Richard Vandermarck Part 10

"Yes," I said, following him, quite pleased. For I could not bear to have him angry with me. I was really fond of him, dear, old Richard; and I looked so happy that I have no doubt he thought more of it than he ought. He pulled all the pretty vases in the parlor to pieces: (Charlotte and Henrietta and his sister had arranged them with such care!) and made me a bouquet of ferns, and tea-roses, and lovely, lovely heliotrope. I begged him to stop, but he went on till the flowers were all arranged and tied together, and no one came down-stairs till the spoilage was complete.

All this time Mr. Langenau was in the library--restless, pretending to read a book. I saw him as we pa.s.sed the door, but did not look again.

Presently we heard the sound of wheels.

"There," said Richard, feeling the weight of hospitality upon him, "Sophie isn't down. How like her!"

But at the last moment, to save appearances, Sophie came down the stairs and went into the parlor: indolent, favored Sophie, who always came out right when things looked most against it.

In a little while the empty rooms were peopled. Dress improved the young ladies of the house very much, and the young ladies who came were some of them quite pretty: The gentlemen seemed to me very tiresome and not at all good-looking. Richard was quite a king among them, with his square shoulders, and his tawny moustache, and his blue eyes.

There were not quite gentlemen enough, and Mrs. Hollenbeck fluttered into the library to hunt up Mr. Langenau, and he presently came out with her. He was dressed with more care than usual, and suitably for evening: he had the _vive_ attentive manner that is such a contrast to most young men in this country: everybody looked at him and wondered who he was.

The music-teacher was playing vigorously, and so, before the German was arranged, several impetuous souls flew away in waltzes up and down the room. The parlor was a very large room. It had originally been two rooms, but had been thrown into one, as some pillars and a slight arch testified. The ceiling was rather low, but the many windows which opened on the piazza, and the unusual size of the room, made it very pretty for a dance. Mary Leighton and the tutor were dancing; somebody was talking to me, but I only saw that.

"How well he dances," I heard some one exclaim.

I'm afraid it must have been Richard whom I forgot to answer just before: for I saw him twist his yellow moustache into his mouth and bite it; a bad sign with him.

Kilian was to lead with Mary Leighton, and he came up to where we stood, and said to Richard, "I suppose you have Miss Pauline for your partner?"

Now I had been very unhappy for some time, dreading the moment, but there was nothing for it but to tell the truth. So I said, "I hope you are not counting upon me for dancing? You know I cannot dance!"

"Not dance!" cried Kilian, in amazement; "why, I never dreamed of that."

"You don't like it, Pauline?" said Richard, looking at me.

"Like it!" I said, impatiently. "Why, I don't know how; who did I ever have to dance with in Varick-street? Ann Coddle or old Peter? And Uncle Leonard never thought of such a thing as sending me to school."

"Why didn't you tell me before, and we wouldn't have bothered about this stupid dance," said Kilian; but I think he didn't mean it, for he enjoyed dancing very much.

Richard had to go away, for though he hated it, he was needed, as they had not gentlemen enough.

The one or two persons who had been introduced to me, on going to join the dance, also expressed regret. Even Mrs. Hollenbeck came up, and said how sorry she was: she had supposed I danced.

But they all went away, and I was left by one of the furthest windows with a tiresome old man, who didn't dance either, because his legs weren't strong enough, and who talked and talked till I asked him not to; which he didn't seem to like. But to have to talk, with the noise of the music, and the stir, of the dancing, and the whirl that is always going on in such a room, is penance. I told him it made my head ache, and besides I couldn't hear, and so at last he went away, and I was left alone.

Sometimes in pauses of the dance Richard came up to me, and sometimes Kilian; but it had the effect of making me more uncomfortable, for it made everybody turn and look at me. Bye and bye I stole away and went on the piazza, and looked in where no one could see me. I could not go away entirely, for I was fascinated by the dance. I longed so to be dancing, and had such bitter feelings because I never had been taught. After I left the room, I could see Richard was uncomfortable; he looked often at the door, and was not very attentive to his partner. No one else seemed to miss me. Mr. Langenau talked constantly to Miss Lowder, with whom he had been dancing, and never looked once toward where I had been sitting.

