Spellbinders — A Closer Reading

oment to appraise her as he crossed the room. Rather prettier--well, he had been warned of that, she had carried the famous Daisy Chain in college,--cleverly dressed, like his own wife, but a trifle more eccentric perhaps in what she was wearing. Not as attractive as Helen--few women were that and they usually paled a little beside her charm. A hard line about her mouth--no, he admitted that it wasn’t hard--undeveloped perhaps. About Helen’s age--she looked it with a certain fairness--about thirty-one or two.

She met him with the same directness with which she had regarded him, giving him her hand with a charming smile which seemed to be deliberately purged of coquetry and not quite friendly, he felt, though that, he quickly told himself, must be the reflection of his own mood.

“And how do you find Helen?” he asked her.

“Very beautiful--very dangerous, as usual.”

“Helen is always dangerous. She uses her power without directing it.”

He had a sense of relief. That was what he had been feeling for. That was the trouble with Helen. But on that thought came quickly irritation at the personal comment, at the divination of the woman he disapproved of.

“It is sometimes a relief,” he said, “to find some woman who is not deliberately directing her powers.”

“You make my idea crystallize into an ugly thought, Mr. Flandon. It’s hardly fair.”

There she was, pulling him into heavy argument. He felt that he had been awkward and that it was entirely her fault. He took refuge in the commonplaces of gallantry.

“Ugly thoughts are impossible in some company. You’re quite mistaken in my meaning.”

She smiled, a half amused smile which did not so much reject his compliment as show him how impervious she was to such things. Deliberately she turned to Helen who had been enveloped by the ponderous conversation of the host. Mr. Brownley liked to talk to Helen and Helen was giving him that absorbed attention which she usually gave to any man. Gage and Margaret joined them, and as if she wondered at the brevity of their initial exchange, Helen gave them a swift glance.

“Well,” she said, “have the feminist and the anti-feminist found peace in each other?”

“She refuses to be complimented,” grinned Gage, rather sheepishly, immensely grateful to Helen for making a joke of that momentary antagonism.

“Have women given up their liking for compliments?” Mr. Brownley beamed upon them beneficently, quite conscious of his ability to remain gallant in his own drawing-room. “Not these women surely.”

Gage flushed a little. It was almost what he himself had said. It had been his tone.

“We have been given so much more than compliments, Mr. Brownley,” said Margaret Duffield, “that they seem a little tasteless after stronger food.”

“Not tasteless to most of us. Perhaps to a few, like Margaret. But most of us, men and women, will like them as long as we have that passion for appearing to ourselves as we would like to be and not as we are.”

Over recovered ease of manner, Gage smiled at Helen. She had taken that up neatly. She had penetration, not a doubt of it. Why did she try then to subordinate herself to these other women, people like this Duffield girl, these arrogant spinsters? He greeted his hostess, who came from the library, where a group of people were already settled about the card tables.

“Will you make a fourth with the Stantons and Emily Haight, please, Gage? You like a good game and Emily can furnish it.”

Mrs. Brownley was a tall, elaborately marcelled woman of about fifty. Handsome, people said, as they do say it of a woman who commands their eyes even when the sex attraction has gone. She had the ease of a woman whose social position is of long standing, the graciousness of one who has nothing to gain and the slight aggressiveness of one who has much to bestow. Gage liked her. He remembered distinctly the time of her reign as one of the “younger matrons”--he had been a boy home from college when, at thirty-five, Mrs. Brownley, successfully the mother of two children, was dominating the gayety of the city’s social life. Just as now--her hair gray and marcelled, and her dancing vivacity cleverly changed into an eagerness of interest in “welfare work” or “civic activity”--she released energies more in keeping with her age.

“I’ll go anywhere you want me to,” he said, “I’ll play checkers or casino. I’ll do anything--except talk to feminist females.”

“Well, Emily’s surely no feminist--go along then--”