The Blood Red Dawn. Charles Caldwell Dobie
excited for calm enjoyment. Supper followed—creamed minced chicken and extraordinarily thin sandwiches, and a dry, pale wine that Claire found at first rather distasteful. Claire sat with a little group composed of Mrs. Condor, Ned Stillman, a fashionable young man, Phil Edington, who frankly confessed boredom at all things musical except one-steps and fox-trots, and two or three artistic-looking souls who pretended to be quite shocked by young Edington's frankness.
Conversation veered naturally to the subject of the war. Edington had tried for a commission in an officers' training-camp and failed. He was extraordinarily frank about it all, and good-natured at the chaffing that Mrs. Condor and Stillman threw at him.
"I'm going to wait now and be drafted," he announced. "As long as I failed to make a high grade I want to begin at the bottom and see the whole picture."
Claire rather waited for a word from Stillman as to his convictions on the subject. Of course one could see that he was over the draft age, still. … For the most part she was silent, but happy and content. By contributing her share to the evening's entertainment she had justified her presence. Wine as a factor in midnight suppers was a new but not a revolutionary experience to Claire Robson, but she gasped a bit when the maid passed cigarettes to the ladies. And yet she felt a delicious sense of being a party to something quite daring and outré, although she did not have either courage or skill to enjoy one of the slender, gold-tipped delights.
The time for departure finally came. Claire rose reluctantly. Mrs. Condor, slipping one arm in Phil Edington's and the other in Claire's, sauntered with them toward the entrance hall.
"I say," ventured Edington as Stillman caught up to the group. "What's the matter with just us four dropping down to the Palace for a whirl or two?"
Claire stared. She had not grown used to the novelty of being included, but any instinctive objections to the plan were promptly silenced by Mrs. Condor's enthusiastic approval.
They arrived at the Palace Hotel shortly before midnight. The Rose Room was crowded. All the tables seemed filled, and Claire had a moment of disappointment caused by the fear that their party would be unable to gain admittance. But young Edington's presence soon set any uneasiness on that score at rest, and a place was evolved with deftness and despatch. The novelty of the situation to Claire was nothing compared with her matter-of-fact acceptance of it. She was neither self-conscious nor timid. Her three companions had a way of tacitly including her in even their trivial chatter that was unmistakable, though hard to define. She felt that she was one of them, and she blossomed in this strange new warmth like a chilled blossom at the final approach of a belated spring. All evening her starved sense of self-importance had been feeding greedily upon the compliments that had come her way. There had been her mother's rather apologetic words of approval at her appearance, to begin with, then Mrs. Condor's appreciation at the piano, and finally a word dropped by one of the women who had shared a mirror with her at the hour of departure.
"How do you manage your hair, Miss Robson?" the other had said, digging viciously at her shifting locks with a hairpin. "I do declare you're the only woman in the room that looks presentable."
But it was Edington's words to Stillman while they stood waiting for the hotel attendants to prepare the table that brought a quickened beat to her heart. The conversation was low and not meant for her ears, but her senses were too sharpened to miss Edington's furtive words as he whispered to Stillman:
"Where did … amazing. … Miss Robson?"
Claire did not catch the reply which must have also been something of a query, but she heard Edington continue.
"Well … a little too silent, I must admit. … No, I don't dislike 'em that way … but I'm afraid of them."
Stillman answered with a low laugh.
They sat down. Edington ordered wine. The crowd at the tables was rather a mixed one. There was plenty of elaborate gowning among the groups of formal diners who had prolonged their feasting into the supper hour, but many casuals, drifting in for a few drinks and a dance or two, robbed the scene of its earlier brilliance.
The orchestra struck up a one-step. Claire denied Stillman the dance, explaining that she knew none of the new steps, and he whirled away with Mrs. Condor. Edington, robbed of his chance, pouted unashamed.
"I say, Miss Robson, can't you do a one-step—really? There isn't anything to it! Come on—try; I'll pull you through."
Claire's knowledge of dancing was instinctive, but not a matter of much practice, yet his distress was so comic that she relented. She wondered if he could feel her trembling as they swung into the dance. She stumbled once or twice from timidity, but Edington guided unerringly. Half-way round she suddenly struck the proper swing.
"There—that's it," cried Edington, enthusiastically. "Now you've got it! Fine!"
His praise mounted to her brain like a heady wine, and suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, all the repressed youth within her awoke with a sweet and terrible joy. … They danced madly, perfectly, the rhythm entering into them like something at once fluid and flaming. Her ecstasy awoke a vague response in her partner, who bent forward as he kept repeating, monotonously:
"And you said you couldn't, Miss Robson! Fancy, you said you couldn't!"
The music stopped abruptly with a crash. Some of the dancers made their way leisurely back among the tables, but the most of them wandered about the polished' floor, clapping insistent hands for an encore. In this brief interlude, groups arrived and departed. The musicians lifted their instruments to chin and lip, struck an opening chord; couples began to whirl and glide. Claire Robson, palpitant and eager, followed Edington's lead, but almost at the first moment of their rhythmic flight they came crashing into the overcoated bulk of a man cutting across the corner of the ballroom in an attempt at a swift exit. A smothered protest escaped Edington, and Claire detached herself from her partner long enough to see the offender bow very low and hear his apology in a voice and manner that seemed curiously familiar:
"I beg your pardon. Pray forgive me! I should have known better."
In the twinkling of an eye the interrupted dancers were sweeping on again, and the apologetic stranger, hat in hand, turning for a farewell look at the pair. Claire Robson felt an up-leap of the heart; a fresh ecstasy quickened her. It was the Serbian!
They finished the dance almost opposite their table and were met by a patter of applause from Mrs. Condor and Stillman, who were already seated.
Claire was flaming with embarrassment as she faced Stillman.
"I hope you'll understand, Mr. Stillman," she faltered. "But Mr. Edington seemed willing to risk my ignorance."
Mrs. Condor turned Claire's plaintive apology into a covert attack upon Stillman's courage, but Stillman rescued Claire from further confusion by laughing back:
"Well, I'll have my revenge on Edington. I'll grant him all the one-steps, but he can't have any of the waltzes, Miss Robson."
The waiter began to pour out the champagne. Claire settled back in her seat with a feeling of delightful languor. The dance had released all the pent-up emotions that a night of vivid sensations had called into her life. She had come into the Rose Room of the Palace Hotel quivering in the leash of a restrained enjoyment; it had taken the quick lash of opportunity to send her spirits hurtling forward in wild and headlong abandon. She lifted her wine-glass in answer to the upraised glasses of her companions, and the thought flashed over her that it would be impossible for her to have quite her old vision again. In every life there are culminating moments of joy or sorrow which either clear or dim the horizon, and Claire felt that such moment was now hers.
Stillman rose promptly in his seat at the first strains of the waltz, which proved to be the next number. Claire stepped out upon the floor with confidence.
She did not need any word of reassurance this time to tell her that her dancing was more than acceptable, and, true to her brief experience with Stillman, he refrained from voicing the obvious. They had begun the dance promptly and for the first whirl about they had the floor