things considerably before their identity was discovered.
Thereafter only the fit were chosen, and very ungracefully did
they respond.
On this particular night Prince was at the door. Pressure had
been brought to bear, and he had not yet recovered from amaze at
his having consented to undertake a task which bid fair to lose
him half his friends, merely for the sake of pleasing the other
half. Three or four of the men he had refused were men whom he
had known on creek and trail,–good comrades, but not exactly
eligible for so select an affair. He was canvassing the
expediency of resigning the post there and then, when a woman
tripped in under the light. Freda! He could swear it by the
furs, did he not know that poise of head so well. The last one to
expect in all the world. He had given her better judgment than to
thus venture the ignominy of refusal, or, if she passed, the scorn
of women. He shook his head, without scrutiny; he knew her too
well to be mistaken. But she pressed closer. She lifted the
black silk ribbon and as quickly lowered it again. For one
flashing, eternal second he looked upon her face. It was not for
nothing, the saying which had arisen in the country, that Freda
played with men as a child with bubbles. Not a word was spoken.
Prince stepped aside, and a few moments later might have been seen
resigning, with warm incoherence, the post to which he had been
unfaithful.
A woman, flexible of form, slender, yet rhythmic of strength in
every movement, now pausing with this group, now scanning that,
urged a restless and devious course among the revellers. Men
recognized the furs, and marvelled,–men who should have served
upon the door committee; but they were not prone to speech. Not
so with the women. They had better eyes for the lines of figure
and tricks of carriage, and they knew this form to be one with
which they were unfamiliar; likewise the furs. Mrs. McFee,
emerging from the supper-room where all was in readiness, caught
one flash of the blazing, questing eyes through the silken mask-
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slits, and received a start. She tried to recollect where she had
seen the like, and a vivid picture was recalled of a certain proud
and rebellious sinner whom she had once encountered on a fruitless
errand for the Lord.
So it was that the good woman took the trail in hot and righteous
wrath, a trail which brought her ultimately into the company of
Mrs. Eppingwell and Floyd Vanderlip. Mrs. Eppingwell had just
found the opportunity to talk with the man. She had determined,
now that Flossie was so near at hand, to proceed directly to the
point, and an incisive little ethical discourse was titillating on
the end of her tongue, when the couple became three. She noted,
and pleasurably, the faintly foreign accent of the “Beg pardon”
with which the furred woman prefaced her immediate appropriation
of Floyd Vanderlip; and she courteously bowed her permission for
them to draw a little apart.
Then it was that Mrs. McFee’s righteous hand descended, and
accompanying it in its descent was a black mask torn from a
startled woman. A wonderful face and brilliant eyes were exposed
to the quiet curiosity of those who looked that way, and they were
everybody. Floyd Vanderlip was rather confused. The situation
demanded instant action on the part of a man who was not beyond
his depth, while HE hardly knew where he was. He stared
helplessly about him. Mrs. Eppingwell was perplexed. She could
not comprehend. An explanation was forthcoming, somewhere, and
Mrs. McFee was equal to it.
“Mrs. Eppingwell,” and her Celtic voice rose shrilly, “it is with
great pleasure I make you acquainted with Freda Moloof, MISS Freda
Moloof, as I understand.”
Freda involuntarily turned. With her own face bared, she felt as
in a dream, naked, upon her turned the clothed features and
gleaming eyes of the masked circle. It seemed, almost, as though
a hungry wolf-pack girdled her, ready to drag her down. It might
chance that some felt pity for her, she thought, and at the
thought, hardened. She would by far prefer their scorn. Strong
of heart was she, this woman, and though she had hunted the prey
into the midst of the pack, Mrs. Eppingwell or no Mrs. Eppingwell,
she could not forego the kill.
