The ball was at its height. Even the coldest and most _blasé_ of the
guests had warmed up and caught fire at the blaze of excitement and
enjoyment. The ball-room was dazzling in the beauty of its decorations
and the soft effulgence of the shaded electric light, in which the
magnificent jewels of the titled and wealthy women seemed to glow with
a subdued and chastened fire. A dance was in progress, and Stafford, as
he stood by the doorway and looked mechanically and dully at the
whirling crowd, the kaleidoscope of colour formed by the rich dresses,
the fluttering fans, and the dashes of black represented by the men's
clothes, thought vaguely that he had never seen anything more
magnificent, more elegant of wealth and success. But through it all,
weird and ghost-like shone Ida's girlish face, with its love-lit eyes
and sweetly curving lips.
He looked round, and presently he saw Maude Falconer in her strange and
striking dress. She was dancing with Lord Fitzharford. There was not a
touch of colour in her face, her lips were pensive, her lids lowered;
she looked like an exquisite statue, exquisitely clothed, moving with
the exquisite poetry of motion, but quite devoid of feeling. Suddenly,
as if she felt his presence, she raised her eyes and looked at him. A
light shot into them, glowed for a moment, her lips curved with the
faintest of smiles, and a warm tint stole to her face.
It was an eloquent look, one that could not be mistaken by the least
vain of men, and it went straight through Stafford's heart; for it
forced him to realise that which he had not even yet quite
realised--that he had tacitly pledged himself to her. Under other
circumstances, the thought might have set his heart beating and sent
the blood coursing hotly through his veins; but with his heart aching
with love for Ida, and despair at the loss of her, Maude Falconer's
love-glance only chilled him and made him shudder with apprehension of
the future, with the thought of the cost of the sacrifice which he had
taken upon himself. The music sounded like a funeral march in his ears,
the glitter, the heat, the movement, seemed unendurable; and he
threaded his way round the room to an ante-room which had been fitted
up as a buffet.
"Give me some wine, please," he said to the butler, trying to speak in
his ordinary tone; but he knew that his voice was harsh and strained,
knew that the butler noticed it, though the well-trained servant did
not move an eyelid, but opened a bottle of champagne with solemn
alacrity and poured out a glass. Stafford signed to him to place the
bottle near and drank a couple of glasses.
It pulled him together a bit, and he was going back to the ball-room
when several men entered. They were Griffenberg, Baron Wirsch, the
Beltons and the other financiers; they were all talking together and
laughing, and their faces were flushed with triumph. Close behind them,
but grave and taciturn as usual, came Mr. Falconer.
At sight of Stafford, Mr. Griffenberg turned from the man to whom he
was talking and exclaimed, gleefully:
"Here is Mr. Orme! You have herd the good news, I suppose, Mr. Orme?
Splendid isn't it? Wonderful man, you father, truly wonderful! He can
give us all points, can't he, baron?" The baron nodded and smiled.
"Shir Stephen ish a goot man of pishness. You have a very glever fader,
Mr. Orme!" he said, emphatically.
Efford caught Stafford's arm as he was passing on with a mechanical
smile and an inclination of the head.
"We've come in for a drink, Orme," he said. "We're going to drink luck
to the biggest thing Sir Stephen has ever done; you'll join us? Oh,
come, we can't take a refusal! Dash it all! You're in the swim, Orme,
if you haven't taken any active part in it."
Stafford glanced at Mr. Falconer, and noticed a grim smile pass over
his face. If these exultant and flushed money-spinners only guessed how
active a part he had taken, how amazed they would be! A wave of
bitterness swept over him. At such a moment men, especially young men,
become reckless; the strain is too great, and they fly to the nearest
thing for relief.
He turned back to the buffet, and the butler and the couple of footmen
opened several bottles of champagne--none of the men knew or cared how
many; several others of the financial group joined the party; the wine
went round rapidly; they were all talking and laughing except Stafford,
who remained silent and grave and moody for some little time; then he
too began to talk and laugh with the others, and his face grew flushed
and his manner excited.
