_ CHAPTER XII. ANITA
On my first day in long trousers I may have been more ill at ease than I was that Sunday evening at the Ellerslys'; but I doubt it.
When I came into their big drawing-room and took a look round at the assembled guests, I never felt more at home in my life. "Yes," said I to myself, as Mrs. Ellersly was greeting me and as I noted the friendly interest in the glances of the women, "this is where I belong. I'm beginning to come into my own."
As I look back on it now, I can't refrain from smiling at my own simplicity--and snobbishness. For, so determined was I to believe what I was working for was worth while, that I actually fancied there were upon these in reality ordinary people, ordinary in looks, ordinary in intelligence, some subtle marks of superiority, that made them at a glance superior to the common run. This ecstasy of snobbishness deluded me as to the women only--for, as I looked at the men, I at once felt myself their superior. They were an inconsequential, patterned lot. I even was better dressed than any of them, except possibly Mowbray Langdon; and, if he showed to more advantage than I, it was because of his manner, which, as I have probably said before, is superior to that of any human being I've ever seen--man or woman.
"You are to take Anita in," said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting beside her; I had interrupted their conversation.
"Hello, Blacklock!" said Langdon, with a quizzical, satirical smile with the eyes only. "It seems strange to see you at such peaceful pursuits." His glance traveled over me critically--and that was the beginning of my trouble. Presently, he rose, left me alone with her.
"You know Mr. Langdon?" she said, obviously because she felt she must say something.
"Oh, yes," I replied. "We are old friends. What a tremendous swell he is--really a swell." This with enthusiasm.
She made no comment. I debated with myself whether to go on talking of Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do with matters down town--and Monson had impressed it upon me that down town was taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for another and suitable topic.
She sat, and I stood--she tranquil and beautiful and cold, I every instant more miserably self-conscious. When the start for the dining-room was made I offered her my left arm, though I had carefully planned beforehand just what I would do. She--without hesitation and, as I know now, out of sympathy for me in my suffering--was taking my wrong arm, when it flashed on me like a blinding blow in the face that I ought to be on the other side of her. I got red, tripped in the far-sprawling train of Mrs. Langdon, tore it slightly, tried to get to the other side of Miss Ellersly by walking in front of her, recovered myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without the least trouble.
It was with a sigh of profound relief that I sank upon the chair between Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon, safe from danger of making "breaks," so I hoped, for the rest of the evening. But within a very few minutes I realized that my little misadventure had unnerved me. My hands were trembling so that I could scarcely lift the soup spoon to my lips, and my throat had got so far beyond control that I had difficulty in swallowing. Miss Ellersly and Mrs. Langdon were each busy with the man on the other side of her; I was left to my own reflections, and I was not sure whether this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to my torment, I grew angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and down and across the big table noted all these self-satisfied people perfectly at their ease; and I said to myself: "What's the matter with you, Matt? They're only men and women, and by no means the best specimens of the breed. You've got more brains than all of 'em put together, probably; is there one of the lot that could get a job at good wages if thrown on the world? What do you care what they think of you? It's a damn sight more important what you think of them; as it won't be many years before you'll hold everything they value, everything that makes them of consequence, in the hollow of your hand."
But it was of no use. When Miss Ellersly finally turned her face toward me to indicate that she would be graciously pleased to listen if I had anything to communicate, I felt as if I were slowly wilting, felt my throat contracting into a dry twist. What was the matter with me? Partly, of course, my own snobbishness, which led me to attach the same importance to those people that the snobbishness of the small and silly had got them in the way of attaching to themselves. But the chief cause of my inability was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its proper value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by nature, and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that he had been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had unconsciously absorbed his attitude; I was like a fellow who, after cramming hard for an examination, finds that all the questions put to him are on things he hasn't looked at. I had been making an ass of myself, and that evening I got the first instalment of my sound and just punishment. I who had prided myself on being ready for anything or anybody, I who had laughed contemptuously when I read how men and women, presented at European courts, made fools of themselves--I was made ridiculous by these people who, as I well know, had nothing to back their pretensions to superiority but a barefaced bluff.
Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew, the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone, sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in.
Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look, finally seated himself beside me. "I hope you'll stay after the others have gone," said he. "They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and talk."
All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I really cared about. "Very well," said I, in reply to him.
He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed wonderful--too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. "Incredible," thought I, "that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife--but again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human creatures?" Her slender white arms, her slender white shoulders, the bloom on her skin, the graceful, careless way her hair grew round her forehead and at the nape of her neck, the rather haughty expression of her small face softened into sweetness and even tenderness, now that she was talking at her ease with one whom she regarded as of her own kind--"but he isn't!" I protested to myself. "Langdon--none of these men--none of these women, is fit to associate with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me who can." And I had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her away--home--to the home she could make for me out of what I would shower upon her.
