"Would you like anything?" Peter Blakeney asked of his partner while he
steered her clear of the crowded dancing floor.
"I am rather thirsty," Rosemary replied, "but I could not stand that
awful supper upstairs."
"Well, look here," he urged, "you slip into one of the empty boxes and
I'll forage for you."
They found a box on the upper tier, the occupants of which had probably
gone off to supper. Rosemary sat down and pulled the curtain forward;
thus ensconced in a cosy corner of the box she drew a contented little
sigh, glad to be in the dark and alone. Peter went to forage and she
remained quite still, gazing--unseeing--on the moving crowd below. She
was hot and felt rather breathless, her chestnut hair, below the velvet
cap, clung against her forehead, and tiny beads of moisture appeared
round the wings of her delicately modelled nose. The last dance had been
intoxicating. Peter was a perfect dancer. Rosemary sighed again quite
involuntarily: it was a little sigh of regret for those golden minutes
that had gone by all too rapidly. Jasper, she reflected, would never
make a dancer, but he would make a kind, considerate, always thoughtful
husband. The kindest husband any woman could wish for.
Her eyes now sought the dancing floor more insistently. She had just
become aware of Jasper's tall figure moving aimlessly amidst the crowd.
Dear, kind Jasper! He was looking for her, of course. Always when she
was not near him he was looking for her, if not physically and actually,
then with his thoughts, trying to find her, to understand her, to guess
at an unspoken wish.
"Dear, kind Jasper," Rosemary sighed and closed her eyes, in order to
shut out that sudden glimpse she had just had of Jasper's anxious gaze
scanning the crowd--in search of her. She pulled the curtain an inch or
two further forward, pushed back her chair deeper into the shadow.
Peter returned, carrying a bottle of champagne and a tumbler.
"Will this do?" he asked, and busied himself with the cork.
"Delicious," she replied, "but what about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes; you have brought only one glass."
"The only one I could get. There's a regular fight up there for
crockery."
She laughed. "It must be horrible up there," she exclaimed.
"Dante's _Inferno_," he assented laconically.
He filled the glass till the froth bubbled over and gave it to her to
drink, which she did with delight.
"Lovely," she exclaimed.
He watched her as she screwed up her eyes and those tantalising little
lines appeared at the sides of her nose.
"I hear you did splendidly at Lord's this afternoon, Peter," she said.
"There's a wonderful article about you in the _Evening Post._"
Then she held the glass out to be refilled. "Your turn next," she said.
"Won't you have some more?"
"Not just now, thank you."
He put the bottle down on the floor, then put out his hand to take the
glass from her. As he did so his fingers closed over hers. She tried to
withdraw her hand, and in the brief struggle the glass fell between
them, and was smashed to smithereens.
"Our one and only glass," Rosemary exclaimed. "Please, Peter," she went
on with a nervous little laugh, "will you release my hand?"
"No," he replied, and increased the pressure on her struggling fingers.
"I have often been allowed to hold your hand before. Why not now?"
She shrugged her shoulders and ceased to struggle.
"Am I never to be allowed to hold your hand again?" he insisted.
But her head now was turned away; she was apparently deeply interested
in the crowd below.
"Oh, Peter," she exclaimed lightly, "do look at Mrs. Opert in that
girlish 1840 costume. Did you ever see anything more ludicrous? Do look
at her huge feet in those wee sandals. There's Jimmy Ransome talking to
her now----"
Again she tried to withdraw her hand and still he held her fast. She
turned to him with a frown.
"Peter," she said, "if you are going to be foolish, I'll go."
"What do you call being foolish?" he retorted. "Holding your hand? I
held you in my arms just now while we danced."
"I call it being foolish, Peter," she retorted coolly. "Would you rather
I called it disloyal?"
"You are too clever to do that, Rosemary," he rejoined, "disloyalty
being so essentially a feminine attribute."
"Peter!"
"Oh, I know! I know!" he went on, quite slowly, and then suddenly
released her hand. "Presently you will be Jasper's wife, the wife of my
best friend. And if I happen to hold your hand just one instant longer
than convention permits I shall be called disloyal, a cad--any ugly word
that takes your fancy for the moment. So I must become less than a
friend--less than a distant cousin--I must not hold your hand--the
others may--I may not. They may come near you, look into your eyes--see
you smile--my God! Rosemary, am I never to look into those glorious eyes
of yours again?"
For a moment it seemed as if she was going to give him a direct answer,
a soft flush rose to her cheeks, and there was a quick intake of her
breath as if words would tumble out that she was determined to suppress.
The struggle only lasted for a second. The next she had thrown bade her
head and burst into a peal of laughter.
"Why, Peter," she exclaimed, and turned great, serious eyes upon him, "I
never knew before that you read Browning."
Her laugh had half sobered him. But evidently he had not grasped her
meaning, for he frowned and murmured puzzled: "Browning?"