Falconer, who stood a little apart, apparently drinking with the
others, but really with care and moderation, watched him under
half-lowered lids; and presently he moved round to where Stafford leant
against the table with his champagne-glass in his hand, and touching
him on the arm, said:
"I hear them enquiring for you in the ball-room, Stafford."
It was the first time he had called Stafford by his Christian name, and
it struck home, as Falconer had intended it should. Stafford set his
glass down and looked round as a man does when the wine is creeping up
to his head, and he is startled by an unexpected voice.
"All right--thanks!" he said.
He made his way through the group, who were too engrossed and excited
to notice his desertion and went into the ball-room. As he did so, his
father entered by an opposite door, and seeing him, came round to him,
and taking Stafford's hand that hung at his side, pressed it
significantly.
"I have told them!" he said. "They are almost off their heads with
delight--you see, it's such a big thing, even for them, Staff! You have
saved us all, my boy; but it is only I and Falconer who know it, only I
who can show my gratitude!"
His voice was low and tremulous, his face flushed, like those of the
men whom Stafford had just left, and his dark eyes flashing and
restless.
"Where are they all?" he asked; and Stafford nodded over his shoulder
towards the buffet.
Sir Stephen looked round the room with a smile of triumph, and his
glance rested on Maude Falconer, standing by a marble column, her eyes
downcast, her fan moving to and fro in front of her white bosom.
"She is beautiful, Staff!" he whispered. "The loveliest woman in the
room! I am not surprised that you should have fallen in love with her."
Stafford laughed under his breath, a strangely wild and bitter laugh,
which Sir Stephen could not have failed to notice if the music had not
commenced a new waltz at that moment.
Stafford went straight across the room to Maude Falconer. She did not
raise her eyes at his approach, but the colour flickered in her cheeks.
"This is our dance, I think," he said.
She looked up with a little air of surprise, and consulted her
programme.
"No; I think this is mine, Miss Falconer," said the man at her side.
"No," she said, calmly; "the next is yours, Lord Bannerdale; this is
Mr. Orme's."
Though he knew she was wrong, of course Lord Bannerdale acquiesced with
a bow and a smile, and Stafford led Maude away.
Wine has a trick of getting into some men's feet and promptly giving
them away; but Stafford, though he was usually one of the most moderate
of men, could drink a fairly large quantity and remain as steady as a
rock. No one, watching him dance, would have known that he had drunk
far too many glasses of champagne and that his head was burning, his
heart thumping furiously; but though his step was as faultless as usual
and he steered her dexterously through this crowd. Maude knew by his
silence, by his flushed face and restless eyes, that something had
happened, and that he was under the influence of some deep emotion. He
was dancing quite perfectly, but mechanically, like a man in a dream,
and though he must have heard the music, he did not hear her when she
spoke to him, but looked straight before him as if he were entirely
absorbed in some thought.
When they came, in the course of the dance, to one of the doors, she
stopped suddenly.
"Do you mind? It is so hot," she murmured.
"N--o," he said, as if awaking suddenly. "Let us go outside."
He caught up a fur cloak that was lying on a bench, and disregarding
her laughing remonstrance that the thing did not belong to her, he put
it round her and led her on to the terrace. She looked up at him just
as they were passing out of the stream of light, saw how set and hard
his face was, how straight the lips and sombre the eyes, and her hand,
as it rested lightly on his arm, quivered like a leaf in autumn. When
they had got into the open air, he threw back his head and drew a long
breath.
"Yes; it was hot in there," he said.
They walked slowly up and down for a minute, passing and repassing
similar couples; then suddenly, as if the presence of others, the sound
of their voices and laughter, jarred upon him, Stafford said:
"Shall we go into the garden? It is quiet there--and I want to speak to
you."
"If you like," she said, in a low voice, which she tried to make as
languid as usual; but her heart began to beat fiercely and her lips
trembled, and he might have heard her breath coming quickly had he not
been absorbed in his own reflections.
