Daphne was happy in her new life of freedom at Old Hall House, though
it was less than it had promised to be when seen from a school-room
window. Its worst failure was her father's postponement for a whole
year of their residence in Paris, and a lingering doubt lest the day
of packing and travelling never arrived. Another was her periods of
dulness. Nobody ever seemed to come to Old Hall House; her father
kept himself shut up in his study; and Owen for nine months of the
year was at school. There were mornings and afternoons when she
wandered about the passages and looked aimlessly out of windows, or
strolled in the garden humming the fragmentary tunes of the lonely.
But she determined to believe in its delights; and indeed much of it
was glorious. It was glorious to shut the door of the great playroom
and loll in the tattered chair and read just what she wanted to. Her
first plan of reading had been much more ambitious: she was going to
work through all her father's critical books, and at the end of each
volume study every masterpiece he had mentioned within its covers.
But she could not do this. Nothing that required effort could she
study for more than half an hour. She boggled at these Sir Thomas
Brownes and Donnes and Emersons and Carlyles, many of whose sentences
had to be enunciated twice or even three times before one glimpsed a
meaning. And poetry wearied her as quickly, though every now and
then a perfect phrase or a line of tragic emotion gave her a spasm of
delight. But her love of these moments was not strong enough to
overcome her indolence; and she decided that she would profit most by
reading only those things that came easy to her--fiction, and the
lighter essayists, such as Lamb and Stevenson, and the jollier parts
of Shakespeare. With her reading of these people surged higher and
higher the longing to do as they had done, and the confidence that
she could do it. Sometimes she put books aside, and got her ink and
paper with a view to starting; but nothing at present would come: the
swelling _something_ in her stayed in its darkness and refused to
filter through a pen. So she resolved--as she preferred to resolve,
for the deep chair was cosy, and reading was so much easier than
creation--that she must go on stocking her mind.
"Besides, I must have experiences, of which at present I have nil."
And then she would look out of her window over the road that ran
southward to the downs and the sea, and northward to the cities, and
wonder what her experiences would be and where they lay.
Now she discovered the hollowness of Miss Carrell. Full of the
excitement of her reading, she would want to pour it all out to her
frequent companion, but quickly found that Miss Carrell was unable to
understand, and consequently uninterested. She shammed an interest,
certainly, but it was at first patronising, and always astonishingly
uninformed. Daphne gradually arrived at the difficult conclusion
that she knew more and understood better than her former governess.
Miss Carrell, in fact, was far from contented. Her gradual
supplanting by Daphne was painfully proved by the invitations that at
last began to arrive from neighbouring society. There had been none
of these before Daphne appeared, Mr. Bruno having the reputation of a
recluse. But now a few fluttered in like stray birds, and generally
they were for "Mr. Tenter Bruno and Miss Bruno." Seldom Miss
Carrell. She was not sure that with all her scheming she had not
ruined herself. Here was she, thirty, and only a waning manageress
in a country house. She had reached her highest point, five years
ago, when she had sent Daphne to school, and entered upon her reign.
At her age, this had been distinctly good. But now----? There was
little chance of marrying, with so few people coming to Old Hall
House. And yet nowhere else could she get so well paid a post. She
was caught in a prison she had built for herself.
Hazily Daphne saw all of this; but she was too happy to desire the
entrance of anything unpleasant, so strove to be affable and even
humble with the apprehensive Miss Carrell.
Too good to be yet believed--Daphne had the regular loan of a saddle
horse, a tall chestnut of sixteen hands. On frosty afternoons, just
before sunset, or summer evenings before the dinner hour, she would
ride it on Ditchling Common--_astride_. The whole neighbourhood, she
suspected, was impressed, and talked about "new women." She pictured
herself as she appeared to them: her hair still down her back and
tied by a black bow; her costume consisting of riding breeches,
overhung by a divided skirt; her seat good but not yet perfect. She
would trot through the "toll-gate" on to Ditchling Common, still with
the childish make-believe that she was a highwayman. When off the
hard road and on the grass of the common, she would set the horse
cantering; and, being a spirited creature, it would soon break into a
stretch gallop. As a dance can be the rhythmic medium of urgent
emotion, so this straight-flying, body-poising, breath-speeding
gallop was the most satisfying art-form for her present feelings; it
was the expression of her glorying in freedom and adulthood. The
wind rushed through her hair, and the blood tingled in her veins.
Her face heated and cooled in the air. She could have shouted. Had
she not everything she wished for? Where had Time swept that
schoolgirl of a few months back, who was punished in bedrooms? She
checked the horse and reined him in, bumping slightly as he slowed
down. Now he was walking, and she hollowed her back for relief; and,
slackening the bridle, replaced a disordered hair.
