“AND THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET FOR THE VERY SHAME OF BLISS.”
People who were familiar with the Talbot Hotel, Lostwithiel, in its
everyday aspect would hardly have recognized the old-fashioned hostelry
to-night, under the transforming hand of the Hunt Club, with Lord
Lostwithiel and Vansittart Crowther on the committee. The entrance
hall, usually remarkable only for various cases of stuffed birds, and
a monster salmon--caught in the Lerrin river in some remote period of
history--was now a bower of crimson cloth and white azaleas. In the
ball-room and ante-room, tea-room and supper-room, were more flowers,
and more crimson cloth, while on every side brushes and vizards
against the crimson and white panelling testified to the occasion.
The dancing-room was very full when Mrs. Baynham’s party made their
entrance, the matron in her historical black velvet--which had formed
part of her trousseau thirteen years before, when she left the family
residence in the chief street of Truro, and all those privileges which
appertained to her as the only daughter of a provincial banker, to
grace Dr. Baynham’s lowlier dwelling. The black velvet gown had been
“let out” from time to time, as youth expanded into maturity: and there
had been a new bodice and a real Maltese lace flounce within the last
three years, which constituted a second incarnation; and Mrs. Baynham
walked into the Talbot ball-room with the serene demeanour that goes
with a contented mind. She was satisfied with herself, and she was
proud of her party, the two fresh, rosy-cheeked girls in sky-blue
tulle, Isola, looking like a Mary lily in her white satin raiment, and
the village surgeon, who always looked his best in his dress clothes,
newly-shaven, and, as it were, pulled together in honour of the
occasion.
The room was full, and very full; but Lostwithiel was not there. Isola
had an instinctive consciousness that he was missing in that brilliant
crowd. People came buzzing round her, and she was made room for upon a
raised bench opposite the gallery where a military band was playing a
polka in which the brasses predominated to an ear-splitting extent.
The Glenaveril party made their entrance ten minutes later. The
Crowther girls were not afraid of wanting partners. Most young men
are glad to dance with half a million of money. There is always an
off chance of a good thing, just as there is a chance of breaking
the bank at Monte Carlo. Belinda looked superb in a cloud of tulle,
like a goddess. Alicia looked too well on horseback to look well off.
Her spare straight figure and sharp elbows were not at their best in
evening dress. She wore black, and an infinity of bugles, and flashed
and glittered more than any one else in the room, though she wore never
a jewel.
“Worth, my dear,” said Mrs. Baynham to a blue niece, in a mysterious
whisper; “I know his style.”
There was a buzz of conversation on that raised divan where the
matrons were sitting with those newly arrived maidens who were like
ships waiting to slide out of their cradles and float away to sea.
Isola and the sky-blue nieces had not long to wait; especially
Isola. Men were entreating the stewards to introduce them to that
lovely fragile-looking creature in white satin--the best men in the
neighbourhood, or those wandering stars from distant counties, or the
London galaxy, “men with handles to their names,” as Mr. Baynham told
Mrs. Crowther, resplendent in salmon brocade, and Venetian point.
“My presentation gown,” she informed the doctor’s wife; “the Court
mantle is ruby velvet, lined with salmon satin. The weight of it
almost pulled me backwards when I curtsied to the royalties--such a
lot of them, and I’m afraid I curtsied rather too low to one of the
Princesses, for I caught her taking me off when she returned my curtsy.”
Isola danced through the lancers as one in a dream. When the heart of
a man is oppressed with care, “Ta-rarra, ta-rarra, ta-rà, ta-rà!” What
foolishness it all seemed. And her husband in Burmah, hemmed round by
murderous dacoits!
She went back to her seat among the matrons, after almost curtly
refusing either refreshment or a promenade through the rooms. Mrs.
Crowther was saying solemnly, “I do believe Lord Lostwithiel is not
coming after all, and yet he worked so hard on the committee, my
husband said, and took such pains about the flowers, and what not.”
The tall, slim figure cut its way through the crowd two or three
minutes later, and Lostwithiel was standing in front of Isola, and the
two matrons.
He wore a pink coat, as became a member of the Lostwithiel Hunt, and
the vivid colour accentuated the pallor of his long thin face. He
talked to all the ladies on the divan; to the sky-blue nieces even,
hoping that their cards were full.
