“She’s gone,” said Mrs. Below. “You can take off that martyred air. Of
course it’s a wonderful card to have up one’s sleeve—if one wants to
get off with servants. They love it.”
Her husband ignored the insult.
“What stuff shall I get?” he said.
“Any damned stuff,” said his wife. “D’you want me to dry-nurse you? I
shouldn’t say you want it for a domino, or they’ll think you’re out of
your mind. Say you want it for a shroud—they’ll believe that. . . .
Just as a matter of interest, can you look cheerful? Or have you lost
the knack?”
“I’ve lost the knack,” said Peregrine. “Our marriage has been a failure,
and——”
“Whose fault is that?”
Peregrine shrugged his shoulders and rose to his feet.
“Mine, I suppose,” he said, with a ghost of a laugh.
“Oh, you darling,” said his wife.
Peregrine shuddered.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Marion.”
His wife stared.
“You wish I wouldn’t—what do you mean?” Peregrine stood silent. “You’d
better pull yourself together, hadn’t you?”
Peregrine sought the door.
“I’ll go and get the stuff,” he said shakily.
“Stop!” Mrs. Below’s voice was vibrating with passion. “I’m not going to
try to teach you manners, because it’s waste of time: but you said just
now that entertainments weren’t in your line. Well, kindly remember that
lectures aren’t in mine—even when delivered by imitation wash-outs. I
can stand an undertaker—in his place: I can even bear Little Lord
Fauntleroy: but a cross between the two _on his hind legs_ is just a
shade too thick even for me.”
For a moment her husband hesitated, pale-faced.
Then he opened the door and passed out.
* * * * *
That Miss Atlee’s maid should sit and talk with Pickford while the
latter was doing her work was natural enough, and when she produced some
silk to make a frill for the hood of Peregrine’s gown Mrs. Below’s maid
was delighted with the attention.
“It’ll give the ole long-cloth a flip,” explained Miss Mason. “Won’ look
so much like a shraoud. There’s enough fer a pair o’ cuffs too, while
we’re abaout it.”
Two hours later she reported to Joan that Peregrine might be known by
his frill and his cuffs.
“You can’t mistake them, miss. It isn’t likely as there’ll be another
gentleman there with silk on a long-cloth gaown, but if there was,
you’ll be sure to know the silk. It’s a bit that was left over from
linin’ your ermine coat.”
“Right,” said Joan. “Thank you. What time do we unmask?”
“Not before midnight, miss.”
“I imagine dancing will start about half-past ten.”
Mason was, as they say, very quick in the uptake.
“Mrs. Below’s maid is ordered for ten o’clock: but that means nothin’,
miss. Still, you never know. If you come upstairs at ten, that’ll give
me time to dress you, an’ then I can slip off to their floor an’ watch
them daown. Then you’ll know where you are, miss.”
“All right, Mason. Thank you.”
So it fell out that evening that the Carey Belows descended the great
staircase with Joan Purchase Atlee a dozen steps behind. . . .
They reached the painted ball-room in the same order.
To identify Mrs. Below required but a nodding acquaintance with that
lady’s way of life. Her domino eclipsed all others as the moon the
stars. It was of cloth of silver, freckled with pips of gold. She was
out for blood to-night. To be outstanding in disguise, to beggar all
concealment, to blaze—a glowing houri in a shoal of ghosts. . . . Such
was her dream. Be sure it was realized. Her progress was one long
triumph. As she entered the ball-room her courtiers swarmed about her,
pleading the favour of a dance.
Peregrine slid to one side and got his back to the wall. . . .
The spectacle was fantastic, suggesting the practice of mysteries which
might be evil. It was the hour of counterfeit. Hooded and cloaked and
masked, Secrecy whirled and flitted, finger to lip. Whispers and stifled
laughter, red mouths and shining feet, white wrists upon hidden
shoulders were mocking Truth. Broad shafts of coloured light, the only
luminants, ranged to and fro over the company. Robed as familiars of the
Inquisition, a cunning orchestra lent scene and music alike a devilish
air.
“Well, Perry, won’t you ask me to dance?”
The man started violently.
“Who are you?” he breathed, taking cool fingers in his and sliding an
arm about a yielding waist.