CHAPTER XXXII
A GREAT BALL
A certain great ball, given yearly at Dunholm Castle, was
one of the most notable social features of the county. It took
place when the house was full of its most interestingly
distinguished guests, and, though other balls might be given at
other times, this one was marked by a degree of greater state.
On several occasions the chief guests had been great personages
indeed, and to be bidden to meet them implied a selection
flattering in itself. One's invitation must convey by inference
that one was either brilliant, beautiful, or admirable, if not
important.
Nigel Anstruthers had never appeared at what the uninvited
were wont, with derisive smiles, to call The Great Panjandrum
Function--which was an ironic designation not
employed by such persons as received cards bidding them to
the festivity. Stornham Court was not popular in the county;
no one had yearned for the society of the Dowager Lady
Anstruthers, even in her youth; and a not too well-favoured young
man with an ill-favoured temper, noticeably on the lookout
for grievances, is not an addition to one's circle. At nineteen
Nigel had discovered the older Lord Mount Dunstan and
his son Tenham to be congenial acquaintances, and had been
so often absent from home that his neighbours would have
found social intercourse with him difficult, even if desirable.
Accordingly, when the county paper recorded the splendours
of The Great Panjandrum Function--which it by no means
mentioned by that name--the list of "Among those present "
had not so far contained the name of Sir Nigel Anstruthers.
So, on a morning a few days after his return, the master
of Stornham turned over a card of invitation and read it
several times before speaking.
"I suppose you know what this means," he said at last to
Rosalie, who was alone with him.
"It means that we are invited to Dunholm Castle for the
ball, doesn't it?"
Her husband tossed the card aside on the table.
"It means that Betty will be invited to every house where
there is a son who must be disposed of profitably.
"She is invited because she is beautiful and clever. She
would be invited if she had no money at all," said Rosy
daringly. She was actually growing daring, she thought
sometimes. It would not have been possible to say anything like
this a few months ago.
"Don't make silly mistakes," said Nigel. "There are a
good many handsome girls who receive comparatively little
attention. But the hounds of war are let loose, when one of
your swollen American fortunes appears. The obviousness of
it `virtuously' makes me sick. It's as vulgar--as New York."
What befel next brought to Sir Nigel a shock of curious
enlightenment, but no one was more amazed than Rosy herself.
She felt, when she heard her own voice, as if she must be
rather mad.
"I would rather," she said quite distinctly, "that you did
not speak to me of New York in that way."
"What!" said Anstruthers, staring at her with contempt
which was derision.
"It is my home," she answered. "It is not proper that I
should hear it spoken of slightingly."
"Your home! It has not taken the slightest notice of you
for twelve years. Your people dropped you as if you were a
hot potato."
"They have taken me up again." Still in amazement at her own
boldness, but somehow learning something as she went on.
He walked over to her side, and stood before her.
"Look here, Rosalie," he said. "You have been taking
lessons from your sister. She is a beauty and young and you
are not. People will stand things from her they will not take
from you. I would stand some things myself, because it rather
amuses a man to see a fine girl peacocking. It's merely
ridiculous in you, and I won't stand it--not a bit of it."
It was not specially fortunate for him that the door opened
as he was speaking, and Betty came in with her own invitation
in her hand. He was quick enough, however, to turn to
greet her with a shrug of his shoulders.
"I am being favoured with a little scene by my wife," he
explained. "She is capable of getting up excellent little
scenes, but I daresay she does not show you that side of her
temper."
Betty took a comfortable chintz-covered, easy chair. Her
expression was evasively speculative.
"Was it a scene I interrupted?" she said. "Then I must
not go away and leave you to finish it. You were saying that
you would not `stand' something. What does a man do
when he will not `stand' a thing? It always sounds so final
and appalling--as if he were threatening horrible things such
as, perhaps, were a resource in feudal times. What IS the
resource in these dull days of law and order--and policemen?"
"Is this American chaff?" he was disagreeably conscious
that he was not wholly successful in his effort to be lofty.
