Part 5

The colonel tried to think of something more to say, but Mrs. Payson relieved him. She fluttered across the aisle.

“Dear Mrs. Carter, we’re all crazy to hear your new daughter sing! Judge Jessup says she’s got a lovely voice.”

Mrs. Carter smiled tremulously and blushed.

“Yes,” she said faintly, but with some pride in her voice. “The judge heard her the other night. She’s--she’s coming with Leigh.”

As she spoke there was a flutter and stir in the audience, and Mrs. Payson retreated hastily to a front seat. Judge Jessup had just appeared on the platform with a tall, thin man who wore an immaculate dress-suit and displayed an amazing head of black hair.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the judge in his deep bass, “it’s my duty and my pleasure to introduce the great pianist, Signor Caraffi.”

Colonel Denbigh led the applause, and for a moment it was deafening. The pianist, thrusting one hand in the front of his white satin waistcoat, bowed low. Judge Jessup discreetly withdrew into the shadow of the palms where--at intervals--the audience glimpsed white skirts and pink skirts and blue skirts, and two or three amazing pairs of feet skirmishing behind the foliage and between the substantial green tubs. But even these things became less diverting when the hirsute gentleman began to play.

“Oh, how wonderful!” breathed Mrs. Carter with relief.

Colonel Denbigh nodded.

“Looks like a hair-restorer advertisement,” he replied gently; “but he can play. I reckon it’s genius that makes his hair grow!”

It certainly looked like genius, for he was really a great pianist. For a while he held the audience spellbound. Splendid music filled their ears and, in some cases at least, stirred their souls. Even the more frivolous listeners forgot to make fun of the huge, shaggy head as it bent and swayed and nodded while the pianist forgot himself and forgot the world in his conflict with the instrument--a conflict that always left him supremely master of heavenly harmonies.

Back in the little room behind the platform, Virginia listened and forgot that she was worn out with superintending it all; forgot that she still had her anxieties, and would have them until the last number was successfully rendered, for Mrs. William Carter was next on the bill, and Mrs. Carter had not come. Not yet! Virginia was waiting for her, much against her will, for there were two or three operatic strangers waiting also, and that intolerable man Corwin, Caraffi’s manager.

Virginia was aware of him, aware of his sleek good looks and his watchful eyes. Finding them fixed in her direction, she turned her shoulder toward him, and was thus the first to see the arrival of Fanchon and Leigh. They came in softly, Fanchon on tiptoe, listening to Caraffi, and Leigh laden with her wraps and her music-roll, his young, flushed face turned adoringly toward his sister-in-law.

Virginia could not blame him. It seemed to her that the girl--she looked no more than seventeen or eighteen--was wonderfully pretty. For Fanchon had stopped just inside the door, where the light fell full upon her, and was listening, her head a little bent and her finger on her lips. She had given her wrap to Leigh, and stood there, a shining little figure, in white and silver, much _décolleté_, her slender arms and her lovely young throat unornamented. Her gown--a Parisian thing, Virginia thought--clung to her in a wonderful way, like the shining calyx of a flower; and yet it floated, too, when she moved. Her dusky hair, her wonderful dark eyes, and the piquant little face, needed no better frame than the glimpse of starry night in the open door behind her and the glimmer of shaded lights overhead.

Virginia went forward.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said softly. “Your number is the next one, Mrs. Carter.”

Fanchon turned to answer, putting out a small, bejeweled hand, confident and smiling, a sparkling little creature. Then suddenly there came a change. She stopped short and stood motionless. She scarcely seemed to breathe. It was as if some force stronger than her will had arrested her.

Watching her face, Virginia felt the shock of it, without knowing what it was--fear or hate, or a mingling of both. But Fanchon’s eyes were fixed on Corwin, and they were no longer soft. It was not the look of a wild fawn, but of a tigress at bay. Something within, some feeling as strong as it was extraordinary, transformed her. For an instant she seemed to flinch, then she stood facing him.

The man, turning as suddenly, saw her. He jumped to his feet.

“Fanchon la Fare!” he exclaimed, and came toward her, speaking rapidly in French.

Virginia turned away. She did not want to listen, but she heard an exclamation from Fanchon, and saw her leave Corwin standing, an odd look on his face.

Leigh, who had been busy with the wraps, turned, saw the meeting and Fanchon’s face. He dropped his burden and crossed over to her quickly.

