THE DANCE
I think that by then Pelleas and I had fairly caught the colour of Youth. For I protest that in Spring Youth is a kind of Lydian stone, and the quality of old age is proved by the colour which it can show at the stone’s touch. Though perhaps with us the gracious basanite has often exceeded its pleasant office and demonstrated us to be quite mad.
Otherwise I cannot account for the intolerance of age and the love of youth that came upon us. I was conscious of this when after breakfast one morning Pelleas and I stood at the drawing-room window watching a shower. It was an unassuming storm of little drops and infrequent gusts and looked hardly of sufficient importance to keep a baby within-doors. But we are obliged to forego our walk if so much as a sprinkling-cart passes. This is so alien to youth that it always leaves us disposed to take exception and to fail to understand and to resort to all the ill-bred devices of well-bred people who are too inventive to be openly unreasonable.
As “What a bony horse,” observed Pelleas.
“Not really bony,” I said; “its ribs do not show in the least.”
“It is bony,” reiterated Pelleas serenely. “It isn’t well fed.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “that is its type. A great many people would say that a slender woman—”
“They’re bony too,” went on Pelleas decidedly. “I never saw a slender woman who looked as if she had enough to eat.”
“Pelleas!” I cried, aghast at such apostasy; “think of the women with lovely tapering waists—”
“Bean poles,” said Pelleas.
“And sloping shoulders—”
“Pagoda-shaped shoulders,” said Pelleas.
“And delicate pointed faces—”
“They look hungry, all the time, and bony,” Pelleas dismissed the matter—Pelleas, who in saner moments commiserates me upon my appalling plumpness.
“There comes the butter woman,” I submitted, to change the subject.
“Yes,” assented Pelleas resentfully, finding fresh fuel in this; “Nichola uses four times too much butter in everything.”
“Pelleas,” I rebuked him, “you know how careful she is.”
“She is,” insisted Pelleas stubbornly, “extravagant in butter.”
“She uses a great deal of oil,” I suggested tremulously, not certain whether oil is the cheaper.
“Butter, butter, she spreads butter on the soup,” stormed Pelleas. “I believe she uses butter to boil water—”
Then I laughed. Pelleas is never more adorable than when he is cross at some one else.
At that very moment the boy who was driving the butter woman’s wagon began to whistle. It was a thin, rich little tune, a tune that pours slowly, like honey. I am not musical but I can always tell honey-tunes. At sound of it Pelleas’ face lighted as if at a prescription of magic.
“Etarre—Etarre!” he cried; “do you hear that tune?”
“Yes,” I said breathlessly.
“Do you remember—?”
“No,” said I, just as breathlessly.
“It’s the Varsovienne,” cried Pelleas, “that we danced together the night that I met you, Etarre.”
With that Pelleas caught me about the waist and hummed the air with all his might and whirled me down the long room.
“Pelleas!” I struggled. “I don’t know it. Let me go.”
For it has been forty years since I have danced or thought of dancing and I could not in the least remember the silly step.
Leaving me to regain my breath as best I might Pelleas was off up the room, around chairs and about tables, stepping long and short, turning, retreating, and singing louder and louder.
“You stood over there,” he cried, still dancing; “the music had begun and I was not your partner—but I caught you away before you could say no, and we danced—tol te tol te tol—”
Pelleas was performing with his back to the hall door when it opened softly, and he did not hear. There stood Nichola. I have never before seen that grim old woman look astonished, but at sight of the flying figure of Pelleas she seemed ready to run away. It was something to see old Nichola taken aback. Our old servant is a brave woman, afraid of nothing in the world but an artificial bath heater which she would rather die than light, but the spectacle of Pelleas, dancing, seemed actually to frighten her. She stood silent for a full minute—and this in itself was amazing in Nichola, who if she went often to the theater would certainly answer back to the player talk. Then Pelleas faced the door and saw her. He stopped short as if he had been a toy and some one had dropped the string. He was frightfully abashed and was therefore never more haughty.