The frankness of Betty's smile was quite without prejudice.
"Dear me, no," she said. "It is only the unpicturesque
result of an unfeminine knowledge of the law. And I was
thinking how one is limited--and yet how things are simplified
after all."
"Simplified!" disgustedly.
"Yes, really. You see, if Rosy were violent she could not
beat you--even if she were strong enough--because you could
ring the bell and give her into custody. And you could not
beat her because the same unpleasant thing would happen to
you. Policemen do rob things of colour, don't they? And
besides, when one remembers that mere vulgar law insists
that no one can be forced to live with another person who is
brutal or loathsome, that's simple, isn't it? You could go
away from Rosy," with sweet clearness, "at any moment
you wished--as far away as you liked."
"You seem to forget," still feeling that convincing loftiness was
not easy, "that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him,
it is she who is likely to be called upon to bear the onus of
public opinion."
"Would she be called upon to bear it under all circumstances?"
"Damned clever woman as you are, you know that she would,
as well as I know it." He made an abrupt gesture with his
hand. "You know that what I say is true. Women who take
to their heels are deucedly unpopular in England."
"I have not been long in England, but I have been struck
by the prevalence of a sort of constitutional British sense of
fair play among the people who really count. The Dunholms,
for instance, have it markedly. In America it is the men
who force women to take to their heels who are deucedly
unpopular. The Americans' sense of fair play is their most
English quality. It was brought over in ships by the first
colonists--like the pieces of fine solid old furniture, one even
now sees, here and there, in houses in Virginia."
"But the fact remains," said Nigel, with an unpleasant
laugh, "the fact remains, my dear girl."
"The fact that does remain," said Betty, not unpleasantly
at all, and still with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced
speculation, "is that, if a man or woman is properly ill-
treated--PROPERLY--not in any amateurish way--they reach
the point of not caring in the least--nothing matters, but that
they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing
--never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make
anything else a thing to smile at. But one could settle the
other point by experimenting. Suppose you run away from
Rosy, and then we can see if she is cut by the county."
His laugh was unpleasant again.
"So long as you are with her, she will not be cut. There
are a number of penniless young men of family in this, as
well as the adjoining, counties. Do you think Mount Dunstan
would cut her?"
She looked down at the carpet thoughtfully a moment, and
then lifted her eyes.
"I do not think so," she answered. "But I will ask him."
He was startled by a sudden feeling that she might be
capable of it.
"Oh, come now," he said, "that goes beyond a joke. You
will not do any such absurd thing. One does not want one's
domestic difficulties discussed by one's neighbours."
Betty opened coolly surprised eyes.
"I did not understand it was a personal matter," she
remarked. "Where do the domestic difficulties come in?"
He stared at her a few seconds with the look she did not
like, which was less likeable at the moment, because it combined
itself with other things.
"Hang it," he muttered. "I wish I could keep my temper as you
can keep yours," and he turned on his heel and left the room.
Rosy had not spoken. She had sat with her hands in her
lap, looking out of the window. She had at first had a moment
of terror. She had, indeed, once uttered in her soul
the abject cry: "Don't make him angry, Betty--oh, don't,
don't!" And suddenly it had been stilled, and she had
listened. This was because she realised that Nigel himself was
listening. That made her see what she had not dared to allow
herself to see before. These trite things were true. There
were laws to protect one. If Betty had not been dealing with
mere truths, Nigel would have stopped her. He
had been supercilious, but he could not contradict her.
"Betty," she said, when her sister came to her, "you said
that to show ME things, as well as to show them to him. I
knew you did, and listened to every word. It was good for
me to hear you."
"Clear-cut, unadorned facts are like bullets," said Betty.
"They reach home, if one's aim is good. The shiftiest people
cannot evade them."
. . . . .
