Part 13

Again Clover and Page looked into one another's eyes, but there was no badinage this time in her glance. It was a place of dreams. Showers of golden mist fell beneath the stars. The massive buildings softened away into distant shadowy suggestion. The sculptors' creations shone out thrillingly.

In heavenly beauty stood the Agricultural Hall with its foreground of gleaming water, the pure white of its columns defined against the tempered rose-color of its inner wall,--a vision glowing and pure; as far above its sister palaces in beauty as its use was set apart from theirs; for here were displayed the works of God rather than the imperfect marvels of man's handiwork.

Amid the majestic splendor of the night rolled the passionate appeal of the gondoliers' love-song, become an impersonal voice now as the boats drifted apart. Little wonder that Page forgot to be abstractly analytical, and that the soft spontaneous sympathy of his companion's eyes exercised enchantment borrowed from the environment. He smiled upon her with a bright tenderness which transfigured his thoughtful face.

For a long time they were silent, but when he gave her his hand as she stepped from the launch, he spoke out of the depths of his enjoyment:--

"That was a never-to-be-forgotten experience for me."

"I think no one ever forgets his first evening in the Court of Honor," returned Clover.

"Well, what are we going to do now?" asked Mildred, as they ascended the steps. "My! How the wind has sprung up from the lake. They will hardly dare to have the fireworks."

"Then let us take a brisk constitutional home," proposed Jack.

"Come, children. Follow your leader," commanded Mildred, turning and addressing Clover and her companion.

"Hurry her by the chocolate houses, Jack," said Clover; "that is, if you can."

"He can't," returned Mildred. "I have my eye on Baker's now."

She insisted that they all stop and partake of the cup, more potent than tea to cheer when the east wind blows, served by the pretty, uniformed girls, who by this time in the evening were inclined to be pessimistic and severe, small blame to them. They must easily believe that the human body is largely liquid.

Leaving the little circular temple, the quartette started up the lake shore on the stone walk. The dark waves were tumbling and dashing, tipped with foam in the sudden gale. The battle-ship and large excursion boats were gay with electric lights.

"Oh, Mrs. Van Tassel!" exclaimed Page. "See the search light on the Quadriga." They turned to view the group with its mounted heralds and champing, prancing horses, distinct and unearthly fair in the surrounding blackness.

"Could we walk home backward, do you think?" he asked.

"No," replied Clover. "I can answer with certainty, for I've tried it more than once."

"I suppose we do in course of time get past the Manufactures Building? What an incomprehensible, colossal thing it is."

"Yes, a good deal more so to me now than it was a month ago."

"Have mercy!" exclaimed Page with a groan.

Mildred and Jack were walking in front of them.

"Isn't this like old times, Mildred?" asked the latter with a relish, clapping his hat on tighter as the sweep of the wind threatened it.

"Just about as unlike as we could imagine. Sorry to disagree with you, Jack."

"Don't mention it. You don't disagree with me, my child. I have enjoyed this first evening with you immensely."

"First evening is pretty good, isn't it?" suggested the girl, and they both laughed. "You didn't use to quarrel for my society," she added.

"I want you to understand that I wasn't quarreling with you there, a few hours back, at the Marine Cafe."

"Oh!"

"No, I was merely making the excusable protest of an old friend,--speaking in a brotherly way, you know."

"Oh, it won't do, Jack." He knew exactly how she was smiling in the darkness. "It is my unalterable rule never to be a sister to any of them. I can't break over it for you."

"Them!" ejaculated her companion. "I don't thank you to class me with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and the rest of these late arrivals. Remember, I was the first-comer into your friendship."

"You were a pretty good sort of fellow."

"Yes; you probably can't conceive of what a healing thought it is to me now that I have snubbed you many a time, young lady. I had to. Your attentions were so persistent in those days. Yes, mademoiselle, I had to hold you off, or I should never have had any peace of my life. I remember it well. Perhaps you don't."

"Oh yes, I do, perfectly," sighed Mildred. "Wasn't the Flirt the stanchest little dear that ever spread a sail; and to think that is all over! I don't feel nearly so much elation over going with Mr. Eames on that yacht party to-morrow as I used to in nagging you into consent that I should sail the Flirt."

