The Buccaneers Read Online Free PDF Page B

passing Mrs. Elmsworth on the verandah, just as she had done till this very afternoon—and how much higher!—in passing Mrs. Closson. Now Mrs. Elmsworth, who did not possess the art of the lifted chin, but whispered and nudged and giggled where a “lady” would have sailed by—now it would be in her power to practise on Mrs. St. George these vulgar means of reprisal. The diamond spray burned like hot lead on Mrs. St. George’s breast; yet through all her misery there pierced the old thrill of pride as the Colonel entered the dining-room in her wake, and she saw him reflected in the other women’s eyes. Ah, poor Mrs. Elmsworth, with her black-whiskered undertaker, and Mrs. Closson, with her cipher of a husband—and all the other ladies, young or elderly, of whom not one could boast a man of Colonel St. George’s quality! Evidently, like Mrs. St. George’s diamonds, he was a costly possession, but (unlike the diamonds, she suspected) he had been paid for—oh, how dearly!—and she had a right to wear him with her head high.
    But in the eyes of the other guests it was not only the Colonel’s entrance that was reflected. Mrs. St. George saw there also the excitement and curiosity occasioned by the re-grouping of seats, and the appearance, behind Mrs. Closson—who came in with her usual somnambulist’s walk and thick-lashed stare—of two young men, two authentic new dancers for the hotel beauties. Mrs. St. George knew all about them. The little olive-faced velvet-eyed fellow, with the impudently curly black hair, was Teddy de Santos-Dios, Mr. Closson’s Brazilian step-son, over on his annual visit to the States; the other, the short heavy-looking young man with a low forehead pressed down by a shock of drab hair, an uncertain mouth under a thick drab moustache, and small eyes, slow, puzzled, not unkindly yet not reliable, was Lord Richard Marable, the impecunious younger son of an English marquess, who had picked up a job on the Closson estancia, and had come over for his holiday with Santos-Dios. Two “foreigners,” and certainly ineligible ones, especially the little black popinjay who travelled with his guitar—but, after all, dancers for the girls, and therefore not wholly unwelcome even to Mrs. St. George, whose heart often ached at the thought of the Newport ball-rooms, where black coat-tails were said to jam every doorway, while at Saratoga the poor girls—
    Ah, but there they were, the girls!—the privileged few whom she grouped under that designation. The fancy had taken them to come in late, and to arrive all together, and now, arm in arm, a blushing bevy, they swayed across the threshold of the dining-room like a branch hung with blossoms, drawing the dull middle-aged eyes of the other guests from lobster salad and fried chicken, and eclipsing even the refulgent Colonel—happy girls, with two new dancers for the week-end, they had celebrated the unwonted wind-fall by extra touches of adornment: a red rose in the fold of a fichu, a loose curl on a white shoulder, a pair of new satin slippers, a fresh moiré ribbon.
    Seeing them through the eyes of the new young men, Mrs. St. George felt their collective grace with a vividness almost exempt from envy. To her, as to those two foreigners, they embodied “the American girl,” the world’s highest achievement; and she was as ready to enjoy Lizzy Elmsworth’s brilliant darkness, and that dry sparkle of Mab’s, as much as her own Virginia’s roses and Nan’s alternating frowns and dimples. She was even able to recognize that the Closson girl’s incongruous hair gilded the whole group like a sunburst. Could Newport show anything lovelier, she wondered half-bitterly, as she seated herself between Mr. Closson and young Santos-Dios.
    Mrs. Closson, from the Colonel’s right, leaned across the table with her soft ambiguous smile. “What lovely diamonds,