Chapter XXIV: Transfiguration

THEY were livelier at the table, but not nearly so noisy as Mamie Ford and Paul Reamer and their intimates would have been at a dinner party at home, Elsie thought; though this was but a hasty and vague comparison flitting through her mind. She was not able to think definitely about anything for a time: she was too dazzled by being dazzling. Her clearest thought was an inquiry: Was this she, herself, and, if she was indeed Elsie Hemingway, were these queer, kind, new people now about her quite sane?

The tall young man with the long face who sat at her left talked to her as much as he could, being hampered by the circumstance that the fair-haired short young man on her right did his best to talk to her all the time, except when she spoke. Then both of them listened with deference; and so did a third young man directly across the table from her. More than that, she could not look about her without encountering the withdrawing glances of other guests of both sexes, though some of these glances, not from feminine orbs, were in no polite flurry to withdraw, but remained thoughtfully upon her as long as she looked their way. _Could_ it be Elsie Hemingway upon whom fond eyes of youth thus so sweetly lingered?

Too centred upon the strange experience to think much about these amazing people except as adjuncts to her transfiguration, she nevertheless decided that she liked best the tall gentleman at her left. He was not so young as the others, appearing to be as far advanced toward middle-age as twenty-seven—or possibly even twenty-nine—and she decided that his long, irregular face was “interesting.” She asked him to “straighten out the names” of the others for her, hoping that he would straighten out his own before he finished.

He began with Lily Dodge. “_Our_ prettiest girl,” he explained, honestly unconscious of what his emphasis implied. “That is, she’s been generally considered so since your cousin Anne was married. The young man on Miss Dodge’s right and in such a plain state of devotion is named Henry Burnett just now.”

“Just now? Does his name change from time to time?”

“Poor Henry’s doesn’t, no; nor the condition in which Miss Dodge keeps him—probably because she likes to win golf tournament cups with him. I mean, the next time you see her at a dinner the man beside her in that state may have another name. _She_ changes ’em.”

“I see,” Elsie said. She looked absently at Miss Dodge, not aware that there could be anything in common between them, much less that in a manner they had shared a day of agony, no great while past. “She seems very lovely.”

“In her own way, yes,” her neighbour returned without enthusiasm. “The man on her left——”

Elsie laughed and interrupted. “What I meant to get at—if you don’t mind—was the name of the man on _my_ left!”

“Of course you wouldn’t have caught it,” he said. “You naturally wouldn’t remember, hearing it spoken with the others.”

“No,” she said. “Yet I think I do remember that Cornelia spoke it a little more impressively than she did any of theirs.”

“That’s only because I’m in her father’s firm. The most junior member, of course. They use me as a waste-basket.”

“As what?”

“A waste-basket. When Mr. Cromwell and the really important partners discover some bits of worthless business cluttering up the office they fill me up with it. Every good office has a young waste-basket, Miss Hemingway.”

“But you haven’t yet told me this one’s name.”

“Harley.”

He laughed ruefully, and she asked why. “Harley doesn’t seem a funny name to me,” she said. “I don’t understand your laughing.”

“It’s to keep from crying,” he explained. “My father was dead before I was born and my mother died just after. I was taken over by my grandfather, and he named me for three of Napoleon’s marshals—Berthier Ney Junot Harley. It takes a grandfather to do things like that to you!”

“But Junot wasn’t a marshal,” Elsie said. “He hoped to be, but the Emperor never made him one; Junot was too flighty.”

Mr. Harley stared. “I remember that’s true;—I spoke of three marshals hastily. I should have said two and a general. My grandfather brought me up on ’em, and I still collect First Empire books. But imagine your knowing!”

“You mean you think I don’t look——”

He interrupted earnestly. “I’m afraid it’s too soon for you to let me tell you how I think you look. But you do laugh at my names, don’t you?”

“No; they don’t seem funny to me.”

“Don’t you ever laugh except when things are funny?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’ve laughed thousands of times when everything was horribly unfunny.”

“Then why did you laugh?”

For an instant she looked at him gravely. “To try to be ‘popular,’” she said.

Plainly he thought this funny enough for laughter. “That _is_ a joke!” he said. “But if laughing makes you any more ‘popular’ than you would be without it, I hope for this one evening at least you’ll be as solemn as an obelisk.”

Of course Elsie said, “Why?”

“Because if you laugh I won’t get to see anything of you at all. I’m afraid I won’t anyhow.”

He spoke with gravity, meaning what he said; and the event proved his fear justified. He got halfway round the country club ballroom with her, after the theatricals, a surprising number of times, but seldom much farther. However, he conclusively proved his possession of that admirable quality, dogged persistence, and so did the other young gentlemen of the dinner party. So did more than these, including probably a majority of the men and youths, married or single, present that evening at the Blue Hills Club.

Elsie wondered when the spell would break. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t be found out presently as a masquerader and dropped into her old homelike invisibility. But whether the break came or not, she knew she would never again be so miserable as she had been, because she was every moment more and more confidently daring to know that she was beautiful. She laughed at a great many things that weren’t funny during this gracious evening; for laughter may spring as freely from excited happiness as from humour; but she made no effort to be noisy—noisiness appeared to be not a necessity at all, but superfluous. And what pleased her most, the girls were “nice” to her, too, as she defined their behaviour;—they formed part of the clusters about her when the music was silent, and they eagerly competed to arrange future entertainment for her. Elsie loved them all, these strange, adorable people who had not seen the wrong thing about her.

The old walls built round her by her own town, enclosing her with such seeming massive permanence and so tightly, now at a stroke proved to be illusion; she was discovering that they were but apparitions all unreal, and that this world is mysterious and can be happily so. Something of its humorous mysteries in dealing with young hearts another person, near her, also learned that night; for Cornelia Cromwell, by coincidence, had a queer experience of her own.

