Chapter LXXIII: The Stormy Dinner

The guests assembled rapidly now, and dinner was announced. Mr. Noel led Mrs. Forbes to the table. Waldon followed with Miss Noel on his arm. The rest came independently; being only men, no one took much notice how they arranged themselves around the table.

Then came the usual routine of a hospitable dinner—profuse in delicacies, brilliant with flowers, and bright with sparkling wines, shining crystal and gleaming silver. Mrs. Forbes made herself charming to the host, who, being for many years a widower, and an habitual invalid, seldom enjoyed an occasion like that as he did under her brilliant influence.

Mary Noel was in fair progress with her first love quarrel, and, with the pouting wrath of a child, turned her shoulders on Waldon, while she bestowed lavish attentions on young Hyde, which the young man received almost as a pledge that his proposal was accepted, while Waldon drank his wine quietly, with a cynical smile on his lips. He rather enjoyed the whole thing; it was so delightfully transparent. By-and-by, if Mary tempted him too far, he would dash the cup from Hyde’s lip in a way he would remember. The insolent fellow! how dared he aspire to any woman Waldon chose to exalt by a preference! The other guests, being gentlemen, talked of politics or racing, in undertones, between the courses.

After the dessert came on, both Mrs. Forbes and the young hostess began to feel their presence as a restraint upon the conviviality. Throwing a mesmeric telegram across the table, the elder lady began to draw on her gloves; then both arose, and floated softly out of the room.

Waldon arose to open the door, but young Hyde was too quick for him, and, bathed in happy smiles, bowed low as Mary passed out.

“I am afraid that I, too, must claim a lady’s privilege, and ask leave to retire,” said Mr. Noel, who did, indeed, look pale and weary. “My physicians forbid too much even of this pleasant excitement. Mr. Waldon, will you take my chair? Our guests will feel all the advantage of the change.”

“_Our_ guests!” Some of the persons thus designated, looked up suddenly, and cast significant glances at each other. Hyde had not noticed the word particularly, but waited, smiling, till Waldon had taken Mr. Noel’s seat, when he called out for those beneath him to close up, and take their wine comfortably. Then came a cracking of corks, the gurgle and rush of wine poured into crystal, and a confused murmur of voices, in which politics and horse-racing clashed with sharp epigrammatic sentences from Egbert Fletcher and Waldon, who seemed measuring swords like persons preparing for a duel.

After a while, when the mellow influence of the wine began to manifest itself, some one broke into the old fashion of health-drinking, and a voice called out: “Fill up, gentlemen—a bumper for our host _pro tem._, and a double bumper to the lady who will soon bear his name.”

A clash of glass, and the rich gurgle of wine followed. Waldon arose to answer the toast, but he was interrupted:

“Stop, stop!” cried young Hyde, “we haven’t drunk to the lady yet. Overflowing glasses to the most beautiful woman of New York, Miss Bertha Canfield, our future Mrs. Waldon.”

Again the glasses rang against each other and were emptied simultaneously, deep inhalations of breath followed, and then Waldon rose to his feet, with a brimming glass in his hand.

“Gentlemen, I drink to the lady’s health with all my heart, but not as my future wife: that honor, or misfortune, which ever you may deem it, will, in a week or two, fall upon the lady who has just left us, Miss Noel.”

A dead silence fell upon the revellers. Waldon’s engagement to Bertha Canfield had been so publicly acknowledged, that even this open mention of her name had not seemed very much amiss, even among the most fastidious; but this bold repudiation struck every one with surprise. The revellers looked at each other in almost ludicrous consternation. Some sat down their empty glasses with emphasis; others held them fast, gazing blankly upon Waldon.

Two men present started up from their seats with white faces and eyes full of fire—those men were Fletcher and young Hyde. To one, that man’s words had brought a keen sense of delight—to the other, savage resentment which he had no power to control.

“Is this true, sir, or are you chaffing in your cups, Russell Waldon?” exclaimed Hyde, setting his glass down with a crash that shivered it to splinters.

