Kerry (25 page)

“I’ll make it my business to see that objection is out of the way by the next dance,” put in Holbrook Junior. “I’ll be delighted to teach you.”

“Thank you,” said Kerry, smiling bravely, though she felt on the very verge of tears, “you are all very kind I’m sure, but there won’t be any next dance for me, and if you please I would rather not learn. I shall not have time for such things, and—well, it isn’t in my line, you know.”

But Mrs. Holbrook had taken command and taken Kerry at her word.

“How about that little black frock you thought you might return, Natalie? Perhaps she might look good in that. Black would be stunning with that hair of course. What was the matter with it that you did not like it? I forget.”

“Oh, it had those funny little new styles, on an evening gown, and the back wasn’t low enough cut for the present style. It looked frumpy.”

“That sounds more like me,” Kerry said, smiling. “Did you say you were returning it? Then if it fits why couldn’t I buy it? I would like that much better than having to borrow, and maybe having something happen to the dress while I had it on. Could I afford it? Was it very expensive?”

“I should say not!” said Natalie with contempt. “It was only twenty-five dollars! They were having a bargain sale, and I thought when I saw it in the window it was darling, but when I got it on I looked like one of the pilgrim fathers.”

Kerry winced inwardly at the idea of paying out twenty-five more of her precious dollars, but still, she would have one more dress, if it was at all wearable, and it seemed a case of necessity. This was her publisher’s house, and she must do him honor. She must be decently dressed.

The ladies adjourned upstairs, and the dress was brought out. Kerry found it quite wearable although she did not care especially for the style, a tightly fitted waist of transparent velvet with many tiers of black malines ruffles floating out like feathery spray down to her very feet. But the round neck was becoming and not too low, and there were tiny pugs of sleeves at the very top of the shoulder. Kerry had to admit to herself that she did look rather nice in it in spite of these objections. And then, the only alternative was a jade green taffeta of Natalie’s, which boasted a very low corsage, clasped over the shoulders with straps of rhinestones and no back at all, as far as the waistline.

“I’ll take this,” said Kerry quietly, “that is, if you are sure you do not want to keep it. It will probably be quite useful to me.” And she produced the money at once.

Somehow her action seemed to inspire more interest in Miss Natalie. She offered some showy shoe buckles and a rhinestone necklace, but Kerry thanked her and declined.

When she was ready a few minutes later, with her new coat on her arm, she had the little green silk shawl from China slung across her shoulders like a scarf, and the effect was rather startling.

“Oh, I say!” ejaculated the younger Holbrook as she came down the stairs. “I didn’t think you could look any prettier, but you certainly are some peach now!”

“Don’t be rude, Harry!” condemned his mother cuttingly as she sailed down in purple tulle and amethysts, and took a quick furtive survey of Kerry. It annoyed her that this girl who was evidently not of their world could yet take a discarded gown that had made her daughter look like a frump and make it serve her beauty so regally. That hair of course was most unusual.

There was something in reflected glory. Since her husband had willed that this girl must be entertained, it was just as well to get any possible advantage from it that there might be. So Mrs. Holbrook surveyed her young guest critically, with reluctant approval and as Kerry was about to put on her new green coat she swept it aside and substituted for it a long evening wrap of her own black velvet with an ermine collar.

“That’s a very lovely garment of course, my dear,” she said condescendingly, “but it will crush your skirt terribly. Take this instead.”

So Kerry went to the dance looking like a young princess, and wondered at herself. On the way over to the clubhouse sitting beside Harrington Holbrook she thought of Graham McNair and the wonderful Saturday night one week before out on the ocean in the moonlight. How she wished she were going with him somewhere to hear him talk of the things of another world, rather than with these people who were not of her kind.

A
dance meant nothing at all to Kerry. She had never actually attended one, although of course she had been dancing at hotels and other paces in her travels. At school the girls had danced but it never interested her so she had taken no part in it. It had not occurred to her that there might be anything in the gathering to which she was invited that would be incongruous with the new life of the spirit into which she had recently entered. She was simply being polite.