Of her few friends Mrs. Montague Jevons, of Wildean Manor, was the
best. Mrs. Montague Jevons was a large-boned, vivacious lady, who,
as an intelligent admirer of the Tenter Bruno books, had shown a
great interest in their author's daughter. A short acquaintance with
Daphne had developed this interest into something like a sane
favouritism. She called Daphne "her little friend" and treated her
mind, not as a child's, but as the equal of her own. She would
invite her to tea and a discussion on books, and would declare with
sincerity that the daughter would one day be as famous as the father.
It was she who daily sent the chestnut horse alongside of a groom.
In January of the second year, when Mr. Bruno really was making a
move about the _pied-à-terre_ in Paris, Mrs. Montague Jevons gave a
ball at Wildean Manor. It would be the biggest that Daphne had gone
to. She was excited. And since Mrs. Montague Jevons had been
careful to invite Miss Carrell, she could discuss to her heart's
content the ball, her dress and the tiring of her hair. Many
experiments she tried with her hair, till she decided to keep it
exactly the same as it was every day, only tidier. Any trace of
effort was a flaw--as one learnt in literary criticism. It wasn't
Greek. And her frock was Greek enough in its simplicity--an
unornamented thing in a silk of that shining green that suited so
well her brown hair and her colouring. As she turned before her
cheval glass, to appraise her completed toilet, something childish
and (as it were) breakable in the figure she saw there seemed to make
foolish the dream of powerful books and world-wide fame. She
provided sentences for the reporters who should one day interview
her: "No one who has read the works of Miss Daphne Bruno, so
masculine in their character, would conceive of her as a shy, slim,
and exceedingly feminine girl. But there it is! Genius alights
where it will. Miss Bruno clothes in all the grace and charm of her
sex her exceptionally virile intellect."
Soon the carriage was at the door, and apprehensively Miss Carrell
and she insinuated themselves under its roof, and were conveyed along
the dark, country roads. Wildean Manor was a big, square, stone
house to the east of Ditchling, and it was some time before their
carriage wheels crunched its half-mile of drive. When the house,
brilliantly alight, came into view, both Daphne and Miss Carrell were
disturbed by the certainty that they were too early. Miss Carrell,
Daphne could see, was pretending to be very much in her element, if
only because she was feeling completely out of it; exactly as Daphne
herself was trying to appear old and self-possessed, if only because
she was feeling very young and ill at ease.
The sight of other guests in the Ladies' Room, and the glimpse as
they stood in the big entrance hall of quite a few people in the
drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Montague Jevons were receiving the
guests, reassured them.
Daphne pushed Miss Carrell in front of her towards the loud-voiced
gentleman in evening dress who was presenting the guests.
"Miss Carrell and Miss Tenter Bruno."
There was a flattering rustle and a silence as the famous name was
bellowed out, and she longed for the day when the name of Miss Daphne
Bruno could produce a silence and turn all heads. With her
companion, after a few exchanges with the host and hostess, which
included a whisper from Mrs. Montague Jevons, "My dear, you're
looking beautiful," she walked across the floor to some chairs
against the farther wall. Here they sat down, and, since they saw no
one whom they knew, passed the time in watching the people as they
were announced. The lofty rectangular drawing-room in which they
were seated opened into a library of exactly the same dimensions, and
as both rooms were to be used for dancing, the band had been placed
on a platform in the farthest corner of the library. From Daphne's
chair she could see both the band in the library and the people
forming in the hall.
Among these a group of three suddenly made her crane her neck. A
blush began to warm her cheeks, and it spread over her face as the
group came through the doors into the drawing-room. The father was a
short, big-hewn man of sixty and more, whose grim mouth was apiece
with the thick chest and the heavy, competent hands; the mother was a
slim, tired woman whose timidity might have been explained by her
husband's mouth; and the third was a tall, dark youth who, if his
features were not perfect (though indeed they were quite good), had
surely a figure of unsurpassable beauty. It was the very measure of
manhood: height, width, symmetry and grace. Daphne looked down,
hoping she would not be recognised behind all these people. Fancy!
Was that what he had grown into?
"Sir Roger and Lady Muirhead, and Mr. Roger Muirhead."
No resuscitation of an old love troubled Daphne; only rose the
eagerness, since a recognition sooner or later was inevitable, to
impress him as the possessor of unlimited friends and one of the most
sought-after belles of the ball. Her programme must quickly be
filled. She stared at the profiles and the occiputs of people she
knew to induce them to turn round and perceive her. Gradually they
did so, and brought their men up and introduced them. The names
dropped into one place after another on her dance card: waltzes,
lancers, polkas, barn-dances. It was like a game when one sought to
fill vacant places against the clock. She must have a "House Full"
before Roger recognised her and begged a place. But there were still
some vacant numbers when the band struck up the first waltz. It
seemed certain that he must see her as she danced among the other
couples. But he did not; as she swung round, talking idly to her
partner, she saw him dancing with a feathery girl and conceding to
her chatter the familiar twinkle with its incomplete, tolerant smile.
