Chapter 5. In Which Bettina Dances

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_ CHAPTER V. IN WHICH BETTINA DANCES

Diana's house, set high on the rocks, hung over the harbor. In the quaint old town, front doors became back doors, kitchens looked out on the street, and the windows of living-rooms and dining-rooms faced the sea. But there were two seasons when the rocky and ignored gardens of the town were ablaze with beauty--in the lilac month of the spring, and in the dahlia month of the fall.

It was at the time of lilac bloom that Bettina came to make her wonderful visit to Diana, and, after an exciting day in which she had been swept from the hands of the dressmaker to the hands of the hair-dresser, thence to Sophie for inspection and to Diana for confirmation of the completeness of her attire, she found herself, arrayed in all her glory, alone in the wide hallway.

The door was open at the end which faced the town, and the fragrance of the lilacs poured in. The soft wind swayed the branches of the bushes so that they seemed to float like white and purple clouds against a background of blue.

On the step sat Peter Pan, and as Bettina came toward him he rose to meet her and together they went down the path.

It was there in the old garden that Justin and Bobbie came upon her. They were in the white flannels and blue coats which Diana's informality permitted. The insignia on Bobbie's cap proclaimed him a yachtsman.

Justin, having presented Bobbie, smiled straight into Bettina's eyes.

"To think of finding you here," he said.

"How is your hand?" was her practical question.

"Dr. Anthony cured it. I was able to fly yesterday over the harbor. When are you going to fly with me?"

"Never." Bettina shivered with apprehension.

"Oh, but you'd like it," broke in Bobbie, eagerly. "I've been up with him, and it's like floating on a sea of sunshine. I give you my word the sensation is delightful."

Justin said no more on the subject. He could wait, but some day he was going to fly with this little golden girl. He wondered who had been inspired to dress her in that white and amethyst combination. She was as flower-like as the lilacs themselves--she belonged to them; she was exquisite.

He walked beside her, content to let Bobbie monopolize the conversation, which was unusual, for Justin liked to be the center of things. He had always been the center of things, and he was not diffident, as a rule, in his approaches toward friendship.

"The funny thing about this place," Bobbie was saying, "is that you have to pass the kitchen door to get to the front. When I was a little boy Delia used to roll out cookies on that table by the window, and I'd sit on the step and wait for them."

"Delia's a dear," said Bettina. "I fell in love with her the minute I came. And I fell in love with Peter."

Peter, hearing his name, jumped down from the stone wall, where he had been watching the robins, and again joined them.

"Peter and I are old friends," said Bobbie, and stopped to pet him.

"So you are going to stay with Diana?" Justin asked.

Bettina nodded. "Yes. Isn't she wonderful?"

"Wonderful. It's a pity we aren't a monarchy, so that Diana could rule as a queen. She's that kind of woman. A man instinctively looks up to her."

"That's what Anthony says."

Marveling somewhat at her familiar use of the name of the distinguished surgeon, Justin replied, "Oh, of course, Anthony thinks she's perfect. He'll marry her some day."

Bettina's startled glance questioned him. "What makes you say that? He won't, of course, but what makes you say it?"

"Because it would be such a perfect arrangement. They are so well matched."

"It wouldn't be perfect at all. People who are alike never ought to marry. And, anyhow, they've never thought of such a thing."

"How do you know?"

"Because they are not in love. Any one can see that who sees them together. They are just good friends--and friendship is a very different thing from love."

Justin stared at her in amazement for a moment, then he threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, wise young woman," he said, "talk to me some more of love----"

"Who's talking of love?" asked Bobbie, coming up.

"Bobbie doesn't think of anything else," said Justin; "only he's never sure of its object. Last month it was Sara, and now it is Doris--next week it will be----"

"Next week," said Bobbie, firmly, "it will be Doris,--and the next and the next--and always----"

They were on the porch now--the wide porch with its rugs and low wicker chairs, its gay striped awning and its bowls of white and purple lilacs.

Sophie was waiting for them, and Justin greeted her with all the light carelessness gone from his voice.

"Dear lady, it is good to see you again, but hard to see this," and his eyes went to her black gown.

Her lips were tremulous. "I know. But when I meet people who knew him, it does not make me sad; it makes me glad because all of his friends are my good friends."

"There are two men whom I always place side by side as peers; one is Anthony Blake and the other your husband. The surgeon and the scientist----"

"Yes," she said, "and they never met. But Diana knew him--and loved him."

"And she loves--Anthony----"

Mrs. Martens gave him a startled look. "Hush," she said. "Oh, no, you mustn't think that."

"Perhaps she doesn't realize," he said, slowly, "but the world can see it with half an eye. And everybody knows Anthony's devotion."

