giving Clyde her hand. "I'm Jill Trumbull. Miss Finchley hasn't
come yet. But I can do the honors just as well, I guess. Come
right in where the rest of us are."
She led the way into a series of connecting rooms that seemed to
join each other at right angles, adding as she went, "You do look
an awful lot like Gil Griffiths, don't you?"
"Do I?" smiled Clyde simply and courageously and very much
flattered by the comparison.
The ceilings were low. Pretty lamps behind painted shades hugged
dark walls. Open fires in two connecting rooms cast a rosy glow
upon cushioned and comfortable furniture. There were pictures,
books, objects of art.
"Here, Tracy, you do the announcing, will you?" she called. "My
brother, Tracy Trumbull, Mr. Griffiths. Mr. Clyde Griffiths,
everybody," she added, surveying the company in general which in
turn fixed varying eyes upon him, while Tracy Trumbull took him by
the hand. Clyde, suffering from a sense of being studied,
nevertheless achieved a warm smile. At the same time he realized
that for the moment at least conversation had stopped. "Don't all
stop talking on my account," he ventured, with a smile, which
caused most of those present to conceive of him as at his ease and
resourceful. At the same time Tracy added: "I'm not going to do
any man-to-man introduction stuff. We'll stand right here and
point 'em out. That's my sister, Gertrude, over there talking to
Scott Nicholson." Clyde noted that a small, dark girl dressed in
pink with a pretty and yet saucy and piquant face, nodded to him.
And beside her a very de rigueur youth of fine physique and pink
complexion nodded jerkily. "Howja do." And a few feet from them
near a deep window stood a tall and yet graceful girl of dark and
by no means ravishing features talking to a broad-shouldered and
deep-chested youth of less than her height, who were proclaimed to
be Arabella Stark and Frank Harriet. "They're arguing over a
recent Cornell-Syracuse foot-ball game... Burchard Taylor and
Miss Phant of Utica," he went on almost too swiftly for Clyde to
assemble any mental notes. "Perley Haynes and Miss Vanda Steele
... well, I guess that's all as yet. Oh, no, here come Grant and
Nina Temple." Clyde paused and gazed as a tall and somewhat
dandified-looking youth, sharp of face and with murky-gray eyes,
steered a trim, young, plump girl in fawn gray and with a light
chestnut braid of hair laid carefully above her forehead, into the
middle of the room.
"Hello, Jill. Hello, Vanda. Hello, Wynette." In the midst of
these greetings on his part, Clyde was presented to these two,
neither of whom seemed to pay much attention to him. "Didn't think
we'd make it," went on young Cranston speaking to all at once.
"Nina didn't want to come, but I promised Bertine and Jill or I
wouldn't have, either. We were up at the Bagleys'. Guess who's up
there, Scott. Van Peterson and Rhoda Hull. They're just over for
the day."
"You don't say," called Scott Nicholson, a determined and self-
centered looking individual. Clyde was arrested by the very
definite sense of social security and ease that seemed to reside in
everybody. "Why didn't you bring 'em along? I'd like to see Rhoda
again and Van, too."
"Couldn't. They have to go back early, they say. They may stop in
later for a minute. Gee, isn't dinner served yet? I expected to
sit right down."
"These lawyers! Don't you know they don't eat often?" commented
Frank Harriet, who was a short, but broad-chested and smiling
youth, very agreeable, very good-looking and with even, white
teeth. Clyde liked him.
"Well, whether they do or not, we do, or out I go. Did you hear
who is being touted for stroke next year over at Cornell?" This
college chatter relating to Cornell and shared by Harriet, Cranston
and others, Clyde could not understand. He had scarcely heard of
the various colleges with which this group was all too familiar.
At the same time he was wise enough to sense the defect and steer
clear of any questions or conversations which might relate to them.
However, because of this, he at once felt out of it. These people
were better informed than he was--had been to colleges. Perhaps he
had better claim that he had been to some school. In Kansas City
he had heard of the State University of Kansas--not so very far
from there. Also the University of Missouri. And in Chicago of
the University of Chicago. Could he say that he had been to one of
those--that Kansas one, for a little while, anyway? On the instant
he proposed to claim it, if asked, and then look up afterwards
what, if anything, he was supposed to know about it--what, for
instance, he might have studied. He had heard of mathematics
somewhere. Why not that?