“If not, I must bring you some men I know,” he said. “You mustn’t miss
a dance.”
They blushed and trembled with delight, never before having been thus
familiarly addressed by a peer of the realm. He asked Isola for her
programme, with well-simulated indifference, yet with that air of
profound respect with which he talked to all women.
“I hope you can spare me some waltzes,” he said.
“She is only just come,” said Mrs. Baynham.
“And yet her card is almost full. People have been very officious.
Here is a poor little waltz--number seven. May I have that, and number
eleven, and number----”
“Please don’t put down your name for anything later than number eleven.
I shall be gone long before those late dances.”
“Oh, surely, you don’t mean to desert us early. Remember this is the
one festive occasion of our lives as a sporting community. All our
other meetings are given up to carking care, financial difficulties,
and squabbling. I shall put down my name in these tempting blanks,
and if you disappoint me--well--it will only be like my previous
experiences as a fox-hunter.”
He gave her back her programme, with all the blanks filled in, and at
the bottom a word written, and triply underscored,
ἉΝΑΓΚΗ.
They had talked of Victor Hugo’s romantic story--that romance which
the great man so despised in after years that he was almost offended
if any one presumed to praise it in his hearing, although in the
half-century that has gone since Victor Hugo was a young man this story
of Notre Dame has been unsurpassed as an example of the romantic novel.
Lostwithiel had praised the book, and had talked of the monk Frollo,
and his fatal love--and that word Fatality, graven upon the wall of his
cell, and burnt into his soul.
Isola knew what those Greek letters meant. She dropped the little white
and gold programme as if it had been an adder. He went away to a duty
dance with a great lady of the district--a lady whose diamonds made a
light about her wherever she moved; and then he waltzed with Belinda
Crowther, to the admiration of the young lady’s mother, and of two or
three other matrons on the divan by the door. Were they not a splendid
couple, she so brilliantly fair, he dark and pale, bronzed slightly
with exposure to the sun in warmer climates than this--not positively
handsome, but with such an interesting countenance. So, and so, and so
prosed the matrons, until various middle-aged cavaliers came to invite
them to the tea-room, where there was the usual drawback in the shape
of a frightful draught from open windows, which the dancers, coming in
flushed and heated, voted delicious.
“This will be a good night’s work for me,” said Dr. Baynham,
cheerfully, although he considered it his duty to warn his patients of
their danger.
Conscience thus satisfied, he could look on complacently as they eat
ices, and selected cool corners of the refreshment-room to flirt in.
“Next to a juvenile party, I don’t know anything better--from a
professional point of view--than a public ball,” he said. “Your canvas
corridors, decorated with flowers and bunting, are a fortune to a
family practitioner.”
Isola danced every dance. She hardly knew who her partners were. She
had only a sense of floating in a vortex of light and colour, to some
swinging melody. Everything was dream-like--but not horrible, as in
her dream by the fireside at home. This was a happy dream, as of a
creature with wings, who knew not of care in the present or a soul to
be saved in the future. And then came her waltz with Lostwithiel, and
that strong arm was round her, bearing her up as a flower is borne upon
a rushing tide, so that she had no consciousness of movement on her own
part, only of floating, floating, floating, to that languid three-time
melody.
It was the last popular waltz they were playing--a waltz that had been
last summer’s delight in the arid gardens of South Kensington--“Il n’y
a que toi;” a waltz with a chorus which the band trolled out merrily,
at intervals, in the French of Stratford atte Bow.
“Il n’y a que toi,” whispered Lostwithiel, with his lips close to the
soft brown hair above the white forehead. “Not a bad name for a waltz
when one is waltzing with just one person in the world.”
* * * * *
Out in the cool night there was a little knot of people as merry
after their homelier fashion as town and county in the ball-room. One
of the windows had been opened at the top for ventilation, and this
opening had been turned to advantage. A large, substantial kitchen
table had been placed in front of the window, and upon this improvised
platform stood Tabitha, Susan, the head chamber-maid, and the ostler’s
wife--this last on sufferance, and evidently not in society--looking on
at the ball. The window was under a verandah, that sloped above these
spectators’ heads. They were thus in dense shadow, and unseen by the
occupants of the lamp-lit room.
Susan was exuberant in her delight.