It would not have been Roger, nor that youth of the supreme shape,
had any one in the room danced more gracefully than he.
After the first waltz, to her delight, more men were brought up and
introduced. There was now but one place on her card. That would
fill after the next dance--and then her single desire was to be
discovered by Roger. But the next dance showed her to him. She had
passed quite close and felt his quick, surprised look and
thenceforward his ever-returning glances. Not once did she look his
way, but talked with vivacity to her partner. Urged on by some of
the younger men, the band was prolonging the music, and soon she was
aware that Roger and his partner had sat down, Roger pretending to
keep up a conversation, but really watching Daphne. Once he seemed
to have mentioned her to the feathery girl.
"Would you like to sit down?" asked her partner.
"No, no," she smiled brightly. "Let's last out as long as any one
else. I'm loving it."
On they danced among the thinning couples, Daphne hoping that her
high colour would be attributed to the lengthened waltz. The few
times her eyes were in danger of meeting Roger's he avoided them. He
was evidently in doubt what to do. The band finished at last, and
Daphne was escorted to a chair by her partner, who was gossiping
gaily. She, too, made a pretence of gay talk, but was really keeping
a watch on Roger. And in a little while Roger made an excuse to his
feathery girl and came across the floor.
"Miss Bruno, isn't it?" he said with a smile.
At once Daphne suspected the course of action on which he had
decided: he was going to make no mention of his boyish dropping of
her, in the hope that she would have expected nothing else from a
little fool. _Her_ course had been planned for years past: a mixture
of friendliness and indifference suggesting that his lordly shake-off
had been a negligible incident, without power to hurt.
"Yes," said she. "I saw you before, and wondered if you would
recognise me. I should hardly have recognised you, only I heard your
name called out."
"Well, at any rate," said Roger, "you're going to dance with me."
The genial command was characteristic; Roger was priding himself on
his imperiousness.
"I don't think I can. There's only one I've got free...."
"Well, let's see."
He compared his card with hers.
"Yes, I'm dancing with some wretched girl on your only vacant date."
"Oh, what a pity." She took back the card.
"Well, there'll have to be an extra extra, that's all. If there's an
extra extra may I have the privilege----" He bowed.
"Oh, but there won't be one. There are three already."
"Oh, but there will be one. I shall see to it."
"All right, then.... Yes, thank you very much."
"Splendid. I'll go and tell the conductor fellow at once that
there's got to be one.... I say, wait a minute...."
Rather self-consciously he walked across the floor, and she watched
him speaking to the conductor, who smiled. Then he returned.
"That's settled all right.... Do you know what I said to the man?"
"No, how should I?"
"Well, perhaps you'd better not."
"All right."
"Perhaps I'll tell you what I said when we're dancing together."
"I don't particularly want to know."
"I didn't ask that. It may be good for you to know.... It's rather
taken my breath away seeing you here. I half fancied I saw you the
other day on horseback, riding a strapping chestnut. I only came
down here three days ago. But then, I suppose it couldn't be."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I can't picture you quite like that. How's your
young brother?"
"He's just gone back to school."
"Oh, yes. I'm afraid I didn't see much of him at Sillborough."
"You've left, I suppose."
It was meant to humiliate and didn't fail of its mark... "Left?
Glory, yes. I've been at Oxford a year."
"Of course. _I'd_ forgotten how old you were. Where was it you saw
me the other day? I didn't see you."
"Then it _was_ you. It must have been by the--just near the--no, I
forget where it was now."
"Probably on Ditchling Common."
"Yes, of course, that's where it was.... Well, I must be getting
back now."
The evening was old when he claimed her for his partner. An old
evening with a glittering record. It would have been an exaggeration
to say that she was the belle of the ball, but none had been more
remarked, none more sought after, none more waited on, none more
excited and vivacious than she. And all the while she had been
conscious of his staring at her--staring in rather a dazed way. That
was good. Good if he fell rapturously in love with her again, while
she felt no stirring of love for him. When he besought her hand, she
would reply: "It's no good, Roger. I can't help it, but I feel no
love for you at all." She could wish that she were already engaged
to some one that she might mention it carelessly to him.
"Now, Miss Bruno," said he, as he claimed her.
The band had begun. They were playing a little languishing waltz
rather slowly. Both felt the wistfulness of the air and for a long
time said nothing. Daphne had a sense of having lost several inches
of her height and some years of her age now that she was in Roger's
arm. He was the first to emerge from the abstraction into which the
tune had sunk them.
"Ye gods, what a tune!"
"Yes, isn't it divine? Do you know what it is? I do."