“I never chaff where ladies are concerned,” answered Waldon, blandly, for he was a man to enjoy another’s discomfiture with the cool deliberation of an epicure; “and am not likely to speak rashly at this table. That I occupy this seat, invited to it as you heard, is proof enough that the master of the house has accepted me as his son-in-law. As for the lady, she permits our engagement to be made public from this evening.”

Hyde sank back to his seat, his eyes glowing, his teeth clenched hard under his mustache, and all his features locked with rage.

Fletcher leaned forward from the seat he had slowly taken. His eyes were bright as stars, but in their stormy joy arose a look of growing indignation. Had this man dared to thrust that noble girl aside, or had she broken loose from his thraldom?

“But how came this about, Waldon?” cried a young man from the bottom of the table, who sat rather uneasily in his chair, and in a mellow, sleepy voice, which gave the words a drowsy significance, he half sang, half recited:

“‘It is good to be just and wise—it’s good to be honest and true, It is good to be off with an old love, before you are on with a new.’

“You have told us about the new love; but how about the old? That’s the question before the meeting—‘how about the old?’”

“Oh, as to that,” answered Waldon, laughing, “I hold myself answerable to no one.”

“Yes, you are; I am that young lady’s friend. I was the means of introducing her to the evil destiny which association with you has brought on so many women. I wish to know how your engagement with Miss Canfield was broken.”

Fletcher spoke with bitter vehemence. In his fierce rage he saw the weak point in Waldon’s armor, and struck through it. In defending Bertha he unconsciously avenged the death of Clara Anderson and the treason that led to it.

Hyde also became her champion, thus turning his wrath aside from its own stinging course. An hour ago, he had thought the heiress of Willow Bend almost his own—the thought burned his heart like fire.

Waldon leaned back in his chair, and laughed till the white edges of his teeth shone again.

“And who gives to Mr. Egbert Fletcher the right to criticise or question me? What is there in my engagements to interest him?”

“So much, sir, that I take it for granted that the young lady came to her senses in time, and cast you off.”

“Cast me off—_me_!”

There was fire enough in those great eyes now, and quite sufficient rage in the strong features to startle more than one of Mr. Noel’s guests.

“You heard what I said,” answered Fletcher, growing hard and cold, as the other kindled to wrath. “There existed only two methods by which an engagement so well known could be broken—dismissal by the lady, or dishonor in the gentleman. No person familiar with Mr. Waldon’s high moral character would for a moment accuse him, so that we must suppose the dismissal came from the lady.”

Fletcher spoke with the very quintessence of scorn and bitterness—his voice was low, and stung like a viper.

Waldon writhed under it. Both self-control and manhood gave way under this scathing contempt before men he had used and considered as nothing more than literary or social satellites.

“You demand the facts?” he said, clenching a champagne glass by the stem, and pressing it down upon the table. “You believe it possible that any woman would fling me over, as you elegantly term it. You wish to know why the engagement between myself and Bertha Canfield was broken off. I will tell you. If the lady does not like it, I call every man here to witness that you brought it on her, not I—”

The man hesitated. Through his writhing vanity, and his venom against Fletcher, he had a sense of the dastardly thing he was doing, and held back a moment.

Hyde saw this, and goaded him on with a cold smile.

Then Waldon made the plunge, like a vicious horse grinding the bit between his teeth.

“I broke my engagement with Bertha Canfield because she was a girl that no gentleman could marry without dishonor.”

Hyde leaned back in his chair, with a triumphant smile on his lips. He cared nothing for the blasted reputation of this poor girl, but exulted in the degrading act of the man he hated.

“Liar!”

As he uttered this one scathing word, Egbert Fletcher leaned over the table, and dashed a full goblet of wine into Waldon’s face.

“Liar! coward! hound!”

