CHAPTER XII

Winter was coming over the town. The gripmen of the cable cars were muffled to their noses in heavy buffalo coats, and the pedestrians were heralded by the white steam that testified to the frostiness of the air. The newspaper boys performed "break downs" on the corners for the mere warmth thereof, and the beggars and tramps presented a more blue-nosed, frost-bitten appearance than usual.

Everybody was in town once more. The hills, the seaside and the watering places had all given up their summer captives, and the metropolis held them all. The Tremonts were returned from Europe. The opera season, promising better entertainment than ever, had lured many of the wealthier folk from the country, for the winter at least. Among these were the Wares. It was a fashion steadily increasing in favor, this of living in town the winter over, and retiring to rusticity for the dog days. With the Wares it was not yet become a fashion; it was merely in accordance with Dorothy's wish to hear the opera and the concert season that the move townward was made.

Mrs. Annie McCallum Stewart's little "evenings" were more popular than ever. There seemed a positive danger that she would become known as the possessor of a "salon" and have a society reporter describe a representative gathering of her satellites. On this particular evening the carriages drove up to the house and drove off again without intermission all the evening. People had a habit of coming there before the theatre, or after; of staying ten minutes or two hours, just as their fancy, or Mrs. Stewart might dictate.

One of the latest to arrive was Dick Lancaster. It was his first appearance there that season. He had only come because he had heard that Dorothy Ware was to be there. He hardly looked as well as usual. He had been working very hard, making up for the time lost in the country. His cheek-bones stood out a trifle prominently, and his eyes were tired.

Mrs. Stewart proffered him the tips of her fingers, shaking her head at him with mockery of a frown.

"You ought to be introduced to me again," she said.

"I've been tremendously busy."

"Ah, you plagiarist! The sins that the word 'busy' is made to cover! People escape debts, and calls, and engagements, nowadays, by simply flourishing the magic word 'busy.'" She broke off, and began to look at him steadily over the top of her fan. Then she went on in a very low voice, "And have you found out how one's youth is lost in town?"

"You're cruel," he murmured.

"Not I. But there, go in and talk to the others. There are lots of people you haven't met before, and there are some pretty girls. Go in, and enjoy yourself if you can. And perhaps, if you find time, and I think of it again, I shall ask you to introduce me to your new self.

"I've never been introduced to that new self yet, _egomet ipse_."

He found two arch-enemies, Mrs. Tremont and Miss Leigh, conversing with cheerless enthusiasm. "I heard of you a good deal while I was abroad," said Mrs. Tremont, after greetings had been exchanged. Dick bowed, and looked a question.

"It was Mr. Wooton mentioned you," Mrs. Tremont went on, pompously. "We met in Germany. A charming man!" She said it with the air of one conferring a knighthood.

Dick was wondering how many times a day a woman like this one managed to be sincere. Then he said, "Miss Tremont is well, I trust?"

"Yes. She's here somewhere." She lifted her lorgnette deliberately and gazed toward the piano, "Who is that playing?" she asked.

"Mrs. Stewart herself," said Miss Leigh.

"Dear me! I didn't know she played. I must go and congratulate her." She moved off with severe dignity.

Miss Leigh laughed as she watched the expression on Dick's face.

"Do you believe in heredity?" he asked.

"Yes, and no. Not in this case, if that's what you mean. Miss Tremont is far too clever. Do you know," she went on, with slow distinctness, "that you are changed."

He made a movement of impatience. "I have heard nothing but that all evening," he declared. "Simply because the town had put it's brand on me, whether I wished it or no, am I to be forever upbraided?" There was both petulence and pathos in his voice.

"H'm," she said, "you still have all your old audacity. But I don't think it is anything but genuine interest in you that prompts such remarks."

"You once said something about being genuine. You said it was pathetic. Now I know why that is so true. The pathos comes after one has lost the genuineness."

"Yes, but when one does nothing but think and think, and brood and brood, the pathos turns bathos. The thing to do is to laugh!"

"Is that why there is so much flippancy?"

"No doubt. Tragedy evokes flippancy and comedy starts tears."