“Nichola,” he said with lifted brows, “we did not ring.”
Nichola remained motionless, her little bead eyes which have not grown old with the rest of her quite round in contemplation.
“We are busy, Nichola,” repeated Pelleas, slightly raising his voice.
Then Nichola regained full consciousness and rolled her eyes naturally.
“Yah!” said she, with a dignity too fine for scorn. “Busy!”
Really, Nichola tyrannizes over us in a manner not to be borne. Every day we tell each other this.
Pelleas looked at me rather foolishly when she had disappeared.
“That was the way it went,” said he, ignoring the interruption as one always does when one is nettled. “Tol te tol te tol—”
“Why don’t you sing da de da de da, Pelleas?” I inquired, having previously noticed that all the world is divided into those who sing tol, or da, or la, or na. “I always say ‘da.’”
“I prefer ‘tol,’” said Pelleas shortly.
Sometime I intend classifying people according to that one peculiarity, to see what so pronounced a characteristic can possibly augur.
“Ah, well,” said I, to restore his good humour, “what a beau you were at that ball, Pelleas.”
“Nonsense!” he disclaimed, trying to conceal his pleasure.
“And how few of us have kept together since,” I went on; “there are Polly Cleatam and Sally Chartres and Horace and Wilfred, all living near us; and there’s Miss Lillieblade, too.”
“That is so,” Pelleas said, “and I suppose they will all remember that very night—our night.”
“Of course,” said I confidently.
Pelleas meditated, one hand over his mouth, his elbow on his knee.
“I wonder,” he said; “I was thinking—I wouldn’t be surprised if—well, why couldn’t we—”
He stopped and looked at me in some suspicion that I knew what he meant.
“Have them all here some evening?” I finished daringly.
Pelleas nodded.
“And dance!” said he, in his most venturesome mood.
“Pelleas!” I cried, “and all wear our old-fashioned things.”
Pelleas smiled at me speechlessly.
The plan grew large in our eyes before I remembered the climax of the matter.
“Thursday,” I said below my breath, “Thursday, Pelleas, is Nichola’s day out!”
“Nichola’s day out” sounds most absurd to every one who has seen our old servant. When she came to us, more than forty years ago, she had landed but two weeks before from Italy, and was a swarthy little beauty in the twenties. She spoke small English and was deliciously amazed at everything, and her Italian friends used to come and take her out once a week, on Thursday. With her black eyes flashing she would tell me next day, while she dressed me, of the amazing sights that had been permitted her. Those were the days when we had many servants and Nichola was my own maid; then gradually all the rest left and Nichola remained, even through one black year when she had not a centime of wages. And so she had grown gray and bent in our service and had changed in appearance to another being and had lost her graces and her disposition alike. One thing only remained the same: She still had Thursday evenings “out.”
Where in the world she found to go now, was a favourite subject of speculation with Pelleas and me over our drawing-room fire. She had no friends, no one came to see her, she did not mention frequenting any houses; she was openly averse to the dark—not afraid, but averse; and her contempt for all places of amusement was second only to her distrust of the cable cars. Yet every Thursday evening she set forth in her best purple bonnet and black “circular,” and was gone until eleven o’clock. Old, lonely, withered woman—where did she go? Unless indeed, it was, as we half suspected, to take certain lessons in magic whereby she seems to divine our inmost thoughts and intentions.
And now for the first time we planned to make a base and harmless advantage of Nichola’s absence. We meant to give a party, a dance, with seven guests. Nichola, we were certain, would not for a moment have supported the idea; she would have had a thousand silly objections concerning my sleeplessness and our nerves and the digestion of Pelleas. We argued that all three objections were inadequate, and that Nichola was made for us and not we for Nichola. This bold innovation of thought alone will show how adventuresome we were become.
