THE TRAMLAY RECEPTION.

“Well, who hasn’t come?” asked Edgar Tramlay, as Lucia hurried toward him with a countenance in which despondency and indignation were striving for mastery. Tramlay knew his daughter’s moods, for they were exact duplicates of some he had married a score of years before.

“Oh, if he hadn’t come!—if he hadn’t come!”

The head of the family looked puzzled; then his expression changed to indignation as he asked,—

“Has any one dared to come to my house after drinking?”

“Worse than that!” wailed Lucia, shuddering, and covering her eyes with her pretty hands. Her father at once strode to the hall-way, looking like an avenging angel; but when he reached the door and took in at a glance the entire cause of his daughter’s annoyance he quickly put on a smile, and exclaimed,—

“Why, my dear fellow, how lucky that you happened in town on our reception evening! Come with me; Mrs. Tramlay will be delighted to see you again.”

Phil resisted the hand laid upon his arm, and replied,—{37}

“I’ll call again,—some other time. I didn’t know you had company this evening.”

“All the better,” said the host, leading Phil along; “ ‘twill give you a chance to meet some of our friends. We’ve met many of yours, you know.”

Just then the couple stopped in front of a sofa on which Phil, whose eyes were still cast down, saw the skirts of two or three dresses. Then he heard his escort say,—

“My dear, you remember our old friend Phil Hayn, I’m sure?”

Phil looked up just in time to see Mrs. Tramlay’s feeble nervous face twitch into surprise and something like horror. Mr. Tramlay extended his hand, as a hint that his wife should arise,—a hint which could not be ignored after his hand had closed upon hers. Even when upon her feet, however, the lady of the house seemed unable to frame a greeting; had Phil been a city acquaintance, no matter how uninteresting, she would have smiled evasively and told him she was delighted that he had been able to come, but what could a lady, at her own reception, say to a young man in a sack-coat and a hard-rubber watch-guard?

Mrs. Tramlay looked at her husband in weak protest; her husband frowned a little and nodded his head impatiently; this pantomime finally stimulated Mrs. Tramlay to such a degree that she was able to ejaculate,—

“What a delightful surprise!”

“Let me make you acquainted with some of the company,” said the host, drawing Phil away. “Don’t{38} feel uncomfortable; I’ll explain that you just dropped in from out of town, so you couldn’t be expected to be in evening dress.”

Phil began to recover from his embarrassment, thanks to his host’s heartiness, but also to the fact that the strain had been too severe to last long. He slowly raised his eyes and looked about him, assisted somewhat by curiosity as to what “evening dress” meant. He soon saw that all the gentlemen wore black clothes and white ties, and that the skirts of the coats retired rapidly. He had seen such a coat before,—seen it often at Haynton, on Ex-Judge Dickman, who had served two terms in the Legislature and barely escaped going to Congress. The only difference between them was that the judge’s swallow-tail coat was blue and had brass buttons,—not a great difference, if one considered the distance of New York and Haynton.

“Upon my word,” exclaimed Tramlay, suddenly, “I don’t believe you’ve met Lucia yet. Here she is—daughter?”

Lucia was floating by,—a vision of tulle, ivory, peachblow, and amber; she leaned on the arm of a young man, into whose face she was looking intently, probably as an excuse for not looking at the unwelcome visitor. Her father’s voice, however, she had always instinctively obeyed; so she stopped, pouted, and looked defiantly at Phil, who again dropped his eyes, a low bow giving him a pretext.

“Daughter,” said Tramlay, “here’s our old friend Phil, from Haynton. Now, don’t spend the whole evening talking over old times with him, but introduce{39} him to a lot of pretty girls: you know them better than I. Phil, you can explain to them how you struck a full-dress reception just after landing from a cruise; ’twill amuse them more, I’ll warrant, than any story any showy young fellow can tell them this evening. It isn’t every young man who can have a good thing to tell against himself the first time he meets a new set.”

During the delivery of this long speech Lucia eyed Phil with boldness and disfavor, but in obedience to her father she took Phil’s arm,—an act that so quickly improved the young man’s opinion of himself that he instantly felt at ease and got command of such natural graces as he possessed; he was even enabled to look down at the golden head by his shoulder and make some speeches bright enough to cheer Lucia’s face.

“It mayn’t be so entirely dreadful, after all,” thought the girl; “I can introduce him to friends to whom I could afterward explain,—friends who are too good-hearted to make spiteful remarks afterward. Besides, I can blame father for it: all girls have fathers whose ways are queer in one way or another.”