A long time after, when they had been dancing--hours it seemed to me--Miss Lowder seemed to feel faint or tired, and Mr. Langenau came out with her, and took her up-stairs to the dressing-room.

Ashamed to be seen looking in at the window, I ran into the library and sat down. There was a student's lamp upon the table, but the room had no other light. I sat leaning back in a large chair by the table, with my bouquet in my lap, b.u.t.toning and unb.u.t.toning absently my long white gloves. In a moment I heard Mr. Langenau come down-stairs alone: he had left Miss Lowder in the dressing-room to rest there: he came directly toward the library.

He came half-way in the door, then paused. "May I speak to you?" he said slowly, fixing his eyes on mine. "I seem to be the only one who is forbidden, of those who have offended you and of those who have not."

"No one has said what you have," I said very faintly.

In an instant he was standing beside me, with one hand resting on the table.

"Will you listen to me," he said, bending a little toward me and speaking in a quick, low voice, "I did say what you have a right to resent; but I said it in a moment when I was not master of my words. I had just heard something that made me doubt my senses: and my only thought was how to save myself, and not to show how I was staggered by it. I am a proud man, and it is hard to tell you this--but I cannot bear this coldness from you--and _I ask you to forgive me_"

His eyes, his voice, had all their unconquerable influence upon me. I bent over Richard's poor flowers, and pulled them to pieces while I tried to speak. There was a silence, during which he must have heard the loud beating of my heart, I think: at last he spoke again in a lower voice, "Will you not be kind, and say that we are friends once more?"

I said something that was inaudible to him, and he stooped a little nearer me to catch it. I made a great effort and commanded my voice and said, very low? but with an attempt to speak lightly, "You have not made it any better, but I will forget it."

He caught my hand for one instant, then let it go as suddenly. And neither of us could speak.

There is no position more false and trying than a woman's, when she is told in this way that a man loves her, and yet has not been told it; when she must seem not to see what she would be an idiot not to see; when he can say what he pleases and she must seem to hear only so much.

I did no better and no worse than most women of my years would have done. At last the silence (which did not seem a silence to me, it was so full of new and conflicting thoughts,) was broken by the recommencement of the music in the other room. He had taken a book in his hands and was turning over its pages restlessly.

"Why have you not danced?" he said at last, in a voice that still showed agitation.

"I have not danced because I can't, because I never have been taught."

"You? not taught? it seems incredible. But let me teach you. Will you?

Teach you! you would dance by intention. And would love it--madly--as I did years ago. Come with me, will you?"

"Oh, no," I said, half frightened, shrinking back, "I am not going to dance--ever."

"Perhaps that is as well," he said in a low tone, meeting my eye for an instant, and telling me by that sudden brilliant gleam from his, that then he would be spared the pain of ever seeing me dancing with another.

"But let me teach you something," he said after a moment. "Let me teach you German--will you?" He sank down in a chair by the table, and leaning forward, repeated his question eagerly.

"Oh, yes, I should like it so much--if--."

"If--if what? If it could be arranged without frightening and embarra.s.sing you, you mean?"

"Yes."

"I wonder if you are not more afraid of being frightened and embarra.s.sed than of any other earthly trial. There are worse things that come to us, Miss d'Estree. But I will arrange about the German, and you need have no terror. How will I arrange? No matter--when Mrs. Hollenbeck asks you to join a cla.s.s in German, you will join it, will you not?"

"Oh, yes."

"You promise?"

"Oh, anything."

"Anything? take care. I may fill up a check for thousands, if you give a blank."

"I didn't give a blank; anything about German's what I meant."

"Ah, that's safer, but not half so generous. And yet you're one who might be generous, I think."

"But tell me about the German cla.s.s."

"I've nothing to tell you about it," he answered, "only that you've promised to learn."

"But where are we to say our lessons, and what books are we to Study?"

"Would you like to say a lesson now and get one step in advance of all the others?"