"Alick, isn't that our young friend of the glen?"
"Bessie Collister? Where?"
"Down there, standing with the fair girl, just inside the door."
"Well, yes, upon my word, I think it is!"
"I've a great mind to go down to them. Let us go."
"No? Really? In a place like this?"
"Why not, man?"
"Well, if you don't mind, I don't."
A few minutes later, in an interval between the dances, Victor,
coming behind Bessie, touched her on the shoulder.
"How are those sweet-smelling heifers----still grazing on the
mountains?"
Bessie, who had watched the young men coming downstairs, and felt
them at her back, turned with a look of surprise, then laughed
merrily and introduced Susie. For a few nervous moments there were
the light nothings which at such times are the only wisdom. Then the
violins began to flourish for another dance, and the two couples
paired off--Victor with Bessie and Susie with Gell.
Victor took Bessie's hand with a certain delicacy to which she was
quite unaccustomed and which flattered her greatly. The dance was a
waltz, and she had never waltzed before, so they had to go carefully
at first, but when the dance was coming to an end she was swinging to
the rhythm of the orchestra as if she had waltzed a hundred times.
In the interval the two couples came together again, and there was
much general chatter and laughter. Gell joined freely in both, and
if at first he had had any backward thoughts of the promise he had
given to his father they were gone by this time.
Another dance began and without changing partners they set off
afresh, Stowell taking Bessie's hand with a firmer grasp and Bessie
holding to his shoulder with a stronger sense of possession. His
nerves were tingling. Turning round and round among women's smiling
faces, and with Bessie's smiling face by his side, he had the sense
of sweeping his partner along with an energy of physical power he had
never felt before.
When the orchestra stopped the second time and they went in search of
their companions, they discovered Susie on a seat, panting and
perspiring, and Gell fanning her with the brim of his straw hat.
Victor's excitement was becoming feverish. He wanted Bessie to
himself, and during the third dance he felt himself dragging her to
the opposite side of the hall. She knew what he was doing, and found
it enchanting to be carried off by sheer force.
When the dance came to an end Victor put Bessie's moist hand through
his arm and walked up and down with her. Her throat was throbbing
and her breast rising and falling under her low-cut blouse. They
spoke little, but sometimes he turned his head to look at her, and
then she turned her eyes to his. He thought her black eyes were
looking blacker than ever.
The evening was now at its zenith, and the orchestra was tuning up
for the "shadow-dance." The white lights on the walls went out, and
over the arc lamps in the glass roof a number of coloured disks were
passed, to throw shadows over the dancers, as of the sunrise, the
sunset, the moon and the night with its stars. The dance itself was
of a nondescript kind in which at intervals, the man, with a whoop,
lifted his partner off her feet and swung her round him in his
arms--a sort of symbol of marriage by capture.
When the shadow-dance ended there was much hand-clapping among the
dancers. It had to be repeated, this time with a more rapid movement
and to the accompaniment of a song, which, being sung by the men in
chorus, made the hall throb like the inside of a drum. Many of the
dancers fell out exhausted, but Victor and Bessie kept up to the last.
Then the big side doors were thrown open, and amid a babel of noise,
cries and laughter, nearly all the dancers trooped out of the hall
into the garden to cool. Victor gave his arm to Bessie and they went
out also.
Lights gleamed here and there in the darkness of the trees, throwing
shadows full of mystery and charm. After a while the orchestra
within was heard beginning again, and most of the dancers hastened
back to the hall, but Victor said,
"Let us stay out a little longer."
Bessie agreed and for some minutes more they wandered through the
garden, in and out of the electric light, with the low murmur of the
sea coming to them from the shore and the muffled music from the hall.
She was breathing deeply, and he was feeling a little dizzy. They
found themselves talking in whispers, both in the Anglo-Manx, and
then laughing nervously.
"Did you raelly, raelly see the young colts racing on the tops,
though?"
"'Deed no, not I, woman. But I belave in my heart I know who did."
"Who?"
"Why you!"
At that word, and the touch of his hand about her waist, she made a
nervous laugh, and turned to him, her eyes closed, her lips parted
and her white teeth showing, and they drew together in a long kiss.
At the next moment a clock struck coldly through the still air from
the tower of a neighboring church and Bessie broke away.
"Gracious me, that must be ten o'clock. I have to catch the ten
train home."
"You can't now. It's impossible," he said, and he tried to hold her.
"I must--I promised," she cried, and she bounded off. He called and
followed a few steps, but she was gone.
Feeling like a torn wound he returned to the dancing-hall. The scene
was the same as before but it seemed crude and tame and even dead to
him now. Where was Gell? He must have gone to see the fair girl off
by the ten train. He would come back presently.
Victor returned to the hotel. To compose his nerves while he waited
he called for another half bottle of wine, and drank it, iced. The
music was still murmuring in his ears. After a while it stopped;
there were a few bars of the National Anthem, and then the pattering
like rain of innumerable feet on the paved way from the dancing-hall
to the promenade. It was now a few minutes to eleven, and
remembering that that was the hour of the last train to the north he
walked up to the station.
A noisy throng was on the platform, chiefly young Manx farming people
of both sexes, returning to their homes in the country. The open
third-class carriages were full of them, all talking and laughing
together.
Victor walked down the line of the train and looked into each of the
dim-lit carriages for Bessie, thinking it impossible that she could
have caught the earlier one. Not finding her, he inquired if the ten
train had left promptly and was told it had been half-an-hour late.
She must have gone.
He got into an empty first-class compartment, folded his arms and
closed his eyes and the train started. While it ran into the dark
country the farming people, being unable to talk with comfort, sang.
Over the rolling of the wheels their singing came in a dull roar, and
when the train stopped at the wayside stations it went up in the
sudden silence in a wild discord of male and female voices.
Victor was beginning to feel cold. He put up the window. His brain
which had been blurred was becoming lucid. He recalled the scenes he
had taken part in and some of them seemed to him now to have been
crude and common and even a little vulgar. He thought of Bessie and
felt ashamed.
When the train drew up at the station for the glen he turned his face
from the direction of the mill, and to defeat a desire to look at it
he opened the window at the other side of the carriage and put out
his head.
The free air was refreshing to body and brain, but when his eyes had
become accustomed to the darkness he saw the broad belt of the trees
of Ballamoar. That brought a stabbing memory of Janet and the
promise he had given her, and then of the Deemster and his
conversation with the Governor.
He began to shiver, and to feel as if he were awakening from a fit of
moral intoxication. To-morrow he would go home, and since he could
not trust himself any longer, he would put himself out of the reach
of temptation by living at Ballamoar in future.
When the train drew up at Ramsey it was half-past twelve. As he
walked out of the quiet station into the echoing streets of the
sleeping town he was drawing a deep breath and saying to himself:
"Thank God!"
It was all over.