Chapter XX: Damsel Dark, Damsel Fair

“DIDN’T I tell you that you could get away with anything?” Ada said. “Weren’t all three of ’em just as wild about you to-night as if you hadn’t done it?”

“Done what?”

“Skipped out to walk with me and didn’t leave any word behind, when you’d made engagements with all of ’em.” And then, as Lily’s flushed and happy face showed a complete vagueness upon the matter, Ada exclaimed, “Good gracious! Yesterday!”

Lily remembered, but as one remembers things of long ago. “Oh, that?” she said, dreamily. “It wasn’t anything.”

Ada looked at her sharply and oddly; and Lily afterward recalled the strangeness of this look. Ada’s eyes, usually placid, were wide and lustrous; her colour was high, and she seemed excited. “Have you done anything to get out of being practically almost engaged to any of them?” she whispered, leaning close. “If you haven’t, you don’t need to worry anyhow, Lily.”

She spoke hurriedly, all in a breath, then kissed Lily’s cheek quickly and whispered, “I’m sorry!” She ran out into the crowded hallway, drawing her cloak about her as she ran.

“Why, what in the world——” Lily began, but Ada was already out of hearing, and disappeared immediately among the homeward-bound dancers near the outer doors. Lily followed, but could catch not even a glimpse of her, though she found an opportunity to say good-night—again—to Mr. Gleason, who was departing.

“Good-night, but never good-bye, I hope,” he said, with a fervour somewhat preoccupied. “You’ve been _beautiful_ to me. I hope you’ll always be my friend.” And with the air of a person pressed for time, he touched her hand briefly and passed on. Lily attributed his haste to the approach of her mother, who was ponderously bearing down upon them; but this interpretation may have been a mistaken one. Mr. Gleason had much on his mind at the moment, and Mrs. Dodge carefully withheld herself from joining her daughter until he had gone.

. . . Mr. Dodge had not retired to bed; he was smoking in the library when the two ladies of his household returned from their merrymaking. Lily kissed him enthusiastically, while his wife stood by, pure granite.

“You’ve had a jolly evening, Lily?”

“Beautiful!” she said. “Oh, simply magnificent!” And she ran upstairs to bed.

That is to say, she was on her way to bed, and she ran up the stairs as far as the landing; but there she paused. The acoustic properties of the house were excellent, and from the stairway landing one could hear perfectly what was said in the library when the library door was open. What stopped Lily was the bitter conviction in her mother’s voice.

“Do you see?” Mrs. Dodge demanded. “Do you see what you’re _doing_? It’s just as I told you it would be. Absolutely!”

“Oh, no!” he protested. “This much isn’t a fair trial. You haven’t given it a chance.”

“Haven’t I?” Mrs. Dodge laughed satirically. “It’s had chance enough to show where it’s certain to end. Don’t you see that for yourself?”

“No. What makes you think I should?”

“I’ll tell you.” But before going on to relate her impressions of the evening, Mrs. Dodge had a deterrent thought. She stood silent a moment, then went to the door and called softly upward, “Lily?”

“Yes, Mamma. I’m just going up to bed,” Lily said, diplomatically, and proceeded upon her way as her mother closed the library door.

Lily wondered if they were talking about her, though she was unable to see how giving something a fair trial could have anything to do with her. She could no longer hear the words her parents were uttering, though the sound of their voices still came to her in the upper hall, and it was evident that they were beginning a spirited discussion. Her father’s voice sounded protestive, her mother’s denunciatory, and Lily decided that they probably weren’t talking about her at all. She was in high spirits and laughed to herself over their earnestness—older people got excited and argued so over such dull matters, she thought. It would be a terrible thing ever to get middle-aged like that!

She never would be like that, she said to herself as she undressed. Never! Such a thing couldn’t happen. “To be like Mamma and not care much what you wear, or anything, and with a good dry old husband at home—and all so dusty and musty and _settled_—and not able to _look_ at another man—I could never in the world be like that! Ada Corey could, but I couldn’t. I’d a thousand times rather die!”

And with the thought of Ada she remembered Ada’s rather enigmatic remarks to her in the cloakroom and the queer look Ada had given her. The recollection of that oddly sharp look disturbed her, and, when she had gone to bed, kept her awhile from sleeping. There had been something appealing in that look, too, something excitedly reticent, as of strange knowledge withheld, and yet something humble and questing. And what in the world had she meant by saying, “I’m sorry!” as she ran out of the room.