“What did he say to you, Fanchon?” he panted. “If he was rude to you, I’ll--I’ll thrash him!”

Fanchon laughed a wild little laugh.

“Dear boy!” she said softly, and stroked his hand. “_Je t’adore!_”

Leigh flushed, his lowering gaze fastened angrily on Corwin, and Virginia drew a breath of relief when she heard the applause outside. Caraffi had given them a cheery encore; he was coming off the platform, and Fanchon must go on. Virginia called to her softly.

“Now, please, Mrs. Carter!” she said.

Fanchon turned and looked at her, saw by her face that Virginia had seen too much, and her eyes blazed with anger. She took a step forward and snatched up her music-roll, running her fingers over the leaves and biting her lip.

“Tell them to play this, please,” she said, with her head up.

Without looking at it, Virginia took it to the director of the orchestra, glad to escape the little scene. It seemed to her that the air was charged, and she knew that the wait had been too long already. She could hear the impatient stir outside.

There was, indeed, a little stir of impatience in the hall. Two or three young ushers went up and down the aisles with pitchers of iced water, and the rear seats began to fill up with gentlemen who were eating cloves. The rest of the audience studied the program, expectant. “No. 2, Mrs. William Carter, solo,” appeared on it in fine type.

“My daughter-in-law’s going to sing next,” said Mr. Carter, remembering the broken engagement and putting out a feeler. “Seen her yet, colonel?”

“Saw her the other day.” The colonel clasped the top of his cane, leaning on it, and looking absently at an amazing pair of feet and ankles that he saw approaching from behind the palms. “She’s mighty pretty.”

“Think so?” Mr. Carter smiled. “Notice her eyes? Something fawn-like about them--and velvety. We’ve got to calling her--among ourselves, of course--‘the wild fawn.’”

At this moment one of the old ladies behind them interrupted. She tapped Mr. Carter’s shoulder with her fan.

“I do like music,” she said in a loud whisper. “It’s so churchy. I can’t hear much, but I feel it down my spine. Now, tableaux--well, sometimes they’re not just the thing, but music for the church, it’s--it’s safe!”

Colonel Denbigh, overhearing, pulled his mustache. His ear had caught the first notes of a piece that was not “churchy”; it was far too light and too fantastic.

“The kind of tune that makes a fellow sit up and take notice,” the colonel thought. “I wonder----”

He got no farther before he was drowned in applause. A small, graceful, shimmering figure had slipped out from behind the palms. Fanchon stood in the center of the stage, her slender arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes bent downward, the shadowy hair framing a low, white brow, her red lips slightly parted. If she heard the applause, she did not heed it. She made no response; she only waited.

Then, as the soft, seductive strains began to fill the hall with music, she began to sing--softly at first, then rising note by note until her clear soprano floated upward like the song of a bird. Then, just as the tension seemed to relax and a deep sigh of pleasure came from the most anxious of the audience, she began to dance.

Still singing, she danced wonderfully, strangely, wildly. Her skirt, clinging and shimmering and floating at the edges, clung to her. It unfolded like a flower as she stepped, and folded again about her slender ankles, above the marvel of her dancing feet. She swayed lightly from side to side, her slender body the very embodiment of grace and motion, as her dancing seemed to be the interpretation of the music, subtle, seductive, wonderful. So might the daughter of Herodias have danced before Herod Antipas!

Breathless, the good people in the front rows stared. Movement was impossible, every sense seemed suspended, everything but the sensation of amazement. Mrs. Carter looked in a frightened way at her husband and caught the twinkle in Colonel Denbigh’s eye. Then she saw her rector mop his forehead with his handkerchief, and she raised her shamed eyes to the stage. Fanchon was pirouetting on one toe! Applause had started in the back rows, among the black sheep, and was running down the side aisles like a prairie-fire when Mr. Carter abruptly rose.

“Excuse me,” he said roughly to Colonel Denbigh as he clambered over him. “I--I’ve forgotten something!”

Mrs. Carter half rose and then sank back, pulled down by Emily, but she seemed to hear, through the spluttering applause, her husband’s crashing exit.