We set about our preparation with proper caution. For one whole forenoon I kept Pelleas in the kitchen, as sentinel to Nichola, driving her nearly mad with his forced excuses for staying while I risked my neck among boxes long undisturbed. But then I love an attic. I have always a sly impulse to attempt framing ours for a wall of our drawing-room. I prefer most attics to some libraries. I have known houses whose libraries do not invite, but gesticulate; whose dining-rooms have an air of awful permanence, like a ship’s dining-room; and whose drawing-rooms are as uninhabitable as the guillotine; yet above stairs would lie a splendid attic of the utmost distinction. These places always have chests which thrill one with the certainty that they are filled with something—how shall I say?—something which does not anywhere exist: Vague, sumptuous things, such as sultans give for wedding gifts, and such as parcels are always suggesting without ever fulfilling the suggestion. Yet when chests like these are opened they are found to contain most commonplace matter—trunk straps with the buckles missing, printed reports of forgotten meetings called to exploit forgotten enthusiasms, and cotton wadding. Yet I never go up to our attic without an impulse of expectancy. I dare say if I persist I shall find a Spanish doubloon there some day. But that morning I found only what I went to seek—the lustrous white silk which I had worn on the night that I met Pelleas. We had looked at it together sometimes, but for very long it had lain unregarded and the fine lace about the throat was yellowed and it had caught the odour of the lonely days and nights. But it was in my eyes no less beautiful than on the night that I had first worn it.
I hid it away in my closet beneath sober raiment and went down to release Pelleas. When I entered the kitchen Nichola glanced at me once, and without a word led me to the looking-glass in the door of the clock.
“Yah?” she questioned suspiciously. “Is it that you have been tomboning about, building fires?”
I looked, wondering vaguely what Nichola can possibly mean by tomboning, which she is always using. There was a great place of dust on my cheek. I am a blundering criminal and should never be allowed in these choice informalities.
That afternoon while Nichola was about her marketing, Pelleas and I undertook to telephone to our guests. When I telephone I always close my eyes, for which Pelleas derides me as he passes; and when he telephones he invariably turns on the light on the landing. Perhaps this is because men are at home in the presence of science while women, never having been gods, fear its thunder-bolt methods. Pelleas said something like this to our friends:—
“Do you remember the ball at the Selby-Whitfords’? Yes—the one on Washington’s Birthday forty-nine years ago? Well, Etarre and I are going to give another ball to the seven survivors. Yes—a ball. Just we seven. And you must wear something that you might have worn that night. It’s going to be Thursday at eight o’clock, and it’s quite a secret. Will you come?”
Would they come! Although the “seven survivors” did suggest a steamship disaster, our guests could have risen to no promise of festivity with greater thanksgiving. At the light that broke over Pelleas’ face at their answers my heart rejoiced. Would they come! Polly Cleatam promised for herself and her husband, although all their grandchildren were their guests that week. Sally Chartres’ son, a stout, middle-aged senator, was with her but she said that she would leave him with his nurse; and Miss Willie Lillieblade cried out at first that she was a hermit with neuralgia and at second thought added that she would come anyway and if necessary be buried directly from our house.
The hall was dark and silent again when Nichola came toiling home and there was nothing to tell her, as we thought, what plans had peopled the air in her absence. Nor in the three days of our preparation did we leave behind, we were sure, one scrap or one breath of evidence against us. We worked with the delighted caution of naughty children or escaping convicts. Pelleas, who has a delicate taste in sweets, ordered the cakes when he took his afternoon walk and went back to the shop every day to charge the man not to deliver the things until the evening. My sewing woman’s son plays the violin “like his own future,” as Pelleas applauds him, and it was easy to engage him and his sister to accompany him. Meanwhile I rearranged my old gown, longing for Nichola, who has a genius in more than cookery. To be sure Pelleas did his best to help me, though he knows no more of such matters than the spirits of the air; he can button very well but to hook is utterly beyond his simple art. However, he attended to everything else. After dark on Thursday he smuggled some roses into the house and though I set the pitcher in my closet I could smell the flowers distinctly while we were at dinner. It is frightful to have a conscience that can produce not only terrors but fragrances.
