The Avalanche. Gertrude Atherton
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back to the ballroom. The exclusiveness of this young society on the wrong side of the continent sometimes made him homesick and sometimes made him sick. He saw little chance for this poor girl to enjoy the rights of her radiant youth if her mother had not taken the precaution to bring letters. France was full of Californians. Many lived there. Surely she must have met some one she could have made use of. It was tragic to watch a pathetic young thing staring at two or three hundred young men and maidens disporting themselves with the natural hilarity of youth, and but few of them too ill-natured to welcome a young and lovely stranger if properly introduced.
He experienced a desperate impulse to go up to the mother and offer her the hospitality of the evening, ask her to regard him as her host. But Madame Delano had a frozen eye, and no doubt orthodox French ideas on the subject of young girls. A moment later his eye fell on Mrs. Ford Thornton.
"Fordy" was many times a millionaire, and his handsome intelligent wife lived the life of her class. But she was far less conservative than any woman Price had met in San Francisco. Although she was no longer young he had more than once detected symptoms of a wild and insurgent spirit, and an impatient contempt for the routine she was compelled to follow or go into retirement. She was always leaving abruptly for Europe, and every once in a while she did something quite uncanonical; enjoying wickedly the consternation she caused among the serenely regulated, and betraying to the keen eyes of the New Yorker an ironic appreciation of the immense wealth which enabled her to do as she chose, answerable to no one. Her husband was uxorious and she had no children. She had seemed to Price more restless than usual of late and showing unmistakable signs of abrupt departure. (He was sure she dusted the soles of her boots as she locked the door of drawing-room A.) Perhaps to-night she might be in a schismatic mood.
She was standing apart, a tall, dark, almost fiercely haughty woman, but dressed with a certain arrogant simplicity, without jewels, her hair in a careless knot at the base of her head. There were times when she was impeccably groomed, others when she looked as if an infuriated maid had left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation in cheating them.
It was evident to Price that she had been snubbing somebody, for a group of matrons, flushed and drawn apart, were whispering resentfully. Price Ruyler stood in no awe of her. He could match her arrogance, and he liked and admired her more than any of his new friends. They quarreled furiously but she had never snubbed him.
He walked over to her, his cool gray eyes lit with the pleasure in seeing her that she had learned to expect. "Good evening, oh, Queen of the Pacific," he said lightly. "You are looking quite wonderful as usual. Are you standing alone almost in the middle of the room to emphasize the--difference?"
"I am in no mood for compliments, satiric or otherwise." She looked him over with cool penetration. "I may not massage or have my old cuticle ripped off. If I choose to look my age you must admit that it gives me one more claim to originality."
"You should have let the world know long since just how original you are, instead of settling down into the leadership of San Francisco society--"
He enjoyed provoking her. Her dark narrow eyes opened and flashed as they must have done in their unchastened youth. "Don't dare call me the leader of this--this!"
"Granted. But the fact remains that your word alone is law. Therefore I am about to ask you to forget that I am a bungling diplomat and do a kind act. For once you would be able to be both kind and original."
"I did not know you went in for charities. I am sick of shelling out."
"My only part in charities is shelling out."
"Well, come to the point. What do you want?"
"I want you to go over to that lady--Madame Delano, her name is--sitting beside that beautiful girl, and introduce yourself and then me. They are strangers and I'd like to give them a good time."
"How disinterested of you!" She looked the isolated couple over. "The girl is all right, but I don't like the mother. She is well dressed--oh, correct from tip to toe--but not quite the lady."
Ruyler's cool insolent gaze swept the dado of amiable overfed ladies who fanned themselves against the wall.
"None of that! You know that I do not tolerate the New York attitude. At least we know who ours are; they came into their own respectably, and with no uncertain touch. Of course it is stupid of them to get fat. Naturally it makes them look _bourgeoise_. But this is a lazy climate. As to that woman: there is something about her I do not like. She is aggressively not massaged, not made up. Only a woman of assured position can afford to be mid-Victorian. It is now quite the smart thing to make up."
"No doubt her position is assured in her own provincial town. It will be easy enough to drop her if she doesn't go down. You can't deny that the girl is all right--and a sweet pathetic figure."
"If the girl marries one of our boys--and no doubt that is what she was brought here for--we shall not be able to get rid of the mother. We've tried that and failed."
At that moment Ruyler's eyes met those of the girl. They flashed an irresistible appeal. He drew a short breath. How different she looked! She radiated a subtle promise of perfect companionship. Price Ruyler did what all men will do until the end of time. He made up his mind that he had found his woman and without vocal assistance.
Mrs. Thornton, who had been watching the unusual mobility of his face, met his eyes with a satirical smile in her own, her thin red curling lips drawn almost straight for a moment. She had played with the fancy, before anger banished it, that if she had been twenty years younger. … Men had fallen madly in love with her in her own day. … She detected the symptoms in this man at once. Her savage will compelled her to accept accumulating years without a concession. But she had forgotten nothing.
Ruyler may have read her thoughts.
"You know," he said, with an attempt at lightness, although the coast wind tan, which was his only claim to coloring, had paled a little, "that girl reminds me so much of you that I have made up my mind to marry her. I don't care who she is. If you don't help me to meet her conventionally I'll manage somehow, but I should hate to practice any subterfuges on the woman I intend to make my wife."
For a moment he had the sensation of being pinned to the wall by that narrow concentrated gaze. Then Mrs. Thornton swung on her heel. "I'll do it," she said.
She walked across the room with the supple grace her slender figure had never lost and sat down beside the older woman. In a moment the astonished dowagers who had "suffered from her fiendish temper all evening," saw her talking with spontaneous graciousness to both the strangers. Madame Delano was at first more distant and reserved than Mrs. Thornton had ever been, manifestly betraying all the suspicion and unsocial instincts of her class; but she thawed, and the two women chatted, while once more the girl's eyes wandered to the dancers.
When Mrs. Thornton had tormented Ruyler for quite fifteen minutes she beckoned to him imperiously. A moment later he was whirling the girl down the ball room and thrilling at her contact.
V
The wooing had been as headlong as his falling in love. Hélène Delano had a deep sweet voice, which completed the conquest during the hour they spent in the grounds under the shelter of a great palm, until hunted down by a horrified parent.
Hélène talked frankly of her life. Her mother had been visiting relatives in a small New England town--Holbrook Centre, she believed it was called, but hard American names did not cling to her memory--she loved the soft Latin and Indian names in California--and there she had met and married her father, James Delano. They were on their way to Japan when business detained him in San Francisco much longer than he had expected and she was born. She believed that he had owned a ranch that he wanted to sell. He died on the voyage across the Pacific and her mother had returned to live among her own people in Rouen--very plain bourgeois, but of a respectability, Oh, là! là!
"But it was a tiresome life for a young girl with American