It might be said that Mr. Carter had the effect of a stone thrown from an ancient catapult, he went with such bounds and rushes. For a stout man his performance was little short of miraculous. He covered the distance to his own door in ten minutes, got out his latch-key, found the key-hole unerringly in the dark, went in, and banged the door to with a violence that made the ornaments on the hall mantel rattle.

The hall was vacant, but he saw a stream of light coming out of the library, and headed violently for it. William was alone, huddled in an easy chair, smoking and reading. Mr. Carter came in and shut the door. Then he advanced on his son with a face of thunder.

“William Henry Carter,” said he, “you’ve married a dancer--a French dancer!”

William, overtaken by the unexpected, laid down his book and stared. But his father only roared the louder. He seemed to think that his son had grown suddenly deaf.

“Do you hear me, sir?” he bellowed fiercely. “You’ve married a--a dyed-in-the-wool ballet-dancer!”

VIII

IT was an hour later when Miranda, looking very dark and showing the whites of her eyes to an alarming extent, opened the front door for Mrs. Carter, Emily and Leigh.

“Mist’ Carter says, please, ma’am, yo’ come inter de libr’ry,” said the colored servitress in a sympathetic undertone.

Mrs. Carter cast an apprehensive look at her daughter.

“I guess you two had better go up-stairs,” she whispered.

Emily nodded, and started for the staircase, but Mr. Carter shouted from the library:

“I hear you-all out there--come in here!”

They went. Leigh, having forgotten to put down Fanchon’s extra wraps, brought up the rear, his flushed face just appearing above a mass of chiffon, lace and fur.

Mr. Carter, striding up and down the room alone, caught sight of his youngest son first.

“Put down those things!” he shouted. “You look like a dromedary.”

Leigh obeyed, but he straightened himself and stood, sullenly, his eyes on the ground. His father took no further notice of him.

“I’d like to know if any of you knew what that girl was going to do to-night?” he demanded fiercely.

Mrs. Carter sank weakly into the nearest chair.

“No, we didn’t! Wasn’t it awful? I was so mortified. The Baptist minister went out just after you, Johnson, and the rector was as red as could be. I’m sure I don’t know what he thought!”

“Thought! Where is she?”

“William came for her, and took her out to supper at the inn,” said Emily in a weak voice.

Like Leigh she stood back, unsympathetic, but she was a little frightened, too.

“Humph! Took her out to supper, eh?” Mr. Carter thundered. “I reckon he thought he’d better! I gave him a piece of my mind.”

“Oh, papa! He was as white as a sheet.” William’s mother pressed her handkerchief against her shaking lips. “He didn’t know, of course. He wasn’t to blame, dear--you shouldn’t have done it!”

“Wasn’t to blame?” Mr. Carter blazed with wrath. “Didn’t he marry that ballet-dancer? Didn’t he bring a French ballet-dancer home here and foist her on a decent, respectable family? He wasn’t to blame, you say? By Jove, I wish he was small enough to thrash!”

He was still walking up and down. As he swung around, Leigh faced him.

“She’s a lovely creature!” the boy cried passionately. “That dance was beautiful--everybody thought so!”

“Oh, Leigh!” gasped his mother. “Dr. Fanshawe was ashamed to look at it!”

“Old idiot!” cried Leigh. “You’re all making her unhappy--any one can see it. Nothing but criticism from morning until night--I call it cruel!”

Mr. Carter stared at him a moment in amazed incredulity. Then he jeered.

“Hear, hear!” he cried. “Wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings! Do you want to marry a ballet-dancer, too, sir?”

But his son’s blood was up.

“I call it a burning shame!” he cried. “She’s come here, a foreigner, and she wants to love us, and you’re talking brutally about her. She’s exquisite, she was to-night, she----”

“Go to bed!” shouted Mr. Carter. “Shut up and go to bed!”

Mrs. Carter rose hastily and gave Leigh a little shove.

“Go!” she whispered. “There, there--don’t aggravate papa.”

Leigh, shaking with anger, yielded ground reluctantly.

“She’s an angel!” he shouted at the door. “I won’t have her abused!”

“Did you marry her!” Mr. Carter asked with fine sarcasm. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake; I thought it was William.”

Leigh almost choked with indignation.

“He isn’t here--I won’t have her talked about.”

“Go to bed!” thundered Mr. Carter, taking a step forward.

“I----” Leigh began to sputter again, but his mother thrust him out and shut the door.