At last Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me--and like his wife. I saw that she, too, was frowning. She looked beautiful that evening, in spite of her too great breadth for her height--her stoutness was not altogether a defect when she was wearing evening dress. While she seemed friendly and smiling to Miss Ellersly, I saw, whether others saw it or not, that she quivered with apprehension at his mildly flirtatious ways. He acted toward any and every attractive woman as if he were free and were regarding her as a possibility, and didn't mind if she flattered herself that he regarded her as a probability.
In an aimless sort of way Miss Ellersly, after the Langdons had disappeared, left the drawing-room by the same door. Still aimlessly wandering, she drifted into the library by the hall door. As I rose, she lifted her eyes, saw me, and drove away the frown of annoyance which came over her face like the faintest haze. In fact, it may have existed only in my imagination. She opened a large, square silver box on the table, took out a cigarette, lighted it and holding it, with the smoke lazily curling up from it, between the long slender first and second fingers of her white hand, stood idly turning the leaves of a magazine. I threw my cigar into the fireplace. The slight sound as it struck made her jump, and I saw that, underneath her surface of perfect calm, she was in a nervous state full as tense as my own.
"You smoke?" said I.
"Sometimes," she replied. "It is soothing and distracting. I don't know how it is with others, but when I smoke, my mind is quite empty."
"It's a nasty habit--smoking," said I.
"Do you think so?" said she, with the slightest lift to her tone and her eyebrows.
"Especially for a woman," I went on, because I could think of nothing else to say, and would not, at any cost, let this conversation, so hard to begin, die out.
"You are one of those men who have one code for themselves and another for women," she replied.
"I'm a man," said I. "All men have the two codes."
"Not all," said she after a pause.
"All men of decent ideas," said I with emphasis.
"Really?" said she, in a tone that irritated me by suggesting that what I said was both absurd and unimportant.
"It is the first time I've ever seen a respectable woman smoke," I went on, powerless to change the subject, though conscious I was getting tedious. "I've read of such things, but I didn't believe."
"That is interesting," said she, her tone suggesting the reverse.
"I've offended you by saying frankly what I think," said I. "Of course, it's none of my business."
"Oh, no," replied she carelessly. "I'm not in the least offended. Prejudices always interest me."
I saw Ellersly and his wife sitting in the drawing-room, pretending to talk to each other. I understood that they were leaving me alone with her deliberately, and I began to suspect she was in the plot. I smiled, and my courage and self-possession returned as summarily as they had fled.
"I'm glad of this chance to get better acquainted with you," said I. "I've wanted it ever since I first saw you."
As I put this to her directly, she dropped her eyes and murmured something she probably wished me to think vaguely pleasant.
"You are the first woman I ever knew," I went on, "with whom it was hard for me to get on any sort of terms. I suppose it's my fault. I don't know this game yet. But I'll learn it, if you'll be a little patient; and when I do, I think I'll be able to keep up my end."
She looked at me--just looked. I couldn't begin to guess what was going on in that gracefully-poised head of hers.
"Will you try to be friends with me?" said I with directness.
She continued to look at me in that same steady, puzzling way.
"Will you?" I repeated.
"I have no choice," said she slowly.
I flushed. "What does that mean?" I demanded.
She threw a hurried and, it seemed to me, frightened glance toward the drawing-room. "I didn't intend to offend you," she said in a low voice. "You have been such a good friend to papa--I've no right to feel anything but friendship for you."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," said I. And I was; for those words of hers were the first expression of appreciation and gratitude I had ever got from any member of that family which I was holding up from ruin. I put out my hand, and she laid hers in it.
"There isn't anything I wouldn't do to earn your friendship, Miss Anita," I said, holding her hand tightly, feeling how lifeless it was, yet feeling, too, as if a flaming torch were being borne through me, were lighting a fire in every vein.
The scarlet poured into her face and neck, wave on wave, until I thought it would never cease to come. She snatched her hand away and from her face streamed proud resentment. God, how I loved her at that moment!
"Anita! Mr. Blacklock!" came from the other room, in her mother's voice. "Come in here and save us old people from boring each other to sleep."
She turned swiftly and went into the other room, I following. There were a few minutes of conversation--a monologue by her mother. Then I ceased to disregard Ellersly's less and less covert yawns, and rose to take leave. I could not look directly at Anita, but I was seeing that her eyes were fixed on me, as if by some compulsion, some sinister compulsion. I left in high spirits. "No matter why or how she looks at you," said I to myself. "All that is necessary is to get yourself noticed. After that, the rest is easy. You must keep cool enough always to remember that under this glamour that intoxicates you, she's a woman, just a woman, waiting for a man." _