“I was never at a ball before,” she said. “Oh, ain’t it lovely? Don’t
I wish I could dance like that? Lor, do look at that fat old party,
spinning round like a teetotum! Well, I never did! Don’t she perspire!”
exclaimed Susan, indulging in a running commentary which left much to
be desired in the matter of refinement.
This unsophisticated damsel heartily admired youth and beauty, and the
smart frocks and flashing gems; but she was cruelly hard upon those
dancers whose charms were on the wane, or whose frocks were inferior or
ugly.
“Well, I wouldn’t,” said Susan, “I wouldn’t go to a ball like this if
I couldn’t have everythink nice. Look at that tall girl in yeller. Did
you ever see such a scarecrow? I’d ever so much rather stay at home, or
stand outside, like this. I should feel it better became me.”
Tabitha made no such remarks. She was singularly silent and thoughtful,
as she stood looking down at the crowded room from her point of vantage
on the kitchen table. She had only eyes for one figure--the willowy
form in the glistening white satin gown, with the feathery Japanese
chrysanthemums, a little crushed and faded by this time; or perhaps it
may be said for two figures, since one followed the other as the shadow
follows the substance. She saw them waltzing together, when supper
was in full progress, and the room comparatively clear. She saw the
graceful head inclining towards his shoulder, the slender waist held in
his firm embrace; and it seemed to her that the waltz was an invention
of the Arch Enemy. She thought of it very much as people thought
seventy years ago when Byron wrote his poetical denunciation of the new
dance. She saw those two moving slowly towards an adjacent ante-room,
where banks of flowers, and a couple of sofas and low easy-chairs made
a retreat which was half boudoir, half conservatory. She saw them
moving side by side, talking to each other in tones so confidential
that his head bent low over hers each time she spoke; and then she
watched them sitting just within the doorway, at an angle where she
could see their faces, and attitudes, still in the same confidential
converse, she with downcast eyes, and he leaning forward with his
elbow on his knee, and looking up at her as he talked.
“It is too bad of him,” muttered Tabitha, writhing at that spectacle.
“Does he think what a child she is, and what harm he may be doing?
It is wicked of him, and he knows it; and other people must notice
them--other people must see what I see--and they will be talking of
her, blighting her good name. Oh, if I could only get her away at once
before people begin to notice her!”
She could see her young mistress’s face distinctly in the lamplight.
Isola was very pale, and her face was full of trouble; not the face
of a woman amusing herself with an idle flirtation, playing with fire
without the least intention of burning her fingers. There were plenty
of flirtations of that order going on in the Talbot ball-room; but this
was not one of them. This meant peril of some kind. This was all evil.
That pale face, those heavy eyelids, shrouding eyes which dared not
look up. That tremulous, uncertain movement of the snowy ostrich fan!
All these were danger signals.
“If I get her safe at home presently, I’ll open her eyes for her,”
thought Tabitha. “I’ll talk to her as if I was her mother. God knows I
should be almost as sorry as ever her mother could be if she came to
any harm.”
If she came to any harm. What harm was there to fear for her, as she
sat there, with Lostwithiel lounging across the low chair beside the
sofa where she sat, leaning forward to look into her downcast face?
What harm could come to her except that which meant destruction--death
to peace, and gladness, and womanly fame? If there were danger it was
a desperate danger, and Tabitha shuddered at the mere thought of that
peril.
“But, lor, she’s little more than a child,” mused Tabitha. “She means
no wrong, and she knows no wrong. She’s too innocent to come to any
harm.”
Yet in the landlady’s snuggery, by-and-by, seated at the comfortable
round table, with its spotless damask and bright glass and silver,
Tabitha was quite unable to do justice to that snack which Mr.
Tinkerly had ordered in her honour--a chicken and lobster-salad from
the supper-room, and three parts of a pine-apple cream. Susan and the
foreman fully appreciated these dainties; but Tabitha only munched a
crust and sipped a tumbler of beer.
“I’m a little bit out of sorts to-night,” she said.
“I hope you haven’t taken cold, Mrs. Thomas,” said the polite Tinkerly.
“Perhaps we ought to have brought another rug?”
“No, it isn’t that. I’ve been quite warm and comfortable. Eat your
supper, Mr. Tinkerly, and don’t bother about me. I’ve been interested
in looking on, and I’m too much took up with what I’ve seen to be able
to eat.”
