The Alcove
The ball was a great success, it was generally admitted. Miss Forster
could have danced each number on the programme with half a dozen
different partners if she had chosen. She danced with Mr. Noel
Draycott; when it came to sitting out, he found her manner a little
disconcerting. He was of the fatuous type of young man, a better dancer
than conversationalist. He had a sort of cut-and-dried routine on such
occasions, saying the same things, as much as possible, to each of his
partners in turn. New ideas would not come to him quickly, especially
when he was talking to women; if they would not keep to the subject
which he felt was appropriate to the occasion, he preferred not to talk
at all.
Miss Forster treated him in that respect quite badly. When he tried to
make one of his orthodox remarks, which were meant to be compliments,
she ignored him utterly. She not only said things which worried him--to
him it always was a labour to find an answer to a remark that was
unexpected--she asked him questions which puzzled him still more,
questions which he felt that she had no right to ask; particularly of a
man in the middle of a dance.
When he had quitted her, before seeking his next partner, he unburdened
himself to his friend, Anthony Dodwell.
"She's a top-hole dancer, Miss Forster, and as pretty as paint, but
when it comes to asking a man if he likes liars I draw the line."
"Did she ask you if you liked liars?"
"She asked me much worse things than that. She was just asking me, when
I hooked it, what I thought was the most shameful way in which a man
could treat a friend. If I hadn't hooked it, I don't know what she
wouldn't have asked me next; she's taken the stiffening out of my
collar, talking to a man like that, between a two-step and a waltz."
When his friend had left him, Dodwell advanced to the lady of whom they
had been speaking.
"May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Forster?"
She had her hand on the arm of the partner who was about to bear her
off; looking Captain Dodwell up and down in a fashion which, to say the
least, was marked, she said, in a tone of voice which was clearly
audible to those around:
"In any case, Captain Dodwell, you would have been too late." She
looked him straight in the face, then she turned to her partner. "Will
you please take me away?"
It was not strange that, as the pair moved off, Anthony Dodwell did not
look happy; if she had flicked a whip in his face her intention could
hardly have been plainer. He was conscious that while there were smiles
on some of the faces about him, and while some observed him with
curious eyes, there were others who kept their eyes carefully averted.
On the whole, he carried the thing off uncommonly well. He strolled
away, and presently was dancing with a lady whose charms were not so
obvious as they possibly once had been. While he danced he was saying
things to himself which would have surprised his partner if she could
have heard them.
"What the devil did the little cat mean by that? What have I ever done
to her? I swear I've done nothing. I expect that the tale is being told
all round the room at this moment; people will be taking it for granted
that I've behaved to her like--God alone knows what. I'll have an
explanation from her before the night's out--and an apology. I should
like to force her down upon her knees before everybody who heard her,
the little----"
He left the sentence unfinished, even though he was only speaking to
himself; as if he could not find words which would give adequate
expression to his feelings. His partner asked him a question, he
answered it; but even while he was speaking, as he steered her round
the room, he was thinking of Violet Forster.
A little later Miss Forster was dancing with another of his brother
officers, Mr. John Tickell, better known as Jackie. Mr. Tickell was not
only still a subaltern, he was a junior subaltern; it was his habit to
mention the fact, with an air of grievance, to persons of the feminine
sex, after a very brief acquaintance, if they showed signs of being
sympathetic. As he was quite a nice boy, and not bad-looking, as he
would himself have expressed it, when he "struck" a girl, nine times
out of ten, he found her as sympathetic as he could possibly have
desired. He had made Miss Forster's acquaintance for the first time
that night; had booked a dance with her with the brightest hopes, which
were destined to be blighted. There was no mistake about her dancing,
their steps went perfectly together; it was in other directions that
disappointment came. He led her, when the music ceased, to a spot on
which he had had his mind's eye all along. In the passage outside the
ballroom there was an alcove, quite a small one; it was screened by a
palm in a wooden tub, a sensible-sized palm, with plenty of leaves,
which really did do service as a screen. Behind this palm there were
chairs, two chairs; no more. Any two persons who sat on them would be
in the midst of the crowd; there was a perpetual procession up and down
the corridor; and yet as much alone as the most sensitive young man who
was in need of sympathy could possibly desire. Mr. Tickell made
straight for that alcove, rather hurrying the lady.
