Lord Lathkill was already dancing with Mrs. Hale, skating delicately
along, with a certain smile of obstinacy, secrecy, and excitement
kindled on his face. Carlotta went up quietly to the Colonel, and put
her hand on his broad shoulder. He let himself be moved into the dance,
but he had no heart in it.
There came a heavy crash, out of the distance. The Colonel stopped as if
shot: in another moment he would go down on his knees. And his face was
terrible. It was obvious he really felt another presence, other than
ours, blotting us out. The room seemed dree and cold. It was heavy work,
bearing up.
The Colonel's lips were moving, but no sound came forth. Then,
absolutely oblivious of us, he went out of the room.
The Victrola had run down. Lord Lathkill went to wind it up again,
saying:
"I suppose mother knocked over a piece of furniture."
But we were all of us depressed, in abject depression.
"Isn't it awful!" Carlotta said to me, looking up beseechingly.
"Abominable!" said I.
"What do you think there is in it?"
"God knows. The only thing is to stop it, as one does hysteria. It's on
a par with hysteria."
"Quite," she said.
Lord Lathkill was dancing, and smiling very curiously down into his
partner's face. The Victrola was at its loudest.
Carlotta and I looked at one another, with hardly the heart to start
again. The house felt hollow and gruesome. One wanted to get out, to get
away from the cold, uncanny blight which filled the air.
"Oh, I say, keep the ball rolling," called Lord Lathkill.
"Come," I said to Carlotta.
Even then she hung back a little. If she had not suffered, and lost so
much, she would have gone upstairs at once to struggle in the silent
wrestling of wills with her mother-in-law. Even now, _that_ particular
fight drew her, almost the strongest. But I took her hand.
"Come," I said. "Let us dance it down. We'll roll the ball the opposite
way."
She danced with me, but she was absent, unwilling. The empty gloom of
the house, the sense of cold, and of deadening opposition, pressed us
down. I was looking back over my life, and thinking how the cold weight
of an unliving spirit was slowly crushing all warmth and vitality out of
everything. Even Carlotta herself had gone numb again, cold and
resistant even to me. The thing seemed to happen wholesale in her.
"One has to choose to live," I said, dancing on.
But I was powerless. With a woman, when her spirit goes inert in
opposition, a man can do nothing. I felt my life-flow sinking in my
body.
"This house is awfully depressing," I said to her, as we mechanically
danced. "Why don't you _do_ something? Why don't you get out of this
tangle? Why don't you break it?"
"How?" she said.