“Well, it was a pretty sight,” exclaimed Tinkerly, enthusiastically;
“but I don’t think I ever saw such a mort of plain women in my life.”
“Lor, Mr. Tinkerly,” cried Susan, with a shocked air. “Why, look at our
young mistress, and at Miss Crowther, and Miss Spenthrop from Truro,
and Mrs. Pencarrow, and Lady Chanderville.”
“Well, I don’t say they’re all ugly. Some of ’em are handsome enough,
and there’s plenty of thorough-breds among ’em, but there’s a sight of
plain-headed ones. There’s quite as much beauty in your spear as there
is among the county folks, Miss Susan. I’ll answer for that.”
* * * * *
The night was waning. Isola had ordered her carriage for half-past two:
but three o’clock had struck from the church tower of Lostwithiel, and
the dance was still at its height--at its best, the dancers said, now
that the sensual attractions of the supper-room drew off a good many
people, and left the floor so much clearer than before supper, when
bulky middle-aged gentlemen, talking to the matrons seated upon the
divan, had projected their ponderous persons into the orbit of the
waltzers.
Isola and Lostwithiel had danced only two waltzes, but since two
o’clock they had sat out several dances, Mrs. Disney having cancelled
all her engagements after that hour by declaring that she would dance
no more.
“I am dreadfully tired,” she told her partners piteously, and her
pallor gave force to the assertion. “Please get some one else for
our dance, Captain Morshead,” and so on, and so on, to half a dozen
disappointed suitors.
Perhaps some of those who happened to be experienced in such
complications may have divined which way the wind blew, for no one
offered to sit out the promised dances, and Isola and Lostwithiel were
left pretty much to themselves among the palms and orange-trees in the
ante-room. They were not unobserved, however; and among the eyes which
marked them with no friendly notice were the fine, steel-blue eyes of
Miss Crowther.
“Is that a flirtation?” she asked Captain Morshead, glancing in the
direction of the ante-room where those two were sitting, as she and
Isola’s cast-off partner waltzed past the muslin-draped doorway.
“They seem rather fond of talking to each other, don’t they? Who was
she? She’s uncommonly pretty.”
“Oh, her people were army, I believe--as poor as church mice--buried
alive in Dinan.”
“At Dinan--and now she lives at Trelasco, she tells me. It seems
scarcely worth while to have exhumed her in order to bury her again.
Such a girl as that ought to be in London enjoying life.”
“Oh, but she’s a grass widow, don’t you know. Her husband is in Burmah.
I don’t think it’s quite nice in her to be here to-night; only as my
too good-natured mother sent her a ticket, I suppose I oughtn’t to say
anything about it. Perhaps if mother sees the way she goes on with Lord
Lostwithiel she’ll rather regret that ticket.”
* * * * *
What was Lostwithiel saying all this time in that gentle baritone,
which was heard only by one listener? He was asking forgiveness for
his indiscretion of the afternoon, and in that prayer for pardon was
repeating his offence. Isola was less inclined to be angry, perhaps,
now. The magic of the dance was still upon her senses, the dance which
had brought them nearer than all the days they had met; than all their
long confidential conversations on the heights above the harbour,
or on the river path, or dawdling on the bridge. She had felt the
beating of his heart against her own, breath mingling with breath, the
thrilling touch of his encircling arm; and it was as if he had woven
a spell around her which made her his. She had never danced with her
husband, who had no love of that heathenish art. In all their brisk,
frank courtship there had been no intoxicating hours. She hardly
knew what dancing meant till she waltzed with Lostwithiel, who had
something of the fiery ardour of a Pagan worshipping his gods in wild
gyrations upon moonlit mountain or in secret cave. She let him talk
to her to-night--let him pour out the full confession of his unhappy
love. He spoke not as one who had hope; not with that implied belief in
her frailty which would have startled her into prompt resistance. His
accents were the accents of despair, his love was a dark fatality.
ἉΝΑΓΚΗ
“Why did you write that word?” she asked.
“Why? Because I could not give you back that card without some token
of my passion--with only commonplace entries which Jones, Brown, and
Robinson might write there. I want you to feel that you belong to me,
somehow, in some way, as the spirits of the dead and the souls of the
living belong to each other sometimes, by links which none can see.