He stopped short as Diana appeared in the doorway. She wore white lace, with a crescent of pearls set just above the parting of her dark hair.

Justin was on his feet in a moment. "Diana, the huntress," he said. "You shouldn't appear like that suddenly on a moonlight night unless you want to be worshiped as a goddess----"

Diana laughed. "Please don't call me 'the huntress' again. It has a sort of 'woman still pursued him' sound."

Justin, with Diana, was his light mocking self. With Bettina he had been self-conscious, with Sophie tenderly sympathetic--but Diana played up, as it were, to his boyish attitude of adoration.

"Are we all here but Anthony?" she asked, with her eyes sweeping the length of the porch where the guests had gathered. "He's probably looking after somebody with appendicitis, or with a broken arm----"

"No, he isn't." Bettina spoke with the assurance of direct knowledge. "This time it is a man's nose; it had to be sewed up."

She shivered as she said it, and her audience roared.

"I'm glad it's not Bobbie's nose," said Justin, "it's the only really handsome feature he possesses isn't it, Doris?"

The blushing Doris murmured inarticulately. She thought Bobbie beautiful, and wondered why any one should designate his nose so explicitly.

Diana regretted that she had not warned Bettina against such assumption of intimacy with Anthony. If people were not to know of the engagement, it was not well--

But Anthony had come, perfectly groomed, from the tips of his white shoes to the top of his head, and presently he was bending over her hand, and saying, pleasantly, "It's a jolly lot of us you've got together, Di. Did I keep you waiting?"

"If you had, it wouldn't be me, but Delia, to whom you'd have to apologize. She's the real head of the house, you know."

Justin took Bettina out, Anthony took Sophie, and one of the married men Diana. At the table Bettina sat between the other married man and Justin, much to her discomfort, for she craved the seat next to the doctor, where perchance she might slip her fingers into his; he seemed so far away, and they were all strangers.

But no one could be shy with Justin. "Of course we're going to be great friends," he said.

Bettina eyed him doubtfully.

"Why?" she asked.

Here at least was no meek surrender to his charms, and Justin girded himself for the flirtation.

"Well, I'm Diana's friend," he ventured.

"Yes?"

"Isn't that reason enough?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I like to choose my friends for myself."

"Won't you choose me?"

She smiled up at him. "Of course; don't be silly."

After that they got on famously. Justin exerted himself to please, and Bettina, with shining eyes, laughed softly in response to his clever wit.

Sara Duffield watched and wondered. Justin had of late seemed her especial property. Yet she had heard him offer to take this strange young woman in his aeroplane, and he had never taken Sara.

"Who is she?" Sara asked of Bobbie, who was next to her.

"A friend of Diana's. She has been looking after her sick mother for a year. Then Mrs. Dolce died, and Diana asked the girl here. She's a beauty, isn't she?"

"Yes," said Sara, who, in certain shimmering greens and blues, looked like a shining little peacock, an effect which was further emphasized by a slender feather caught by an emerald which she wore in her black hair. "Where did she live before she came to Diana?"

"In the top of the Lane mansion."

"The Lane mansion." Sara's tone was scornful. "But it's an awful old place----"

"I fancy they didn't have much money. But she doesn't need it, not with that face."

"Doris had better look out," said Sara, unpleasantly.

"Doris?" Bobbie's round young face grew red. "Doris is the last one, Sara, and there won't be any other. You and Justin can just let that subject alone."

Sara shrugged her shoulders, and returned to her survey of Bettina. "I wonder where she got that stunning gown, if she's so poor. It's straight from Paris."

"Oh, you women," Bobbie exploded, and rested his eyes on Doris, across the table, and the thought of her gentleness was like soothing balm in contrast to Sara's sharpness.

After dinner Diana sang. She sat at the piano, which was placed just within the door of the unlighted music room, and her guests grouped themselves on the porch outside.

She gave them, first, a little German serenade, then a gay bit of Paris music-hall frivolity, and finally her fingers strayed into the accompaniment of a song which she had written for Anthony. It was called "The Wind From the Sea," and it had a haunting refrain.

Diana's thrilling voice rose and fell with the beating cadences. She had sung the song for Anthony on the night before she sailed for Berlin, and when she had finished he had made once more his insistent plea, and she had said, "Wait."

Bettina, next to Anthony, in a corner of the porch, had had a rapturous moment when he had murmured, "How lovely you are to-night," and had laid his hand over hers in the darkness.

But as Diana sang, her joy was suddenly shadowed. Why was Diana singing things that seemed to drag the heart out of one, and why had Anthony taken his hand away, and why was he so still?

Even as she questioned the search-light from the little ferry that plied between the Head and the Neck sent a shaft of blinding radiance across the harbor. Bettina caught a glimpse of her lover's face, and of the longing look in his eyes as they rested on Diana.