A certain thing became evident to Betty during the time
which elapsed between the arrival of the invitations and the
great ball. Despite an obvious intention to assume an amiable
pose for the time being, Sir Nigel could not conceal a not
quite unexplainable antipathy to one individual. This
individual was Mount Dunstan, whom it did not seem easy for
him to leave alone. He seemed to recur to him as a subject,
without any special reason, and this somewhat puzzled Betty
until she heard from Rosalie of his intimacy with Lord Tenham,
which, in a measure, explained it. The whole truth
was that "The Lout," as he had been called, had indulged
in frank speech in his rare intercourse with his brother and
his friends, and had once interfered with hot young fury in
a matter in which the pair had specially wished to avoid all
interference. His open scorn of their methods of entertaining
themselves they had felt to be disgusting impudence, which
would have been deservedly punished with a horsewhip, if the
youngster had not been a big-muscled, clumsy oaf, with a
dangerous eye. Upon this footing their acquaintance had stood
in past years, and to decide--as Sir Nigel had decided--that
the oaf in question had begun to make his bid for splendid
fortune under the roof of Stornham Court itself was a thing
not to be regarded calmly. It was more than he could stand,
and the folly of temper, which was forever his undoing,
betrayed him into mistakes more than once. This girl, with
her beauty and her wealth, he chose to regard as a sort of
property rightfully his own. She was his sister-in-law, at
least;
she was living under his roof; he had more or less the power
to encourage or discourage such aspirants as appeared. Upon
the whole there was something soothing to one's vanity in
appearing before the world as the person at present responsible
for her. It gave a man a certain dignity of position, and his
chief girding at fate had always risen from the fact that he
had not had dignity of position. He would not be held cheap in
this matter, at least. But sometimes, as he looked at the girl
he turned hot and sick, as it was driven home to him that
he was no longer young, that he had never been good-looking,
and that he had cut the ground from under his feet twelve
years ago, when he had married Rosalie! If he could have
waited--if he could have done several other things--perhaps
the clever acting of a part, and his power of domination
might have given him a chance. Even that blackguard of a
Mount Dunstan had a better one now. He was young, at least,
and free--and a big strong beast. He was forced, with bitter
reluctance, to admit that he himself was not even particularly
strong--of late he had felt it hideously.
So he detested Mount Dunstan the more for increasing
reasons, as he thought the matter over. It would seem, perhaps,
but a subtle pleasure to the normal mind, but to him there was
pleasure--support--aggrandisement--in referring to the ill case
of the Mount Dunstan estate, in relating illustrative
anecdotes, in dwelling upon the hopelessness of the outlook,
and the notable unpopularity of the man himself. A
confiding young lady from the States was required, he said
on one occasion, but it would be necessary that she should be
a young person of much simplicity, who would not be alarmed
or chilled by the obvious. No one would realise this more
clearly than Mount Dunstan himself. He said it coldly and
casually, as if it were the simplest matter of fact. If the
fellow had been making himself agreeable to Betty, it was as
well that certain points should be--as it were inadvertently
--brought before her.
Miss Vanderpoel was really rather fine, people said to each
other afterwards, when she entered the ballroom at Dunholm
Castle with her brother-in-law. She bore herself as composedly
as if she had been escorted by the most admirable
and dignified of conservative relatives, instead of by a man who
was more definitely disliked and disapproved of than any other
man in the county whom decent people were likely to meet.
Yet, she was far too clever a girl not to realise the situation
clearly, they said to each other. She had arrived in England
to find her sister a neglected wreck, her fortune squandered,
and her existence stripped bare of even such things as one felt
to be the mere decencies. There was but one thing to be
deduced from the facts which had stared her in the face. But
of her deductions she had said nothing whatever, which was,
of course, remarkable in a young person. It may be mentioned
that, perhaps, there had been those who would not have been
reluctant to hear what she must have had to say, and who had
even possibly given her a delicate lead. But the lead had never
been taken. One lady had even remarked that, on her part,
she felt that a too great reserve verged upon secretiveness,
which was not a desirable girlish quality.
