arm. Such women always know the time.
It was a race, and Etta won it. She had only half an hour. De Chauxville was there, and Maggie with her quiet, honest eyes. But the widow of Sydney Bamborough made Paul ask her to be his wife, and she promised to give him his answer later. She did it despite a thousand difficulties and more than one danger—accomplished it with, as the sporting people say, plenty to spare—before the door behind them was opened by the attendant, and Karl Steinmetz, burly, humorously imperturbable and impenetrable, stood smiling gravely on the situation.
He saw Claude de Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round the expression on Steinmetz’s large and placid countenance had changed from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to one of a dim recognition.
“I have had the pleasure of meeting madame somewhere before, I think. In St. Petersburg, was it not?”
Etta, composed and smiling, said that it was so, and introduced him to Maggie. De Chauxville took the opportunity of leaving that young lady’s side, and placing himself near enough to Paul and Etta to completely frustrate any further attempts at confidential conversation.
For a moment Steinmetz and Paul were left standing together.
“I have had a telegram,” said Steinmetz in Russian. “We must go back to Tver. There is cholera again. When can you come?”
Beneath his heavy mustache Paul bit his lip.
“In three days,” he answered.
“True? You will come with me?” enquired Steinmetz, under cover of the clashing music.
“Of course.”
Steinmetz looked at him curiously. He glanced toward Etta, but he said nothing.
VIII
Safe!
The season wore on to its perihelion—a period, the scientific books advise us, of the highest clang and crash of speed and whirl, of the greatest brilliancy and deepest glow of a planet’s existence. The business of life, the pursuit of pleasure, and the scientific demolition of our common enemy, Time, received all the care which such matters require.
Debutantes bloomed and were duly culled by aged connoisseurs of such wares, or by youthful aspirants with the means to pay the piper in the form of a handsome settlement. The usual number
