Chapter XVII

_The Midsummer Night's Ball_

And now I come to a certain chapter of my book of life which I would fain leave unwritten. But I am bound to set down the full truth, no matter how unpleasant the bare, ugly facts may be. No one can blame me more hardly than I did myself, and assuredly I was well punished for my misdoings. So here goes.

I had become jealous of Chalmers Warriner, bitterly, almost insanely jealous; and this in spite of my sober judgment, my real inner conviction of Betty's unswerving loyalty and wholehearted love. It is a humiliating confession for a man to make, but since I did play the fool to the top of my bent I ought to be willing to endure my penance; as it turned out, I came within an ace of paying the ultimate price of my folly. So much by way of _apologia pro mea culpa_.

The winter, spring and early summer had passed without incident. In June it occurred to me that it would be well if Betty were away from the "Hundred" for the period covered by the double tragedy of Francis Graeme's death and Eunice Trevor's mysterious taking-off. Accordingly, we went to the "Old White" for three weeks, returning to our home the first day of July. Betty had certainly been benefited by the change, and I hoped that the current of our family life was now to flow smoothly on for an indefinite length of time.

The immediate rock upon which our matrimonial barque proceeded to wreck itself was the Midsummer Night's ball at "Powersthorp" on August the fourth. As Hilda Powers was Betty's most intimate friend we had motored over early to assist in receiving the guests; half of King William county seemed to have been invited, and the crush was tremendous.

I was standing near the receiving line of ladies when Chalmers Warriner came up; and, in spite of my secret dislike and suspicion, I could not help thinking how distinguished looking he was--just the sort of man that a woman invariably favors with a second glance. And now he was lingering for that maddening hundredth part of a second over Betty's hand; I heard him whisper: "The supper waltz then?" and I saw Betty start and flush and finally nod a smiling assent. Ignoble of me to be standing there, actually spying on my own wife! I admit the justice of your censure, dear reader, but have you ever endured even the smallest pang of the jealous man's agony? One ought to be competent to testify in this particular court.

I suppose I went through the ordinary motions of a man attending a ball; I have a vague recollection of dancing at least half a dozen times; I comforted innumerable elderly dowagers and flagons of near-claret cup, and encouraged several flappers to venture on their first cigarette in the friendly dusk of the pleached lime alley; I even played one rubber of auction with the colonel, the commodore, and the judge, while they were awaiting the arrival of the rector to make up their accustomed coterie. But my eyes were always fixed on the big clock at the end of the hall; according to our simple country fashion supper was invariably scheduled for midnight, and was preceded by the principal waltz number of the dance program.

There it came at last! the opening bars of Strauss's "On the Beautiful Blue Danube." Why is it that smiles and tears lie so close together in the lilt and swing of a fine waltz tune? And, by that same token, the saddest music in all the world to-day is that same "Blue Danube," the last, faint exhalation of an old regime that, however rotten at its core, continued to present a lovely and gracious exterior. At least there were no war-brides and greasy Israelitish profiteers on the polished boards of the ancient Hofberg when Maestro Johann raised his baton, and his incomparable band, in their gay Hussar uniforms, breathed out the intoxicating melody which the great Brahms himself would not have been ashamed to have composed, the veritable apotheosis of the dance.

Gone, all gone! and this old, gray world, albeit made safe for democracy, has yet lost something of perennial beauty and enchantment that can never be renewed--a broken spell, a vanished vision. The wax candles have guttered to their sockets, the shimmering waves of color are graying under the merciless white light of a proletarian dawn, the haunting violins have sobbed themselves to sleep; and of all that brilliant, bewildering, phantasmagoric past there remains but one poignant and exquisite echo--the "Blue Danube."

I watched Betty as she circled past me held close in the hollow of Warriner's arm; she was looking up at him, her eyes intent and her cheeks glowing. I pushed through the throng and caught them temporarily halted in a re-entrant swirl of dancers. "I'll take the rest of this turn," I announced, with small pretense of civility. Warriner would have been fully justified in resenting my rudeness, for this was no ordinary case of give-and-take cutting in; but he instantly relinquished his claim, and I whirled Betty away to the farther end of the great hall. "We won't wait for supper," I said curtly. "You know Hilda well enough for that, and she won't mind. Or I don't care if she does." Betty's lower lip went out and her eyes flashed. But a woman, in an emergency, can summon a control over her nerves that mere man may only wonder at. "As you like, Hugh," she said with quiet composure. "I'll just slip up to the dressing room, and you can have the motor brought around to the side door, where it won't be noticed."

We exchanged only a few, indifferent words on the way home, since Zack was acting as chauffeur and sat within easy earshot.

Betty confronted me under the swinging hall lantern of "Hildebrand Hundred," her small figure straight and tense as a grenadier on parade. "Well?" she said briefly.

"You know what I mean," I evaded weakly enough. But she only continued to look at me, and I had to come out in the open.

"I object to your dancing with that man," I growled.

"What man?"

"Chalmers Warriner, of course."

"Chalmers Warriner! Why----" Betty bit her lip and choked back the coming words.

"Go on!" I demanded, instantly alert to the possible significance of that suddenly checked utterance.

But Betty only shook her head--mutinously so as I chose to think in my green-eyed madness.

"You won't tell me?" I persisted hotly.

"I can't."

"Then I've nothing more to say except just this: You are my wife, and so long as you continue to bear my name you are to have no communication of any kind with Mr. Warriner."

Betty made no reply, and we parted without another word.

I had to be in Calverton all the following day on some law business; and I had left the "Hundred" before Betty appeared at the breakfast table. When I returned, late in the afternoon, the house was fairly upside down with hurried preparations for a departure; everywhere trunks and handbags were being packed for the journey, and the station car was already in waiting at the front door. Betty met me as usual in the lower hall. I lifted my eyebrows interrogatively.

"You know little Hugh has been feeling the hot weather of late," she answered steadily, "and Doctor Marcy strongly advised a change to a Northern climate."

"Where are you going?"

"To my Aunt Alice Crew's in Stockbridge. We can stay there through August and September."

"And then?"

"Probably to the Davidsons at Irvington-on-Hudson."

"For how long?"

"That depends on you, Hugh." Betty was actually smiling as she looked up at me, and that made me angrier than ever.

"You mean until I am ready to trust you," I blurted out.

"If you like to put it that way."

The discussion had let us into an _impasse_; there was nothing more to be said. I accompanied Betty to the Crown Ferry station, and saw my little family party of wife, baby, and nurse safely aboard the sleeper. Even at that last moment I should have dropped everything and gone along had Betty given me the smallest opening. But she said no further word, and I could not conquer at once my masculine pride and my jealous fear. I watched the red tail lights of the train disappear around a curve, and told myself that I was the unhappiest man and the biggest fool on God's green earth.