We were in a fever of excitement until Nichola got off. While Pelleas tidied the drawing-room I went down and wiped the dishes for her—in itself a matter to excite suspicion—and I broke a cup and was meek enough when Nichola scolded me. Every moment I expected the ice cream to arrive, in which event I believe I would have tried to prove to Nichola that it was a prescription and that the cakes were for the poor.
Pelleas and I waited fearfully over the drawing-room fire, dreading her appearance at the door to say her good-night; for to our minds every chair and fixture was signaling a radiant “Party! Party!” like a clarion. But she thrust in her old face, nodded, and safely withdrew and we heard the street door close. Thereupon we got upstairs at a perilous pace and I had on the white gown in a twinkling while Pelleas, his hands trembling, made ready too.
I hardly looked in the mirror for the roses had yet to be arranged. I gathered them in my arms and Pelleas followed me down, and as we entered the drawing-room I felt his arm about my waist.
“Etarre,” he said. “Look, Etarre.”
He led me to the great gilt-framed cheval glass set in its shadowy corner. I looked, since he was determined to have me.
I remembered her so well, that other I who forty-nine years ago had stood before her mirror dressed for the Selby-Whitford ball. The brown hair of the girl whom I remembered was piled high on her head and fastened with a red rose; the fine lace lay about her throat and fell upon her arms, and the folds of the silk touched and lifted over a petticoat of lawn and lace. And here was the white gown and here the petticoat and tucker, and my hair which is quite white was piled high and held its one rose. The white roses in my arms and in my hair were like ghosts of the red ones that I had carried at that other ball—but I was no ghost! For as I looked at Pelleas and saw his dear face shining I knew that I was rather the happy spirit risen from the days when roses were not white, but merely red.
Pelleas stooped to kiss me, stooped just enough to make me stand on tiptoe as he always does, and then the door-bell rang.
“Pelleas!” I scolded, “and the roses not arranged.”
“You know you wanted to,” said Pelleas, shamelessly. And the truth of this did not in the least prevent my contradicting it.
Sally Chartres and Wilfred came first, Sally talking high and fast as of old. Such a dear little old lady as Sally is. I can hardly write her down “old lady” without a smile at the hyperbole, for though she is more than seventy and is really Madame Sarah Chartres, she knows and I know the jest and that she is just Sally all the time.
She threw off her cloak in the middle of the floor, her pearl earrings and necklace bobbing and ticking. At sight of her blue gown, ruffled to the waist and laced with black velvet, I threw my arms about her and we almost laughed and cried together; for we both remembered how, before she was sure that Wilfred loved her, she had spent the night with me after a ball and had sat by the window until dawn, in that very blue frock, weeping in my arms because Wilfred had danced so often with Polly Cleatam. And now here was Wilfred looking as if he had had no thought but Sally all his days.
In came Polly Cleatam herself presently in her old silk poplin trimmed with fringe, and her dimples were as deep as on the day of her elopement. Polly was nineteen when she eloped on the evening of her début party with Horace who was not among the guests. And the sequel is of the sort that should be suppressed, but I must tell it, being a very truthful old woman and having once or twice assisted at an elopement myself: They are very happy. Polly is an adorable old lady; she has been a grandmother for nineteen years, and the Offence is Lisa’s best friend. But whereas Sally and I have no idea of our own age Polly, since her elopement, has rebounded into a Restraining Influence. That often happens. I think that the severest-looking women I know have eloped and have come to think twice of everything else. Polly with an elopement behind her is invariably the one to say “Hush,” and “I wouldn’t.”
Miss Willie Lillieblade was late. She came in wound in costly furs—Heaven provided her bank account in the neuter gender—and she stood revealed in a gorgeous flowered gown, new, but quite like the one which she had worn at the very ball that we were celebrating. Miss Lillieblade is tiny, and though her hair is quite white she seems to have taken on none of the graces of age. She has grown old like an expensive India-rubber ball, retaining some of her elasticity and constantly suggesting her former self instead of becoming another article altogether. She has adopted caps, not soft, black, old-lady caps, but perky little French affairs of white. She is erect—and she walks with a tall white staff, silver-headed, the head being filled with two kinds of pills though few know about that.