Of course the situation had been so much discussed that
people were naturally on the lookout for the arrival of the
Stornham party, as it was known that Sir Nigel had returned
home, and would be likely to present himself with his wife
and sister-in-law. There was not a dowager present who did
not know how and where he had reprehensibly spent the last
months. It served him quite right that the Spanish dancing
person had coolly left him in the lurch for a younger and
more attractive, as well as a richer man. If it were not for
Miss Vanderpoel, one need not pretend that one knew nothing
about the affair--in fact, if it had not been for Miss
Vanderpoel, he would not have received an invitation--and poor
Lady Anstruthers would be sitting at home, still the forlorn
little frump and invalid she had so wonderfully ceased to be
since her sister had taken her in hand. She was absolutely
growing even pretty and young, and her clothes were really
beautiful. The whole thing was amazing.
Betty, as well as Rosalie and Nigel--knew that many people
turned undisguisedly to look at them--even to watch them
as they came into the splendid ballroom. It was a splendid
ballroom and a stately one, and Lord Dunholm and Lord
Westholt shared a certain thought when they met her, which
was that hers was distinctly the proud young brilliance of
presence which figured most perfectly against its background.
Much as people wanted to look at Sir Nigel, their eyes were
drawn from him to Miss Vanderpoel. After all it was she
who made him an object of interest. One wanted to know
what she would do with him--how she would "carry him off."
How much did she know of the distaste people felt for him,
since she would not talk or encourage talk? The Dunholms
could not have invited her and her sister, and have ignored
him; but did she not guess that they would have ignored him, if
they could? and was there not natural embarrassment in feeling
forced to appear in pomp, as it were, under his escort?
But no embarrassment was perceptible. Her manner
committed her to no recognition of a shadow of a flaw in the
character of her companion. It even carried a certain conviction
with it, and the lookers-on felt the impossibility of
suggesting any such flaw by their own manner. For this evening,
at least, the man must actually be treated as if he were an
entirely unobjectionable person. It appeared as if that was
what the girl wanted, and intended should happen.
This was what Nigel himself had begun to perceive, but
he did not put it pleasantly. Deucedly clever girl as she was,
he said to himself, she saw that it would be more agreeable
to have no nonsense talked, and no ruffling of tempers. He
had always been able to convey to people that the ruffling of
his temper was a thing to be avoided, and perhaps she had
already been sharp enough to realise this was a fact to be
counted with. She was sharp enough, he said to himself, to
see anything.
The function was a superb one. The house was superb,
the rooms of entertainment were in every proportion perfect,
and were quite renowned for the beauty of the space
they offered; the people themselves were, through centuries
of dignified living, so placed that intercourse with their
kind was an easy and delightful thing. They need never doubt
either their own effect, or the effect of their hospitalities.
Sir Nigel saw about him all the people who held enviable
place in the county. Some of them he had never known, some
of them had long ceased to recall his existence. There were
those among them who lifted lorgnettes or stuck monocles into
their eyes as he passed, asking each other in politely subdued
tones who the man was who seemed to be in attendance on
Miss Vanderpoel. Nigel knew this and girded at it internally,
while he made the most of his suave smile.
The distinguished personage who was the chief guest was
to be seen at the upper end of the room talking to a tall man
with broad shoulders, who was plainly interesting him for the
moment. As the Stornham party passed on, this person, making his
bow, retired, and, as he turned towards them, Sir Nigel
recognising him, the agreeable smile was for the moment lost.
"How in the name of Heaven did Mount Dunstan come
here?" broke from him with involuntary heat.
"Would it be rash to conclude," said Betty, as she
returned the bow of a very grand old lady in black velvet
and an imposing tiara, "that he came in response to invitation?"