But these people, as he could see, were too much interested in
themselves to pay much attention to him now. He might be a
Griffiths and important to some outside, but here not so much--a
matter of course, as it were. And because Tracy Trumbull for the
moment had turned to say something to Wynette Phant, he felt quite
alone, beached and helpless and with no one to talk to. But just
then the small, dark girl, Gertrude, came over to him.
"The crowd's a little late in getting together. It always is. If
we said eight, they'd come at eight-thirty or nine. Isn't that
always the way?"
"It certainly is," replied Clyde gratefully, endeavoring to appear
as brisk and as much at ease as possible.
"I'm Gertrude Trumbull," she repeated. "The sister of the good-
looking Jill," a cynical and yet amused smile played about her
mouth and eyes. "You nodded to me, but you don't know me. Just
the same we've been hearing a lot about you." She teased in an
attempt to trouble Clyde a little, if possible. "A mysterious
Griffiths here in Lycurgus whom no one seems to have met. I saw
you once in Central Avenue, though. You were going into Rich's
candy store. You didn't know that, though. Do you like candy?"
"Oh, yes, I like candy. Why?" asked Clyde on the instant feeling
teased and disturbed, since the girl for whom he was buying the
candy was Roberta. At the same time he could not help feeling
slightly more at ease with this girl than with some others, for
although cynical and not so attractive, her manner was genial and
she now spelled escape from isolation and hence diffidence.
"You're probably just saying that," she laughed, a bantering look
in her eyes. "More likely you were buying it for some girl. You
have a girl, haven't you?"
"Why--" Clyde paused for the fraction of a second because as she
asked this Roberta came into his mind and the query, "Had any one
ever seen him with Roberta?" flitted through his brain. Also
thinking at the same time, what a bold, teasing, intelligent girl
this was, different from any that thus far he had known. Yet quite
without more pause he added: "No, I haven't. What makes you ask
that?"
As he said this there came to him the thought of what Roberta would
think if she could hear him. "But what a question," he continued a
little nervously now. "You like to tease, don't you?"
"Who, me? Oh, no. I wouldn't do anything like that. But I'm sure
you have just the same. I like to ask questions sometimes, just to
see what people will say when they don't want you to know what they
really think." She beamed into Clyde's eyes amusedly and
defiantly. "But I know you have a girl just the same. All good-
looking fellows have."
"Oh, am I good-looking?" he beamed nervously, amused and yet
pleased. "Who said so?"
"As though you didn't know. Well, different people. I for one.
And Sondra Finchley thinks you're good-looking, too. She's only
interested in men who are. So does my sister Jill, for that
matter. And she only likes men who are good-looking. I'm
different because I'm not so good-looking myself." She blinked
cynically and teasingly into his eyes, which caused him to feel
oddly out of place, not able to cope with such a girl at all, at
the same time very much flattered and amused. "But don't you think
you're better looking than your cousin," she went on sharply and
even commandingly. "Some people think you are."
Although a little staggered and yet flattered by this question
which propounded what he might have liked to believe, and although
intrigued by this girl's interest in him, still Clyde would not
have dreamed of venturing any such assertion even though he had
believed it. Too vividly it brought the aggressive and determined
and even at times revengeful-looking features of Gilbert before
him, who, stirred by such a report as this, would not hesitate to
pay him out.
"Why, I don't think anything of the kind," he laughed. "Honest, I
don't. Of course I don't."
"Oh, well, then maybe you don't, but you are just the same. But
that won't help you much either, unless you have money--that is, if
you want to run with people who have." She looked up at him and
added quite blandly. "People like money even more than they do
looks."
What a sharp girl this was, he thought, and what a hard, cold
statement. It cut him not a little, even though she had not
intended that it should.
But just then Sondra herself entered with some youth whom Clyde did
not know--a tall, gangling, but very smartly-dressed individual.
And after them, along with others, Bertine and Stuart Finchley.
"Here she is now," added Gertrude a little spitefully, for she
resented the fact that Sondra was so much better-looking than
either she or her sister, and that she had expressed an interest in
Clyde. "She'll be looking to see if you notice how pretty she
looks, so don't disappoint her."