While acting upon this plan, and finding, to her great relief, that Phil could talk courteous nothings to new acquaintances, she suddenly found herself face to face with a man of uncertain age but faultless dress and manner, who said,—

“Mayn’t I be favored with an introduction? Your friend is being so heartily praised by your father that I am quite anxious to know him.”

“Mr. Marge, Mr. Hayn,” said Lucia. Phil’s proffered{40} hand was taken by what seemed to be a bit of languid machinery, although encircled at one end by a cuff and coat-sleeve and decorated with a seal-ring. Phil scanned with interest the face before him, for he had often heard Mr. Marge mentioned when the Tramlay family were at Haynton. His look was returned by one that might have been a stare had it possessed a single indication of interest, surprise, or curiosity. Mr. Marge had met young men before; he had been seeing new faces for twenty-five years, and one more or less could not rouse him from the composure which he had been acquiring during all that time.

“Can you spare your friend a few moments?” said Mr. Marge to Lucia. “I would be glad to introduce him to some of the gentlemen.”

“You are very kind,” murmured Lucia, who was dying—so she informed herself—to rejoin some of her girl friends and explain the awkward nature of the intrusion. Marge offered Phil his arm, a courtesy the young man did not understand, so he took Phil’s instead, and presented the youth to several gentlemen as an old friend of the family. Soon, however, Marge led Phil into a tiny room at the rear of the hall,—a room nominally the library, the books consisting of a dictionary and a Bible, the greater part of the shelf-space being occupied by pipes, tobacco-boxes, cigar-cases, ash-receivers, and other appurtenances of the vice and comfort of smoking. Placing Phil in a great easy-chair, the back of which hid him from the company, Marge took a cigarette from his own case, which he afterward passed to Phil.{41}

“No small vices,” said he, as Phil declined. “Just as well off, I suppose. As for me,”—here Mr. Marge struck a match,—“I’ve (puff) been acquainted with the weed so long that (puff) I can’t very well snub it when I would.”

“I think nicotine is injurious to the brain, the lungs, and finally to the digestion,” said Phil. “Have you seen Professor Benchof’s analyses? They were printed in the——”

“I may have seen them in print, but I’m sure I passed them,” said Marge, exhaling smoke in such a way that it hid his face for an instant. “I can’t afford to worry myself with information that I’d rather not use.”

“But one’s physique——” said Phil.

“One’s physique becomes quite obliging when it knows what is expected of it.”

Phil mentally sought a way of passing this unexpected obstacle: meanwhile, Marge breathed lazily through his cigarette a moment or two, and then said,—

“Miss Tramlay is a charming girl.”

“Indeed she is,” Phil replied. “If she only were——”

“Tut, tut, my dear sir,” said Marge, “woman is divine, and it isn’t good form to criticise divinity. Miss Tramlay is remarkably pretty: I trust we agree at least upon that safe ground?”

“Pretty?” echoed Phil, before Marge had ceased speaking. “She is radiant,—angelic!”

Again Mr. Marge enshrouded his face with smoke, after which he did not continue the conversation,{42} except to remark, “Yes.” Phil studied the color-tone of the room, and wondered why paper like that on the wall had not been offered for sale by the store-keeper at Haynton; then he resolved he would buy and take home to his mother a chair just like that in which he was sitting, for it was so comfortable that he felt as if he could fall asleep in it. Indeed, he was already so oblivious to Marge and other human presence that he was startled when a gentle rustle ushered in Lucia, who exclaimed,—

“Phil, you must come back to the parlor. Half a dozen girls are real envious because they haven’t seen you at all, and half a dozen others want to see more of you. Father has been sounding your praises until they’re sure the Admirable Crichton has come to life again.”

Phil attempted to rise,—an awkward operation to a man previously unacquainted with Turkish chairs. Lucia laughed, and offered him assistance: it was only a little hand, but he took it, and as he looked his thanks he saw Lucia’s face as he had sometimes known it of old,—entirely alert and merry. At the same time a load fell from his mind, a load which he had been vaguely trying to attribute to the lateness of the hour, the strangeness of his surroundings,—anything but the manner in which the girl had first greeted him. As she took his arm and hurried him out of the library he felt so fully himself that he forgot even that he was not attired like the gentlemen around him.

Mr. Marge, who had risen when Lucia entered the library, followed the couple with his eyes; then, when{43} alone, he frowned slightly, bit his lip, dropped the end of his cigarette, paced to and fro several times, leaned on the mantel, and muttered,—

“ ‘Phil’!”

Then he lighted another cigarette, and veiled his face in smoke for several minutes.