But when they arrived at the clubhouse, and the introductions began, she felt more and more out of her element, both physically and spiritually. She did not like the way the women were dressed, voluptuously, with much makeup. Perhaps her father’s prejudice against such things made her dislike them more than she otherwise would have done. She did not like the way the women talked. Not all, but many of them, especially the young girls were openly carelessly profane, and used expressions that she had been taught to feel were coarse. Some of the older women in the dressing room were gathered together having a royal gossip about a poor young thing who evidently used to be of their number, and now was in some kind of disgrace. Kerry couldn’t help wondering, as she stood before the mirror fastening back a recalcitrant wave of hair, whether these same unholy, self-righteous women had not prepared the way for the girl to walk into disgrace. Surely an atmosphere like this was not one in which to grow in righteousness.

Back in the great club room again with the Holbrooks, being introduced right and left, to girls and young men, and women and old men, Kerry suddenly perceived herself a celebrity. So this was why she had had to be better dressed. She was the daughter of one of the world’s great men. Well, perhaps she would consider this a part of business, and swallow it down as such. She was taking her father’s honors. How he had disliked having a fuss made over him. Yet she found herself glad that he was honored by the world, and that she might know that people cared.

But there came cocktails.

That was another thing that Kerry had not considered would affect her. Of course she knew people in social life drank such things, but her father had taught her to hate it. It was just another separating custom, that was all.

Quite simply she declined them but met so much remonstrance that she discovered at once it was a sore point. People raised their eyebrows questioningly at her. One large dowager asked her if her father had been a prohibitionist, and jokes flew around about the eighteenth amendment. Kerry had no idea what it was all about. She knew nothing of American politics, and little of American customs, having been away so long.

But she noticed that when she declined the second cocktail young Holbrook declined also, and in spite of the jeers and loud protests of his friends he continued to shake his head.

She turned to him with a bright smile.

“What’s the idea?” she asked. “Aren’t we allowed to eat and drink as we please?”

He grinned.

“Come on, let’s get out of this,” he said in a low tone. “I’ll take you for a ride in the moonlight.”

“Lovely!” said Kerry. “Only we must do our duty here first, you know.”

So Kerry stood smiling and talking to people, told them bits about her father, and her travels, and the foreign lands she had seen, just a dash of color here and there and they were satisfied. They did not really care to hear any connected conversation. They struck her as being filled with a fine frenzy of excitement, doing and saying things that were expected of them, interested in nothing save to whoop it up and keep the mad whirl going.

The orchestra struck up, and the dancing began.

Young Holbrook was watching her.

“You don’t enjoy all this, do you?” he asked, a note of surprise in his eager young voice.

Kerry smiled.

“Why, it’s—different!” she said without enthusiasm. “I’ve not been used to a life like this, you know.”

“But that’s the strange part about it,” he said in a puzzled tone, “just for that very reason I’d expect you to be crazy about it. Weren’t you awfully bored, never seeing life? Weren’t you always wanting to do what other people did? Weren’t you terribly dissatisfied?”

“Yes,” said Kerry, “I was often unhappy, very, and always wondering why I had to live. And I think in those days, perhaps until quite recently, I would have welcomed all this. I would have reached out eagerly for it. But—not now. It—somehow—does not seem real to me. It is—well—just passing the time away and trying to forget one is alive!”

“Gosh!” said the young fellow, casting his eyes avidly over the bright assembly that was now most of it moving excitedly around in couples in time to the music. “Why, that’s what it is of course, just passing the time away! What else could you do? You don’t live but once, and you’re a long time dead!”

“Only once,” said Kerry with an exultant smile, “but it lasts forever! And it means, oh, a great deal! And then—you may not have to die at all, but—whether we live or whether we die—it’s—oh wonderful—! And I’ve just found that out!”

“You mean you’ve found something better than all this?” he said with a sweeping gesture toward the ballroom.