"You are a very fountain of worldly paradoxes. Where do you get them all from?"

"From my enemies. I love my enemies, you know, for what I can deprive them of. That's right, leave me just when I'm getting brilliant! Go and talk to Miss Ware about the rich red tints of the Indian summer leaves and the poetry in the gurgle of the brook. Go on, it will be like a breath of fresh air after the dismal gloom of my conversation!" She got up, laughing, and added, in a voice that he had not heard before, "Go in and win! Your eyes have told your secret."

She moved off, and he saw Dorothy Ware coming toward him. He noticed how delightfully she seemed to fit into this scene; how charmingly at ease and how natural she looked. Her color was not as fresh as it once had been: but he remembered how popular she had at once become in town, and that her life was now a very whirl of dances and receptions and festive occasions of that sort. He had hardly shaken hands when Mrs. Tremont and her daughter approached from different directions. They were both, they declared, so perfectly delighted to see Miss Ware again.

Mrs. Stewart sailed majestically up to them at this juncture, and bore Lancaster away in triumph. He heard Mrs. Tremont asking Dorothy, as he moved away, "And how's your poor, dear mother?" Then he found himself being introduced to a personage with a Vandyke beard.

"Ah," said the personage, with some show of interest, "you're an artist? Now, tell me, frankly, why do you Western artists never treat Western subjects?" And then Dick found himself floundering about in a sea of argument with this personage. Afterwards, when the agony was over, he discovered that it was the author, Mr. Wreath, who had thus been catechizing him. It was noised about the world that Mr. Wreath was a monomaniac on the subject of realism. Dick remembered wishing he had caught the man's name at the introduction.

In the meanwhile Miss Tremont stood talking to Dorothy Ware in a dim corner of the room. There was a small table near them, and upon it were scattered portfolios of photographs.

"Do you ever hear of Mr. Wooton?" Miss Tremont asked, smiling sweetly.

Dorothy gave a little start, and a flush touched her cheek.

"No," she said tonelessly.

"He's a very clever man," persisted Miss Tremont. "I congratulate you." She smiled meaningly.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean?" Dorothy's eyes flashed and her fingers toyed nervously with the photographs.

"If I were an expert photographer I could show you what I mean instantly. Speech is so clumsy!"

Dorothy still looked at her blankly, though she felt her heart beating with accelerated speed.

"From what I saw at Schandau," the other went on coldly, "I should say it was time to announce the engagement."

Dorothy gripped the little table with a tight clasp. Bending over, as if to examine the pictures, she felt waves of heat and cold follow each other over her cheeks and forehead. Her breath seemed to choke. How warm the room was! She longed for a breath of fresh air. She would go and tell her mother that she wanted to have the carriage called at once. But there was her mother talking busily with Mrs. Tremont. And there, beyond, was Dick.

Something very like tears came to the borders of her eyes, as Miss Dorothy Ware looked at, and thought of Dick. He had loved her, and she--Ah, well, that was all over now! Even had she been able to compound with her own conscience, Miss Tremont had effectually barred the way to--ah, to everything! There was Miss Tremont talking, now, to Mr. Wreath and to Dick. Surely the girl would not dare--but no, that was absurd!

Fortunately, Miss Leigh, noticing Dorothy's solitude, decided, just then, that she would go and talk to the girl, which succeeded in diverting Dorothy's mind from unpleasant thoughts.

At the other end of the room the various groups were constantly changing. Above the chatter one could hear the strains of music that floated in from the music-room. Miss Tremont having finally succeeded in luring Mr. Wreath on to a discussion of his own peculiar theory of the art of fiction, Dick left them and strolled into the conservatory. He wanted to be alone. He had been suffering more than ever before from such accute pain as afflicts each individual soul that submits to drowning itself in the meaningless chatter of society. As he himself put it, with something like an oath of disgust, "I've been listening to people I don't care a pin about; hearing rubbish and talking rubbish!" The real key to his feeling of disgust, however, was in the fact that his opportunities to a confidential talk with Miss Ware had all been ruthlessly killed.