"Is that the infantry officer?"

"Yes; and he is very nice. I should like you to meet him. If I knew him a little better I would have procured you an invitation. You should remember that virtue is its own reward. If you had not preferred smoking in the hammock to coming into the parlor and making yourself agreeable the other evening when Helen Eames and her mother were calling, they would surely have asked you to join the party. 'If you would be loved, be lovely.' That is what my mother used to tell me." Mildred laughed to herself.

"Then why don't you obey her?" returned Jack curtly.

"I don't want to be loved," returned the spoiled girl. "I'm loved too much already."

After this they marched in silence for a time, their springy steps carrying them by the foreign buildings, Ceylon, France with its green, fountain-sprayed court, Spain, and Germany. It was not until they turned beside Iowa's pavilion and left behind them the waves dashing on the sea-wall that Mildred spoke again.

"It gives me the blues, Jack, every time I see our boathouse stranded high and dry behind that nightmare of a Spectatorium."

"I don't see how you can call anything dry that is as full of beer as that is."

"Oh," exclaimed the girl indignantly, "what a fall from its old estate! To think of our playhouse being turned into a saloon! Do you remember the dance it was christened with? I was allowed to go, and you made me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once."

"Humph!" returned the other. "And now it is a great question whether you would make me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once."

"Oh, Jack," Mildred laughed out now, "don't be cross. Don't grudge a girl her 'little brief authority.' My observation of life has taught me that her queenship is brief enough. She blossoms out of awkward childhood into an attractive womanhood, and then after a little space yields up her sweet liberty to some lord of creation whom she has to pacify and wait on ever afterward. Moral: Let her keep her authority as long as possible."

"You seem to have been rather unfortunate in your married masculine acquaintance," returned Van Tassel drily.

A sudden thought sent the color flying to Mildred's face, and her customary complacent poise was shaken.

"There was one exception," she said, so timidly and meekly that her companion was struck by the change; but she had not the courage to be more specific, and there was no need. Jack understood her.

When the four reached home they found Miss Berry in the sitting-room reading by the light of a lamp.

Blitzen was sitting on a rug, and did not, as usual, run to meet them. On a chair reposed a bird-cage with some white stuff in it.

"What is this, Aunt Love?" asked Clover. "Have you some new pets?"

"I've got one," returned Miss Berry, smiling placidly. "I'll give you all three guesses. It's a World's Fair souvenir."

"Tell us, Blitzen," said Mildred, kneeling on the rug beside the small dog and shaking his tousled head; but Blitzen, as soon as he could free himself, withdrew in unwonted dignity. Evidently there was that within him to-night which could not brook flippancy.

"A live souvenir?" asked Clover, perplexed.

"Mr. Gorham can guess," remarked Miss Lovina, glancing again down the columns of her newspaper, and shaking in a comfortable silent laugh.

"I?" said Page; then, after a moment's cogitation, "You surely didn't bring home one of those chickens?"

"I did. In that cage, my dears, there is an electric chicken." Miss Berry looked over her spectacles impressively. "The same power that runs the inter-internal railroad and shines in the rainbow fountains, don't disdain to hatch a chicken. If you doubt it, there's the chicken."

She gestured toward the bird-cage.

"I brought it home in a box; and I said to myself that most everybody had an old cage, so I went up garret, and there I found that one. On Blitzen's account I thought best to use a cage to-night." Her gaze descended on the terrier, whose head descended beneath it.

"Blitzen," asked Jack with deliberate, stern solemnity, "what do you think of the chicken?"

Blitzen rose with a crushed air, and slowly, as one who would not attract attention, crept across the room and retired under a remote sofa.

A shout of laughter followed his unostentatious disappearance.

"We've had some words," explained Aunt Love. "He barked cruel at the poor little thing when he first saw me with it."

"Have it out, have the chicken out," said Mildred; and Miss Berry, yielding to the general urgency, produced her prize from the depths of the cotton wool. It began to struggle and peep vigorously as soon as its beady eyes saw the light, and there came a muffled howl from under the sofa.

"What are you going to name it?" asked Clover.

