The story, floating in her clear, crisp voice upon the intimate air, disarmed Forrest. It had nothing to do with what had taken place in Washington or New York ten years before. Suddenly he wanted to go and sit near her, because she was the tongue of flame that made the firelight vivid. Leaving, he walked for an hour through feathery snow, wondering again why he couldn’t know her, why it was his business to represent a standard.
“Well, maybe I’ll have a lot of fun some day doing what I ought to do,” he thought ironically—“when I’m fifty.”
The first Christmas dance was the charity ball at the armory. It was a large, public affair; the rich sat in boxes. Everyone came who felt he belonged, and many out of curiosity, so the atmosphere was tense with a strange haughtiness and aloofness.
The Rikkers had a box. Forrest, coming in with Jane Drake, glanced at the man of evil reputation and at the beaten woman frozen with jewels who sat beside him. They were the city’s villains, gaped at by the people of reserved and timid lives. Oblivious of the staring eyes, Alida and Helen Hannan held court for several young men from out of town. Without question, Alida was incomparably the most beautiful girl in the room.
Several people told Forrest the news—the Rikkers were giving a big dance after New Year’s. There were written invitations, but these were being supplemented by oral ones. Rumor had it that one had merely to be presented to any Rikker in order to be bidden to the dance.
As Forrest passed through the hall, two friends stopped him and with a certain hilarity introduced him to a youth of seventeen, Mr. Teddy Rikker.
“We’re giving a dance,” said the young man immediately. “January third. Be very happy if you could come.”
Forrest was afraid he had an engagement.
“Well, come if you change your mind.”
“Horrible kid, but shrewd,” said one of his friends later. “We were feeding him people, and when we brought up a couple of saps, he looked at them and didn’t say a word. Some refuse and a few accept and most of them stall, but he goes right on; he’s got his father’s crust.”
Into the highways and byways. Why didn’t the girl stop it? He was sorry for her when he found Jane in a group of young women reveling in the story.
“I hear they asked Bodman, the undertaker, by mistake, and then took it back.”
“Mrs. Carleton pretended she was deaf.”
“There’s going to be a carload of champagne from Canada.”
“Of course, I won’t go, but I’d love to, just to see what happens. There’ll be a hundred men to every girl—and that’ll be meat for her.”
The accumulated malice repelled him, and he was angry at Jane for being part of it. Turning away, his eyes fell on Alida’s proud form swaying along a wall, watched the devotion of her partners with an unpleasant resentment. He did not know that he had been a little in love with her for many months. Just as two children can fall in love during a physical struggle over a ball, so their awareness of each other had grown to surprising proportions.
“She’s pretty,” said Jane. “She’s not exactly overdressed, but considering everything, she dresses too elaborately.”
“I suppose she ought to wear sackcloth and ashes or half mourning.”
“I was honored with a written invitation, but, of course, I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
Jane looked at him in surprise. “You’re not going.”
“That’s different. I would if I were you. You see, you don’t care what her father did.”
“Of course, I care.”
“No, you don’t. And all this small meanness just debases the whole thing. Why don’t they let her alone? She’s young and pretty and she’s done nothing wrong.”
Later in the week he saw Alida at the Hannans’ dance and noticed that many men danced with her. He saw her lips moving, heard her laughter, caught a word or so of what she said; irresistibly he found himself guiding partners around in her wake. He envied visitors to the city who didn’t know who she was.
The night of the Rikkers’ dance he went to a small dinner; before they sat down at table he realized that the others were all going on to the Rikkers’. They talked of it as a sort of comic adventure; insisted that he come too.
“Even if you weren’t invited, it’s all right,” they assured him. “We were told we could bring anyone. It’s just a free-for-all; it doesn’t put you under any obligations. Norma Nash is going and she didn’t invite Alida Rikker to her party. Besides, she’s really very nice. My brother’s quite crazy about her. Mother is worried sick, because he says he wants to marry her.”
Clasping his hand about a new highball, Forrest knew that if he drank it he would probably go. All his reasons for not going seemed old and tired, and, fatally, he had begun to seem absurd to himself. In vain he tried to remember the purpose he was serving, and found none. His father had weakened on the matter of the Kennemore Club. And now suddenly he found reasons for going—men could go where their women could not.
“All right,” he said.
The Rikkers’ dance was in the ballroom of the Minnekada Hotel. The Rikkers’ gold, ill-gotten, tainted, had taken the form of a forest of palms, vines and flowers. The two orchestras moaned in pergolas lit with fireflies, and many-colored spotlights swept the floor, touching a buffet where dark bottles gleamed. The receiving line was still in action when Forrest’s party came in, and Forrest grinned ironically at the prospect of taking Chauncey Rikker by the hand. But at the sight of Alida, her look that at last fell frankly on him, he forgot everything else.
“Your brother was kind enough to invite me,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she was polite, but vague; not at all overwhelmed by his presence. As he waited to speak to her parents, he started, seeing his sister in a group of dancers. Then, one after another, he identified people he knew: it might have been any one of the Christmas dances; all the younger crowd were there. He discovered abruptly that he and Alida were alone; the receiving line had broken up. Alida glanced at him questioningly and with a certain amusement.
So he danced out on the floor with her, his head high, but slightly spinning. Of all things in the world, he had least expected to lead off the Chauncey Rikkers’ ball.
III
Next morning his first realization was that he had kissed her; his second was a feeling of profound shame for his conduct of the evening. Lord help him, he had been the life of the party; he had helped to run the cotillion. From the moment when he danced out on the floor, coolly meeting the surprised and interested glances of his friends, a mood of desperation had come over him. He rushed Alida Rikker, until a friend asked him what Jane was going to say. “What business is it of Jane’s?” he demanded impatiently. “We’re not engaged.” But he was impelled to approach his sister and ask her if he looked all right.
“Apparently,” Eleanor answered, “but when in doubt, don’t take any more.”
So he hadn’t. Exteriorly he remained correct, but his libido was in a state of wild extroversion. He sat with Alida Rikker and told her he had loved her for months.
“Every night I thought of you just before you went to sleep,” his voice trembled with insincerity, “I was afraid to meet you or speak to you. Sometimes I’d see you in the distance moving along like a golden chariot, and the world would be good to live in.”
After twenty minutes of this eloquence, Alida began to feel exceedingly attractive. She was tired and rather happy, and eventually she said:
“All right, you can kiss me if you want to, but it won’t mean anything. I’m just not in that mood.”
But Forrest had moods enough for both; he kissed her as if they stood together at the altar. A little later he had thanked Mrs. Rikker with deep emotion for the best time he had ever had in his life.
It was noon, and as he groped his way upright in bed, Eleanor came in in her dressing gown.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Awful.”
“How about what you told me coming back in the car? Do you actually want to marry Alida Rikker?”
“Not this morning.”
“That’s all right then. Now, look: the family are furious.”
“Why?” he asked with some redundancy.
“Both you and I being there. Father heard that you led the cotillion. My explanation was that my dinner party went, and so I had to go; but then you went too!”
Forrest dressed and went down to Sunday dinner. Over the table hovered an atmosphere of patient, puzzled, unworldly disappointment. Finally Forrest launched into it:
“Well, we went to Al Capone’s party and had a fine time.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Pierce Winslow dryly. Mrs. Winslow said nothing.
“Everybody was there—the Kayes, the Schwanes, the Martins and the Blacks. From now on, the Rikkers are pillars of society. Every house is open to them.”
“Not this house,” said his mother. “They won’t come