They went down the steps and into the semi-darkness of the beautiful
garden. The silence was broken by the hum of the distant voices and the
splashing of a fountain which reflected the electric light as the spray
rose and fell with rhythmic regularity. Stafford stopped at this and
looked at the reflection of the stars in the shallow water. Something
in its simplicitude and the quiet, coming after the glitter and the
noise of the ball-room, called up the remembrance of Herondale, and the
quiet, love-laden hours he had spent there with Ida. The thought went
through him with a sharp pain, and he thrust it away from him as one
thrusts away a threatening weakness.
"What is it you wanted to say to me?" asked Maude, not coldly or
indifferently as she would have asked the question of another man, but
softly, dreamily.
He walked on with her a few paces, looking straight before him as if he
were trying to find words suitable for the answer; then he turned his
face to her and looked at her steadily, though his head was burning and
the plash of the fountain sounded like the roar of the sea in his ears.
"I wonder whether you could guess?" he said, as he thought of her
father's words, his assertion that Stafford was to be his son-in-law.
"I suppose you must."
Her gaze was as steady as his, but her lips quivered slightly.
"I would rather you should tell me than that I should I guess," she
said in a low voice. "I might be wrong."
He was not in a condition to notice the significance of her last words,
and he went on with a kind of desperation.
"I brought you here into the garden, Miss Falconer, to ask you if you'd
be my wife."
They had stopped just within the radius of an electric light, held
aloft by a grinning satyr, and Stafford saw her face grow paler and
paler in the seconds that followed the momentous question. He could see
her bosom heaving under the half-open fur cloak, felt her hand close
for an instant on his arm.
"Do you wish me to say 'Yes'?" she asked in a low voice.
The red flooded Stafford's face for a moment, and his eyes fell under
her fixed regard.
"What answer does one generally hope for when one puts such a
question?" he said, trying to smile. "I want you to be my wife, and I
hope, with all my heart, that you will say 'Yes.'"
"'With all your heart,'" she echoed, slowly, almost inaudibly. "'With
all your heart.' With all mine, I answer 'Yes.'"
As she murmured the words--and, like that of most cold women when they
are intensely moved, her voice could be exquisitely sweet with its
thrill of passion, all the sweeter for its rarity--she insensibly drew
nearer to him and her hand stole to his shoulder. Her eyes were lifted
to his, and they shone with the love that was coursing through her
veins, almost stopping the beating of her heart. Love radiated from her
as the light radiated from the lamp the mocking satyr held above them.
Stafford was at his best and worst, a man and not a block of stone and
wood, and touched, almost fired, by the passion so close to him, he put
his arm round her waist and bent his head until his lips nearly touched
hers.
Her eyes closed and she was surrendering herself to the kiss, when
suddenly she drew her head back, and, keeping him from her, looked up
at him. "Is it with all your heart?" she whispered. "You have never
spoken to me of--love before. Is it with all your heart?"
His brow contracted in a frown, he set his teeth hard. If he were to
lie, 'twere better that he lied thoroughly and well; better that his
sacrifice should be complete and effectual. Scarcely knowing what he
said, what he did, with the fumes of the champagne confusing his brain,
the misery of his lost love racking his heart, he said, hoarsely:
"I did not know--till to-night. You can trust me. I ask you to be my
wife--I will be true to you--it is with all my heart!"
If Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries, the angels must weep at such false
oaths as this. Even as he spoke the words, Stafford remembered the "I
love you?" he had cried to Ida as he knelt at her feet, and he
shuddered as Maude drew his head down and his lips met hers.