"Why, yes," she said gaily. "I forget exactly how it goes, but something
like this: 'I will hold your hand, just as long as all may. Or so very
little longer.'"
He made no sign that her flippancy had hurt him; he sat down beside her,
his hands clasped between his knees.
"Why should you hate me so, Rosemary?" he asked quietly.
"Hate you, my dear Peter?" she exclaimed. "Whatever put that quaint
notion into your head? The heat must have been too much for you this
afternoon. You never will wear a cap."
"I know that I am beneath contempt, of course," he insisted, "but when
one despises a poor creature like me, it seems wanton cruelty just to
kick it."
"I did not mean to hurt you, Peter," Rosemary rejoined more gently, "but
when you are trying to talk nonsense, I must in self-defence bring you
back to sanity."
"Nonsense? Would to God I could talk nonsense, act nonsense, live
nonsense. Would to God my poor brain did refuse to take in the fact that
you have promised to become Jasper's wife, and that I, like a fool, have
lost you for ever."
"Lost me, Peter?" she retorted, with just the faintest tremor of
bitterness in her voice. "I don't think you ever sought me very
seriously, did you?"
"I have loved you, Rosemary," Peter Blakeney said very slowly and very
deliberately, "from the first moment I set eyes on you."
Then, as the girl shrugged her shoulders with an obvious attempt at
indifference, he said more insistently: "You knew it, Rosemary."
"I know that you often said so, Peter," she replied coldly.
"You knew it that night on the river when you lay in my arms just like a
lovely pixie, with your haunting eyes closed and your lips pressed to
mine. You knew it then, Rosemary," he insisted.
But now she would no longer trust herself to speak. She had drawn
herself further back within the shadows. All that Peter could see of her
was the exquisite oval of her face like a cameo carved against the dark,
indefinite background. Her eyes he could not see, for they were veiled
by the delicate, blue-veined lids, but he had a glimpse of her breast
like mother-of-pearl, and of her small hand clinging tightly to the
protecting curtain. The rest of her, swathed in the rich folds of her
brocaded gown, was merged in the shadows, her auburn hair hidden by the
velvet cap. Just by looking at her face, and on that clinging hand, he
knew that everything within her was urging her to flee, was warning her
not to listen, not to allow her memory to recall that wonderful night in
June, on the river, when the honey-coloured moon threw shafts of silver
light on the tall grasses bending to the breeze, and a nightingale in
the big walnut tree sang a lullaby to its mate. Intuitively he knew that
she wished to flee, but that a certain something held her back, forced
her to listen--a certain something that was a spell, an enchantment, or
just the arms of her sister-pixies that clung around her and would not
let her go.
"Don't let us talk about the past, Peter," she murmured at last
involuntarily, with a pathetic note of appeal in her voice.
"I mean to talk about it, Rosemary," he retorted quietly, "just this
once more. After that I will fall out of your life. You can cast me out
and I will become one of the crowd. I won't even take your hand, I will
try not to see you, not even in my dreams. Though every inflection of
your voice makes my bones ache with longing, I shall try not to listen.
Just now I held you while we danced; you never once looked at me, but I
held you closer than any man ever held woman before. I held you with my
soul and heart and body--just now and for the last time. And though you
never looked at me once, Rosemary, you allowed me to hold you as I
did--not your body only, but your soul--and whilst we danced and your
sweet breath fanned my cheek you belonged to me as completely as you did
that night on the river, even though you have pledged your word to
Jasper. Though why you did that," he added, with a quaint change of
mood, "God alone knows."
"Jasper wants me," she murmured. "He loves me. He sets me above his
ambition----"
Peter Blakeney gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.
"Dear old Jasper," he said, "even he would laugh to hear you say that.
Ambition! There's no room for ambition in the scheme of Jasper's life.
How can a man be ambitious when all the beneficent genii of this world
presided at his birth, and showered gifts into his lap. It is we, poor
devils, who have ambitions--and see them unfulfilled."
"Ambitions which you set above your love, above everything," Rosemary
broke in, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. "You talk of
love, Peter," she went on with sudden vehemence, while the sharp words
came tumbling out at last as if from the depths of her overburdened
heart. "What do you know of love? You are quite right, I did lay in your
arms that night, loving you with my whole being, my soul seeking yours
and finding it in that unforgettable kiss. My God! How I could have
loved you, Peter! But you? What were your thoughts of me the next day,
and the next day after that, whilst I waited in suspense which turned to
torture for a word from you that would recall that hour? What were your
thoughts? Where were you? I was waiting for you at the Lascelles as you
had promised you would come over from Oxford the very next day. You did
not come--not for days--weeks----"
"Rosemary!"
"Not for days--weeks----" she insisted, "and I waited for a sign--a
letter----"
"Rosemary, at the time you understood!"
