Dodo laid her hand on his shoulder, conscious of restraining her
impatience.
"No, that's just the difference between us," she said. "Go on, Tommy,
get into the carriage. You don't want me not to go, dear, do you?"
"No, you are right to go, if you wish to," he said again.
Dodo grew impatient.
"Really, you might be more cordial about it," she said. "I needn't have
consulted you at all."
Lord Chesterford was not as meek as Moses. He was capable of a sense of
injustice.
"I don't know that you did consult me much," he said, "you mean to go
in any case."
"Very well," said Dodo, "I do mean to go. Good-night, old boy. I
sha'n't be very late. But I don't mean to quarrel with you."
Lord Chesterford turned into his room. But he would not keep Dodo, as
she wished to go, even if he could have done so.
Ledgers was waiting in the carriage.
"Oh, the devil," said Dodo, as she stepped in.
Lady Bretton's ball is still talked about, I believe, in certain
circles, though it ought to have been consigned, with all other events
of last year, to oblivion. It was very brilliant, and several princes
shed the light of their presence on it. But, as Lord Ledgers was heard
to remark afterwards, "There are many princes, but there is only one
Dodo." He felt as if he was adapting a quotation from the Koran,
which was somehow suitable to the positive solemnity of the occasion.
Dodo can only be described as having been indescribable. Lucas, Lady
Bretton's eldest son, in honour of whose coming of age the ball was
given, can hardly allude to it even now. His emotions expressed
themselves feebly in his dressing with even more care than usual, in
hanging round Eaton Square, and in leaving cards on the Chesterfords as
often as was decent.
Dodo was conscious of a frenzied desire to make the most of it, and
to drown remembrance, for in the background of her mind was another
picture, that she did not care to look at. There was a man she knew,
leaning over a small dead child. The door of the room was half open,
and a woman, brilliantly dressed, was turning to go out, looking back
over her shoulder with a smile, half of impatience, half of pity, at
the kneeling figure in the room. Through the half-open door came sounds
of music and rhythmical steps, and a blaze of light. This picture had
started unbidden into Dodo's mind, as she and Ledgers drove up to Lady
Bretton's door, with such sudden clearness that she half wondered
whether she had ever actually seen it. It reminded her of one of
Orchardson's silent, well-appointed tragedies. In any case it gave her
a rather unpleasant twinge, and she determined to shut it out for the
rest of the evening, and, to do her justice, no one would have guessed
that Dodo's brilliance was due to anything but pure spontaneity, or
that, even in the deepest shades of her inmost mind, there was any
remembrance that it needed an effort to stifle.
Many women, though few men, were surprised to see her there, and there
was no one who was not glad; but the question arose more than once
in the minds of two or three people, "Would society stand it if she
didn't happen to be herself?" Dodo had treated a select party of her
friends to a private exhibition of skirt-dancing during supper-time.
The music from the band was quite loud enough to be heard distinctly
in a small, rather unfrequented sitting-out room, and there Dodo had
displayed her incomparable grace of movement and limb to the highest
advantage. Dodo danced that night with unusual perfection, and who has
not felt the exquisite beauty of such motion? Her figure, clad in its
long, clinging folds of diaphanous, almost luminous texture, stood out
like a radiant statue of dawn against the dark panelling of the room;
her graceful figure bending this way and that, her wonderful white arms
now holding aside her long skirt, or clasped above her head; above all,
the supreme distinction and conscious modesty of every posture seemed,
to the little circle who saw her, to be almost a new revelation of the
perfection of form, colour and grace.
Jack knew Dodo pretty well, but he stood and wondered. Was she a devil?
was she a tiger? or was she, after all, a woman? Dodo had told him what
had happened that evening, and yet he did not condemn her utterly. He
knew how prison-like her life must have been to her during the last
month. It was a thousand pities that Dodo's meat was Chesterford's
poison, but he no more blamed Dodo for eating her meat than he blamed
Chesterford for avoiding his poison; and to advance the conventional
argument against Dodo, that her behaviour was not usual, was,
equivalent to saying, "Why do you behave like yourself?" rather than,
"Why don't you behave like other people?" Dodo's estimate of herself,
as purely normal, was only another instance of her very abnormalness.
No, on the whole, she was not a devil. The other question was harder
to settle. Jack remembered a tigress he had seen that day with her at
the Zoo. The brute had a small and perfectly fascinating tiger cub,
in which she took a certain maternal pride; but when feeding-time came
near, and the cub continued to be importunate, she gave it a cuff with
her big velvety paw, and sent it staggering to the corner. Dodo's tiger
cub was a mixture between Chesterford and the dead child, and Dodo's
feeding-time had come round. Here she was feeding with an enviable
appetite, and where was the cub? The tigress element was not wholly
absent.