The very grand old lady seemed pleased to see her, and, with
a royal little sign, called her to her side. As Betty Vanderpoel
was a great success with the Mrs. Weldens and old
Dobys of village life, she was also a success among grand old
ladies. When she stood before them there was a delicate
submission in her air which was suggestive of obedience to the
dignity of their years and state. Strongly conservative and
rather feudal old persons were much pleased by this. In
the present irreverent iconoclasm of modern times, it was most
agreeable to talk to a handsome creature who was as beautifully
attentive as if she had been a specially perfect young
lady-in-waiting.
This one even patted Betty's hand a little, when she took
it. She was a great county potentate, who was known as
Lady Alanby of Dole--her house being one of the most
ancient and interesting in England.
"I am glad to see you here to-night," she said. "You are
looking very nice. But you cannot help that."
Betty asked permission to present her sister and brother-in-
law. Lady Alanby was polite to both of them, but she gave
Nigel a rather sharp glance through her gold pince-nez as
she greeted him.
"Janey and Mary," she said to the two girls nearest her,
"I daresay you will kindly change your chairs and let Lady
Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoel sit next to me."
The Ladies Jane and Mary Lithcom, who had been ordered
about by her from their infancy, obeyed with polite smiles.
They were not particularly pretty girls, and were of the
indigent noble. Jane, who had almost overlarge blue eyes,
sighed as she reseated herself a few chairs lower down.
"It does seem beastly unfair," she said in a low voice to
her sister, "that a girl such as that should be so awfully
good-looking. She ought to have a turned-up nose."
"Thank you," said Mary, "I have a turned-up nose myself,
and I've got nothing to balance it."
"Oh, I didn't mean a nice turned-up nose like yours," said
Jane; "I meant an ugly one. Of course Lady Alanby wants
her for Tommy." And her manner was not resigned.
"What she, or anyone else for that matter," disdainfully,
"could want with Tommy, I don't know," replied Mary.
"I do," answered Jane obstinately. "I played cricket with
him when I was eight, and I've liked him ever since. It is
AWFUL," in a smothered outburst, "what girls like us have to
suffer."
Lady Mary turned to look at her curiously.
"Jane," she said, "are you SUFFERING about Tommy?"
"Yes, I am. Oh, what a question to ask in a ballroom!
Do you want me to burst out crying?"
"No," sharply, "look at the Prince. Stare at that fat
woman curtsying to him. Stare and then wink your eyes."
Lady Alanby was talking about Mount Dunstan.
"Lord Dunholm has given us a lead. He is an old friend
of mine, and he has been talking to me about it. It appears
that he has been looking into things seriously. Modern as he
is, he rather tilts at injustices, in a quiet way. He has
satisfactorily convinced himself that Lord Mount Dunstan has
been suffering for the sins of the fathers--which must be
annoying."
"Is Lord Dunholm quite sure of that?" put in Sir Nigel,
with a suggestively civil air.
Old Lady Alanby gave him an unencouraging look.
"Quite," she said. "He would be likely to be before he
took any steps."
"Ah," remarked Nigel. "I knew Lord Tenham, you see."
Lady Alanby's look was more unencouraging still. She
quietly and openly put up her glass and stared. There were
times when she had not the remotest objection to being rude
to certain people.
"I am sorry to hear that," she observed. "There never was any
room for mistake about Tenham. He is not usually mentioned."
"I do not think this man would be usually mentioned, if
everything were known," said Nigel.
Then an appalling thing happened. Lady Alanby gazed
at him a few seconds, and made no reply whatever. She
dropped her glass, and turned again to talk to Betty. It was
as if she had turned her back on him, and Sir Nigel, still
wearing an amiable exterior, used internally some bad language.
"But I was a fool to speak of Tenham," he thought. "A great
fool."
A little later Miss Vanderpoel made her curtsy to the
exalted guest, and was commented upon again by those who
looked on. It was not at all unnatural that one should find
ones eyes following a girl who, representing a sort of royal
power, should have the good fortune of possessing such looks
and bearing.
Remembering his child bete noir of the long legs and square,
audacious little face, Nigel Anstruthers found himself
restraining a slight grin as he looked on at her dancing.