Blinded by the wine, stung by these insulting words, Waldon leaped to his feet, dashed the dripping moisture from his eyes, and made a plunge across the table, attempting to clear it like a wild beast, and kill the man, who had insulted him, with his clenched fist. Half a dozen powerful men held him back, frightened by the gladiator fury in his eyes, and the foam that flew in swift flecks from his lips.

Fletcher stood opposite, white as death and firm as a rock, while around them rose a wild clamor of words, through which Waldon’s voice hissed its stinging venom, while he struggled against the hands that held him, and struck out wildly across the table, beating the air.

Fletcher neither moved nor spoke, but his breast heaved with a fierce, animal longing to smite the mouth that had dared to cast shame on the woman he loved.

Only one man at the table kept his seat. He was smiling blandly, darting the blade of his knife here and there, while he sung, in a mellow voice:

“It’s good—it’s good to be off with an old love, before you are on with—with flirtation number two.”

This was the scene upon which Mrs. Forbes and Mary Noel entered, when the noise of the quarrel reached them in the drawing-room. Their frightened faces subdued the storm a little.

Waldon struggled madly against the hands that held him, unconscious of their presence.

Mary forced her way to his side, and clung to his arm, sobbing out:

“Oh, Waldon! Waldon! do you want to break my heart?”

Mrs. Forbes approached Fletcher, and laid her hand on his arm. She was trembling from head to foot, but spoke calmly, like an angel of peace.

“What is this, Egbert?”

He looked in her eyes an instant, blinded by his passion; then, recognizing that anxious face, answered, almost in a whisper:

“He slandered the woman I love.”

“I understand. Come with me, brother. This is no place for us.”

“When they have taken their hands from him. I will not leave the room until they set him free.”

“They have set him free now. Mary Noel is clinging to his arm, crying like a baby—that is all.”

Mary Noel heard her name, in the confusion, and cried out, with a burst of sobs:

“Oh, Mrs. Forbes! dear Mrs. Forbes! do find out what has happened? He won’t speak a word to me! Papa has gone to his room, and I’ve nobody to help me but you!”

Mrs. Forbes turned at this appeal, and led Mary from the room, consoling her with great kindness.

“Go to your room, child. This is no scene for you. These gentlemen must not learn in this way how much you are interested in Mr. Waldon.”

“Oh, but I must see him! I can’t go up till I have seen him! He didn’t seem to know me, Mrs. Forbes, and I just engaged! Isn’t it terrible?”

“Go into the drawing-room. By-and-by he will come to you, I dare say. There, sit down in this great easy-chair.”

Mary flung herself into the chair, and began to cry again.

“Do make him come in! Tell him that I am just breaking my heart!” she sobbed.

Mrs. Forbes was in the dining-room again before half this plaint was uttered. She found Waldon, exhausted by his wild rage, lying back in his chair, with his cravat loosened, and his white vest, all stained with wine, unbuttoned. Now and then he gasped out:

“I will have his life! Gentlemen, I call you to witness, I would have had his life now, but for your interference.”

A faint smile trembled across Fletcher’s mouth, and he regarded with intense scorn the artistic tableau gotten up around the great man’s chair.

Half a dozen persons were grouped about it, giving him their most devoted attention, as if he had been a fainting woman, instead of a strong man, whose threats of vengeance made them watchful.

“Tell him that Miss Noel is in the drawing-room, awaiting an explanation of this disturbance,” said Mrs. Forbes, gliding past the group, and approaching her brother. “Come, Egbert, let us go now.”

Fletcher took her hand, led her to the door, and, leaving her in the hall a moment, turned back. Putting one of the impromptu guards aside, he leaned down, and whispered in Waldon’s ear:

“My plantation is not far off—you will know where to find me.”

Waldon started from his chair, foaming with rage, but not till Fletcher had reached the door and taken Mrs. Forbes on his arm. Then he broke into a fierce sneer, and, pointing after them, called upon those present to witness how adroitly the man who had insulted him could cover his retreat by the presence of a woman.