"I don't know what name would be good enough for such a smart critter."

"Why, Electra, of course," remarked Jack. "Nothing less for such a star among chickens."

"Sounds well and suitable," observed Miss Berry placidly, "whether it means anything or not."

"I wonder if it has any unusual springs," said Mildred. "If I should touch the button do you suppose it would give us a rest?" She advanced a finger toward one of the bright eyes, but Miss Berry removed her squeaking prize from harm, and tucked it away again in the cotton from which it struggled several times before finally settling down with a diminuendo of peeps.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

*CLOVER'S DIPLOMACY.*

Mr. and Mrs. Page arrived duly, even a little earlier than they had at first anticipated. Jack met them at the station and drove with them to their destination.

"You see it was simply impossible, Mrs. Van Tassel, for my wife to curb her impatience after Gorham began to write home," said Mr. Page to his hostess in explanation of their change of plan. "Gorham doesn't very often gush, as perhaps you know."

"And I assure you that Mr. Page was not difficult to persuade," added Hilda. "Your last kind letter determined us. And I am really in Chicago!" she went on, looking about her. "Jack, congratulate me!"

"I do, sincerely. I think you, Hilda, will appreciate your advantages."

Mr. Page gave his contagious, quiet chuckle. "That is the way he goes on," he said, turning to Mildred. "Jack is very severe on me always. I am going to show you, Miss Bryant, several lists of adjectives, carefully prepared, very carefully and thoughtfully, one for every day in the week, that I am intending to use on the World's Fair to mollify my cousin."

"You might have trusted safely to the inspiration of the moment," returned Mildred gayly.

"Oh, you don't know Jack. One single false move, one expletive out of place, and it would be all over with me."

"Poor Robert, I feel for you," remarked Van Tassel.

"Why, that is mysterious," replied his cousin. "Anybody who compassionates me just now doesn't understand economizing his emotions." The speaker sank back in his roomy wicker chair and took a glass of lemonade from a salver which Miss Berry was passing to the company. The crushed ice jingled pleasantly against the crystal, and the couple of straws that emerged from each glass were alluring to a stout and thirsty man. "Aunt Love, it is very pleasant to see you here," he added. "We shall have to renew our old acquaintance. We had no time in Boston."

"That's so, Mr. Page. I guess I can jog your memory about a good many things."

When later the husband and wife were shown to their own room and the door was closed, Robert looked at Hilda with large eyes. "Whew!" he said softly. "Uncle Richard was all right. What pretty women!"

"I told you so. I told you that Mildred was a perfect Juno, and that you were very unfortunate to be out of town when she spent that week with me at the beach. As for Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"Why, she's an angel,--she's an angel! I knew it from her letter. I felt it in my bones."

"As if you knew anything about your bones, you dear old cushion. Stop praising those girls,--calling one a goddess and one an angel. Come and apostrophize the lake. Isn't it beautiful?"

"It was you who called Miss Bryant a goddess, remember. Yes, this is every bit as good as the ocean, for all I see," walking to the window and putting an arm around his wife's waist. "We are in great luck, Hilda," continued Page, glancing about their spacious room. "This isn't much like the discomforts we read about in connection with World's Fair visiting. I don't wonder," he added after a pause, "that Jack was cut up by being at cross purposes with those girls."

"H'm. There is one exhibit I have come out here to see that isn't inside the White City," returned Hilda. "I've come to discover which one of them Jack is in love with."

"Both, of course. How can he help it?" replied her husband promptly.

Gorham took it upon himself to launch his brother and sister on their Fair pilgrimage that very evening.

When they came home again, hours later, Clover and Jack were sitting alone in the parlor and rose to meet them as they entered the room. Their tired, excited faces were a study.

Hilda dropped into a chair. "Well," she exclaimed, "I never expected to go to heaven till I died; but I've been there."

"Jack," added Robert meekly, "get in your fine work now. I've nothing to say, absolutely nothing. I've dropped my jaw so often since six o'clock that it isn't in working order, any way."

"Say no more," returned Van Tassel, waving his hand grandiloquently. "We Chicagoans are nothing if not magnanimous."