Partners flocked about her like bees, and Lady Alanby of Dole,
and other very grand old or middle-aged ladies all found the
evening more interesting because they could watch her.
"She is full of spirit," said Lady Alanby, "and she enjoys
herself as a girl should. It is a pleasure to look at her. I
like a girl who gets a magnificent colour and stars in her eyes
when she dances. It looks healthy and young."
It was Tommy Miss Vanderpoel was dancing with when her
ladyship said this. Tommy was her grandson and a young man
of greater rank than fortune. He was a nice, frank, heavy
youth, who loved a simple county life spent in tramping about
with guns, and in friendly hobnobbing with the neighbours, and
eating great afternoon teas with people whose jokes were easy
to understand, and who were ready to laugh if you tried a joke
yourself. He liked girls, and especially he liked Jane Lithcom,
but that was a weakness his grandmother did not at all
encourage, and, as he danced with Betty Vanderpoel, he looked
over her shoulder more than once at a pair of big, unhappy blue
eyes, whose owner sat against the wall.
Betty Vanderpoel herself was not thinking of Tommy. In
fact, during this brilliant evening she faced still further
developments of her own strange case. Certain new things were
happening to her. When she had entered the ballroom she had
known at once who the man was who stood before the royal
guest--she had known before he bowed low and withdrew. And
her recognition had brought with it a shock of joy. For a few
moments her throat felt hot and pulsing. It was true--the
things which concerned him concerned her. All that happened
to him suddenly became her affair, as if in some way they
were of the same blood. Nigel's slighting of him had
infuriated her; that Lord Dunholm had offered him friendship
and hospitality was a thing which seemed done to herself, and
filled her with gratitude and affection; that he should be at
this place, on this special occasion, swept away dark things from
his path. It was as if it were stated without words that a
conservative man of the world, who knew things as they were,
having means of reaching truths, vouched for him and placed
his dignity and firmness at his side.
And there was the gladness at the sight of him. It was an
overpoweringly strong thing. She had never known anything
like it. She had not seen him since Nigel's return, and here he
was, and she knew that her life quickened in her because they
were together in the same room. He had come to them and said
a few courteous words, but he had soon gone away. At first
she wondered if it was because of Nigel, who at the time was
making himself rather ostentatiously amiable to her. Afterwards
she saw him dancing, talking, being presented to people,
being, with a tactful easiness, taken care of by his host and
hostess, and Lord Westholt. She was struck by the graceful
magic with which this tactful ease surrounded him without any
obviousness. The Dunholms had given a lead, as Lady Alanby
had said, and the rest were following it and ignoring intervals
with reposeful readiness. It was wonderfully well done.
Apparently there had been no past at all. All began with this
large young man, who, despite his Viking type, really looked
particularly well in evening dress. Lady Alanby held him by her
chair for some time, openly enjoying her talk with him, and
calling up Tommy, that they might make friends.
After a while, Betty said to herself, he would come and ask
for a dance. But he did not come, and she danced with one
man after another. Westholt came to her several times and
had more dances than one. Why did the other not come? Several
times they whirled past each other, and when it occurred
they looked--both feeling it an accident--into each other's eyes.
The strong and strange thing--that which moves on its way
as do birth and death, and the rising and setting of the sun--
had begun to move in them. It was no new and rare thing, but
an ancient and common one--as common and ancient as death
and birth themselves; and part of the law as they are. As it
comes to royal persons to whom one makes obeisance at their
mere passing by, as it comes to scullery maids in royal kitchens,
and grooms in royal stables, as it comes to ladies-in-waiting
and the women who serve them, so it had come to these two
who had been drawn near to each other from the opposite sides
of the earth, and each started at the touch of it, and withdrew
a pace in bewilderment, and some fear.
"I wish," Mount Dunstan was feeling throughout the evening,
"that her eyes had some fault in their expression--that they drew
one less--that they drew ME less. I am losing my head."