"I know a first-rate place for sitting out, if only someone isn't there
before us."
No one was; they placed themselves in the two chairs. Mr. Tickell gave
a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was
distinctly a find--as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping
dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no
doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed
that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there
only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that
alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of
being left invitingly open for him.
"Are you fond of dancing?"
He also had his methods of commencing such conversations; this was one
of his stereotyped openings; he liked to lead up to the sympathetic
point by routes with which he was acquainted.
"Don't I dance as if I were--is that what you mean?"
This was not at all the sort of answer he had expected; from his point
of view, it was not playing the game. While he was still floundering
about for a suitable answer, she put a question to him on her own
account.
"What are you fond of?"
He would have liked to say that he was fond of her. He had had partners
to whom he would have said it without the slightest hesitation; but
somehow he felt that this was a partner with whom the remark might not
have the success it deserved; and before he spoke she again went on.
"Are you fond of gambling?"
"Gambling?" He stared at her with startled eyes, it seemed to him to be
such a singular question to have hurled at him.
"I mean, for instance, are you fond of poker?" Again she went on before
he could speak, taking an answer for granted in a fashion which he
found a trifle disconcerting. "But, of course, I know you are; I have
heard of some of your performances at poker."
He really did not like her tone at all; there was something in it which
made him conscious of a vague discomfort. What could the girl be
driving at?
"Particularly I've heard of one."
She said it while she was glancing at him over the top of her fan,
which she was opening and shutting.
"Which one?"
"Weren't you playing some months ago when one of your brother officers
was accused of cheating?"
Small wonder if his eyes seemed to grow rounder, the bad taste of such
a remark! To say nothing of its unexpectedness.
"Really, I don't know to what you refer."
"Oh yes, you do. You know perfectly well; if you don't, I'll explain."
"Thank you very much, but if you don't mind, I'll take you back to the
ballroom; there's someone whom I've just thought I ought to be behaving
nicely to."
"You'll behave as nicely as you can to me before you try your practised
hand on anybody else. You've presence of mind, Mr. Tickell, but it
won't do. You sit still until I let you go."
Except by violence, he could hardly have got away; he saw now why she
had expressly directed him to take the farther chair. He could scarcely
get out of the alcove without passing her; he did not see how he could
do it if she did not choose to let him.
"At the game of poker to which I wish to call your attention, right at
the close, you were betting against Mr. Sydney Beaton."
"If you don't mind, I'd much rather not talk about it; I don't
know how you came to know anything about it, but you'll understand
that it's rather a painful subject to me. What do you think of the
floor--first-rate, isn't it?"
If he hoped to get her to confine her conversation to what he regarded
as proper topics, his hope was doomed to disappointment, as she at once
made plain.
"There was a good bit of money in the pool, at the point on which I
wish to refresh your memory--over a thousand pounds, I've been given to
understand, at the moment when Mr. Beaton covered your raise--you had a
straight, king high; Mr. Beaton had a full, three aces and a pair of
knaves, a much better hand than yours, and yet, I'm told, you claimed
the pool."
"Then you've been misinformed. Excuse me, Miss Forster, I don't know
what all this has to do with you."
"It has a very great deal to do with me. You claimed the pool----"
"I did not claim the pool; really, Miss Forster, I don't think this is
the sort of thing to talk about at a dance."
"You took the pool, you conveyed its contents to your pockets."
"It was adjudged to be mine. But with all possible apologies, Miss
Forster, I must decline to discuss the subject with you, especially at
such a moment as this. May I take you back to the ballroom?"
He stood up, his face a little flushed; if he thought that she would be
overawed by his air of determination, he was mistaken. She also stood
up, in such a way that without an actual tussle it would have been
impossible for him to escape--that well-screened alcove had its
drawbacks.
"You will not leave me, Mr. Tickell, till you have given me certain
explanations which I am about to require from you. Sit down."
