He paused at the entrance with an exclamation of surprise:
"Well, of all the wonders!"
"But you can\'t stop yet!" whispered Nan, drawing him gently on.
Apparently on entering the banquet hall they were stepping outdoors into an enchanted pine forest. The walls were completely hidden by painted scenery representing the mountains of western North Carolina. The room had been transformed into a forest, trees and shrubbery melting imperceptibly into the scenery on the walls, and mocking birds were singing in cages hidden high among the boughs of the trees.
Stuart gazed at the great panorama painting on the wall, fascinated.
"Why, Nan," he gasped, "that\'s a view of the river hills at home where you and I used to roam."
"Well, if you hadn\'t recognized it, I should never have forgiven you."
"How on earth did your artists get it so perfectly?"
"I sent him there, of course. He did it in three weeks. There\'s something else in that picture I thought you\'d see, too."
"Isn\'t it now!" Stuart laughed, as they reached the head of the central table. "A boy and girl sitting on a fence looking down at the river in the valley below."
"The very spot we found that quail\'s nest, you remember. You see I\'ve begun to rebuild your dream-life to-night, Jim."
"It\'s marvellous!" he answered slowly. "And there in the distance loom the three ranges of our old mountains until their dim blue peaks are lost in the clouds. These tables seem spread for a picnic in the woods on the hills."
"Are you pleased with my fantasy?" she asked with quiet emotion.
"Pleased is not the word for it," he replied quickly. "I\'m overwhelmed. I never thought you so sentimental."
"Perhaps I\'m not, perhaps I\'ve only done this to please a friend. Do you begin to feel at home in this little spot I\'ve brought back by magic to-night from our youth?"
"I\'m afraid I\'ll wake and find I\'m dreaming."
Stuart gazed on the magnificently set table with increasing astonishment. Winding in and out among the solid silver candelabra a tiny stream of crystal water flowed among miniature trees and flowers on its banks. The flowers were all blooming orchids of rarest colouring and weirdly fantastic shapes.
"Those hideous little flowers cost a small fortune," Nan exclaimed, "I\'m ashamed to tell you how much—I don\'t like them myself, I\'m frank to say so to you. But they are the rage. I prefer those gorgeous bowers of American beauty roses, the canopies to shade my guests from the rays of my artificial sun shining through the trees. You see how skilfully the artist has lighted the place. It looks exactly like a sunset in a pine forest."
Stuart noted that the service was all made for this occasion, silver, cut glass, and china. Each piece had stamped or etched in it the coat of arms of his native state, "Peace and Plenty."
"And you\'ve done all this in six weeks? It\'s incredible."
"Money can do anything, Jim," she cried under her breath. "It\'s the fairy queen of our childhood and the God of our ancient faith come down to earth. You really like my banquet hall?"
"More than I can tell you."
Nan looked at him keenly.
"The world will say to-morrow morning that I have given this lavish entertainment for vulgar display. In a sense it\'s true. I am trying to eclipse in splendour anything New York has seen. But I count the fortune it cost well spent to have seen the smile on your face when you looked at that painting of our old hills. I would have given five times as much at any moment the past ten years to have known that you didn\'t hate me."
"You know it now."
"Yes," she answered tenderly. "You have said so with your lips before, now you mean it. You are your old handsome self to-night."
Apart from the charm of Nan\'s presence Stuart found the dinner itself a stupid affair, so solemnly stupid it at last became funny. In all the magnificently dressed crowd he looked in vain for a man or woman of real intellectual distinction. He saw only money, money, money!
There was one exception—the titled degenerates from the Old World, hovering around the richest and silliest women, their eyes glittering with eager avarice for a chance at their millions. It seemed a joke that any sane American mother could conceive the idea of selling her daughter to these wretches in exchange for the empty sham of a worm-eaten dishonoured title. And yet it had become so common that the drain on the national resources from this cause constitutes a menace to our future.
In spite of the low murmurs of Nan\'s beautifully modulated voice in his ears, he found his anger slowly rising, not against any one in particular, but against the vulgar ostentation in which these people moved and the vapid assumption of superiority with which they evidently looked out upon the world.
