_ CHAPTER XVI
"Would you mind telling me," inquired Arethusa, as courteously as possible, "what these are?"
But her neighbor paid no attention.
She repeated her request, raising her voice a trifle. "Maybe he's deaf," she thought.
And this time he turned, "I beg your pardon.... But did you speak to me?"
"Yes," she replied, "I asked you to tell me what these were."
He stared at her, surprised into a direct reply, "Why, they're oysters!"
"Oysters!"
Arethusa examined them critically. No wonder they had looked so familiar! "But they're raw!" she exclaimed.
"It's an oyster cocktail! Of course they're raw!"
"But I never saw them this way before! I didn't know people ate raw fish at Parties! I.... This is the Very First Party I ever went to," she explained. It was surely extenuation enough for any ignorance of the customs of such gatherings!
His glance searched her, up and down. He struggled visibly with amusement. It was all he could do not to laugh outright.
"I suppose you're visiting here?" he remarked, after awhile, when speech was once more somewhat of a possibility.
Arethusa thought it was most polite of him to show this interest. She nodded.
"I'm Arethusa Worthington."
"Arethusa Worthington!" The youth was all real interest and animation at once. "Not Mr. Ross Worthington's daughter! Why, I ... I'm proud to call him one of my best friends! I'm just crazy about that man! I met him abroad. And so you're really his daughter! I certainly am glad to meet you! Now, that I think, of it, I believe he did tell me the other day that you were coming!"
Arethusa smiled all over, showing every dimple; she felt at home immediately with any friend of her father's, self-announced though he might be.
"My name's Watts, Miss Worthington," he continued, "William Watts. But most people call me 'Billy.'"
"I don't know you quite well enough yet to call you 'Billy,'" she replied, seriously reproving. "But wasn't it just dear that we happened to sit next to each other?"
Mr. Watts enthusiastically agreed. And acquaintanceship established on this firm foundation, he turned his attention once more to food.
"Don't you like oysters?"
"Yes, but they look so horrid! Ugh!" Arethusa shivered. "Generally, I love 'em, but these are raw! I never ate any raw ones before!"
"Go ahead and try them," he urged in all friendliness. "If you like them at all, you'll like them this way, too, I'll bet."
But she still hung back, "I don't know how."
"It's perfectly easy. Just like this." He speared one and lifted it to show her.
Arethusa watched the operation, fascinated at his skill, but she shook her head with decision when he suggested that she do likewise.
"I couldn't possibly. I believe I'd drop it. That little pitchfork thing doesn't look near big enough to hold such an enormous oyster."
"Oh, you won't drop any," he encouraged; "nobody ever has that I have heard of. Go on and try."
"No," she shook her head again, "no, I don't believe I will. I think I'd much rather practice at home first."
For it looked far too difficult to attempt thus offhand, even though reassured that none had ever been dropped. And should one really miss its way to her mouth and fall off the pitchfork thing to land in her lap? Well, the Dress was far too beautiful and too precious to be risked so foolishly. Those oysters had a most slimy appearance.
There was a little silence while the epicurean Mr. Watts consumed his oysters unaccompanied.
Arethusa wondered if the time was ripe for her to introduce into the Conversation the Subject of Lepidoptera, but if it was, she was quite at a loss how to do so with "ease and grace." Perhaps a little Poetry would be appreciated, but there was nothing as yet with which it could be "interspersed." None of the verses she knew had any remotest application to what had been said so far.
Mr. Watts finished his oysters to the very last one, and then turned her way with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"You certainly did make a mistake this time, Miss Worthington, for those were perfectly bully. This hotel is rather famous for its sea food, you know, especially for oysters."
Now Arethusa was getting somewhat tired of hearing of these bivalves and their extremely succulent taste; she did not want the entire evening to be given over to a discussion of oysters. There were other things. The Subject she had been at such pains to prepare, for instance, would make a much more interesting Conversation. So she plunged right in.
"Do you know anything about Lep--lep-e-e-top-dera?" she asked, with a charming and social smile.
He looked frankly puzzled.
"Moths and butterflies," she added, in explanation to that questioning expression.
"No, I bite. What about 'em?"