"Why"--he smiled his patronising smile--"are you a great musician
these days?"
"No; but I learnt the 'cello at school, and one of the girls used to
play this on her violin. But I didn't know then it could be so--so
troubling as this."
"Troubling--that's the very word. What is it?"
She told him its name, but he didn't acknowledge the information, and
when she looked up at him she saw that his eyes had been waiting to
twinkle into hers.
"From henceforth I shall always call it the Daphne Bruno waltz."
"Don't be silly."
"Don't be rude, Miss Bruno."
"Do you know, I've just been thinking I've never been properly
introduced to you."
"On the contrary, madam, you introduced yourself to me with something
approaching boldness from behind a blackberry bush on the King's
highway."
"What silly kids we were!"
"I wasn't so silly as I thought----" The unfortunate sentence broke
abruptly.
They danced through the door of the drawing-room into the library,
and the sight of the conductor suffering (as Roger said) all the
pains of the artistic temperament prompted him to ask:
"Shall I tell you what I said to yon fiddler?"
"If it's interesting."
Excitement and supper had heightened his natural temerity.
"I said, 'Look here, Sousa, unless you put on an extra extra, I
shan't be able to dance with the only girl worth calling a girl in
the room.' And he said--he seems a humorous fellow--he said, 'Well,
sir, in that case there'll have to be an extra extra for an extra
extra young lady.' And, of course, he got impertinent and said, 'May
I ask which one she is?' I said, 'No, certainly not. Besides, it's
perfectly obvious to any one with any eyes.'"
Daphne looked towards the conductor, and saw that over his violin he
was watching Roger and her. She could not feel displeased with the
man, since he had been told that she was the only girl in the room.
But she chose to turn colder with Roger, and did not speak till he
asked:
"What sort of life are you living now?"
She gave him an attenuated answer and deliberately refrained from
asking him anything about himself. He was obliged to proffer the
story unsought. As soon as he had finished with Oxford he was to
travel, and then go in for politics. Possibly he would stand for
their Cornish constituency.
"Cornish?" queried Daphne.
"Yes. Didn't you know? That holiday we went to Cornwall"--he
blushed as he recalled which holiday it was--"father fell in love
with a little smuggler's cove, and swore he'd buy it up and build a
house there right on the rocks. And on his principle of 'What I've
once determined on, that I do,' he went and did it. I wish you could
see the place. It's rather exciting. And what are you going to do
in the future?"
"Stay with father, I suppose."
The whimsical sparkle had come again into his eyes, she saw, as she
looked up for an explanation of his silence; and the trembling,
incomplete smile was at his lips.
"Not for long," said he. "You'll marry."
"No, I shan't."
"Of course you'll marry."
"And why 'of course'?"
"Because--because you're the sort."
"I've just told you I'm not."
"You've just told me you don't want to be the sort, but you'd no say
in the matter."
"I wish you'd explain."
He hummed the waltz to the accompaniment of the band. Then in a
muted way he whistled it.
"I can't very well. But it's a theory of mine that you can always
tell the girls who will marry--bar tragedies. I don't know what it
is about them. It's not beauty."
"Thank you very much."
"Don't mention it. I'm speaking generally. It's some other
quality--a sort of sensuous attraction"--he stuttered, probably not
clear as to the meaning of sensuous--"though the quality is rarely
absent from beauty."
"I don't know what you are talking about."
"Well, I suppose you can't understand.... If your looking-glass
doesn't tell you, it's quite impossible for a man to."
They danced on, and she noticed that once or twice his lips moved as
though he were trying to force words through the inhibitions of
pride. And at a moment when the band was likely to dwindle to a
finale, he jerked out:
"Miss Bruno, I'd like to see you sometimes. Now that the Downway
House is vacant, we're----"
She had been waiting for this advance, and quickly replied:
"It's no good. I'm going abroad, and----"
His look drove the rest from her head. His mouth had set like his
father's, and she guessed that he was enjoying the strong man's huff.
She decided to hurt him further.
"What a long time the band's playing for."
"Is it?"
"Well, isn't it?"
"Why?" he muttered. "Do you want to stop?"
"Yes, I do. I'm tired. I've been dancing all the evening."
"All right."
He guided her quickly towards the chairs, and released her. It was
done with the courtesy that never failed him and yet with suddenness,
that she might feel he was not used to being snubbed. His features
had tightened--"gone tight"--she invented the phrase that moment to
express what Roger looked like when thwarted or misunderstood.
Triumph trembled through her. The conductor, seeing that the two for
whom he had played the waltz had deserted, brought it to an end.
"Well, good-bye, Miss Bruno. It's been quite nice to see you again
and dance once with you."
"Good-bye. There's Miss Carrell, I must run and speak to her."
She ran off, unconsciously humming the waltz; and Roger strode as
best he could towards his people.