"It would be better," Betty thought, "if I did not wish
so much that he would come and ask me to dance with him--
that he would not keep away so. He is keeping away for a
reason. Why is he doing it?"
The music swung on in lovely measures, and the dancers
swung with it. Sir Nigel walked dutifully through the Lancers
once with his wife, and once with his beautiful sister-in-law.
Lady Anstruthers, in her new bloom, had not lacked partners,
who discovered that she was a childishly light creature who
danced extremely well. Everyone was kind to her, and the very
grand old ladies, who admired Betty, were absolutely benign in
their manner. Betty's partners paid ingenuous court to her, and
Sir Nigel found he had not been mistaken in his estimate of the
dignity his position of escort and male relation gave to him.
Rosy, standing for a moment looking out on the brilliancy
and state about her, meeting Betty's eyes, laughed quiveringly.
"I am in a dream," she said.
"You have awakened from a dream," Betty answered.
From the opposite side of the room someone was coming
towards them, and, seeing him, Rosy smiled in welcome.
"I am sure Lord Mount Dunstan is coming to ask you to dance with
him," she said. "Why have you not danced with him before,
Betty?"
"He has not asked me," Betty answered. "That is the only
reason."
"Lord Dunholm and Lord Westholt called at the Mount a
few days after they met him at Stornham," Rosalie explained
in an undertone. "They wanted to know him. Then it seems
they found they liked each other. Lady Dunholm has been
telling me about it. She says Lord Dunholm thanks you,
because you said something illuminating. That was the word
she used--`illuminating.' I believe you are always illuminating,
Betty."
Mount Dunstan was certainly coming to them. How broad
his shoulders looked in his close-fitting black coat, how well
built his whole strong body was, and how steadily he held his
eyes! Here and there one sees a man or woman who is, through
some trick of fate, by nature a compelling thing unconsciously
demanding that one should submit to some domineering attraction.
One does not call it domineering, but it is so. This
special creature is charged unfairly with more than his or her
single share of force. Betty Vanderpoel thought this out as
this "other one" came to her. He did not use the ballroom
formula when he spoke to her. He said in rather a low voice:
"Will you dance with me?"
"Yes," she answered.
Lord Dunholm and his wife agreed afterwards that so noticeable
a pair had never before danced together in their ballroom.
Certainly no pair had ever been watched with quite the same
interested curiosity. Some onlookers thought it singular that
they should dance together at all, some pleased themselves by
reflecting on the fact that no other two could have represented
with such picturesqueness the opposite poles of fate and
circumstance. No one attempted to deny that they were an
extraordinarily striking-looking couple, and that one's eyes
followed them in spite of one's self.
"Taken together they produce an effect that is somehow
rather amazing," old Lady Alanby commented. "He is a
magnificently built man, you know, and she is a magnificently
built girl. Everybody should look like that. My impression
would be that Adam and Eve did, but for the fact that neither of
them had any particular character. That affair of the apple was
so silly. Eve has always struck me as being the kind of woman
who, if she lived to-day, would run up stupid bills at her
dressmakers and be afraid to tell her husband. That wonderful
black head of Miss Vanderpoel's looks very nice poised near
Mount Dunstan's dark red one."
"I am glad to be dancing with him," Betty was thinking.
"I am glad to be near him."
"Will you dance this with me to the very end," asked Mount
Dunstan--"to the very late note?"
"Yes," answered Betty.
He had spoken in a low but level voice--the kind of voice
whose tone places a man and woman alone together, and wholly
apart from all others by whomsoever they are surrounded.
There had been no preliminary speech and no explanation of
the request followed. The music was a perfect thing, the
brilliant, lofty ballroom, the beauty of colour and sound about
them, the jewels and fair faces, the warm breath of flowers
in the air, the very sense of royal presence and its accompanying
state and ceremony, seemed merely a naturally arranged
background for the strange consciousness each held close and
silently--knowing nothing of the mind of the other.
This was what was passing through the man's mind.