"A nice way to contribute to the general entertainment!" It was Mrs. Stewart herself. She was shaking her fan at him. "Don't get up!" she went on, "I want to talk to you." She scrutenized him. "You don't look cheerful!"

"I'm not," he said curtly.

"Remorse?"

"No. Remorse is the divine right of cowards and gourmands. Mine is merely a case of weariness."

"With your own sweet self to blame. I know the feeling. You've been thinking, or, rather, you think you have been thinking. And when one is in that state, everything goes against the grain. Even such a galaxy as that!" She waved her fan to the direction of the inner rooms, and a smile of mischief curled her mouth. "What do you think of this year's crop of lions?"

"Bah!" he scorned viciously, with all the bitterness of the man knocking at the closed portals. "Who was it that first gave your friend Clarence Miller the idea that he was a novelist? His wife, I suppose. When a man's single his follies are suggested by the devil; when he's married, by his wife. I suppose she wants her husband to equal the notoriety attained by her brother-in-law, the composer of 'Rip Van Winkle' and other comic operas that society flocks to listen to. It's a great pity that art and literature happen to be the thing this season."

"You're thinking of the real artists and writers, I presume. Well, it is rather hard on them."

"Hard? Why, its death! Think of the author that finds the market glutted with the free-gratis product of the society butterfly's pen. Its enough to create suicides."

"But you can't very well include Mr. Wreath in the free-gratis class?"

"No. But he is a charlatan, for revenue only. He has so many fads that they stud his conversation as barnacles cover a rock. He is a trumpeter of theories. Oh, I don't deny that he writes well! But he is not satisfied with that, unfortunately; he must needs preach, and the man who preaches about his art is a dispiriting spectacle."

"Dear, dear! What a change! It used to be that we others said all the cutting things, while you listened in awe and trembling; now it is you that uses the edge tools of language. You have beaten us at our own game." Mrs. Stewart dropped her voice a little, and sighed. "But you have lost as much as you have gained, have you not?"

He nodded silently. "The world is a usurer that lends us wisdom if we will but pay our youth as interest. And when we are bankrupt in youth, the wisdom turns to ashes."

"Don't be morbid. It's too fashionable. Cynicism is so cheap nowadays that the poorest Philistine of us all can afford it. The only virtue in optimism, it seems to me, is that it is suffering neglect today; for that reason I may espouse it, merely to avoid the charge of being commonplace. Come, be gay I Laugh! Forget!"

"To forget is to forego one of life's sweetest pains." He laughed mechanically, and got up, offering Mrs. Stewart his arm. "I'm a stupid, morbid fool. My only saving grace is that I know just how big a fool I am." They entered the inner rooms, and Mrs. Stewart, with a smile and a bow, left Dick to talk flatteringly to the musical lion of the town.

Some of the people were already leaving. Dick determined to slip away quietly. But, as he turned to the vestibule, he found himself face to face with Dorothy Ware.

All his gloom vanished. "I've been trying to talk to you all evening," he declared. "I've been wanting to ask you something. I asked you once before. But that seems a very long time ago." He found himself carried away in a whirl of eager enthusiasm and hope. "Dorothy," he said, looking down at her, "there is still hope for me, is there not?"

But in the girl's eyes there was nothing save pain, and shame. She looked away. She played nervously with the lace of her dress.

Blind, man-like, he took it all for shyness. "Only a little hope," he repeated, tenderly. He tried to take her hand.

She shrank away from him in a sort of horror. "No, no," she murmured, in a voice of torture. She did not look him in the face.

Dick stared at her dumbly. Now, at last, he understood her silence, her averted head. He saw the expression that told him she feared to wound him, even though she cared for him not at all.

"Forget me!" she said, and moved away quickly.

He stood, for an instant, looking after her, then he went, moving his lips in a queer, mumbling way, to the vestibule, and asked for his wraps.

As he was leaving the house Dorothy was sinking into a chair by her mother's side. She stared straight out in front of her. When her mother spoke to her she turned slowly around and said, "It's very cold in here." She shivered.

And her mother, knowing that it was as warm as an oven in those rooms, and watching the queer look on her daughter's face, decided the latter was not very well, and must be taken home at once.