Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Dance-1

The Dance––––––––

After breakfast one morning Peleas and I were standing at the drawing-room window watching a snowstorm. It was an unassuming storm of little flakes and infrequent gusts, and hardly looked important enough to keep a baby indoors. But we who have old age and rheumatism and heaven knows what to think of, are obliged to forego our walk if so much as a sprinkling-cart passes.

This always makes Peleas cross, and I myself, that morning, was disposed to take exception, and to fail to understand, and to resort to all the ill-bred devices of well-bred people, who are too polite to be openly quarrelsome.

"What a bony horse!" remarked Peleas

"I don't think so," I said; "its ribs don't show in the least."

"It's bony," reiterated Peleas irritably. "It isn't well fed."

"Perhaps," said I, "that's its type. A good many people would say that a slender woman——"

"They're bony, too," went on Peleas decidedly. "I never saw a slender woman yet who looked as if she had enough to eat."

"Peleas!" I cried, aghast at such defection, "think of the women with lovely tapering waists "

"Bean-poles," said Peleas.

"And sloping shoulders——"

"Yes—pagoda-shaped shoulders," said Peleas.

"And delicate, pointed faces——"

"They look hungry—every one of them—and bony," Peleas dismissed the matter—Peleas who, in saner moods, commiserates me on my appalling plumpness!

"There's the butter-woman," said I, to change the subject.

"Yes," said Peleas resentfully, finding fresh fuel in this, "Nichola uses four times too much butter in everything."

"Peleas," I rebuked him, "you know how careful she is."

"No, I don't," replied Peleas stubbornly; "she's extravagant in butter."

"She uses a great deal of oil," said I tremulously, not certain whether oil is cheaper.

"Butter, butter—she spreads butter on her soup," stormed Peleas "I believe she uses butter to boil water——"

Then I laughed. Peleas is never more adorable than when he is cross—at someone else.

At that very moment the boy who was driving the butter-woman's wagon began to whistle. It was a thin, rich little tune—a tune that pours slowly, like honey. I am not musical, but I can always tell honey-tunes. At sound of it Peleas's face lighted as if at a prescription of magic.

"Ettare! Ettare!" he cried, "do you hear that tune?"

"Yes," I said breathlessly.

"Do you remember——?"

"No," said I, just as breathlessly.

"It's the Varsovienne," cried Peleas, "that we danced together the night that I met you, Ettare!"

With that Peleas caught me about the waist and hummed the air with all his might and whirled me down the long room more breathless than ever.

"Peleas!" I struggled, "I don't know it. Let me go."

For it has been forty years since I have danced or thought of dancing, and I could not in the least remember the silly step.

Leaving me to regain my breath as best I might, Peleas was off up the room, around chairs and about tables, stepping long and short, turning, retreating, and singing louder and louder.

"You stood over there," he cried, still dancing, "the music had begun, and I was not your partner—but I caught you away before you could say no, and we danced—tol te tol te tol——"

Peleas performed with his back to the hall door. It opened softly, and he did not hear. There stood Nichola. I have never before seen that grim old woman look astonished, but at sight of the flying figure of Peleas she seemed ready to run away. It was something to see old Nichola nonplussed. Our old servant is a brave woman, afraid of nothing on earth but an artificial bath-water heater, which she would rather die than light, but the spectacle of Peleas, dancing, seemed actually to frighten her. She stood silent for a full minute—and this in itself was amazing in Nichola, whom I have always feared to take to the theatre, lest she answer back to the player-talk.

In one of the most frantic of his revolutions, Peleas faced the door and saw her. He stopped short as if he had been a toy and someone had ceased drawing the string. He was frightfully abashed, and was therefore never more haughty.

"Nichola," said he, with lifted brows, "we did not ring."

Nichola remained motionless, her little bead eyes, which have not grown old with the rest of her, quite round in contemplation.

"We are busy, Nichola," repeated Peleas, slightly raising his voice.

Then Nichola came to and rolled her eyes naturally.

"Yah!" said she, with a dignity too fine for scorn. "Was it, then, a fire-drill?"

Really, Nichola tyrannizes over us and bullies us about in a manner not to be borne. We tell each other this every day.

Peleas looked at me rather foolishly for a minute when she had disappeared.

"That was the way it went," said he, ignoring the interruption as one always does when one is nettled: "Tol te tol te tol——"

"Why don't you sing da de da de da, Peleas?" I inquired, having noticed before that all the world is divided into those who sing tol, or da, or la, or na. "I always say 'da.'"

"I prefer 'tol,'" said Peleas shortly.

Some time I am going to classify people according to that one peculiarity, and see what so pronounced a characteristic can possibly augur.

"Dear, dear," said I, to restore his good humor, "what a beau you were at that ball, Peleas."

"Nonsense!" said Peleas, trying to conceal his pleasure.

"And how a few of us have kept together since," I went on. "There are Polly Cleatam and Sally Chartres and their husbands, all living near us; and there's Miss Lillieblade, too."

"That's so," said Peleas, "and I suppose they all remember that very night—our night."

"Of course," said I confidently.

Peleas meditated, one hand over his mouth, his elbow on his knee.

"I wonder," he said, "I was thinking—I wouldn't be surprised if—well, why couldn't we?"

He stopped and looked at me in some suspicion that I knew what he meant.

"Have them all here some evening?" said I daringly.

Peleas nodded.

"And dance!" said he, in his most venturesome mood.

