CHAPTER III
GREAT-GRANDMOTHER LOMIS’ CORALS
Beth Baldwin felt that this was really her first “grown-up” party. She knew that few of the girls who had graduated with her from high school had been invited to the Haven house on this evening; and few of the younger guests would be brought to the door, she was likewise sure, in any vehicle. There were but four taxicabs in the town.
Beth knew that to the very nicest parties in town most people went afoot, carrying their dancing slippers under their arms. But now the girl was set down before the Haven door, under an awning and on a well-worn strip of carpet, both of which led up to the wide-open and brilliantly lighted doorway of the mansion.
The Haven place was a fine old house; there was none better for the purpose of entertaining in town. Almost the whole of the lower floor could be used for dancing. The broad stairway, bordered by potted plants, offered plenty of “nestling corners” for tired dancers; palms hid the rear of the reception hall where the musicians were stationed. Already, when Beth timidly entered, the lights, the moving couples, the tinkle of music, the murmur of voices, were quite confusing.
She saw Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s stately figure just within the drawing-room doorway. A few couples swung in time to the music across the hall in the huge dining-room, from which all the furniture had been taken. There were people going up and down the stairway whom she had never even seen before. She had not stopped to think until now that, after all, Larry Haven lived in a world quite apart from the Baldwins.
Her mother’s very good cravanette hid Beth’s frock from throat to slippers. She wore no head-covering save the waves of her pretty black hair. For Beth was one of those fortunate girls who possess soft looking, wavy hair, adaptable to any style of hair-dressing.
She was directed to the dressing rooms above, and mounted the stairs. There a maid showed her to one of the large bedrooms, now set apart for the women to use as a dressing room.
Five minutes later Beth descended the stairway. She saw at its foot a group of people looking up at her. Mrs. Haven was not one of them. Indeed, Beth thought she knew none of the group—at least, none of the women.
She imagined that they were whispering about her. The suspicion heightened the color in her cheeks; but she could not afford to be panic-stricken now. Beyond this group—wavering a little in her sight because Beth saw her through a mist—she knew Mrs. Haven stood.
She stepped from the lower tread of the stairway, and—— Who was this who met her, both hands outstretched, lips smiling, gray eyes dancing? Such a tall young man, strikingly handsome, Beth thought, in his evening clothes, his shock of straw-colored hair brushed back from his brow, giving him a remarkably wide-awake appearance.
“Larry!” she said, almost in a whisper, giving him her hands.
“You howling little beauty!” he responded, in a tone equally confidential. “Mother did not prepare me for this change. Goodness, Beth! you’ve grown up!”
“No, no. But you have,” she said, flutteringly.
He laughed. Then he tucked Beth’s plump little hand under his arm and led her into the drawing-room.
“Mater,” he said, for she chanced to be alone at the moment, “I introduce you to the ‘belle of the ball.’ What do you know about our little ‘Saint Elizabeth?’ Hasn’t she grown up?”
“Mercy, child!” murmured Mrs. Haven, and the lorgnette came into play to rescue her from absolute confusion. “I told you, Larry, how really pretty she had grown. In a few years, Beth, you will set the young men’s hearts aflame. Introduce her to some of the others—do, Larry. So she will not feel lonesome,” and the lady patted Beth’s arm with her lorgnette.
“And your Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals. I always envied your mother those beauties,” said the matron. “But I had no idea Priscilla had kept them all these years.”
“Why,” gasped Beth, finally stung to self-defense, “they are heirlooms!”
“Oh—yes—of course,” Mrs. Haven said. “But it isn’t every one who can afford to keep heirlooms, you know.”
Beth felt the sting in every word Larry’s mother uttered. She knew Mrs. Haven was antagonistic to her. Why?
“Do introduce her to some of the young folk, Larry,” his mother said impatiently.
“Not till I’ve danced once with her myself, Mater,” said the young man, laughing. “I can see plainly that if I don’t take my chance to do so right now, I’m likely to have none. Our little Beth is going to cut a wide swath to-night.”
“Mercy!” murmured his mother. “What are these children coming to?”
“You must not treat me as though I were grown up, Larry,” Beth said, laughing, as the orchestra struck up again.
“Know this?” he asked quickly.
“Oh, yes,” said Beth, glad she had learned some of the new steps.