"I only understood," she retorted with cold irony, "that you blamed
yourself for having engaged my young affections--that you had your way
to make in the world before you could think of asking a girl to share
your poverty--and so on--and so on--every time we met--and in every
letter you wrote--whilst I----
"Whilst you did not understand, Peter," she went on more calmly. "Whilst
you spoke of the future, of winning fame and fortune----"
"For you, Rosemary!" he cried involuntarily, and buried his head in his
hands. "I was only thinking of you----"
"You were not thinking of me, Peter, or you would have known that there
was no poverty or toil I would not gladly have shared with the man I
loved."
"Yes, poverty--toil--on an equal footing, Rosemary; but you were rich,
famous: already you had the world at your feet----"
"And you did not care for me enough, Peter," she said with a note of
fatality in her voice, "to accept wealth, comfort, help in your career
from me----"
"Peter Blakeney the cricketer," he declaimed with biting sarcasm; "don't
you know, he is the husband of Rosemary Fowkes now. What a glorious
career for a man, eh, to be the husband of a world-famous wife?"
"It would only have been for a time," she protested.
"A time during which youth would have flown away on the wings of life,
taking with it honour, manhood, dignity----"
"And love?"
"Perhaps."
There was silence between them after that. The last word had been
spoken, the immutable word of Fate. Peter still sat with his head buried
in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees--a hunched-up figure
weighed down by the heavy hand of an inexorable past.
Rosemary looked down at the bent head, and there, in the shadow where no
one could see save the immortal recorder of sorrows and of tears, a look
of great tenderness and of pity crept into her haunting eyes. It was
only for a moment. With a great effort of will she shook herself free
from the spell that for a while had held possession of her soul. With a
deliberate gesture she drew back the curtain, so that her face and
figure became all at once flooded with light, she looked down upon the
kaleidoscopic picture below: the dusky orchestra had once more begun to
belch forth hideous sounds, and hellish screams; the puppets on the
dancing floor began one by one to resume their gyrations. Several among
the crowd, looking up, saw and recognised Rosemary: she smiled and
nodded to them, waved her fan in recognition. She was Rosemary Fowkes
once more, the most talked-of woman in England, the fiancée of Jasper
Tarkington, queen of her set, admired, adulated, the comet of the past
two seasons.
"There's that tiresome George Orange," she said in her coldest, most
matter-of-fact tone. "He is making desperate and ludicrous signs. I
strongly suspect him of making straight for this box. Shall we try and
give him the slip?"
Her quiet voice seemed to act like an anodyne on Peter's jangled nerves.
He straightened out his tall figure, quietly pulled the chairs away, to
enable her to pass. She, too, rose and prepared to go. It seemed
difficult not to say another word, or to look him once more straight in
the eyes; and yet to speak words now, after what had just passed between
them, seemed more difficult than anything. His hand was on the door
handle. The other side of the door people were moving up and down,
talking and laughing. Another second or two and she would pass out of
his sight--pass out of his life more effectually even than she had done
when she gave her word to Jasper Tarkington. Another second. But just
then she raised her eyes, and they met his.
"Rosemary!" he said.
She shook her head and smiled gently, ironically perhaps, indulgently
also as on a rebuked child.
"I had better go now, Peter," she said quietly. "I feel sure George
Orange is on his way to drag me to his wife's box."
Just for another second he did not move.
"It is no use, Rosemary," he said, and in his turn smiled as on
something very dear, very precious, wholly unattainable. "It is no use,
my dear."
"What is no use, Peter?" she murmured.
"Thinking that all is over."
"In six months' time, if I am alive," she rejoined coolly, "I shall be
Jasper Tarkington's wife."
"I know it, dear. Jasper is my friend, and I would not harbour one
disloyal thought against him. But you being the wife of an enemy or of
my best friend is beside the point. I cannot shut you out of my life,
strive how I may. Never. While I am as I am, and you the exquisite
creature you are, so long as we are both alive, you will remain a part
of my life. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you, whenever I hear the sound
of your voice, my soul will thrill and long for you. Not with one
thought will I be disloyal to Jasper, for in my life you will be as an
exquisite spirit, an ideal, greater or less than woman. Just you. If you
are happy I shall know it. If you grieve, Heaven help the man or woman
who caused your tears. I have been a fool; yet I regret nothing. Sorrow
at your hands is sweeter than any happiness on earth."
It was quite dark where they stood side by side in this moment of
supreme farewell. Each felt the inevitableness of it all--the
fatality. Pride on either side had built a barrier between them: honour
and loyalty would consolidate it in the future. Too late! Everything
was too late!
Peter bent his knee to the ground and slowly raised the hem of her gown
to his lips. But Rosemary did not move: for that one instant her limbs
had become marble, and in her soul she prayed that her heart, too, might
turn to stone.
Then Peter rose and opened the door, and she passed out into the world
again.