But whatever might have been lacking in the wit and genius of the guests who sat at Nan\'s tables, there could be no question about the quality of the dinner set before them. When the Roman Empire was staggering to its ruin amid the extravagancies of its corrupt emperors, not one of them ever gave a banquet which approximated half the cost of this. The best old Nero ever did with his flowers was to cover the floors of his banquet hall with cut roses that his guests might crush them beneath their feet. But flowers were cheap in sunny Italy. Nan\'s orchids alone on her tables cost in Roman money a hundred thousand sesterces, while the paintings, trees, shrubbery, water and light effects necessary to transform the room into a miniature forest cost five hundred thousand sesterces, or a total of thirty thousand dollars for the decorations of the banquet hall alone.
When the feast ended at ten thirty the sun had set behind the blue mountains, the moon risen, and hundreds of fire flies were floating from the foliage of trees and shrubs.
Nan led the way to the ball room, where the entertainment by hired dancers, singers, and professional entertainers began on an improvised stage.
During this part of the programme the women and men of the banqueting party who were to appear in the fancy-dress ball at twelve retired to the rooms above to dress for their parts.
Nan left Stuart with a pretty sigh to arrange her costume.
"I\'m sorry you never learned to dance, Jim, but there are compensations to-night. I\'ve a surprise for you later."
Before he could reply, with a wave of her bare arm, she was gone, and he stood for a moment wondering what further surprise could be in store after what he had seen.
He noted with some astonishment the peculiar sombre effects of the ball room. He had expected a scene of splendour. Instead the impression was distinctly funereal. The lights were dimmed like the interior of a theatre during the performance and the lofty gilded ceilings with their mural decorations seemed to be draped in filmy black crêpe.
The professional entertainment began on the little stage amid a universal gabble which made it impossible for anything save pantomime to be intelligible beyond the footlights. Star after star, whose services had cost $1,000 each for one hour, appeared without commanding the slightest attention. At last there was a hush and every eye was fixed on the stage. Stuart looked up quickly to see what miracle had caused the silence.
An oriental dancing girl, barefooted and naked save for the slightest suggestion of covering about her waist and bust, was the centre of attraction. For five minutes she held the crowd spell-bound with a dance so beautifully sensual no theatrical manager would have dared present it. Yet it was received by the only burst of applause which broke the monotony of the occasion.
Stuart turned to the program in his hand and idly read the next number:
"A song by an unknown star."
He was wondering what joke the manager was about to perpetrate on the crowd when his ear caught the first sweet notes of Harriet\'s voice singing the old song he loved so well, the song she had first sung the day he came from the South.
His heart gave a throb of pain. Who could have prepared this humiliation for his little pal! He pushed his way through the throng of chattering fools until he stood alone straight in front of the slender little singer. She saw him at once, smiled, and sang as he had never heard her sing. Her eyes shone with a strange light and Stuart knew she was in the spirit world. The rabble of ignorant men and women before her did not exist. She was singing to an invisible audience save for the one man who looked up into her eyes, his heart bursting with sympathy and tenderness.
To his further surprise Stuart saw the doctor standing in the shadows at the corner of the stage looking over the gossiping, noisy crowd with a look of anger and horror.
When the last note of the song died away, quivering with a supernatural tenderness and passion, he brushed a tear from his eyes, lifted his hands high above his head and made a motion which said to her: "Tumultuous applause!"
She nodded and smiled and he rushed behind the scenes to ask an explanation.
He grasped both her hands and found them cold and trembling with excitement.
"What on earth, does this mean?"
"Simply that I was engaged to sing to-night—and I wanted to surprise you. Didn\'t you like my song?"
Stuart held her hands tightly.
"I never heard you sing so divinely!"
"Then I\'m very happy."
"How could you sing at all under such conditions?"
"I had one good listener."
"I could have killed them because they wouldn\'t hear you."
"But you enjoyed it?"
"It lifted me to the gates of heaven, dear."
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CHAPTER XVII SOME INSIDE FACTS
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CHAPTER XIX THE LAST ILLUSION
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