“Do speak lower, Johnson,” she sobbed. “I know Miranda listens.”

“I don’t care a hang whether Miranda listens or not,” said Mr. Carter. “That boy’s an ass--talk about his being a genius!”

“Oh, papa, he’s only eighteen,” said Mrs. Carter deprecatingly, “and she’s made up to him from the very first.”

“He’s an ass!” repeated Mr. Carter. “And I guess the whole town knows I’ve got a ballet-dancer----”

He stopped; his eye had suddenly lighted on Emily. She was huddled in a frightened attitude behind her mother’s chair, and the light was strong on her face. Her father stared.

“What’s the matter with that child’s eyes?” he demanded suddenly. “They look like burnt holes in a blanket!”

Mrs. Carter, following his look, suddenly noticed her daughter’s eyelashes and nose. In an illuminating flash she remembered that first night in Emily’s room.

“Oh, Emmy!” she gasped. “You’ve painted your eyelashes!”

Emily clung to the back of her chair.

“I had to, mama. They’re horrid and white.”

“Good Lord, that minx is teaching my daughter to paint her face! Mama, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Can’t you watch your own children?” bellowed Mr. Carter, beside himself.

“Emmy, I’m ashamed!” Poor Mrs. Carter sat gasping, her mouth open. “I never dreamed--what’s that on your nose?”

Emily seized her handkerchief and began to rub the offending feature.

“It’s nothing, mama--just a little liquid powder.”

“You march up-stairs and wash your face!” said her father. “Hear me? Don’t let me catch you painting up like that--singing doll!”

Emily began to cry.

“It’s--it’s nothing, papa. Everybody does it. The girls think I look so nice.”

“Wash your face!” shouted her father. “March up and wash your face!”

“I don’t want to!” sobbed Emily. “The girls say my eyes look twice as----”

Mr. Carter seized her by the shoulder and turned her toward the door.

“Want me to wash your face?” he asked her grimly. “No? I thought not. Well, then, you march!”

Emily, sobbing loudly, marched. They could hear her stumbling up-stairs, crying as she went.

“Oh, papa, you were awful!” Mrs. Carter wiped her own eyes. “The poor child!”

“Do you suppose that I’m going to let my daughter paint her face?” Mr. Carter fairly bellowed. “I reckon I’ve got enough in a daughter-in-law! I’ll see to Emmy myself, if you can’t!”

“Johnson, you know I didn’t notice.”

Mr. Carter emitted another roar, and finally threw himself into a chair and thrust his feet out.

“What did that fool William do?”

“You mean to-night?” Mrs. Carter dried her eyes. “He just met us at the door. He was so white he scared me, and he took Fanchon off in a taxi--in that scandalous dress! Said he’d give her a supper out to-night. I’m afraid you’ve done it this time, Johnson. What did you do to the poor boy?”

“Poor donkey! I told him what I thought of that woman--called by my name, too--a woman dressing like one of those yellow East Indian dancing-girls--that’s what I told him.”

“Johnson!”

“I did! What do you s’pose the congregation thought? By George, it made me hot all over. Did you see her legs?”

“You mean her stockings? They were a little startling. I told her so before we started.”

“Startling? My word.”

Mr. Carter relapsed into a terrible silence. Mrs. Carter sat helplessly looking at him. She was thinking of that dance, that terrible, amazing, dazzling dance. What a pretty creature, too! That was it; she had turned William’s head; and Leigh’s and Emily’s, too. Those painted eyelashes! For a moment Mrs. Carter half laughed.

“It’s funny--I can’t help it, Johnson,” she said, feebly apologetic, as she met his irate eyes. “I was thinking of Emmy trying to paint her lashes.”

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he retorted hoarsely. “Don’t see the joke myself. I’ve got too much daughter-in-law, that’s my trouble!”

“Hush! There’s some one now--they’ve come!” Mrs. Carter tiptoed to the door and listened, coming back, relieved. “No, it’s only Dan.”

“I wish William had Dan’s sense!”

“I wish Dan would marry a nice home girl. It would make things better,” sighed Mrs. Carter.

“Daniel marry?” Mr. Carter raised his voice again to a roar of discontent and hopelessness. “Who d’you think Dan could marry? What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

“Hush!”