And yet, withal, she was a woman. Is it that certain attributes of pure
womanliness run through the female of animals, or that every woman has
a touch of the tigress about her? Jack felt incompetent to decide.
Dodo's dance came to an end. She accepted Prince Waldenech's arm, and
went down to supper. As he advanced to her, Dodo dropped a curtsey,
and he stooped and kissed her hand. "The brute," thought Jack, as
he strolled out into the ballroom, where people were beginning to
collect again. Many turned and looked at Dodo as, she passed out with
her handsome partner. The glow of exercise and excitement and success
burned brightly in her cheeks, and no one accused Dodo of using rouge.
The supper was spread on a number of small tables, laid for four or six
each. The Prince led her to an empty one, and sat down by her side.
"I have seen many beautiful things," he said, in French, which permits
a man to say more than he may I in English, "but none so beautiful as
what I have seen to-night."
Dodo was far too accomplished a coquette to pretend not to know what he
meant. She made him a charming little obeisance.
"Politeness required that of your Highness," she said. "That is only my
due, you know."
"I can never give you your due," said he.
"My due in this case is the knowledge I have pleased you."
Dodo felt suddenly a little uncomfortable. The forgotten picture
flashed for a moment across her inward eye. She spoke of other things:
praised the prettiness of the ballroom, the excellence of the band.
"Lady Bretton has given a fine setting to the diamond," said the
Prince, "but the diamond is not hers."
Dodo laughed. He was a little ponderous, and he deserved to be told so.
"You Austrians have beautiful manners," she said, "but you are too
serious. English are always accused of sharing that fault, but anyhow,
when they pay compliments, they have at least the air of not meaning
what they say."
"That is the fault of the English, or of the compliment."
"No one means what they say when they pay compliments," said Dodo.
"They are only a kind of formula to avoid the unpleasantness of saying
nothing."
"Austrians seldom pay compliments," said he; "but when they do, they
mean them."
"Ouf," said Dodo; "that sounds homelike to you, doesn't it? All
Austrians say 'ouf' in books--do they really say 'ouf,' by the
way?--What a bald way of saying that I needn't expect any more
to-night. Really, Prince, that's rather unflattering to you. No, don't
excuse yourself; I understand perfectly. I'm not fishing for any more.
Come, there's the _pas de quatre_ beginning. That's the 'Old Kent Road'
tune. It's much the best. What do you suppose 'Knocked 'em in the Old
Kent Road' means? No foreigner has ever been able to translate it to me
yet. This is your dance, isn't it? O dear me, half the night's gone,
and I feel as if I hadn't begun yet. Some people are in bed now; what a
waste of time, you know."
The ball went on and on, and Dodo seemed to gather fresh strength and
brilliance with each hour. Extra dances were added and still added, and
many who were tired with dancing stayed and watched her. The princes
went away, and nobody noticed their departure. If Cleopatra herself
had suddenly entered the ballroom, she would have found herself at
a discount. It was the culmination of Dodo's successes. She seemed
different in kind, as well as in degree, from the crowd around her.
Pretty women seemed suddenly plain and middle-aged; well-dressed women
looked dowdy beside her, and when at length, as the electric light
began to pale perceptibly before the breaking day, Dodo asked her
partner to take her to Lady Bretton, the dancers stopped, and followed
Dodo and Prince Waldenech, for she was dancing with him, to where Lady
Bretton was standing.
"It has been heavenly," said Dodo. "It's a dreadful bore to have
people come and say how much they have enjoyed themselves, but I've
done it now. Tell Lucas I wish he would come of age every year; he
really is a public benefactor."
She took Prince Waldenech's arm, and stood waiting with him, while her
carriage detached itself from the others which lined the square, and
drove up to the door. And, as they stood there, the crowd followed her
slowly out of the ballroom, still silent, and still watching her, and
lined the stairs, as she passed down to the front door.
Then, when she had got into her carriage, and had driven off, they
looked at each other as if they had all been walking in their sleep,
and no one knew exactly why they were there. And a quarter of an hour
later the rooms were completely empty.
Meanwhile, as Dodo drove back through the still, cool, morning air,
she threw down the windows of her carriage, and drew in deep satisfied
breaths of its freshness. She thought of the crowds who had followed
her down to the door, and laughed for pleasure. "It's life, it's life,"
she thought. "They followed me like sheep. Ah, how I love it!"
It was nearly six when she reached home; "Decidedly it would be too
absurd to go to bed," she thought. "I shall go for a glorious gallop,
and come back to breakfast with Chesterford. Tell them to saddle
Starlight at once," she said to the footman: "I sha'n't want a groom.
And tell Lord Chesterford, when he wakes, that I shall be back to
breakfast."