"I thought I knew what I was going to see, that is the queer part of it," said Page, looking perplexed; "but it seems I didn't know anything at all about it. I feel there is an unlimited feast in store for me, Mrs. Van Tassel."

Clover smiled at his enthusiastic tone. "You are in the first-day frame of mind, I see."

"What is that?"

"Oh, eagerness and hopefulness."

"And what is the second?"

"Despair; yes, overwhelming, stony despair."

"What is the third? Suicidal tendency?"

"No indeed. Resignation. At first one expects and determines to see everything; soon finds that to be so impossible that he yields to his bewilderment, and at last accepts the inevitable and sets himself to see what he can, and be rapturously content therewith."

"Thank you, thank you! Forewarned, forearmed. Perhaps we may even skip the second stage."

A few days later, Clover, her guests having scattered on various quests, went to the noon orchestral concert in Festival Hall. This wonderfully generous free exhibit attracted a large audience, many of whom embraced it as an opportunity to rest from the fatigues of sight-seeing, while many others, coming perhaps from the country where "hearing a band" was a rare privilege, were drawn thither by the hope of attractive music.

Possibly one half the number came intelligently to the feast, and greeted the conductor when he entered upon the stage. Clover joined in the applause as Theodore Thomas passed before his players with that quiet, characteristic grace, which has power to thrill with anticipation a greater number of America's music-lovers than the movement of any other man.

It interested her as it had many a time before, this summer, to note the effect upon certain of the audience of the number with which the programme opened. She saw pleased hopefulness give way to apathy in many faces, as strange harmonies and dissonances fell upon uncultivated ears. She noticed one patient-faced countryman who waited through two numbers, evidently discovering nothing but a wilderness of sound. He then examined his programme, and not finding "After the Ball" on it, arose and departed from the hall more in sorrow than anger.

Blessings on the man, by the way, who introduced the noiseless paper on which those programmes were printed. There were two girls sitting next to Clover, chewing gum while they listened for some melody they could recognize, and Clover congratulated herself that all the foldings and drummings of their programmes were inaudible; but alas, as soon as the maidens discovered that the music they were hearing was unworthy the name, they cheerfully set about doing the next best thing, which was to prepare for the afternoon's campaign. This was a free concert anyway, so no matter if it wasn't worth much. They would not leave at once, because this was a better place to rest than they would be likely to find soon again; so they unfolded their maps of the grounds, not printed on absorbent paper, far from it, and proceeded to discuss their plans.

Clover caught sight of Jack standing across the hall. He discovered her at the same moment. His concentrated look flashed into a smile as they exchanged nods.

At the close of the number he came around to where Clover sat in the front row of the circle, and leaned his arm on the railing in front of her.

"How handsome Jack can look, when he is happy and interested," she thought, and instantly became aware that her neighbors had ceased their planning, and were nudging each other in silent absorption.

"Wasn't that great!" he exclaimed. "Are you going over to the Music Hall this afternoon?"

"Indeed I am. They are going to play the Tschaikowsky Symphony."

"That settles it. Suppose we go up in the wheel after lunch, and then go over to the concert together."

"All right. I'd like to. Why, there is Mildred on the left, down there near the front. I didn't know she was coming."

"Nor I. Shall I go and speak to her?"

In a minute Jack was back, just as the music began again. The girls who had constituted the thorn in Clover's side during the first half of the programme had left their seats as soon as he moved away, so he came in and took the place beside Clover.

"Mildred says she will go with us," he whispered.

When the Intermezzo was finished, Clover spoke.

"Did you ask Mildred to join us?" she asked.

"No, she proposed it," returned Jack, and there was a pleasure in his eyes which did not escape his companion.

"You mentioned last night in our talk that you hadn't seen much of Mildred since you came; that she was too much of a belle for your comfort."

"Yes. It is simply surprising to find her here alone."

Clover's eyes twinkled. She had mentioned to her sister, this morning, that she meant to meet Jack at the noon concert.

"Well, you leave her to me. No matter what I say, don't contradict me. Promise?"

"What's up?" asked Van Tassel doubtfully.