Mrs. Carter, very pale, rose and shut the door; but she was too late. Daniel, suspecting the trouble in the library, had started for his own room. The stairs were just outside the library door, however, and he could not help hearing every word his father said. In fact, Mr. Carter’s irate voice rang out like a trumpet. “What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel, clinging to the banisters, ascended more wearily than usual. The stairs turned at the landing, and he was out of sight when his mother shut the door. He never used a cane in the house now. He was well enough to get along with a heavy limp, and he made no noise as he crossed the upper hall and went into his own room. Once there, he locked his door, and, crossing to the window, stood staring out with absorbed and thoughtful eyes.

The night was perfect. A young moon had set, and there seemed to be, instead, a myriad of stars. He could discern, too, even in the darkness, the darker profile of the hills, and, nearer at hand, the clustering beauty of foliage, pierced here and there with the lights of near-by houses, which shone in the darkness, without any discernible outlines behind them, like fallen stars. The air was fragrant and soft, with the sweetness of flowering grapes, familiar and homelike, amid all that blended early blossoming.

He could hear soft, blurred sounds, too--the hum of insect life, the piping of frogs, the murmur of the brook that flowed not a hundred yards away. He stood motionless, thinking, and glad of the cool night air on his hot cheeks and brow. He felt as if some one had dealt him a physical blow, and his bruised flesh was still quivering under it.

“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel shut his lips sharply over his clenched teeth. It wasn’t a new idea; it wasn’t even a suggestion. He had known it all along, he told himself, and yet the bare words were brutal. They seemed to brand him like hot iron, to shrivel into his shrinking flesh and leave the mark there.

“Cripple!” He remembered, in a flash, his well days--the days when he was like other boys, before the fall which lamed him. He remembered his own young scorn of the weakling and the maimed, the repugnance that the physically strong often feel toward the physically disabled. Yet there was nothing disfiguring in his trouble. He was lame, but he was not twisted; he only halted in his walk. But, none the less, he was a cripple.

“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel stared steadily out into the night, as if the starry darkness held the answer. One by one he saw the lights go out in the houses near at hand. Farther off, lights still shone in the town but darkness grew and grew. Then, far off, he detected a moving thing, saw a leap of flame and sparks as the smoke belched from the funnel of the engine. He could trace it coming nearer and nearer, and then he heard the clamor of its bell at the crossing, strangely distinct at night.

He turned slowly away, lit the lamp on his table, and, going to his desk, took out the picture of Virginia that he had stolen from the mantel down-stairs after Fanchon’s attack upon it. He brought it to the table, and, setting it down beside him, began to write. From time to time, as he wrote, he glanced up at the young face in the frame, and felt an exquisite sense of companionship. He was not alone; the picture kept him company. The pallor of his face, too, gradually changed, and a slight color rose in his cheeks. He took off his coat and lit his pipe. Well into the small hours he worked steadily on a case for Judge Jessup.

He was aware of doors shutting below, aware that sounds gradually ceased and sleep drenched the household, but he worked on with the passionate zeal that only an ambitious man can feel--a man who has no other end in life but to forget himself in the fury of his toil. Yet, all the while, the young face of Virginia bore him mute company, and sometimes it seemed to smile upon him.

At daybreak, the fury of his thirst for work slaked, he lifted a haggard face to the light, glanced at the picture, and stretching his arms across the table laid his head upon them with a groan. He fell asleep there from sheer exhaustion and was sleeping when the sun rose.

IX

WILLIAM CARTER took his wife to the inn for supper. He had appeared at the door of the Sunday-school hall with a taxi and abruptly bundled Fanchon into it. It was just after her performance on the stage and before the audience began to disperse. In fact, they heard the strains of some very churchy music coming from the orchestra, as if an effort was being made--delayed but strenuous--to soothe the startled spectators of Fanchon’s amazing dance.

William said nothing. He sat in the dark interior of the taxi with a face as white as paper, and Fanchon, watching him covertly, saw that the hand he laid on the window shook. She leaned back in her corner, twisting a strand of pearls around her throat--a strand that she had put on after the dance--and watching him; but she said nothing.

She had danced so wildly, indeed, that she was still panting and throbbing with excitement. She seemed to feel the thrill of the music even in her feet. It was intoxicating, it was what she loved--the glamour of the lights, the music, the motion. Her whole body vibrated, she could scarcely sit still, her feet still moved restlessly. She loved it!