Why did Anthony look at Diana like that?

As the insistent question obsessed her, Bettina was conscious of no feeling of jealousy. Her faith in Anthony made impossible any thought that his heart was not wholly hers. She merely coveted the look in his eyes as they rested on another woman.

"Of course it's just the way she sings," she told herself, restlessly. "Why, it almost makes me cry."

The music ceased abruptly, and Diana sat very still in the darkness.

It was Sophie's voice which broke the silence.

"Betty, dear, haven't you a song for us?"

"No," came the response from the far corner. "Dad sang. I can only dance."

"Really?" Justin was on his feet at once. "If you'll dance, we will light all the candles in the music room."

Bettina came forward. "It's an interpretive dance. Can you play the 'Spring Song,' Diana?"

Sophie, observing anxiously, wondered what further test would try her friend. But she saw no sign of an emotion which had to do with a night when Diana had waited in the moonlight for the lover who belonged to another woman, as with firm touch she played the first chords of the rippling melody.

And Bettina danced.

Justin, watching her, thought of lilacs blown by light breezes, of clouds on a May morning, of the drift of white petals from blossoming trees. Was she a woman or a wraith, this slender thing swaying in the candle-light?

Anthony watched, too, leaning back, tired, in his chair.

Diana watched, and asked herself, "Can any man resist such youth and beauty?"

And Sophie watched, and said to herself, out of the pity of her great and loving heart, "She is such a child--and things are going to be hard for her."

When Bettina finished, she went straight back to Anthony. "Did you like it?" she demanded.

But his answer was lost in the applause which forced her to face the rest of them, and explain:

"Dad taught me. He loved beauty, and he felt that the dance was beauty in motion."

"Sit here by me," urged Justin, in a wheedling tone, and placed a chair for her.

Bettina yearned wistfully for her corner and Anthony, but Sara was there now, and her light hard laugh floated out to them.

"I think I'm tired," said Bettina, as she dropped into the chair, and Justin, the much sought after Justin, looked at her with chagrin.

"Are you tired of me?" he asked in an injured voice.

She shook her head. "No--but it's been an exciting day."

Somewhere back in the house the telephone rang, and presently Delia came out for the doctor. "You're wanted at the Neck, sir," she said; "it's the old gentleman with the pneumonia."

As Anthony went to answer the call, the other guests said their farewells.

Justin reproached Bettina. "You haven't been a bit good to me; if I come again will you talk to me?"

Bettina smiled. "I'll let you talk to me."

"When?"

She turned to Sophie. "When shall I let him come?"

"He'll see you to-morrow on Bobbie's boat," said Sophie; "he wants us for lunch----"

"Till to-morrow, then," said Justin, and bent over her hand; then he ran down the porch steps to Sara, who was waiting with her head held high.

When Anthony came back from the telephone Bettina said, mournfully, "Now you must go, and I haven't talked to you for a single minute."

He looked down into the wistful face, and hesitated, then he asked, "Would you like to ride with me over to the Neck? It won't take long, but you'd have time to tell me all about your beautiful day."

She was radiant at once.

"Of course I can go."

"Take my cloak," said Sophie; "the long black one; it's warmer, and the air is cool."

Diana, returning from a conference with Delia, asked, "Where's Betty?"

"Gone for a little ride with Anthony."

"But, Sophie, what will people say--at this hour?"

"I told her to wear my black cloak," said Sophie; "it's less conspicuous, and she was so eager."

Diana stood very still in the darkness. How she coveted the intimacy of the little car! She had ridden so often with Anthony, and he never talked so well as when driving; he never revealed so fully the depth and fineness of his great nature. Would he reveal himself to Bettina? Would he? And was she shut out from his life forever?

She went up-stairs slowly. "You wait for them, Sophie," she said. "I'm tired--it's been a hard day----"

"Poor dear." Sophie stood looking up at her from the foot of the stairs. "I'll come up and rub your head presently."

"It isn't my head," Diana answered over her shoulder.

"Poor dear," said Sophie again, softly, and saw with anxious eyes the droop of the ascending figure in the white gown.

An hour later Bettina came.

"We rode across the causeway, and down the shore drive. It was beautiful and Anthony is going to take me again. It's been such a lovely, lovely day, Mrs. Martens."

All the doubts of the early evening had been swept away, and Bettina was triumphantly happy.

When they reached the second floor, she stopped outside of Diana's room.

"Good-night, dear lady," she called softly, with her lips against the door.

"Good-night," came faintly, then after a moment, "dear child."

But Diana did not open the door. _

Read next: Chapter 6. "For Every Man There Is Just One Woman"

Read previous: Chapter 4. White Lilacs

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