The impact of this remark, a reflection of the exact truth, was not
necessary to cause Clyde to gaze attentively, and even eagerly.
For apart from her local position and means and taste in dress and
manners, Sondra was of the exact order and spirit that most
intrigued him--a somewhat refined (and because of means and
position showered upon her) less savage, although scarcely less
self-centered, Hortense Briggs. She was, in her small, intense
way, a seeking Aphrodite, eager to prove to any who were
sufficiently attractive the destroying power of her charm, while at
the same time retaining her own personality and individuality free
of any entangling alliance or compromise. However, for varying
reasons which she could not quite explain to herself, Clyde
appealed to her. He might not be anything socially or financially,
but he was interesting to her.
Hence she was now keen, first to see if he were present, next to be
sure that he gained no hint that she had seen him first, and lastly
to act as grandly as possible for his benefit--a Hortensian
procedure and type of thought that was exactly the thing best
calculated to impress him. He gazed and there she was--tripping
here and there in a filmy chiffon dance frock, shaded from palest
yellow to deepest orange, which most enhanced her dark eyes and
hair. And having exchanged a dozen or more "Oh, Hellos," and
references with one and another to this, that and the other local
event, she at last condescended to evince awareness of his
proximity.
"Oh, here you are. You decided to come after all. I wasn't sure
whether you would think it worth while. You've been introduced to
everybody, of course?" She looked around as much as to say, that
if he had not been she would proceed to serve him in this way. The
others, not so very much impressed by Clyde, were still not a
little interested by the fact that she seemed so interested in him.
"Yes, I met nearly everybody, I think."
"Except Freddie Sells. He came in with me just now. Here you are,
Freddie," she called to a tall and slender youth, smooth of cheek
and obviously becurled as to hair, who now came over and in his
closely-fitting dress coat looked down on Clyde about as a spring
rooster might look down on a sparrow.
"This is Clyde Griffiths, I was telling you about, Fred," she began
briskly. "Doesn't he look a lot like Gilbert?"
"Why, you do at that," exclaimed this amiable person, who seemed to
be slightly troubled with weak eyes since he bent close. "I hear
you're a cousin of Gil's. I know him well. We went through
Princeton together. I used to be over here before I joined the
General Electric over at Schenectady. But I'm around a good bit
yet. You're connected with the factory, I suppose."
"Yes, I am," said Clyde, who, before a youth of obviously so much
more training and schooling than he possessed, felt not a little
reduced. He began to fear that this individual would try to talk
to him about things which he could not understand, things
concerning which, having had no consecutive training of any kind,
he had never been technically informed.
"In charge of some department, I suppose?"
"Yes, I am," said Clyde, cautiously and nervously.
"You know," went on Mr. Sells, briskly and interestingly, being of
a commercial as well as technical turn, "I've always wondered just
what, outside of money, there is to the collar business. Gil and I
used to argue about that when we were down at college. He used to
try to tell me that there was some social importance to making and
distributing collars, giving polish and manner to people who
wouldn't otherwise have them, if it weren't for cheap collars. I
think he musta read that in a book somewhere. I always laughed at
him."
Clyde was about to attempt an answer, although already beyond his
depth in regard to this. "Social importance." Just what did he
mean by that--some deep, scientific information that he had
acquired at college. He was saved a non-committal or totally
uninformed answer by Sondra who, without thought or knowledge of
the difficulty which was then and there before him, exclaimed:
"Oh, no arguments, Freddie. That's not interesting. Besides I
want him to meet my brother and Bertine. You remember Miss
Cranston. She was with me at your uncle's last spring."
Clyde turned, while Fred made the best of the rebuff by merely
looking at Sondra, whom he admired so very much.
"Yes, of course," Clyde began, for he had been studying these two
along with others. To him, apart from Sondra, Bertine seemed
exceedingly attractive, though quite beyond his understanding also.
Being involved, insincere and sly, she merely evoked in him a
troubled sense of ineffectiveness, and hence uncertainty, in so far
as her particular world was concerned--no more.
"Oh, how do you do? It's nice to see you again," she drawled, the
while her greenish-gray eyes went over him in a smiling and yet
indifferent and quizzical way. She thought him attractive, but not
nearly as shrewd and hard as she would have preferred him to be.
