The Younger Set. Chambers Robert William
tank, goggling their eyes at the lights.
"You—you are living with the Gerards, I believe," she said carelessly.
"For a while."
"Oh, 'Boots' says that he is expecting to take an apartment with you somewhere."
"What! Has 'Boots' resigned?"
"So he says. He told me that you had resigned. I did not understand that; I imagined you were here on leave until I heard about Neergard & Co."
"Do you suppose I could have remained in the service?" he demanded. His voice was dry and almost accentless.
"Why not?" she returned, paling.
"You may answer that question more pleasantly than I can."
She usually avoided champagne; but she had to do something for herself now. As for him, he took what was offered without noticing what he took, and grew whiter and whiter; but a fixed glow gradually appeared and remained on her cheeks; courage, impatience, a sudden anger at the forced conditions steadied her nerves.
"Will you please prove equal to the situation?" she said under her breath, but with a charming smile. "Do you know you are scowling? These people here are ready to laugh; and I'd much prefer that they tear us to rags on suspicion of our over-friendliness."
"Who is that fool woman who is monopolising your partner?"
"Rosamund Fane; she's doing it on purpose. You must try to smile now and then."
"My face is stiff with grinning," he said, "but I'll do what I can for you—"
"Please include yourself, too."
"Oh, I can stand their opinions," he said; "I only meet the yellow sort occasionally; I don't herd with them."
"I do, thank you."
"How do you like them? What is your opinion of the yellow set? Here they sit all about you—the Phoenix Mottlys, Mrs. Delmour-Carnes yonder, the Draymores, the Orchils, the Vendenning lady, the Lawns of Westlawn—" he paused, then deliberately—"and the 'Jack' Ruthvens. I forgot, Alixe, that you are now perfectly equipped to carry aloft the golden hod."
"Go on," she said, drawing a deep breath, but the fixed smile never altered.
"No," he said; "I can't talk. I thought I could, but I can't. Take that boy away from Mrs. Fane as soon as you can."
"I can't yet. You must go on. I ask your aid to carry this thing through. I—I am afraid of their ridicule. Could you try to help me a little?"
"If you put it that way, of course." And, after a silence, "What am I to say? What in God's name shall I say to you, Alixe?"
"Anything bitter—as long as you control your voice and features. Try to smile at me when you speak, Philip."
"All right. I have no reason to be bitter, anyway," he said; "and every reason to be otherwise."
"That is not true. You tell me that I have ruined your career in the army. I did not know I was doing it. Can you believe me?"
And, as he made no response: "I did not dream you would have to resign. Do you believe me?"
"There is no choice," he said coldly. "Drop the subject!"
"That is brutal. I never thought—" She forced a smile and drew her glass toward her. The straw-tinted wine slopped over and frothed on the white skin of her arm.
"Well," she breathed, "this ghastly dinner is nearly ended."
He nodded pleasantly.
"And—Phil?"—a bit tremulous.
"What?"
"Was it all my fault? I mean in the beginning? I've wanted to ask you that—to know your view of it. Was it?"
"No. It was mine, most of it."
"Not all—not half! We did not know how; that is the wretched explanation of it all."
"And we could never have learned; that's the rest of the answer. But the fault is not there."
"I know; 'better to bear the ills we have.'"
"Yes; more respectable to bear them. Let us drop this in decency's name, Alixe!"
After a silence, she began: "One more thing—I must know it; and I am going to ask you—if I may. Shall I?"
He smiled cordially, and she laughed as though confiding a delightful bit of news to him:
"Do you regard me as sufficiently important to dislike me?"
"I do not—dislike you."
"Is it stronger than dislike, Phil?"
"Y-es."
"Contempt?"
"No."
"What is it?"
"It is that—I have not yet—become—reconciled."
"To my—folly?"
"To mine."
She strove to laugh lightly, and failing, raised her glass to her lips again.
"Now you know," he said, pitching his tones still lower. "I am glad after all that we have had this plain understanding. I have never felt unkindly toward you. I can't. What you did I might have prevented had I known enough; but I cannot help it now; nor can you if you would."
"If I would," she repeated gaily—for the people opposite were staring.
"We are done for," he said, nodding carelessly to a servant to refill his glass; "and I abide by conditions because I choose to; not," he added contemptuously, "because a complacent law has tethered you to—to the thing that has crawled up on your knees to have its ears rubbed."
The level insult to her husband stunned her; she sat there, upright, the white smile stamped on her stiffened lips, fingers tightening about the stem of her wine-glass.
He began to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. "I wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at him!—Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp. Little girl—oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—for you have done nothing to me, child, that can match it in sheer atrocity!"
Her colour was long in returning.
"Philip," she said unsteadily, "I don't think I can stand this—"
"Yes, you can."
"I am too close to the wall. I—"
"Talk to Scott Innis. Take him away from Rosamund Fane; that will tide you over. Or feed those fool fish; like this! Look how they rush and flap and spatter! That's amusing, isn't it—for people with the intellects of canaries. . . . Will you please try to say something? Mrs. T. West is exhibiting the restless symptoms of a hen turkey at sundown and we'll all go to roost in another minute. . . . Don't shiver that way!"
"I c-can't control it; I will in a moment. . . . Give me a chance; talk to me, Phil."
"Certainly. The season has been unusually gay and the opera most stupidly brilliant; stocks continue to fluctuate; another old woman was tossed and gored by a mad motor this morning. . . . More time, Alixe? . . . With pleasure; Mrs. Vendenning has bought a third-rate castle in Wales; a man was found dead with a copy of the Tribune in his pocket—the verdict being in accordance with fact; the Panama Canal—"
But it was over at last; a flurry of sweeping skirts; ranks of black and white in escort to the passage of the fluttering silken procession.
"Good-bye," she said; "I am not staying for the dance."
"Good-bye," he said pleasantly; "I wish you better fortune for the future. I'm sorry I was rough."
He was not staying, either. A dull excitement possessed him, resembling suspense—as though he were awaiting a dénouement; as though there was yet some crisis to come.
Several men leaned forward to talk to him; he heard without heeding, replied at hazard, lighted his cigar with the others, and leaned back, his coffee before him—a smiling, attractive young fellow, apparently in lazy enjoyment of the