I fancy that we were in great contrast; for Miss Lillieblade is become a fairy-godmother-looking old lady; Polly Cleatam has taken on severity and poise and has conquered all obstacles save her dimples; Sally has developed into a grande dame of old lace and Roman mosaic pins; and I look for all the world like the plump grandmothers that they paint on calendars.
Pelleas and Wilfred and Horace talked us over.
“Ah, well now,” said Wilfred, “they look not a day older than when we were married, and Miss Willie is younger than any one.”
Wilfred, who used to be slim and bored, is a plump, rosy old gentleman interested in everything to the point—never beyond—of curiosity. O these youthful poses of languor and faint surprise, how they exchange themselves in spite of themselves for the sterling coin!
Horace beamed across at Polly—Horace is a man of affairs in Nassau Street and his name is conjured with as the line between his eyes would lead one to suspect; yet his eyes twinkled quite as they used before the line was there.
“Polly,” he begged, “may I call you ‘Polly’ to-night? I’ve been restricted to ‘Penelope,’” he explained, “ever since our Polly was born. Then after her coming out she demanded the Penelope, and I went back to the Polly I preferred. But now our Polly-Penelope is forty, and there is a little seminary Polly who is Polly too, though I dare say the mite may rebuke us any day for undue familiarity. May I say ‘Polly’ now?”
Pelleas was smiling.
“I leave it to you,” he said generously to every one, “to say if Etarre’s hair was not white at our wedding? She has always looked precisely—but precisely!—the way she looks now.”
Miss Willie Lillieblade sighed and tapped with her staff.
“Pooh!” said she. “Old married folk always live in the past. I’m a young thing of seventy-four and I’ve learned to live in the present. Let’s dance. My neuralgia is coming back.”
We had the chairs away in a minute, and Pelleas summoned from the dining-room the musicians—a Danish lad with a mane of straight hair over his eyes and his equally Danish sister in a collarless loose wool frock. They struck into the Varsovienne with a will and at the sound my heart bounded; and, Pelleas having recalled to me the step when Nichola was not looking, I danced away with Wilfred as if I knew how to do nothing else. Pelleas danced with Miss Willie who kept her staff in her hand and would tap the floor at all the impertinent rests in the music, while Pelleas sang “tol” above everything. Polly insisted on dancing alone—I suspect because her little feet are almost as trim as when she wore one’s—and she lifted her poplin and sailed about among us. Sally kept her head prettily on one side for all the world as she used, though now her gray curls were bobbing. Horace, who suffers frightfully from gout, kept beside her at a famous pace and his eyes were quite triangular with pain. “Tol te tol te tol!” insisted Pelleas, with Miss Willie holding her hand to her neuralgia as she whirled. I looked down at the figures on the carpet gliding beneath my feet and for one charmed moment, with the lilt of the music in my blood, I could have been certain that now was not now, but then!
This lasted, as you may imagine, somewhat less than three minutes. Breathless we sank down one by one, though Sally and Pelleas, now together and now alone, outdanced us all until we dreaded to think what the morrow held for them both. Miss Lillieblade was on her knees by the fire trying to warm her painful cheek on an andiron knob and laughing at every one. Polly with flushed face and tumbled hair was crying out: “O, but stop, Sally!” and “Pray be careful!” and fanning herself with an unframed water-colour that had been knocked from the mantel. We all knew for that matter that we would have to pay, but then we paid anyway. If one has to have gout and attendant evils one may as well make them a fair exchange for innocent pleasure instead of permitting them to be mere usury. Pelleas said that afterward.
Sally suddenly laughed aloud.
“They think that we have to be helped up and down steps!” she said blithely.
We caught her meaning and joined in her laugh at the expense of a world that fancies us to have had our day.
“If we liked,” said Miss Lillieblade, “I have no doubt we could meet here every night when no one was looking, and be our exact selves of the Selby-Whitford ball.”
