第45章 Contrasts.(2)

"Well,"she concluded,recklessly,"why should I care what he thinks?I have lived thus far without his good opinion,and Ican live a little longer,I imagine.I have had a good time for eighteen years after my own fashion,and I will just ignore him and have a good time still.Indeed I'll shock him to-night and to-morrow so thoroughly,that he won't come near me again;for I'm sick of his superior airs.I'm sick of his learned talk about books,pictures,and politics,as if a young society girl were expected to know about these things;and as for his small talk,it reminded me of an elephant trying to dance a jig;"and she sprang up with a snatch of song from the "opera bouffe,"and began her toilet for dinner.

In a few moments,however,she dropped her hairbrush absently,and forgot to look at her fair face in the mirror.

"I wonder,"she mused,"if he and Miss Burton ever met before they came here?It has been a strange coincidence that she should have felt such a sudden indisposition in each instance at the same moment that his name was casually mentioned.True,on both occasions,events occurred that might account for the sudden giving way of her nerves,but I cannot help thinking that she has some association with him that the rest of us know nothing about.She certainly seems more interested in him than in any one else in the house,for I have several times noticed peculiar and furtive glances towards him;besides,they are evidently growing to be very good friends.As for Ik,he seems quite inclined to enter upon a serious flirtation with her.But what do I care for either of them!Mr.Sibley will be here to-night,and I'll enable this artist to bring his investigations to a close at once.I am what I am,and that's the end of it,and I won't mope and have a stupid time for anybody,and certainly not for him.Let him marry the school-ma'am.She can talk books,art,and all the 'isms'going,to his heart's content.

I,as well as Miss Burton,have my opinion of flirting,and know from some little experience that it is jolly good fun.

"He can go his way,I'll go mine;

E'en though he frowns,the sun will shine."And with a careless gesture she affected to dismiss him from her thoughts.

To judge from her manner that evening and the following day,one might suppose that she succeeded very fully.Sibley,with an unwonted venturesomeness,did risk his one immaculate possession,his clothes,and came from the city through the storm.Ida and himself,between them,brought about the nearest approach to a "ball"possible in the circumstances.

The dancing,under their auspices,differed from that of the morning,not merely in name and form,but in its subtle character.In the one instance it had been an innocent pastime,occasioned by childlike and joyous impulses.The people's manner might have reminded one of a bit of darkened landscape that had been rapidly filled with light,and almost ecstatic life by the advent of a May morning.

In the evening,however,everything was artificial and in keeping with the gaslight.The ladies were conscious of their toilets,conscious of themselves,looking for admiration rather than hearty enjoyment.Even the older boys and girls,who had been joyous children in the morning,were now small parodies of fashionable men and women!A band of hired performers twanged out the hackneyed dancing music then in vogue,going over their small "repertoire"with wearisome repetition.People danced at first because it was the thing to do,and not from any inspiration from the melody.As the evening wore on,Sibley,who had been drinking quite freely,tried to introduce,as far as possible,the excitement of a revel,calling chiefly for swift waltzes and gallops through which he and Ida whirled in a way that made people's heads dizzy.

Miss Burton,after going through a quadrille with Stanton early in the evening,had declined to dance any more.She did not feel very well,she explained to Van Berg as he sought her for the next form;but he imagined that she early foresaw that Sibley and others,and among them even Stanton,were inclined to give the evening a character that was not to her taste.

As Ida had made herself somewhat prominent in inaugurating the "ball,"as Sibley took pains to term it on all occasions,Van Berg,as a part of his tactics to win the beauty's good-will,tried at first to make the affair successful.He danced with others,and twice sought her hand;but in each case she rather indifferently told him that she was engaged.He would not have sought her as a partner after his first rebuff had he not imagined,from occasional and furtive glances,that she was not as indifferent as she seemed.

Early in the evening it occurred to him that her slightly reckless manner was assumed,but he saw that she was abandoning herself to the growing excitement of the dance,as Sibley,her most frequent partner,and others,were to the stronger excitement of liquor.

Observant mothers called away their daughters.Ladies,in whom the instincts of true refined womanhood were in the ascendancy,looked significantly at each other,and declined further invitations.

Van Berg had also withdrawn,but with his disposition to watch manifestations of character in general,and of one present in particular,he still stood at a parlor window looking on.The band had just struck up a livelier waltz than usual,and Ida and Sibley were whirling through the wide apartment as if treading on air;but when,a few moments later,they circled near where he stood,he saw upon the young man's face an expression of earthiness and grossness that was anything but ethereal.Indeed so unmistakably wanton was the look which Sibley bent upon his companion,whose heaving bosom he clasped against his won,that the artist frowned darkly at him,and felt his hand tingling to strike the fellow a blow.

She,looking up,caught his frown,and in her egotism and excitement,thought it meant only jealousy of the man she had so favored during the evening.