Lisle laughed a sweet ripple of amused laughter.
“Mother! If you can’t find something real to worry over, you make up something. I declare I never heard anything so funny. The idea of my having a broken heart over Victor! Why Mother, I’ve lived without him for four years and more, and I’m not going to collapse now without him. In fact, I think I’d be relieved if he would just fall in love with somebody else and let me alone. He is getting to be a regular pest, and I don’t know what to do about it. If only he’ll behave at the party, I’ll be very thankful. Now, Mother, if you’ll please come upstairs and see how I look in my dress. I’ve got the sash all fixed, and I do hope it passes your critical eye, for I think it’s lovely.”
“I’m sure I shall think so, too, dear, for you have excellent taste.”
And so it proved, for both mother and daughter were well satisfied with the effect when Lisle put her dress on and posed before her mother.
Then the girl went off to her nursery work, for it was time for her shift to begin.
She went happily, humming the line or two of the chorus she had heard at the Bible class the evening before.
“Come back as early as you can, dear, and get a good rest. That will make tomorrow evening better, if you are rested when you start,” called the mother.
Lisle answered sweetly, “I’ll try, but I doubt if it will be possible.”
The next night Lisle had a good rest after dinner before she dressed. It was not her intention to go to the next house early. She had declined the invitation to take dinner at the Vandingham home, much to the vexation of her hostess, who had at the last minute to accept a substitute of Victor’s, a girl named Erda. She looked dubiously at the stunning ash-blonde who appeared in the most daring dress she had ever seen in town, but there was nothing to do but make the best of it, for Victor had brought her in just when she was so annoyed with Lisle for not coming. She had expected Lisle to help her with last-minute plans and decisions, but Lisle had sent word that she couldn’t possibly get there until after dinner, as something had come up that made it impossible.
Victor’s mother was not completely unaware. She had not lived with her son all his years without knowing that he sometimes did things that offended even his best friends, and she wondered what Victor had been doing now. And when Victor produced this arrogantly beautiful ash-blonde, she wondered the more, and put on her most worried expression, letting the dinner conversation lag again and again until it was mainly confined to talk between Victor and the girl. And even that was sullen and disagreeable. Victor was acting like an arrogant young king who was about to be crowned, as Lisle had suggested. Victor’s mother rightly judged that Lisle was at the bottom of this also. Had Lisle seen him going around with a girl like this and stayed away on purpose? Or had they had a quarrel? If so, the promise of the evening was not at all bright. And she had worked so hard to have everything right!
In the interval between dinner and the time when the guests began to arrive for the evening, Victor’s mother vanished, striving vainly by the aid of powder and brick-red rouge to erase the traces of the few tears she could not help shedding after that awful dinner. She had left Victor and Erda down in the library having what Erda laughingly called a heart-to-heart talk to get acquainted.
Erda’s job that she had set for herself was to find out as much as possible about the Vandingham plant and to throw out feelers, for even if the young man Kurt Entry said they were trying to get should undertake that job, she felt that she could be of valuable assistance in more ways than one if she could just get an entrance to the place. She wanted to test out Victor and see if there was any chance of a job in the office for her. She had posed as being well off, but she was making a great show of wanting a real defense job so she could feel that she was honestly doing something in this great war in the country of her adoption.
But she didn’t make much headway getting information on the plant from Victor. The truth was, he didn’t really know much about it yet. He had never taken an interest in the business and had declined all his father’s offers of a partnership and a chance to get ready for it during vacations. He didn’t know any more about the plant than the outside of the buildings. It was to him just a dirty place where workmen had to labor to make an income for his dad. That was all. And he couldn’t imagine why this girl should be interested and ask so many questions. But at last he told her that he was taking over himself in a few days now, at least for the duration, as they were making some parts of a very important invention that was to be used in the fighting.
She eagerly caught at the idea and said, “Why, that’s great! Aren’t you just thrilled? Say, why can’t you take me into your office as your private secretary? I couldn’t think of any job I’d like better, and I’d do good work for you. I’m thoroughly competent. I can give you references. I’m a super typist, and stenographer.”
“Say! That’s great!” said the young man. “I’ll see if I can’t arrange it when I get things going. Of course, it will be somewhat up to Dad at the start, and I’d have to go slow. They haven’t had anything but men in the office before this. That’s Dad’s idea, but when I get going it’ll be up to me, and I’ll be in a position to say what I want, and get it. Say! It would be great having such a dream of loveliness around a grimy old office of a steel plant. You see, the office is right down by the shop floor, and especially now when the government has stepped in and given us some secret contracts, it won’t do to have the work known by just anybody. That’s one reason Dad will be hard to persuade. He doesn’t believe in having women messing in men’s work. But I’m a different kind of guy. I can do a great deal better work if I have a few women around me, jollying me along. And it would be just great if I could have a dream of loveliness around like you. Life would be worth living and all that, you know. I’ll see what I can do, baby. You stick around, and don’t say yes to anything else yet.”