When I am at the other end of the earth I want to feel that there is
something, if it were only a word, like a masonic sign, between us; if
it were only a promise that in such or such a phase of the waning moon
we would each look up and breathe the other’s name.”
“You are going away?”
“What else can I do? Can I stay? You tell me I made you miserable by
what I said this afternoon. That means we must meet no more. I can’t be
sorry for my offence. I cannot answer for myself. My love has passed
the point of sanity and self-control. I have no option. I must offend
you, or I must leave you.”
“You need not leave Trelasco,” she said gently. “I am going away
to-morrow.”
“Going away! Where?”
“To London first, and then to India.”
“To Burmah? Impossible!”
“If not to the front, to the nearest convenient station. I am going to
my husband; as nearly as I can reach him; and as quickly as I can make
the journey.”
“You are dreaming.”
“No, I have quite made up my mind. I hated to be left behind last year;
and now that his return is deferred my only chance of happiness is
to go to him. Some one called me a grass widow the other day. What a
detestable name!”
“Give me this one waltz?” he asked, without any comment upon her
intended journey.
“Impossible. I told them all I shouldn’t dance any more.”
“Oh, your partners are all in the supper-room, I dare say. The dancing
men go in last. Hark! it’s the Myosotis. Just one turn--only one.”
He had risen from his low seat, and she rose involuntarily at the sound
of the opening bars. He put his arm round her gently, and drew her into
the ball-room, waltzing slowly as they went, and then, with the sudden
impetus of an enthusiastic dancer, he was whirling her round the room,
and she know nothing, cared for nothing, in the confusion of light and
melody.
“Think of me sometimes when you are far away!” he whispered, with his
lips almost touching her forehead.
She did not resent that whisper. Already, within a dozen hours of his
first offence, she had grown accustomed to his words of love. It
seemed to her as if they had loved each other for years--had loved and
had despaired long ago, in some dim half-remembered past. A passion of
this kind is like a dream, in which an instant gives the impression of
half a lifetime, of long memories and old habit.
The room was much clearer now.
“Is it very late?” asked Isola.
“About four.”
“So late--and I told the flyman half-past two. It is dreadful. Let us
stop, please.”
He obeyed, and went with her towards the cloak-room. The seats were
nearly empty now where the matrons had sat in their velvet and brocade,
a gorgeous background to the clouds of tulle and sylph-like figures of
the dancers. Mrs. Baynham was nowhere to be seen, and the diminished
bundles of tabby-cat cloaks and Shetland shawls in the cloak-room
indicated that a good many people had left. Isola put on her soft white
shawl hurriedly, and went out into the hall, where Lostwithiel had gone
to look for her carriage.
People were going away very fast, and through the open doorway there
was a sound of voices and wheels; but, in spite of footmen, constables,
and hangers-on, there seemed a prodigious difficulty in getting any
particular carriage to the door.
It was a mild, misty night, and the moon, which had been counted on for
the return home, was hidden behind a mass of black clouds--or in the
expressive phraseology of one of the foxhunters, had gone to ground.
Mrs. Disney waited near the door while Lostwithiel searched for her
fly. There were several departures of other muffled figures, features
undistinguishable behind Shetland wraps, or furry hoods, as the men
hustled their womenkind into the carriages. It seemed an age to Isola,
waiting there alone in the corridor, and seeing no mortal whom she knew
among those passersby, before Lostwithiel came, hurried and breathless,
to say that her carriage was just coming up to the door.
“Wrap your shawl round your head,” he said quickly, as he gave her his
arm. “There’s a nasty damp fog--so,” muffling her, almost to blindness.
“Come along.”
She looked at the carriage, with its lamps shining red against the grey
mistiness like great fiery eyes, and then, glancing at the horse, she
cried suddenly, “I’m afraid that’s the wrong fly. I think mine had a
grey horse.”
“No, no, it’s all right. Pray don’t loiter in this chilling air.”
The carriage door was open, the constable standing by, bull’s-eye in
hand, a pair of horses snorting close behind, another carriage coming
up so near that the pole threatened destruction. There was no time for
loitering. Everybody was in a hurry to get home. Isola stepped lightly
into the brougham, which drove slowly off.
“Next carriage, Mrs. Brune Prideaux,” roared the constable. “Mrs.
Prideaux’ carriage stops all the way.”