"You've been terribly busy with your work, I suppose. But now that
you've come out once, I suppose we'll see more of you here and
there."
"Well, I hope so," he replied, showing his even teeth.
Her eyes seemed to be saying that she did not believe what she was
saying and that he did not either, but that it was necessary,
possibly amusing, to say something of the sort.
And a related, though somewhat modified, version of this same type
of treatment was accorded him by Stuart, Sondra's brother.
"Oh, how do you do. Glad to know you. My sister has just been
telling me about you. Going to stay in Lycurgus long? Hope you
do. We'll run into one another once in a while then, I suppose."
Clyde was by no means so sure, but he admired the easy, shallow way
in which Stuart laughed and showed his even white teeth--a quick,
genial, indifferent laugh. Also the way in which he turned and
laid hold of Wynette Phant's white arm as she passed. "Wait a
minute, Wyn. I want to ask you something." He was gone--into
another room--bending close to her and talking fast. And Clyde had
noticed that his clothes were perfectly cut.
What a gay world, he thought. What a brisk world. And just then
Jill Trumbull began calling, "Come on, people. It's not my fault.
The cook's mad about something and you're all late anyhow. We'll
get it over with and then dance, eh?"
"You can sit between me and Miss Trumbull when she gets the rest of
us seated," assured Sondra. "Won't that be nice? And now you may
take me in."
She slipped a white arm under Clyde's and he felt as though he were
slowly but surely being transported to paradise.
Chapter 26
The dinner itself was chatter about a jumble of places, personalities,
plans, most of which had nothing to do with anything that Clyde had
personally contacted here. However, by reason of his own charm, he
soon managed to overcome the sense of strangeness and hence
indifference in some quarters, more particularly the young women of
the group who were interested by the fact that Sondra Finchley liked
him. And Jill Trumbull, sitting beside him, wanted to know where he
came from, what his own home life and connections were like, why he
had decided to come to Lycurgus, questions which, interjected as
they were between silly banter concerning different girls and their
beaus, gave Clyde pause. He did not feel that he could admit the
truth in connection with his family at all. So he announced that
his father conducted a hotel in Denver--not so very large, but still
a hotel. Also that he had come to Lycurgus because his uncle had
suggested to him in Chicago that he come to learn the collar
business. He was not sure that he was wholly interested in it or
that he would continue indefinitely unless it proved worth while;
rather he was trying to find out what it might mean to his future, a
remark which caused Sondra, who was also listening, as well as Jill,
to whom it was addressed, to consider that in spite of all rumors
attributed to Gilbert, Clyde must possess some means and position to
which, in case he did not do so well here, he could return.
This in itself was important, not only to Sondra and Jill, but to
all the others. For, despite his looks and charm and family
connections here, the thought that he was a mere nobody, seeking,
as Constance Wynant had reported, to attach himself to his cousin's
family, was disquieting. One couldn't ever be anything much more
than friendly with a moneyless clerk or pensioner, whatever his
family connections, whereas if he had a little money and some local
station elsewhere, the situation was entirely different.
And now Sondra, relieved by this and the fact that he was proving
more acceptable than she had imagined he would, was inclined to
make more of him than she otherwise would have done.
"Are you going to let me dance with you after dinner?" was one of
the first things he said to her, infringing on a genial smile given
him in the midst of clatter concerning an approaching dance
somewhere.
"Why, yes, of course, if you want me to," she replied, coquettishly,
seeking to intrigue him into further romanticisms in regard to her.
"Just one?"
"How many do you want? There are a dozen boys here, you know. Did
you get a program when you came in?"
"I didn't see any."
"Never mind. After dinner you can get one. And you may put me
down for three and eight. That will leave you room for others."
She smiled bewitchingly. "You have to be nice to everybody, you
know."
"Yes, I know." He was still looking at her. "But ever since I saw
you at my uncle's last April, I've been wishing I might see you
again. I always look for your name in the papers."
He looked at her seekingly and questioningly and in spite of
herself, Sondra was captivated by this naive confession. Plainly
he could not afford to go where or do what she did, but still he
would trouble to follow her name and movements in print. She could
not resist the desire to make something more of this.