"Oh, Mildred's conceit and a few other things that ought to come down. I want you to myself a part of the time, Jack."

Her companion met her laughing glance.

"I am yours to command, Clover, always."

"Don't forget, then," she answered.

When the concert was over, Mildred came slowly up the aisle, superb as usual in her consciously unconscious carriage.

"Well," she said to her sister as they met, "where are we to lunch?"

"Are you going to lunch with us?" asked Clover in well-affected surprise.

"Of course I am," returned the younger with a half-pouting smile flung at Jack; "and I am going in the Ferris Wheel with you too. I haven't been up in it yet."

"Why, I don't see how you possibly can, Mildred," said Clover coolly. "I heard you promise Mr. and Mrs. Page to meet them in the Art Gallery at two o'clock, and show Mrs. Page some of our favorite pictures."

Mildred expected some protest from Jack, and was disconcerted that none came. "I only told them that if I was at the south entrance at two o'clock I would act as their cicerone," she answered.

"Well, my dear, having said so much," suggested Clover gravely, "I think the least you can do is to be there, considering that they are our guests."

Still Jack did not interfere. Mildred could not forbear hurling one glance at him from beneath her eyelashes, but it might have been a gaze. Van Tassel was absently viewing the dispersing audience.

Her eyes and cheeks burned as they had on the night he refused to accompany her to witness the fireworks, but as on that occasion she carried the matter with a high hand.

"Very well, then you have lost my company at lunch, too. You and Jack would be sure to make me late, dawdling at table. _Au revoir_," and as they nodded to her, she swept away.

Clover looked at her companion and tried to repress the mirthful laugh that bubbled over her lips.

"Jack, you wouldn't be human if you hadn't enjoyed that."

"Then I must be inhuman," he responded rather ruefully, "for I give you my word I'm scared almost to death."

"Don't you worry, mon ami; I know Mildred to the depths of her noble, generous, overbearing, over-indulged soul."

"I don't suppose you realize, Clover," Van Tassel spoke low and jerkily, "but I care very much; absurdly much, you might think, considering the shortness of the time."

Clover looked into his flushed face, and the merriment in her sweet eyes was quenched.

"Dear Jack," she said, laying her hand lightly on his arm, "whatever you wish, I wish. Trust me. No harm has been done. Do you want my advice,--the advice of one who knows?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then don't let Mildred suspect what you have told me. The round world is just a rattle to her now. You are one of the bells on it that jingle for her amusement when she moves you. There are Katherines in existence still, and Petruchios are wholesome teachers for them."

"Imagine me cracking a horsewhip at Mildred!"

"Out, please!" roared a Columbian Guard, exasperated by the sight of these two loiterers, after the remainder of the audience had drifted away. "As if there wasn't any other place on the grounds to spoon but just this," he muttered.

Mildred, to her credit be it said, devoted her afternoon to Mrs. Page with as cheerful courtesy as though she bore no grudge in her mind against the world. Mr. Page left them together and went off somewhere under his brother's guidance. It was nearly dinner-time when he drove up to the house in a Beach wagon, and found Mildred swinging idly in a hammock on the piazza.

"Your wife is taking a nap," she announced, as he came up the steps.

"Fortunate woman!" he responded, sinking wearily upon a wicker divan. "The only interest I've had for hours in any exhibit was as to whether there was a chair in it; but Gorham is a terrible fellow. Merciless. Each building being one thousand miles from every other building makes it hard lines. I threatened more than once to trip over one of those chains that say 'Keep off the grass,' and refuse to get up again."

"You and your brother should have taken one of those double chairs."

"Oh, there wouldn't have been any room for Gorham," and the jolly man laughed. "I suppose you have done the Plaisance."

"Partly, yes."

"Gorham and I went into the Dahomey village, this afternoon. Some of those savages were unpleasantly personal. Good afternoon, Aunt Love," as the housekeeper appeared on the veranda. "I was just telling Miss Mildred how those children of nature in the Dahomey village injured my finer feelings to-day. One of them came for me with a big carving knife, yelling 'Big man, fat man,' and going through the pantomime of taking a slice off my sacred person."

"Dirty critters!" remarked Miss Berry sententiously.