"I thought they would be nice for us to talk about. I read about them in the Encyclopedia so I could. The 'Advice to Young Ladies' said at a dinner you must always have something to talk about."
But this "member of the other sex next whom she was seated at the festive board" was not at all affected by her attempt to make the evening pleasant as Arethusa had been led by the little book to believe he would be; for after a momentary stare, he began to laugh.
He went through all the gamut of mirth. He gurgled. He giggled. He shrieked. He roared. And he even pounded on the table.
"Oh, but this is rich!" he gasped. "My word! But this is rich! It's the very richest thing I ever heard!"
His unseemly merriment attracted the attention of nearly everybody around them.
Arethusa was rather startled by his laughter at first, and then she was infuriated; for she realized that it was laughter directed straight at her. Timothy could have told Mr. Watts that it was very unsafe to laugh at Arethusa; that she hated nothing in the world so much as to be laughed at. Her eyes darkened with anger, and the mirthful one was given the full battery of their wrathful blazing.
But he did not even pause. He laughed on and on, uncontrollably.
So she reached over and pinched him with all the power of strong young fingers on the very fleshiest part of his arm.
His laughter stopped abruptly. "Say," he exclaimed, "that hurt like fury!"
"I meant it to hurt!" breathed Arethusa, and she turned as far away from him as was possible, owing to the fact that their chairs were so close together.
She was trembling all over with her rage, and he mistook it for weeping.
"I didn't mean to make you cry, Miss Worthington," he began.
Her angry dark eyes flashed around at him for a moment. "I'm not crying!" she announced with emphasis, and then turned away from him again.
But that one brief glance had shown him how far she was from tears. "Well, I most certainly didn't mean to make you mad," he had only to change the words of his apology. "But ... that was funny!"
"Why?" she demanded, peremptorily, half turning back to face him.
"It just was! You ask your father!" Arethusa's expression remained most unrelenting. "But I really do beg your pardon, in all humbleness, for laughing at you. It was horribly rude of me, I'll have to admit, and I'm certainly sorry that I did it. So do forgive me this time, and let's go on being friends. Please...." he coaxed.
Arethusa softened, just the least bit. "But why was it so funny, what I said? You didn't tell me. Oughtn't I to have said it?"
"It wasn't what you said. There wasn't anything so dead wrong in that. You could talk about such creatures all you wanted, I suppose, and still not commit anything that wasn't right according to Hoyle. It was the way you handed it out that got my goat so completely!" He gurgled reminiscently. "But listen here, Miss Arethusa, you do just what I'm telling you and you let the natural history alone for the rest of this party, no matter what your book said about it. You can the high-brow stuff from now on, and you'll get along better."
She could plainly tell that every word of this was meant as advice between friends. It was impossible to construe Mr. Watts' manner as anything but eagerness to help. And it sounded delightfully like Timothy in their happier moments.
Her face broke into a forgiving smile.
She informed her repentant neighbor of how he had pleasantly reminded her of Timothy; just who Timothy was, and all about him. Mr. Watts was the personification of absorbed interest. Timothy sounded to him as if he might be a "human being," he declared, and quite worth while.
Arethusa and her adjacent "member of the other sex" managed to get along famously for the rest of the dinner, oblivious to the fact that each had another person on the other side, Mr. Watts because he did not like the girl in blue at his left, and Arethusa because she was almost unconscious that there was anybody else at this table beside their two selves. Mr. Watts was quite sufficient for her entertainment.
As the courses proceeded and Arethusa ate and laughed and chattered away, from time to time her glance roved around the huge dining-room, so gorgeously decorated for this occasion, admiring everything she saw, the diners themselves, as well as the decorations. There were some very pretty girls at this Party, as well as some passably handsome men; and Arethusa liked the contrast of the sombre black and white of the men's attiring silhouetted against the gay dresses of the girls near them. And she liked to watch them as they laughed and talked together.
Among the faces which most interested her was one, a man's face, to which she returned again and again to steal a look. Finally, she asked Mr. Watts to tell her who he was.
"The one next to the girl with the feather fan, at that second table by the pillar."
"Oh, that? That's Gridley Bennet."
There was something in the way he said the name that made Arethusa ask if there was anything wrong with Mr. Bennet.