Nothing could have been more dictatorial than her manner, or more
uncalled for; his visage sufficiently expressed the amazement he felt.
"Miss Forster!"
"You have done me a very serious injury, Mr. Tickell, a wrong which no
man with any pretensions to decency would do any woman; if you decline
to sit down, if you try to leave this place, there'll be a scandal,
because I shall follow you into the ballroom, and wring an explanation
from you there. I am not friendless; I will take care that you don't
leave this house till I have it."
The young gentleman sat down, with every appearance of the most extreme
discomfiture. His words came from stammering lips.
"I--I--I never heard such a thing in my life; I--I've done you a wrong?
Why, Miss Forster, I never met you before. Of course, I've heard of
you, everybody has; as--as to doing you a wrong, I'd no more think of
doing you a wrong than--than---- Whatever makes you think I have?"
She resumed her seat beside him with an air that was much more
commanding than he had ever seen worn by his colonel.
"Be so good as to answer the question which I put to you just now, Mr.
Tickell: why did you convey to your own pockets the contents of the
pool which properly belonged to Mr. Beaton, since he had won it?"
"I do not know why you are talking to me like this, Miss Forster--I
give you my word I don't--but if you know so much you must know the
chaps said he cheated."
"What chaps?"
"All the chaps."
"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Tickell, on your honour, that all the men
who were present in the room accused Mr. Beaton of cheating?"
"That's what it amounts to, but, of course, it began with Dodwell."
"I am perfectly aware that Captain Dodwell made a certain statement for
which Mr. Beaton was only kept from knocking him down by the rest of
you--brave men! What I want to know is if you were all in the
conspiracy. Did you yourself see, with your own eyes, Mr. Beaton
cheat?"
"I can't say that I did."
"You were watching him the whole time?"
"I suppose I was."
"Did you see anything in the least suspicious about anything he did?"
"I'm bound to say I didn't, at least, not to notice it."
"Had you any suspicions of him?"
"Not the faintest shadow of one, we were chums; I would as soon have
suspected myself."
"So, except for what Captain Dodwell said, which was, after a fashion,
corroborated by Mr. Noel Draycott, you had no reason to suppose that
Mr. Beaton had been guilty of the slightest irregularity?"
"I suppose I hadn't, if you look at it like that."
"You would unhesitatingly have handed the pool to Mr. Beaton, without
even the slightest feeling of having been ill-used?"
"Of course I would; he had won it; his hand was better than mine."
"He denied having done what Captain Dodwell stated?"
"Rather; as you said, he wanted to knock him down; he was as mad as a
hatter."
"Would you have behaved with perfect calmness in the face of Captain
Dodwell's hideous accusation?"
"I don't expect I should, especially as we were all of us pretty warm
to begin with."
"Would you want to knock a man down who said that kind of thing of
you?"
"You bet, I should want to kill him."
"Because Mr. Beaton felt exactly as you would have done, his brother
officers, chivalrous creatures, threw him out of the room--you assisted
them?"
"Upon my word, I hardly know what I did do, it was a regular
rough-and-tumble; Beaton fought like ten wild cats. I daresay I did
bear a hand."
"Oh, you dare say? I congratulate you, Mr. Tickell, on the courageous
assistance you lent your brother officers; was it twelve or twenty
against one? They could scarcely have done without you. Cowards! And
having assisted your friends in getting rid of the rightful claimant,
you had no scruple in placing Mr. Beaton's money in your pocket, and, I
presume, paying with it some of the more pressing debts which I
understand you owed?"
The young gentleman winced, the lady's thrust had gone home.
"That's all I want from you, Mr. Tickell; I am obliged to you for the
confession you have made. I advise you to consider your position, and
to ask yourself, when you are dancing with your next partner, if a
person who has behaved as you have done is entitled to show his face in
such a house as this. Mr. Beaton cheated no one; he is incapable of
such conduct as yours; you cheated him, having first joined yourself
with some twelve or twenty of your friends to get him out of the way.
Think over what I have said to you, Mr. Tickell, instead of whispering
soft nothings to your partners, and remember that I shall be watching.
Now you may go."