But here Mrs. Eppingwell did a strange thing. So this, at last,
was Freda, she mused, the dancer and the destroyer of men; the
woman from whose door she had been turned. And she, too, felt the
imperious creature’s nakedness as though it were her own. Perhaps
it was this, her Saxon disinclination to meet a disadvantaged foe,
perhaps, forsooth, that it might give her greater strength in the
struggle for the man, and it might have been a little of both; but
be that as it may, she did do this strange thing. When Mrs.
McFee’s thin voice, vibrant with malice, had raised, and Freda
turned involuntarily, Mrs. Eppingwell also turned, removed her
mask, and inclined her head in acknowledgment.
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105
It was another flashing, eternal second, during which these two
women regarded each other. The one, eyes blazing, meteoric; at
bay, aggressive; suffering in advance and resenting in advance the
scorn and ridicule and insult she had thrown herself open to; a
beautiful, burning, bubbling lava cone of flesh and spirit. And
the other, calm-eyed, cool-browed, serene; strong in her own
integrity, with faith in herself, thoroughly at ease;
dispassionate, imperturbable; a figure chiselled from some cold
marble quarry. Whatever gulf there might exist, she recognized it
not. No bridging, no descending; her attitude was that of perfect
equality. She stood tranquilly on the ground of their common
womanhood. And this maddened Freda. Not so, had she been of
lesser breed; but her soul’s plummet knew not the bottomless, and
she could follow the other into the deeps of her deepest depths
and read her aright. “Why do you not draw back your garment’s
hem?” she was fain to cry out, all in that flashing, dazzling
second. “Spit upon me, revile me, and it were greater mercy than
this!” She trembled. Her nostrils distended and quivered. But
she drew herself in check, returned the inclination of head, and
turned to the man.
“Come with me, Floyd,” she said simply. “I want you now.”
“What the–” he began explosively, and quit as suddenly, discreet
enough to not round it off. Where the deuce had his wits gone,
anyway? Was ever a man more foolishly placed? He gurgled deep
down in his throat and high up in the roof of his mouth, heaved as
one his big shoulders and his indecision, and glared appealingly
at the two women.
“I beg pardon, just a moment, but may I speak first with Mr.
Vanderlip?” Mrs. Eppingwell’s voice, though flute-like and low,
predicated will in its every cadence.
The man looked his gratitude. He, at least, was willing enough.
“I’m very sorry,” from Freda. “There isn’t time. He must come at
once.” The conventional phrases dropped easily from her lips, but
she could not forbear to smile inwardly at their inadequacy and
weakness. She would much rather have shrieked.
“But, Miss Moloof, who are you that you may possess yourself of
Mr. Vanderlip and command his actions?”
Whereupon relief brightened his face, and the man beamed his
approval. Trust Mrs. Eppingwell to drag him clear. Freda had met
her match this time.
“I–I–” Freda hesitated, and then her feminine mind putting on
its harness–“and who are you to ask this question?”
“I? I am Mrs. Eppingwell, and–”
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106
“There!” the other broke in sharply. “You are the wife of a
captain, who is therefore your husband. I am only a dancing girl.
What do you with this man?”
“Such unprecedented behavior!” Mrs. McFee ruffled herself and
cleared for action, but Mrs. Eppingwell shut her mouth with a look
and developed a new attack.
“Since Miss Moloof appears to hold claims upon you, Mr. Vanderlip,
and is in too great haste to grant me a few seconds of your time,
I am forced to appeal directly to you. May I speak with you,
alone, and now?”
Mrs. McFee’s jaws brought together with a snap. That settled the
disgraceful situation.
“Why, er–that is, certainly,” the man stammered. “Of course, of
course,” growing more effusive at the prospect of deliverance.
Men are only gregarious vertebrates, domesticated and evolved, and
the chances are large that it was because the Greek girl had in
her time dealt with wilder masculine beasts of the human sort; for
she turned upon the man with hell’s tides aflood in her blazing
eyes, much as a bespangled lady upon a lion which has suddenly
imbibed the pernicious theory that he is a free agent. The beast