"Nothing I know of. He's just our prize debutante's delight."
"Why.... What?"
"Lady-killer," he amplified. "All the girls are crazy about him."
"I don't wonder!" Arethusa's own admiration was wholly undisguised by now. "He's the handsomest man I ever saw!" she added recklessly.
"He's handsome enough, I reckon, but he knows it almost too well. And he just hates himself!"
"That's a horrid thing to say about anybody; I don't believe it at all! And how on earth could he help knowing he's good-looking if he ever looks in the mirror! There's no harm in knowing you're good-looking if you are!"
The subject of this discussion looked far more as those charming gentlemen pictured in the advertising sections of our various current magazines to show the superiority of certain brands of collars and other necessary articles of manly garb were intended to look than the artists have ever been able to make the pictures. He was superbly tall and broad of shoulder; in every way he fulfilled the most exacting requirements of what a Hero should be. No dream of a Prince Charming could have formed a being half so well-fitted for the role as this living Reality.
He wore his faultless dress clothes as if they had been a veritable part of him, not something donned for the few hours of this evening. And he had gold-tipped eyelashes every bit as long as Arethusa's own (she could tell that they were even so far away as she sat from him), and the most irresistible of smiles. He smiled with commendable frequency. Perhaps he knew that his rows of teeth were as perfect as ordinary human teeth could very well be, and that this superlative smile was in consequence no trifling addition to his other attractions of person. He had a little trick of flinging his head back when he laughed aloud, that showed to still greater advantage all of these wonderful teeth, and his eyelashes, and even called attention to the perfect straightness of his handsome nose.
He laughed for Arethusa's benefit as she watched him, and she smiled in sympathy for such a charming laugh, although she was so far across the room from him she could have no idea why he laughed.
And then she gazed and gazed at him, unashamed; a tiny sigh fluttered through her parted red lips.
"I wish I could meet Him!"
"That's perfectly simple," remarked Mr. Watts. "Introductions haven't gone out yet, as I have heard." His tone was scornful, but it was all lost on Arethusa.
"Could you introduce me?" eagerly.
"I might, if really urged." Then he added, half to himself, "It's a regular slaughter of the innocents whenever Grid Bennet goes to a debutante party. He ought to be barred from 'em by law."
"I think you're jealous of him," said Arethusa reprovingly.
"I haven't a thing to be jealous of him about, and just to prove it, here goes."
And as the Party was all beginning to rise from the tables, Mr. Watts headed straight for Mr. Bennet. He was a trifle disgusted with Arethusa for this display of enthusiasm over Gridley Bennet. His type did not appeal to Mr. Watts very much.
But it certainly did to Arethusa.
A nearer view of Mr. Bennet showed him to her as even handsomer than she had thought at a distance. The Introduction was a Momentous Affair, far more of a Real Event than any introduction in which Arethusa had ever participated. Mr. Bennet's manner of bending over her hand in his acknowledgment of it called loudly for satin knee breeches and lace ruffles, silver buckled shoon and a decorative sword, as the most appropriate accompaniments. It was delightfully suggestive, to the thrilled Arethusa, of the pages of her favorite novels of those days when ladies' hands were kissed in public.
"Grid's squshy manner would get him anywhere he wanted with the skirts, even if he didn't have the looks to back it up," commented Mr. Watts, with inward dryness, of the meeting.
"I've been watching you for some time, Miss Worthington," was Mr. Bennet's flattering opening to the conversation, "and I was planning an introduction to you just as soon as dinner was over."
Now he very probably had not noticed her at all until Billy Watts had him face to face with her, but he could no more help saying such things than he could help his breathing. He was built just that way.
But Arethusa found no reason to doubt the sincerity of these charming words. And his little way of looking at her and of leaning toward her as he talked, were a perfect corollary, seeming to single her out from among all these hundred or more feminine beings in the vast room as the one whose company he most ardently desired. "These other stupid folks do not exist for me at present," proclaimed his manner, "and I am just where I most want to be."
Her heart fluttered painfully. She could only stand there at first, silently flushing and paling by turns, at a loss for the words of a reply that should suitably acknowledge such a marvelous greeting of her insignificant self. Then the music started up in the ball room at the other end of the hall, and she moved away with all the rest of the Party toward the sound, at Mr. Bennet's side, still quite unable to find her generally so-ready tongue.