“Yes,” said Kerry, turning bright, wistful eyes upon him. She found herself wishing this nice boy might understand, too. “Why, you see, I’ve just found out we were not put here on this earth just to have a good time. This is a sort of preparation time, a college course, a testing through which we have to pass, to get ready for the life that is to last forever, and is to be so wonderful that we cannot even understand how great it is!”

“Oh, gosh! You don’t mean religious stuff, do you?” asked the boy with a disappointed tone. “I thought for a minute you were talking about something real! You looked so interested!”

“Oh, but I am interested,” said Kerry with a radiant look, “and I’ve only just found out what a marvelous thing it is. No, I don’t think you’d call it religious stuff,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s not what I’ve always called religion. Religion is a kind of system, isn’t it? Something men have thought out for themselves. For instance Confucianism and Buddhism and things like that. This is different. It’s God’s own Word.”

He looked at her a moment in amazement, noted with admiration the eager light in her dark eyes, the lovely flush on her young cheek, the whole flaming beauty of her charming face, and his own look softened with appreciation.

“Tell me about it,” he said softly. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

But at that instant a group of young men rushed up eagerly and surrounded Kerry.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” they demanded in a breath. “May I have this next dance?

“No, I was here first, Forsythe!”

“No, I was the one that started first—” put in a third.

They clamored around her, and for one brief instant Kerry tasted the honey of popularity. Was it the new dress with its dusky ruffles to her toes? she wondered. She never realized at all her own lovely face set in its frame of red-gold hair, above the new gown, with the dashing green of her shawl trailing over one shoulder. She did not know she made a picture as she stood at the far end of the big dancing floor, a distinguished little figure, the beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother and a great father! She was only annoyed that the conversation had been broken in upon.

“But I don’t dance,” she said brightly and brought dismay upon all three.

“Well, can’t you learn?” they asked eagerly. “We’ll take turns teaching you.”

“She doesn’t care to learn,” said Holbrook coolly, “and we were just going to ride. Miss Kavanaugh wants to see the Hudson by moonlight.”

“What’s the little old idea, Harry, hogging the guest of honor, I’d like to know?” asked the young man they called Forsythe.

“Oh, we’ll be back after a while,” said Harrington Holbrook, withering him with a glance and leading Kerry away.

“Will it be all right for us to run away a little while?” asked Kerry wistfully as she followed him with a worried glance back. “I wouldn’t like to annoy your mother and sister.”

“Oh, sure! They won’t know where you are from now on. They’ll think you’re sitting it out somewhere. All the girls run away for drives. We’ll drop in again during the night. Anyhow Mother is deep in a game in the card room. She wouldn’t know you now if you were introduced.”

Kerry was glad to get out into the fresh spring air and the enchantment of the moonlight. She settled down in pure delight, exclaiming over the beauty of a group of cherry trees just coming into exquisite bloom.

The boy shot the car out into the highway and stepped on the gas. Kerry caught her breath with joy. Why this was like flying. Her experience in automobiles up until then had been mostly confined to city taxicabs.

“Oh, this is wonderful!” she said as they flew along the white ribbon of the highway past sweet-smelling trees in bloom and fresh earth upturned in gardens. She drew long breaths of delight and her eyes shone starry. The boy looked at her with keep appreciation. “Some girl!” he said to himself enthusiastically.

By and by he turned from the highway into a still, sweet lane where there were high borders of hedges, and a silver gleaming of moonlit water ahead.

He parked the car near the edge of a large bluff overlooking the river, and sat back happily.

“Now,” he said joyously, “this is something like!” And he slid his young eager arm around Kerry with an astonishing swiftness and possessiveness, and drew her close to him, at the same time gathering her two hands that lay in her lap.

Kerry sat up with suddenness, and drew her hands away, gently but firmly.

“Oh, please don’t, Mr. Holbrook,” she said earnestly. “I—want to respect you—and myself, too!’

“Whaddaya mean, respect?” asked the boy in a hurt tone. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to you. I’ll say I didn’t! Why, I respect you more than any girl I ever saw, and that’s a fact!”