Lily had to give it up, at least for that night, but she made up her mind to call Ada on the telephone early in the morning and reproach her for keeping people awake by suddenly becoming mysterious. Of course, though, the explanation would be simple, and the mystery would turn out to be nothing of any importance. Ada never knew any exciting secrets and probably hadn’t intended to be mysterious at all. Having come to this conclusion, Lily let her thoughts go where they wanted to go, though they were not so much thoughts as pictures and dreamy echoes of sounds—pictures of dark and tender eyes bent devotedly upon hers, dreamy echoes of a mellow voice murmuring fond things to the lilting accompaniment of far-away dance music. So, finally, she slept, and slept smiling.

A coloured maid tapped at her door in the morning, and, being bidden to enter, came in and brought to Lily’s bedside a note addressed in Ada’s hand.

“Must been lef’ here in the night-time, Miss Lily, or else awful early this morn’. It was stickin’ under the front door when I went to bring in the newspaper.”

Lily read the note.

It was the only thing we could do, Lily, to keep my people from
guessing what was really going on. We didn’t mean to let it go
on so long, but we had to wait until we could save up enough to
start with. Of course, I know everybody will say I’m hopelessly
mad and reckless, and my family will be terribly upset. I _told_
you I wished I were like you. If it were you, you could get away
with a thing like this and after a day or so nobody would think
anything about it, but I know how awful and different it will
seem to everybody because _I’m_ the one that does it!

I’m glad you told me it didn’t really mean anything serious to
you—I was sure it wouldn’t. I hope you won’t feel I ought to
have given you my confidence, and I _would_ have given it if it
hadn’t been such a serious matter. Besides, the real truth is,
Lily, our whole friendship seemed to be centred on your affairs
and you, never on me or mine. You were so interested in the
confidences you made to me, you never even seemed to think I had
any to make of my own and you never invited any. Please don’t
take this for criticism—and _please_ wish me happiness!

Lily dressed hurriedly; Ada had indeed mystified and disturbed her now; and she was eager to get to the telephone downstairs and find out what in the world this strange communication portended. But as she passed the dining-room door on her way to the little telephone table in the hall, her mother called to her. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were at breakfast.

“Not now, Mamma. I’ll come in a moment. I want to telephone to Ada first.”

“Lily,” her father said, urgently, “I wouldn’t.”

His tone arrested her, and she paused near the doorway.

“You wouldn’t telephone to Ada?” she asked, nervously. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“Ada’s not there,” he said, gravely. “Come here, Lily.”

She came in slowly, looking at him with an appealing apprehension; and his own look, in return, was compassionate. He held a morning paper in his hand, and moved as if to offer it to her, then withheld it. “Wait,” he said. “Your mother and I both think her family have behaved foolishly. If they’d shown a little more discretion—but she’s the sort of girl nobody’d have dreamed would be up to this sort of thing, and I suppose they must have been terribly upset. Of course, they might have known the papers would get it, though, when they began calling up the police to look for her and stop the——”

“Police!” Lily gasped. “Papa! What are you _talking_ about?”

“Ada Corey,” he said. “She never came home from the dance last night. She’s run away with that crazy young Price Gleason. They eloped from the Country Club, and the paper says they were married at a village squire’s office about an hour afterward.”

With that, not looking at her, but at his plate, he offered her the newspaper. Lily did not take it. She stared at it, wholly incredulous; then she reddened with sudden high colour, and, remembering Ada’s queer look of last night, needed not even the confirmation of the queerer letter just read to understand that the thing was true.

She said nothing, but after a moment went to her chair at the table, and, although he did not look at her, Mr. Dodge had a relieved impression that she was about to sit down and eat her breakfast in a customary manner. Then his wife rose suddenly and moved as if to go to her.

“Let me _alone_!” Lily gasped. She ran out of the door and up to her own room.

She felt that she could not live. No one _could_ live, she thought, and bear such agony. The dimensions of her anger, too great to be contained, were what agonized her.

“To think of their daring to make me a mere blind!” she cried out to her mother, when Mrs. Dodge followed her. “To think they _dared_! It’s the treachery of it—the _insolence_ of it! I can’t _live_ and be made a mere blind! I _can’t_, Mamma!”