"Shall we dance?" asked Mr. Bennet courteously, as they walked. His voice was another of his distinct attractions, rather deep and with the slightest possible drawl.
Arethusa paused just under the broad arch of the ball-room doorway, and so Mr. Bennet paused also, to watch the dancers for a moment, all of them bending and turning and twisting to a tune of such impelling rhythm that it would have made a wooden-legged man almost to attempt the impossible, and then to curse his fate; then she lifted troubled eyes to Mr. Bennet.
"But I don't dance what they're dancing."
"Oh, yes, you do, I'm sure," with the intimation in his tone that she was sure to be the very best dancer on the floor. "It's only the one-step."
Arethusa could not help but laugh.
"Well, it certainly doesn't look anything like the one-step that
I know! You see, Mr. Bennet, I've never been to any Parties. Timothy just taught me some down in our barn." She was beginning to feel a little less awed by his magnificence as a Man, for he was, after all, human, and quite inclined to be kind.
"Then let me give you another lesson, now.... Do, please. You won't really need it as a lesson though, I know."
Still she hesitated. Yet her feet unconsciously kept time to the gay music as she stood, just watching.
"Surely you won't confer a favor on this Timothy person you'd deny to me," and Arethusa was quite convinced there was a wee tinge of reproachful jealousy in Mr. Bennet's attractive voice. "I may not prove to be so good a teacher as he is, but I shall certainly do my best."
Arethusa laughed again; with real merriment this time.
The very idea of Timothy as a better teacher of anything than this Wonderful Mr. Bennet!
The picture of herself in those blue print dresses she wore around the Farm and Timothy in khaki trousers and blue flannel shirt, hopping about on the barn floor (which, though clean-swept and smooth, was hardly meant for dancing) to tunes which were hummed and whistled by each alternately, rose before her; and she compared it in its utter inferiority with this picture of herself in this Heavenly Green Frock and Mr. Bennet in his Perfect Evening Clothes, the shining floor which stretched away from them, and the lilt of the band music which went to her head like wine.
She shook her head. "But suppose I should fall down or something. This floor looks so dreadfully slick and hard to stand up on. I wouldn't mind a bit if I was awkward with Timothy. But...."
"I'm getting rather jealous of Timothy, I'm afraid," said Mr. Bennet. "Miss Worthington, you couldn't be awkward if you tried. And you won't fall down, I can promise to take care of that. Please give me this great pleasure."
So Arethusa allowed herself to be thus charmingly persuaded.
But it must be confessed that their start was a bit awkward.
Arethusa was horribly self-conscious, and not at all sure, despite his reassurance, that she was going to manage this new venture. After a few moments, however, and his low-spoken command to let herself be guided, her natural-born instinct to dance asserted itself, the self-consciousness wore away, and she was one-stepping with the best of any on that floor.
She was more certainly meant for a dancer. She was as light as a feather, for all her height, and like a piece of thistledown she swayed and circled about the room in perfect time to the music. She seemed to feel instinctively the beat of the measures, and her flying feet obeyed Mr. Bennet's guidance, as if he and she had danced together all of their lives. Mr. Bennet himself was a truly wonderful exponent of the art. He danced with a grace and ease that few men ever attain, and he had an arm of sureness at his partner's back that took her safely through that crowded room without a single bump or mishap. Had Arethusa but known it, there was no one at the Party who could so well have conducted her in her first real effort of this kind as Mr. Bennet.
It was over much too soon to please her. She could have gone on for hours, just like that without a pause, and without once tiring.
"Why, you dance beautifully!" exclaimed Mr. Bennet, when the music stopped. "I verily believe," very softly, "that you were fibbing when you said you had danced so little!"
She looked up at him shyly, from under her long lashes, and blushed just a bit. "That was you. I couldn't have danced with anyone else that way. Timothy doesn't dance at all like that!"
Now this was the rankest ingratitude on Arethusa's part. For had it not been for Timothy's surreptitious lessons, so kindly and willingly given, she would never have experienced the intense pleasure of this one-step with Mr. Bennet. But Arethusa was honestly surprised at her own swallow-like ability to keep time to music that was played instead of whistled.