“Then come on—and tell me all about yourself while we dance,” Larry rejoined.
“Oh no! You are the interesting subject just now. Think! a full-fledged lawyer,” she told him.
“Yes—‘full-fledged,’ indeed,” he agreed. “And likely to get well plucked the first time I appear in court.”
“Does the thought of your first case scare you?” she asked roguishly.
“No. The fear that there won’t be a first case is what is troubling me. They tell me fledgling lawyers sometimes starve to death and are swept up with the dust in their offices and thrown out.”
“I’ll have Mary Devine watch over you. Her father is janitor of the block, you know. If you are seen to become emaciated, we will try to smuggle you in some food,” laughed Beth.
“I don’t know how long I shall be at it,” the young man said, with more seriousness; “but I mean if possible to make the name of Haven known—and respected—as it used to be among the ‘legal lights.’”
“Oh, I hope so, Larry!” she declared, with warmth. “We all at our house will ‘boost’ for you.”
“And all the kids are well?” he asked, looking down at her with frank admiration.
“Lovely. And fast growing up. You should see Ella! She is going to be a regular ash-blonde.”
“I never did fancy light-complexioned people,” said Larry, laughing at her. “You suit me, Beth.”
“‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said,’” returned Beth, courtesying. “But remember, please, that my mother considers me a child.”
“Pooh! pooh! and a couple of fudges! You are a stunner, Beth.”
“I am a schoolgirl; you must not turn my head with compliments.”
“Got through the high, Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And going in for the higher-ed., of course?”
“Just as sure—as sure!” she said firmly. “I don’t know just how, yet; but I mean to go to Rivercliff in the autumn.”
“Whew! That’s some school. I met some girls at college who had been there. Co-eds, you know.”
“Nice girls?”
“Awfully nice,” he declared. “They took two years at Rivercliff after high and then came to college. But the full course up there would put you ahead a whole lot, Beth. These girls I speak of were preparing for particular lines of work. If a girl wanted to be a teacher——”
“That is my goal, Larry,” Beth interrupted, so earnestly that she missed her step. “I must be a teacher. You know—papa isn’t rich. We have to scrimp a good deal. If I could teach I could help a lot.”
“Sure you could,” he agreed, with answering enthusiasm. “And, besides, a girl doesn’t get anywhere at all now if she hasn’t a pretty good education. You know how it is—a fellow likes to talk to a girl that can discuss the same things he can, and discuss them intelligently. Why, Beth,” and he laughed, “our great-grandmothers, who only knew how to sew and knit and bake and be domestic, would never get a chance to marry nowadays.”
“What nonsense you talk,” said Beth, dimpling. “Papa says that the nearest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I fancy that not all young men of our generation are dyspeptic and have to live on predigested health foods.”
“That is all right,” Larry said seriously. “But a fellow can hire a cook. He wants a wife who can be his mental companion.”
“Good-ness me!” drawled Beth. “Hear the boy! When are you going to get married, Larry Haven? How soon?”
“Just as soon as I find the right girl,” he returned, laughing at her.
“Do you expect her to starve to death in your law offices, too?” she demanded, quizzically.
The question brought him to a stop. He gazed down at her for a moment. “Got me there, Elizabeth—got me there,” he admitted. “I didn’t think of that. She will have to be supported—the future Mrs. Haven—won’t she?”
“And a cook hired for her, too,” Beth responded wickedly. “By the time you are able to do that, Larry Haven, on your income as an attorney, I shall be principal of a young ladies’ seminary at five thousand a year.”
He laughed delightedly. She was just as bright as he remembered her to have been when she was little.
He handed her over to Major Whipple after this dance. The major, although a bachelor of over fifty, still possessed a discriminating eye for beauty. And he could dance well, too. Beth was enjoying herself. Larry did not let her sit idle a single dance. And the boys, young men, middle-aged men, were all ready to be partners with her.
Larry said to his mother: “What did I tell you, Mater? Beth is the belle of the evening.”
“You will turn that child’s head, Larry. I warn you,” his mother said seriously.
“Well! she talks a whole lot more sensibly than most of the young women I have talked with this evening,” he declared.
“Ah! she is wiser than I thought,” murmured Mrs. Haven. “And I would like to own those corals of her Great-grandmother Lomis.”