So Erda sat happily, with a glint in her narrowed green eyes and a triumphant curve on her pretty, sensuous lips.
Then the maid appeared and asked Erda if she would like to go to a room and freshen up for the evening and led her away. Victor lazed out to the dining room where sideboards were beginning to display wines of different kinds and took a copious drink. Then his eyes sought the window, where in the gathering darkness he could see the Kingsley house, and he noticed that there was no light in Lisle’s window. So, that was what she was going to do, was it? She was going to pretend she was called away, or sick or something, and she wasn’t coming to his party at all! Well, if that was what she was going to do, he was off her for life, and he would see that she understood it thoroughly.
The truth of the matter was that Lisle was lying down, taking her rest, and trying to gather strength for the ordeal of the evening.
Victor got himself ready for the party and went down to take another drink. This was a habit he had acquired in college, and had learned well how it would bolster him up when he was ill at ease. When he finally stood in line to receive his guests, he was cheerful and hilarious, talking loud and greeting everybody in the latest accepted style. His troubled mother stood worriedly in her place and tried to rally her forces. She knew that when his father came to stand with them, he would notice Victor and see that he had been drinking. He didn’t approve of young men drinking too much, and so early in the evening! It was shocking! She would have liked to burst into tears and run away to hide. How could her boy do a thing like this, bringing that awful girl to dinner? It must be all Lisle’s fault. Lisle, who had always been his friend, to desert him on this, his great night! This night that she had dreamed of and planned for for years! And Lisle was to spoil it all? What would people think?
She turned sharply, intending to ask Victor if he knew where Lisle was and why she was so late. Had she said anything to him about it? But Victor was talking to that lynx-eyed girl, Erda, and of course she couldn’t say anything before her.
Then suddenly there was Lisle. Mrs. Vandingham gave
a startled look at her loveliness and fairly fell on her neck with joy.
“Oh, my dear Lisle!” she said, “I have been so worried. It would simply spoil the whole affair if you hadn’t come. And we were terribly disappointed that you couldn’t be with us at dinner!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Vandingham! I’m not that important, you know. But I didn’t mean to upset your plans,” said Lisle sweetly. “Am I very late? I thought I would arrive about the time the rest of the guests did.”
“Well, no, not so late; it is only that you are usually with us from the start at anything, you know, my dear. But now you are here, I shall relax and enjoy myself. And let me introduce you. Victor, here’s Lisle, don’t you see her?”
“I certainly do,” blared Victor. “When did I ever fail to see Lisle? But I’m not sure I shall speak to her, coming late this way, and on my coronation night, as she called it. How do I look, darling? Like the king you said I would be?”
Lisle gave Victor one of her steady looks and perceived with a chilly feeling around her heart that things were going to be pretty bad, for Victor was drunk. She had never seen him out-and-out drunk before, and it shocked her. She had never associated Victor with drinking. That is, if he drank he probably did it quietly, and she had never seen him like this. But now he was boisterously drunk. She did not answer, but turned away to move on down the line, till he put out a detaining hand.
“Hi, darling, you don’t get out of it that easy. Let me make you acquainted with my other best girl, Erda Brannon. You two ought to be the best of friends, my two best girls! How about it, Lisle? Take her under your wing, will you?”
But Lisle gave one glance at Erda, flashed her a quick, cold, bright smile, and turned away sharply, slipping on down the line and mingling with her friends, presently lost in a group of those she knew well.
Poor Mrs. Vandingham flushed deeply beneath her brick-red rouge and giggled nervously. “Oh, Vickie,” she gurgled, “you always will have your little joke.” She turned to renew her giggle for Lisle’s benefit, and found Lisle was gone. But when she turned back to Victor, there was only a stupid look on his face as if he had been slapped, and the girl beside him was staring off haughtily, astonished. If Lisle had seen them both she might have felt that she had won the first bout of the battle or she might have felt condemned that she had found no way to meet the onslaught of the enemy but by the world’s methods. Just now, while she was laughing and talking brilliantly with a number of young men in uniform and girls in brilliant evening garb, she was suddenly remembering that she had not come alone to this party. There was One who had promised to be with her. Was she honoring Him? But of course she gave no sign of these thoughts as she went on, looking bright and happy.
Mrs. Vandingham bustled up and claimed her attention later.
“Oh, my dear! How darling you look! That dress. I know that must have come from New York. It has the New York look. Somehow nothing around here can quite come up to New York, can it? And it looks so new and fresh and quite in keeping with the times with that charming sash. It did come from New York, didn’t it, Lisle?”
“Why yes, Mrs. Vandingham, it did originally, about two years ago, but I’ve never worn it around here, I guess. Though the sash is new. I made most of it myself!”
“My dear!” said the lady, with a quick look around to be sure no one had heard. “How clever you are! But don’t tell anybody. They think it is absolutely new. I heard some of the girls talking about it.”