"Oh, do you?" she added. "Isn't that nice? But what do you read
about me?"
"That you were at Twelfth and Greenwood Lakes and up at Sharon for
the swimming contests. I saw where you went up to Paul Smith's,
too. The papers here seemed to think you were interested in some
one from Schroon Lake and that you might be going to marry him."
"Oh, did they? How silly. The papers here always say such silly
things." Her tone implied that he might be intruding. He looked
embarrassed. This softened her and after a moment she took up the
conversation in the former vein.
"Do you like to ride?" she asked sweetly and placatively.
"I never have. You know I never had much chance at that, but I
always thought I could if I tried."
"Of course, it's not hard. If you took a lesson or two you could,
and," she added in a somewhat lower tone, "we might go for a canter
sometime. There are lots of horses in our stable that you would
like, I'm sure."
Clyde's hair-roots tingled anticipatorily. He was actually being
invited by Sondra to ride with her sometime and he could use one of
her horses in the bargain.
"Oh, I would love that," he said. "That would be wonderful."
The crowd was getting up from the table. Scarcely any one was
interested in the dinner, because a chamber orchestra of four
having arrived, the strains of a preliminary fox trot were already
issuing from the adjacent living room--a long, wide affair from
which all obstructing furniture with the exception of wall chairs
had been removed.
"You had better see about your program and your dance before all
the others are gone," cautioned Sondra.
"Yes, I will right away," said Clyde, "but is two all I get with
you?"
"Well, make it three, five and eight then, in the first half." She
waved him gayly away and he hurried for a dance card.
The dances were all of the eager fox-trotting type of the period
with interpolations and variations according to the moods and
temperaments of the individual dancers. Having danced so much with
Roberta during the preceding month, Clyde was in excellent form and
keyed to the breaking point by the thought that at last he was in
social and even affectional contact with a girl as wonderful as
Sondra.
And although wishing to seem courteous and interested in others
with whom he was dancing, he was almost dizzied by passing
contemplations of Sondra. She swayed so droopily and dreamily in
the embrace of Grant Cranston, the while without seeming to,
looking in his direction when he was near, permitting him to sense
how graceful and romantic and poetic was her attitude toward all
things--what a flower of life she really was. And Nina Temple,
with whom he was now dancing for his benefit, just then observed:
"She is graceful, isn't she?"
"Who?" asked Clyde, pretending an innocence he could not physically
verify, for his cheek and forehead flushed. "I don't know who you
mean."
"Don't you? Then what are you blushing for?"
He had realized that he was blushing. And that his attempted
escape was ridiculous. He turned, but just then the music stopped
and the dancers drifted away to their chairs. Sondra moved off
with Grant Cranston and Clyde led Nina toward a cushioned seat in a
window in the library.
And in connection with Bertine with whom he next danced, he found
himself slightly flustered by the cool, cynical aloofness with
which she accepted and entertained his attention. Her chief
interest in Clyde was the fact that Sondra appeared to find him
interesting.
"You do dance well, don't you? I suppose you must have done a lot
of dancing before you came here--in Chicago, wasn't it, or where?"
She talked slowly and indifferently.
"I was in Chicago before I came here, but I didn't do so very much
dancing. I had to work." He was thinking how such girls as she
had everything, as contrasted with girls like Roberta, who had
nothing. And yet, as he now felt in this instance, he liked
Roberta better. She was sweeter and warmer and kinder--not so
cold.
When the music started again with the sonorous melancholy of a
single saxophone interjected at times, Sondra came over to him and
placed her right hand in his left and allowed him to put his arm
about her waist, an easy, genial and unembarrassed approach which,
in the midst of Clyde's dream of her, was thrilling.
And then in her coquettish and artful way she smiled up in his
eyes, a bland, deceptive and yet seemingly promising smile, which
caused his heart to beat faster and his throat to tighten. Some
delicate perfume that she was using thrilled in his nostrils as
might have the fragrance of spring.
"Having a good time?"
"Yes--looking at you."
"When there are so many other nice girls to look at?"
"Oh, there are no other girls as nice as you."
"And I dance better than any other girl, and I'm much the best-
looking of any other girl here. Now--I've said it all for you.
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