* * * * *
Half an hour later they went slowly up the steps again. Stafford's head
was still burning, he still felt confused, like a man moving in a
dream. Since he had kissed her he had said very little; and the
silences had been broken more often by Maude than by him. She had told
him in a low voice, tremulous with love, and hesitating now and again,
how she had fallen in love with him the day he had rowed her on the
lake; how she had struggled and striven against the feeling, and how it
had conquered her. How miserable she had been, though she had tried to
hide her misery, lest he should never come to care for her, and she
should have to suffer that most merciless of all miseries--unrequited
love. She seemed as if she scarcely wanted him to speak, as if she took
it for granted that he had spoken the truth, and that he loved her; and
as if it were a joy to her to bare her heart, that he might see how
devotedly it throbbed for him and for him alone. Every now and then
Stafford spoke a few words in response. He scarcely knew what he said,
he could not have told what they were ten minutes after they were said;
he sat with his arm round her like a man playing a part mechanically.
In the same condition he moved beside her now as arm and arm they
entered the house, he looking straight before him with a set face, a
forced smile, she with now raised, now drooping eyes glowing with
triumph, a flush on her usually pale face, her lips apart and
tremulous. The ball was breaking up, some of the women had already gone
to the drawing-room or their own apartments; a stream of men were
making their way to the billiard-room from which came the popping of
champagne-corks and the hissing of syphons.
As they entered the hall, Howard came lounging out, in his leisurely
way, from the drawing-room, and at sight of him Stafford seemed to
awake, to realise what he had done and how he stood. He looked from
Howard to Maude, then, he said:
"Howard, I want you to congratulate me. Miss Falconer--Maude--has
promised to be my wife."
Howard did not start, but he stared in silence for an instant, then his
eyelids flickered, and forcing the astonishment from his face, he took
Stafford's left hand and shook it, and bowed to Maude.
"I do congratulate you with all my heart, my dear Stafford, and I hope
you'll both be as happy as the happiest pair in a fairy story."
She drew her arm from Stafford's.
"I will go up now," she said. "Good-night!"
Stafford stood until she had got as far as the bend of the stairs; then
Howard, who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him. But as he
came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw
Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard,
almost stagger.
There are moments when the part of even one's best friend is silence,
blindness. Howard turned aside, and Stafford went on slowly, with a
kind of enforced steadiness, to the billiard-room. While Howard, with
dismay and apprehension, was looking after him, he heard "Mr. Howard!"
called softly, mockingly, from the stairs, and looking up, saw Maude
Falconer leaning over, with her arm extended, her hand open.
He understood in a moment, and, removing his ring as he ran up the
stairs, put it in the soft, pink palm. She gave a little triumphant,
mocking laugh, her hand closed over the ring, and then she glided away
from him.
The smoking-room was crowded as Stafford made his way in. Through the
clouds of smoke he saw his father standing at one end, surrounded by
the money-spinning crew, Falconer seated in a chair near him with a
black cigar between his lips. The group were laughing and talking
loudly, and all had glasses in their hands. Some of the younger men,
who had just come from the hall-room, were adding their laughter and
chatter to the noise. Dazed and confused, half mad with rage and
despair, with a sense that Fate was joining her mocking laughter with
that of the men round him. Stafford took a glass of wine from the
butler who advanced with it, and drinking it off, held it out to be
refilled. The man refilled it twice, and Stafford, his eyes aflame,
almost pushed his way through the various groups to where his father
stood.
"I have come for your congratulation, sir," he said, in a voice which,
though not loud, was so clear as to break through the row. "Miss
Falconer has promised to be my wife!"
A silence, so sudden as to be startling, fell upon the hot and crowded
room; then, as Sir Stephen grasped his son's hand, a din of voices
arose, an excited buzz of congratulations and good wishes. Stafford
faced them all, his face pale and set, his lips curved with a forced
smile, his eyes flashing, but lit with a sombre fire. There was a smile
on his lips, a false amiability in his eyes, but there was so much of
madness in his heart that he was afraid lest at any moment he should
dash the glass to the ground and break out into cursing.
An hour later he found himself in his room, and waving Measom away from
him, he went to the window and flung it wide open, and stood there with
his hands against his throbbing brow; and though no word came from his
parched lips, his heart cried:
"Ida! Ida!" with all the agony of despair.