Beyond the outer fringe of dancers she saw her mother standing among a group of the older people;—one of these was Miss Bailey, the principal of the suburban school in which Cornelia had once been a pupil. Cornelia had not seen her for several years and went conscientiously to greet her. Principal and former pupil made the appropriate exchanges; but Cornelia was rather vague with the grayish gentleman who had Miss Bailey upon his arm.

Mrs. Cromwell said something as in correction of an error; but it was too late, and the couple had moved away before Cornelia understood.

“You called her Miss Bailey,” Mrs. Cromwell explained. “She’s been married to Professor Bromley for two years.”

“What! Was that funny little old——” Cornelia checked herself; but the tactful mother had already turned away to speak to someone else. The daughter stood and gazed at the stiff little old-fashioned gentleman standing punctiliously arm-in-arm with his wife. “Oh, dear _me_!” Cornelia whispered.

Then she ran back, wide-eyed, to rejoin an anxious lad who had arrived late. “Look here,” he said. “You’ve missed another chance to let me meet your cousin. What did you run away like that for?”

“To learn something important,” Cornelia told him. “Come on;—I’ll get you through to Elsie somehow.”

For the unmasking of Elsie, that dreaded break in the spell, still postponed itself as the evening wore on. Her miraculous night continued to be a miracle to the end, and she was a girl grateful for wonders when she talked them over with her cousin in the big bedroom, after two o’clock in the morning.

“I never met such darling people in the whole world!” she declared. “I never knew——”

“What nonsense!” Cornelia laughed. “You must be perfectly used to being a sensation wherever you go, Elsie.”

“A ‘sensation’?” Elsie cried. “_I?_”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know it!”

“Cornelia, you don’t understand. Nobody was ever really nice to me at a party before to-night in my whole life.”

At that her cousin beamed upon her. “I believe that’s what I like best of all about you, Elsie.”

“You mean nobody ever being nice to me before?”

“No,” Cornelia laughed. “I mean your not admitting that you know it. Of course you do know, because it’s impossible for a girl like you not to realize the effect you have on people; but I love you for pretending you don’t see it.”

“But it’s true,” Elsie insisted. “Until to-night nobody ever——”

“Yes, yes! Go on! It’s very becoming, and it’s what placates the other girls so that you get both sexes in your train, you clever thing!”

“I’m not clever, though,” the visitor protested. “I’m no good at all at pretending things. I’m not——”

“Aren’t you?” Cornelia laughed. “Well, it’s nice of you to _try_ to be modest, then. Your thinking you ought to be is one of your charms. It isn’t the biggest one, though. Everybody saw that one the instant you came downstairs to-night and stood in the drawing-room doorway, just before Father went to bring you in. It was very striking, Elsie.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s right; you oughtn’t to know,” Cornelia said, seriously. “It has to be spontaneous, I suppose, and it probably can’t be imitated or done deliberately.”

“But I didn’t do _anything_!” Elsie cried.

“I know you didn’t; that’s just what I’m pointing out. Maybe it was something they call ‘magnetism’; but anyhow it was more than just being a beauty. Of course you’re _that_——”

“Nobody ever told me so; not before——”

“Nonsense!” Cornelia interrupted; then she went on: “It seemed to lie in not only being a beauty, but in being a beauty with a kind of glow. I don’t know just how else to express it, because it’s better than having what they call the ‘come hither’ look. It was—well, _charm_, I suppose. People might never notice that a beauty is a beauty if she doesn’t have something of it. But ‘charm’ _is_ too vague to express it exactly. It was a look as if—as if——” Cornelia hesitated, groping. “Well, I can’t find any way to tell it except to say it was as if you knew something mysterious and lovely about yourself. And it makes everybody else crazy to know it, too!”

She jumped up, pointing at the clock upon the mantel. “Good heavens! And we’ve got engagements for every minute of the next two weeks, beginning at half-past eight to-morrow morning! Don’t bother to put those flowers in water, Elsie; it’d only be a waste. There’ll be more to-morrow!”

“I’d like to keep these,” Elsie said. “I think I’d like to keep them forever.”

“Dear me! Did he make that great an impression on you?”

“Who?”

“Elsie, you _are_ a hypocrite! Berthier Ney Junot Harley!”

“I didn’t even know it was he that sent them. I wanted to keep them because they’d remind me of—of everything.”

And when Cornelia, touched by the way this was spoken, had kissed her fondly and gone out, Elsie put the pretty bouquet in a vase of water. Then she took one of the rosebuds from the cluster of them and pinned it upon her breast for the night. She had liked Berthier Harley best; but it was not on his account that she wore his rosebud through her dreams; it was to remind her of—of everything!

She awoke early, smiling, and the bright wings of all her new fairy memories were fluttering in her heart. Then, reflecting, she became incredulous. Somewhere she had heard that every girl, no matter what her looks, has one night in her life when she is beautiful. Her own night had come at last; she could never doubt that. But what if it were the only one?

She jumped up and ran to the mirror. No;—tousled and flushed from warm and happy sleep, still drowsy, too, she was beautiful in the early sunshine. She knew it, and it was true. Last night had been her night, but it was not to be her only night;—and so, half laughing in her delight, she nodded charmingly to this charming mirror and began to think about what clothes to wear for the first day of her triumphant visit. She had no serious doubt now that it would remain triumphant, and so long as she kept upon her that glamour Cornelia had described as the look of “knowing something mysterious and lovely” about herself, Elsie was right not to doubt. She kept the look, and the longer she kept it, the easier it was to keep. Her visit was all glorious.