"Peleas," I cried, "and all wear our old-fashioned things!"

Peleas smiled at me speechlessly.

The plan grew large in the eyes of both of us even before I remembered the c****x of the matter.

"Thursday," I said in a whisper, "Thursday, Peleas, is Nichola's day out!

"Nichola's day out" sounds most absurd to anyone who has seen our old servant. When she came to us, forty-odd years ago, she had landed but two weeks before from Italy and was a swarthy little beauty in the twenties. She spoke little English and was deliciously amazed at everything, and her Italian friends used to come and take her out once a week, on Thursday. With her black eyes flashing, she would tell me next night, while she dressed me for a ball, of the amazing sights that had been permitted to her. Those were the days when we had many servants, and Nichola was my own maid; then gradually all the rest left and Nichola alone remained—even through one black year when she had not a centime of wages. And so she had grown gray and bent in our service, and had changed in appearance, and lost her graces and her disposition alike. One thing only remained the same—she still had Thursday evenings "out."

Where in the world she found to go, now, was a favorite subject of speculation with Peleas and me. She had no friends, no one came to see her, she did not mention frequenting any house; she was openly averse to the dark—not afraid, but averse; and her contempt for all places of amusement was second only to her distrust of the cable-cars. Yet every Thursday evening she set forth in her best purple bonnet and black "circular" and was gone until eleven o'clock. Old, lonely, withered woman—where did she go?

Peleas and I used to wonder about it week by week, and now, for the first time, we planned to take a base and harmless advantage of her absence. We meant to give a party—a dance—with seven guests. Nichola, we decided, would not have supported the idea for one moment; she would have had a thousand silly objections about my sleeplessness and our digestion and Peleas's nerves. We argued now that all three objections were inadequate, and that Nichola was made for us, not we for Nichola. This bold innovation of thought alone will show how adventuresome we were become.

We set about our preparation with proper caution. We had a disagreement at the outset, for whereas Peleas was eager to begin by inviting our guests, I was determined first to find out if any one of the old gowns in the garret chests might be worn. I kept Peleas for one whole forenoon in the kitchen, driving Nichola nearly mad with his forced excuses for staying, while I risked my old neck among boxes so long undisturbed that one would have said that they might have dreamed dresses within their empty walls in that long sleep. At last I lifted it from its place—the lustrous white silk that I had worn on the night that I met Peleas. It was as if the fragrance of that time had wrapped it round all these years and kept it fresh. Peleas and I had looked at it together sometimes and had smiled at each other and remembered, but for very long it had lain quite unregarded. The fine lace about the throat was yellowed, and it had caught the odors of the lonely days and nights, but it was no less beautiful in my eyes than the night when I had first worn it.

I hid it away in my closet beneath sober raiment, and went innocently downstairs to release Peleas.

"Dear," said I, entering the kitchen, "don't you want to come up and read for a little?"

Nichola looked at me at once, and without a word led me to the looking-glass in the door of the clock.

"Ah?" questioned she suspiciously. "Is it that you have built fires?"

There was a great place of dust on my cheek. I am a blundering criminal and should never be allowed in these choice informalities.

That afternoon, while Nichola was about her marketing, Peleas and I undertook to telephone to our guests. We seldom telephone, and we were both nervous at the idea. We turned on the lights in the hall, and I found the numbers as my share, for—though Peleas claims stoutly that his eyes are as good as mine—I lose no opportunity to prove my superiority of vision. Then Peleas said something like this to our friends:

"Do you remember the ball at the Selby-Whitfords? Yes—the one forty-nine years ago this winter. Well, Ettare and I are going to give another one to the seven survivors. Yes—a ball. Just we seven. And you must wear something that you might have worn that night. It's going to be Thursday, at eight o'clock, and it's quite a secret. Can you come?"

Could they come! Although the "seven survivors" suggested a steamship disaster, they could have risen to the occasion with no more thanksgiving. At the light that broke over Peleas's face at their answers my old heart throbbed and I pressed my cheek against his coat sleeve in my anxiety to know what was being said. Could they come! Polly Cleatam promised for herself and her husband, although all their grandchildren were their guests that week. Sally Chartres's son, a stout, middle-aged senator, was with her, but she said that she would leave him with his nurse; and Miss "Willy" Lillieblade—she was Wilhelmina—cried out at first that she was a sight with neuralgia and, at second thought, added that she would come anyway, and, if necessary, be buried right from our house.

The hall was dark and silent again when Nichola came toiling home, and there was nothing to tell her, as we thought, what a company of sweet presences had filled the air in her absence. Nor in the three days of our preparation did we leave behind, as we were sure, one scrap or one breath of evidence against us. We worked with the delighted caution of naughty children or escaping convicts. Peleas, who has a most delicate taste in sweets, ordered cakes while he took his afternoon walk, and went back to the shop every day to charge the man not to deliver the things until the evening. My sewing-woman's son plays the violin divinely, and it was easy to engage him, and his sister to accompany him. Meanwhile, I rearranged my old gown, longing for Nichola, who has genius in more than cookery. To be sure, Peleas did his best to help me, though he knows no more of such matters than the spirits of the air; he can button very well, but to hook is utterly beyond his simple art. However, he attended to everything else. After dark, on Thursday, he smuggled some roses into the house, and though I set the pitcher in my closet, I could smell the flowers distinctly while we were at dinner. It is frightful to have a conscience that can produce not only terrors but fragrances!