“Did you?” said Lisle amused. “Well, I’m glad you like it. And what a lot of uniforms you have present. Isn’t it grand so many of the boys are enlisting? And how enthusiastic they are.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vandingham, with a quick droop of sadness in her face and voice. “I suppose it is, but I think of the mothers. How terrible it must be for them. I can’t be thankful enough that my boy had such an important post given to him. And that he will not have to go away. Of course, he is brokenhearted that he cannot go out with the other fellows his age, but he was needed here. His father has not been at all well for the past year, and it was only with the help of Victor that he dared accept the assignment the government had given his company. It was very hard on Vickie, but there are no losses without compensations, and of course it means a great deal to me that he is to remain at home. I know you, too, will rejoice in that fact.”
This was one of the trying situations that Lisle had known she would have, but fortunately just then a group of old friends came up to introduce two soldier boys, and she did not have to reply.
The evening dragged itself along, hour after hour, and Lisle avoided the neighborhood of Victor, who seemed thoroughly engrossed with the girl Erda, though occasionally he came around where Lisle was, his face furrowed with anger. You never would have taken him for a king being crowned that night. His handsome face was frowning, his expression was surly, and only now and then a grim smile appeared, and that was directed at Erda.
There was good music, and of course there was dancing. One time Victor stalked over to Lisle and asked her to dance with him, but she shook her head and told him that she had promised one of the soldiers to take him up to the library and show him a couple of choice engravings that portrayed some notable battles of the past. She decidedly did not want to dance with Victor. There was no knowing what he might take it into his head to do if she did. He was evidently out for revenge, and he would have it somehow. But she reflected that her mother and his mother would both consider it a great breach of etiquette for her not to dance at least once with her host, so when she came back from the library and found him waiting in the hall for her, claiming her as his partner without even asking again, she submitted, moving gracefully, impersonally to the music, her eyes across the room, her lips silent and grave.
All her life Lisle had been accustomed to dance, a little, though she was not especially fond of it. Her mother’s code had been moderation in all such things, and Lisle had an extreme and ladylike demeanor that made her dancing more of a picture of grace, like one of the muses, than like a modern form of amusement. There was none of the modern yielding of self to the partner. She kept him at a discreet distance, in spite of his fierce effort to draw her closer.
“You are making a fool of yourself,” he muttered. “Nobody dances that way now! I ought to have shown you how they do things today, since you seem to have been out of the world.”
She gave him a brief smile and then said gravely, “Is the world, then, such a pleasant place to be that one should try to follow all its ways?”
“Oh, you’re simply impossible!” snarled the young gentleman.
“Yes?” said Lisle. “Suppose we stop then.” And dropping her hand from his arm, she turned and quietly stepped out of the whirl, vanishing across the room and out a door. Swiftly, by a way that the years had made familiar to her as a child, she went to the room where she had left her cloak and her little white fur-edged shoes, hurriedly donned them, and slipped down the back stairs and out through the servants’ entrance unobserved, for the servants were all busy serving now. So she went across the snowy lawn to her home and happily up to her room. Her mother was out that evening, so there was no need to report her experiences, and she could get quiet and think everything over.
She undressed in the dark because she did not wish to afford any idle spectators over at the Vandinghams’ the satisfaction of knowing that she had gone home and gone to bed. Her room was on the side of the house toward the Vandingham house, and while it was not likely that the guests would think to look out across the lawns, notice her light, and call attention to it, it was altogether likely that Victor might take occasion to do so, and she did not care to give him the opportunity.
Victor had been drinking more or less all evening, and while he had not been quite so hilarious as when she arrived, he was still pretty well under the influence of liquor. To have his hot breath fan her face, heavy with the odor of liquor, had been unpleasant to her in the extreme. It wasn’t that sh
e hadn’t been where these things went on, occasionally, but she had been a girl happy in her studies, fond of simple pleasures, and just hadn’t cared for this sort of gaiety. And now to find Victor like the others whom she had known and avoided stirred her to deep disappointment. She might not wish to marry him, but it hurt her to be so ashamed of him. She hadn’t thought Victor had taken to drinking. She was almost shocked. Yes, it must be true that she was old-fashioned. Dowdy in her ideas. Well, she was, and a conviction grew in her heart that she was right in being that way. And her Companion, her escort for the evening, was He pleased at the way she had conducted herself? Did He like all this dancing and drinking? Were places like these parties good for His children? She must look into that someday, that is, if she ever had occasion to feel the necessity of going to another one. Should this new Christ’s child put herself in such a place?
Well, there had been soldiers in uniform there this evening, the uniform of their beloved country. Suppose that the party had been given by the enemy, and that many present were in enemy uniform. Should a loyal American deliberately stay among them, except for state reasons under orders? Well, here again was something she must look into. But not tonight. She was tired and disappointed and had reached a place of parting where her old life and a new one separated. It made her sad, and yet there was a deep gladness beneath it all.
As she laid her head upon the pillow, she could hear the strains of music from the other house, far enough away now to lose some of its wild blare. But presently, as she remembered last evening, and her vision, a soft sweet memory brought other strains.
I have seen the face of Jesus,