CHAPTER XV

AT THE COUNTRY CLUB

To show that she was not limited to her own particular set in her choice of guests, Mabel had asked Raridan, whom she wished to know better, and Wheaton, who had danced with her at the carnival ball, to be of her party. Chaperons were tolerated but not required in Clarkson. For this reason Mabel had thought it wise to ask Mrs. Whipple, whom she wished to impress; and as she liked to surprise her fellow citizens, it was worth while in this instance to yield something to the _convenances_. The general was too old for such nonsense; but he was willing to sacrifice his wife, and she went, giving as her excuse for taking "that Margrave girl's bait," that she was doing it in Evelyn's interest.

The coach rolled with loud yodeling to the Porter door, where there was much laughing and bantering as the guests settled into their places. When the locked wheels ground the hillside and the horn was bravely blown by an admirer of Mabel's from Keokuk, it was clear to every one that Timothy Margrave's daughter was achieving another triumph. The young man from Keokuk was zealous with the horn; a four-in-hand was not often seen in the streets of Clarkson, albeit this same vehicle was always to be had from the leading liveryman, and town and country turned admiring eyes on the party as the coach rolled along in the golden haze of early October. The sun warmed the dry air; and far across the Missouri flats its light fell mildly upon yellow bluffs where the clay was exposed in broad surfaces which held the light. The foliage of the hills beyond the river was lit with color in many places; a shower in the morning had freshened the green things of earth, giving them a new, brief lease of life, and there was no dust in the highways. In such a day the dying year bends benignantly to earth and is fain to loiter in the ways of youth.

The paint was still fresh in the club house, which was a long bungalow, set in a clump of cottonwoods. There was an amplitude of veranda, and the rooms within were roughly furnished in Texas pine. The older people of the town looked upon the club with some suspicion as something new and untried. The younger element was just beginning to know the implements and vocabulary of golf. The first tee was only a few feet from the veranda, so that a degree of heroism and Christian resignation was essential in those who began their game under the eyes of a full gallery. There were the usual members of both sexes who talked a good deal about their swing without really having any worth mentioning; and there were others more given to reading the golf news in the golf papers at the club house, than to playing, to the end that they might discuss the game volubly without the discomfort of acquiring practical knowledge.

The walls of the dining-room had not been smoothed or whitened. They were hung with prints which ranged in subject from golf to Gibson girls. Mabel had supplemented the meager furnishings of the club pantry with embellishments from her own house, and had given her own touch to the table. As her touch carried a certain style, her crystal and silver shone to good advantage under the lamps which she had substituted for the bare incandescents of the room. The young man from Keokuk who was, just then, as the gossips said, "devoted" to Mabel, had supplied a prodigal array of flowers, ordered by telegraph from Chicago for the occasion. The table was served by colored men, who had been previously subsidized by Mabel, in violation of the club rules; and they accordingly made up in zeal what they lacked in skill.

Mabel talked a great deal about informality, and drove her guests into the dining-room without any attempt at order, and they found their name-cards with the surprises and exclamations which usually characterize that proceeding.

Captain Wheelock sat at the end of the oblong table opposite Mabel, who placed the man from Keokuk at her right and Raridan at her left. Evelyn was between Raridan and one of Mabel's "men," who was evidently impressed by this propinquity. He was the Assistant General Something of one of the railroads and owned a horse that was known as far away from home as the Independence, Iowa, track. There was a great deal of talking back and forth, and Evelyn told herself that it did not much matter that her guests had fallen into rather poor hands. She was quite sure that Captain Wheelock, who liked showy girls, would not be much interested in Annie Warren, who was distinctly not showy. Belle Marshall, with her drollery, was not likely to be dismayed by Wheaton's years and poverty of small talk. Belle was not easily abashed, and when the others paused now and then under the spell of her dialect, which seemed funny when she did not mean it to be so, she was not distressed. She had grown used to having people listen to her drawl, and to complimentary speeches from "you No'the'ne's" on her charming accent. Evelyn found that it was unnecessary to talk to Raridan; he and Mabel seemed to get on very well together, and in her pique at him, Evelyn was glad to have it so.

Mabel's supper was bountiful, and Raridan, who thought he knew the possibilities of the club's cuisine, marveled at the chicken, fried in Maryland style, and at the shoestring potatoes and flaky rolls, which marked an advance on anything that the club kitchen had produced before. There was champagne from the stock which the Margraves carried in their car, and it foamed and bubbled in the Venetian glasses that Mabel had brought from home, at a temperature that Mabel herself had regulated. Captain Wheelock made much of frequently lifting his glass to Mabel in imaginary toasts. The man from Keokuk drank his champagne with awe; he had heard that Mabel Margrave was a "tank," and he thought this a delightful thing to be said of a girl. Mrs. Whipple noted with wonder Mabel's capacity, while most of the others tried not to be conscious of it. Mabel grew a little boisterous at times through the dinner, but no one dared think that it was the champagne. Mrs. Whipple remembered with satisfaction that she had no son to marry Mabel. There were, she considered, certain things which one escapes by being childless, and a bibulous daughter-in-law was one of them.

Attention was arrested for a time by a colloquy between Mrs. Whipple and Captain Wheelock as to the merits of army girls compared with their civilian sisters; and the whole table gave heed. Wheelock maintained that the army girl was the only cosmopolitan type of American girl, and Mrs. Whipple combated the idea. She took the ground that American girls are never provincial; that they all wear the same clothes, though, she admitted, they wore them with a difference; and that the army girl as a distinct type was a myth.