Then Mr. Harrison caught sight of her and rushed across the room to claim her. He had been hunting everywhere for her, he declared.
Then Mr. Watts came in his turn, and inquired saucily, as he "broke in," if she had found Mr. Bennet as charming as he looked. But she laughed at him merrily, for his friendly teasing. She was too happy to be offended at anything.
And she laughed and chatted away with these two oldest acquaintances her most enthusiastic and Arethusa-like self; with every one introduced to her she had just as Wonderful a Time. There were a great many who asked to be introduced to her, for her shining eyes and her very evident enjoyment of everything she did made her an object of interest to nearly everybody who observed her. Arethusa was really one of the belles of the evening; such unreserved happiness as hers is bound to attract. Consequently, the Party fulfilled her most sanguine expectations as to what a Party should be, although she did not know how large was her own personal share in this fulfillment.
She entirely forgot that she had ever prepared a Topic of Conversation for the Occasion; she made no other mention of moths and butterflies; not once did she quote a line of Poetry. Her words poured forth in as mad a rush, as gaily inconsequential, as the words of the most hardened Party-goer who has ever been an assistance to her hostess in adding to the enjoyment of her fellow guests. Without making any conscious effort to do so, Arethusa followed Mr. Watts' kindly advice, and his words as to the result proved delightfully true.
The terpsichorean attempts which she made during the evening without Mr. Bennet's able guidance, might have been managed with a little more gratifying success, had not her eyes been so prone to follow him in his whirling about the room, wherever she could, as he honored other ladies with his attentions. But when she did miss step, or stumbled, her apologies were so pretty, and she was so sincere in her confused regrets, that it could make no difference to any one with his heart in the right place.
Yet Mr. Bennet came back to Arethusa herself quite often to ask for dances--a truly flattering number of times--for it was a kindly fate that had given her that lightness of foot and her undeniable grace. Then too, Mr. Bennet, like Mr. Watts, knew Ross rather well, and he wanted to be nice to Ross's daughter for various reasons. And last, but not least, her ingenuous admiration of his own attractive person amused Mr. Bennet more than he had been amused for a long while.
There was one last wild romp of a dance as an encore from the more good-natured members of the orchestra, while the other musicians packed their instruments, and then the First Real Party was only a thing to be remembered.
Mr. Bennet made a special point of telling Arethusa good-night, and he bent lingeringly over her hand as he did so, in his own inimitable way of making it seem the very hardest parting he had ever had to make.
"I'm coming to see you some time, if I may," he said.
Her heart almost stopped beating at this. Then it raced on again to beat in quick, little jumps. She lifted young, frankly adoring eyes to the handsome man before her, and quite suddenly, without a word of real warning, Arethusa knew....
She had
fallen in love!
But it was not as she had fallen in love with Elinor, and it was not such love as she gave Ross or Miss Asenath or even Timothy; for this was without doubt the Miracle she had read about so many times under the hollow tree in Miss Asenath's Woods. And it had come just as she had always dreamed it would come, with a Hand-clasp and a Glance.
The hand in Mr. Bennet's holding trembled and grew cold before Arethusa could withdraw it. Her misbehaving heart almost interfered with her breathing. But the world around them went on as casually unaware of the Miracle as if neither Arethusa nor Mr. Bennet existed, when it should surely have been hushed into a Startled Silence by What had happened.
All through that night, Arethusa wandered with a tall man of long-lashed hazel eyes of marvelous beauty, through a country which was a Country of Rare Delight, even if only a Country of Dreaming. And as they wandered, he bent his head again and again to whisper, in a deep drawling voice, Words which bore a remarkable resemblance to some of the lyrics of the early nineteenth-century poets, and the pages of conversation in Arethusa's much read romances.
What though the Gentleman of the Dream wore a modern suit of commonplace evening clothes, instead of Ruffles and a Velvet Coat and Satin Small-clothes? It did not prevent, in the Dream, his pressing his Hand to his Heart at moments when it was logical that he should have done so, nor did it rob his Voice of the Proper Passionate Inflection. Nor did it keep the cardiac region of the Arethusa of the Dream from fluttering in an altogether delightful way. _