Horace smiled across at Polly.
“Who would read them to sleep with fairy stories?” he demanded.
Polly nodded her gray curls and smiled tenderly.
“And who would get my son, the senator, a drink of water when he cried for it?” gayly propounded Sally.
Pelleas and I were silent. The evenings that we spent together in the nursery were bitterly long ago.
“Ah, well,” said Miss Lillieblade with a little sigh, “I could come, at any rate.”
For a moment she was silent. “Let’s dance again!” she cried.
We danced a six-step—those little people could play anything that we asked for—and then, to rest, we walked through a minuet, Pelleas playing a double rôle. And thereafter we all sat down and shook our heads at the music and pretended to be most exhausted, and I was glad that the rest pretended for I really was weak with fatigue and so was Pelleas. For half an hour we sat about the fire, Miss Willie with her face constantly upon the andiron though she recalled more delightful things than anybody.
“Then there was Aunt Effié in Vermont,” she had just said, her voice cracking deliciously on its high tones, “who cooked marvelously. And when the plain skirts came in she went about declaring that she would never have one that wasn’t full, because she couldn’t make a comforter out of it afterward!”
At that mention of marvelous cookery and in the laugh which followed, Pelleas and I slipped without. For we were suddenly in an agony of foreboding, realizing horribly that we had not once heard the area-bell ring. And if the ices and cakes had been left outside it would probably be true that by now they had gone to the poor.
The back stairway was dark for Nichola always extinguishes all the lower lights when she goes out. We groped our way down the stairs as best we might, Pelleas clasping my hand. We were breathing quickly, and as for me my knees were trembling. For the first time the enormity of our situation overcame me. What if the ices had not come? Or had been stolen? What about plates? And spoons? Where did Nichola keep the best napkins? And after all Sally was Madame Sarah Chartres, whose entertainments were superb. All this flooded my spirit at once and I clung to Pelleas for strength.
“Pelleas,” I murmured weakly, “did the ice-cream man promise to have it here in time?”
“He’s had to promise me that every day since I first ordered it,” Pelleas assured me cheerfully, “five or six times, in all.”
“O,” said I, as if I had no character, “I feel as if I should faint, Pelleas.”
Three steps from the bottom I stood still and caught at his coat. Through the crack at the top of the door I could see a light in the kitchen. At the same moment an odour—faint, permeating, delicious, unmistakable—saluted us both. It was coffee.
Pelleas flung open the door and we stood making a guilty tableau on the lowest step.
The kitchen was brightly lighted and a fire blazed on the hearth. The gas range was burning and a kettle of coffee was playing its fragrant rôle. Plates, napkins, and silver were on the dresser; the boxes of ices were on the sill of the open area window; on the table stood the cakes, cut, and flanked by a tray of thin white sandwiches; the great salad bowl was ready with a little tray of things for the dressing; from a white napkin I saw protruding the leg of a cold fowl; there was the chafing dish waiting to hold something else delectable. And in the rocking-chair before the fire, wearing an embroidered white apron and waiting with closed eyes, sat Nichola.
“O Nichola,” we cried together in awed voices, “Nichola.”
She opened an eye, without so much as lifting her head.
“For the love of heaven,” she said, “it’s ’most time. The coffee’s just ready an’ Our Lady knows you’ve been havin’ a hard evenin’. Ain’t you hungry, dancin’ so? Well, go back upstairs, the both of you.”
We went. In the dark of the stairway we clung to each other, filled with amazement and thanksgiving. We could hear Nichola moving briskly about the kitchen collecting her delicacies. How had she found us out? O, and now at last was not the secret of her mysterious Thursday evenings revealed to us? She did go somewhere for lessons in magic and she had learned to read our inmost thoughts!
From above stairs came the laughter of the others, echoes of that ancient ball which we had been pretending to re-live, trading the empty past for the largess and beauty of now.
Pelleas slipped his arm about me to help me up the stairs.
“Etarre,” he said, “I am glad that now is now—and not then!”