"My furniture," she said, "has followed the flag as much as anybody's; but the army girl is only a superstition among fledgling lieutenants. On my street are people from Maine, Indiana and Georgia. You don't have to go to the army to find cosmopolitan young women; they are the first generation after the founders of all this western country. Right here in the Missouri valley are the real Americans, made by the mingling of elements from everywhere. Am I stepping on anybody's toes?" she asked, looking around suddenly.

"Oh, don't mind us," drawled Belle, turning with a mournful air to Annie.

"We've counting on you to marry and settle amongst us," said Mrs. Whipple palliatingly.

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Raridan, looking significantly from one man to another; "destiny is pointing to us!"

"You're in no danger, Mr. Raridan," Belle flung back at him. "Miss Warren and I can go back where we came from."

Raridan's rage at Evelyn had spent itself; he was ready for peace. She had been politely indifferent to him at the table, to the mischievous joy of Belle Marshall, who had an eye for such little bits of comedy. As they all stood about after supper in the outer hall, Evelyn chatted with Wheaton, and continued to be oblivious of Raridan, who watched her over the shoulder of one of Mabel's particular allies and waited for a tete-a-tete. Warry had the skill of long practice in such matters; there were men whom it was difficult to dislodge, but Wheaton was not one of them. He took advantage of a movement toward benches and chairs to attach himself to Evelyn and to shunt Wheaton into Belle's company,--a manoeuver which that young woman understood perfectly and did not enjoy. There was something so open and casual in Warry's tactics that the beholder was likely to be misled by them. Evelyn was half disposed to thwart him; he had been distinctly disagreeable at the ball, and had not appeared at the house since. She knew what he wanted, and she had no intention of making his approaches easy. Some of the others moved toward the verandas, and Warry led the way thither, while he talked on, telling some bits of news about a common acquaintance from whom he had just heard. It was cool outside and she sent him for her cape, and then they walked the length of the long promenade. He paused several times to point out to her some of the improvements which were to be made in the grounds the following spring. This also was a part of the game; it served to interrupt the walk; and he spoke of the guests at the Hill, and said that it was too bad they had not come when things were livelier. Then he stood silent for a moment, busy with his cigarette. Evelyn gathered her golf cape about her, leaned against a pillar and tapped the floor with her shoe.

"You haven't been particularly attentive to them, have you?" she said. "I thought you really liked them."

"Of course I like them, but I've been very busy." Warry stared ahead of him across the dim starlit golf grounds.

"That's very nice," she said, still tapping the floor and looking past him into the night. "Industry is always an excuse for any one. But, come to think of it, you were very good in showing them about at the ball. I appreciate it, I'm sure."

It was of his conduct at the ball that he wished to speak; she knew it, and tried to make it hard for him.

"See here, Evelyn, you know well enough why I kept away from you that night. I told you before the ball that I didn't,--well, I didn't like it! If I hadn't cared a whole lot it wouldn't have made any difference--but that show was so tawdry and hideous--"

Evelyn readjusted her cape and sat down on the veranda railing.

"Oh, I was tawdry, was I?" she asked, sweetly. "I knew some one would tell me the real truth about it if I waited."

"I didn't come here to have you make fun of me," he said, bitterly. He imagined that since the ball he had been suffering a kind of martyrdom.

Evelyn could not help laughing.

"Poor Warry!" she exclaimed in mock sympathy. "What a hard time you make yourself have! Just listen to Mr. Foster laughing on the other side of the porch; it must be much cheerfuller over there." Mr. Foster was the young man from Keokuk; he wore a secret society pin in his cravat, and Warry hated him particularly.

"What an ass that fellow is!" he blurted, savagely. He had just lighted a fresh cigarette, and threw away the stump of the discarded one with an unnecessary exercise of strength.

"But he's cheerful, and has very nice manners!" said Evelyn. Warry was still looking away from her petulantly. Her attitude toward him just now was that of an older sister toward a young offending brother. He felt that the interview lacked dignity on his side, and he swung around suddenly.

"You know we can't go on this way. You know I wouldn't offend you for anything in the world,--that if I've been churlish it's simply because I care a great deal; because it has hurt me to find you getting mixed up with the wrong people. If you knew what your coming home meant to me, how much I've been counting on it! and then to find that you wouldn't meet me on our old friendly basis, and didn't want any suggestions from me."

He had, almost unconsciously, been expecting her to interrupt him; but she did not do so, and left him to flounder along as best he could. When he paused helplessly, she said, still like a forbearing sister:

"I didn't know you could be so tragic, Warry. The first thing I know you'll be really quarreling with me, and I don't intend to have that. Why don't you change your tactics and be a good little boy? You've been spoiled by too much indulgence of late. Now I don't intend to spoil you a bit. You were terribly rude,--I didn't think you capable of it, and all because I wouldn't offend my father and his friends and other very good people, by refusing to take part in the harmless exercises of that perfectly ridiculous but useful society, the Knights of Midas. That's all over now; and the sun comes up every morning just as it used to. You and I live in the same small town and it's too small to quarrel in."

She paused and laughed, seeing how he was swaying between the impulse to accept her truce and the inclination to parley further. He had been persuading himself that he loved her, and he had found keen joy in the misery into which he had worked himself, thinking that there was something ideal and noble in his attitude. He did not know Evelyn as well as he thought he did; when she came home he had imagined that all would go smoothly between them; he had meant to monopolize her, and to dictate to her when need be. He had assumed that they would meet on a plane that would be accessible to no other man in Clarkson; and his conceit was shaken to find that she was disposed to be generously hospitable toward all. It was this that enraged him particularly against Wheaton, who stood quite as well with her, he assured himself, as he