"This is the thing which most men experience several times during
their lives. It would be reason enough for all the great deeds
and all the crimes one hears of. It is an enormous kind of
anguish and a fearful kind of joy. It is scarcely to be borne,
and yet, at this moment, I could kill myself and her, at the
thought of losing it. If I had begun earlier, would it have
been easier? No, it would not. With me it is bound to go
hard. At twenty I should probably not have been able to keep
myself from shouting it aloud, and I should not have known that
it was only the working of the Law. `Only!' Good God,
what a fool I am! It is because it is only the Law that I cannot
escape, and must go on to the end, grinding my teeth together
because I cannot speak. Oh, her smooth young cheek!
Oh, the deep shadows of her lashes! And while we sway
round and round together, I hold her slim strong body in the
hollow of my arm."
It was, quite possibly, as he thought this that Nigel
Anstruthers, following him with his eyes as he passed, began to
frown. He had been watching the pair as others had, he had
seen what others saw, and now he had an idea that he saw
something more, and it was something which did not please him.
The instinct of the male bestirred itself--the curious instinct
of resentment against another man--any other man. And, in
this case, Mount Dunstan was not any other man, but one for
whom his antipathy was personal.
"I won't have that," he said to himself. "I won't have it."
. . . . .
The music rose and swelled, and then sank into soft breathing,
as they moved in harmony together, gliding and swirling
as they threaded their way among other couples who swirled and
glided also, some of them light and smiling, some exchanging
low-toned speech--perhaps saying words which, unheard by
others, touched on deep things. The exalted guest fell into
momentary silence as he looked on, being a man much attracted
by physical fineness and temperamental power and charm. A
girl like that would bring a great deal to a man and to the
country he belonged to. A great race might be founded on such
superbness of physique and health and beauty. Combined
with abnormal resources, certainly no more could be asked.
He expressed something of the kind to Lord Dunholm, who
stood near him in attendance.
To herself Betty was saying: "That was a strange thing
he asked me. It is curious that we say so little. I should
never know much about him. I have no intelligence where
he is concerned--only a strong, stupid feeling, which is not
like a feeling of my own. I am no longer Betty Vanderpoel--
and I wish to go on dancing with him--on and on--to the
last note, as he said."
She felt a little hot wave run over her cheek uncomfortably,
and the next instant the big arm tightened its clasp of her--
for just one second--not more than one. She did not know
that he, himself, had seen the sudden ripple of red colour,
and that the equally sudden contraction of the arm had been
as unexpected to him and as involuntary as the quick wave
itself. It had horrified and made him angry. He looked the
next instant entirely stiff and cold.
"He did not know it happened," Betty resolved.
"The music is going to stop," said Mount Dunstan. "I
know the waltz. We can get once round the room again before
the final chord. It was to be the last note--the very last,"
but he said it quite rigidly, and Betty laughed.
"Quite the last," she answered.
The music hastened a little, and their gliding whirl became
more rapid--a little faster--a little faster still--a running
sweep of notes, a big, terminating harmony, and the thing was
over.
"Thank you," said Mount Dunstan. "One will have it to
remember." And his tone was slightly sardonic.
"Yes," Betty acquiesced politely.
"Oh, not you. Only I. I have never waltzed before."
Betty turned to look at him curiously.
"Under circumstances such as these," he explained. "I
learned to dance at a particularly hideous boys' school in
France. I abhorred it. And the trend of my life has made it
quite easy for me to keep my twelve-year-old vow that I would
never dance after I left the place, unless I WANTED to do it, and
that, especially, nothing should make me waltz until certain
agreeable conditions were fulfilled. Waltzing I approved of
--out of hideous schools. I was a pig-headed, objectionable
child. I detested myself even, then."
Betty's composure returned to her.
"I am trusting," she remarked, "that I may secretly regard
myself as one of the agreeable conditions to be fulfilled. Do
not dispel my hopes roughly."
"I will not," he answered. "You are, in fact, several of them."
"One breathes with much greater freedom," she responded.
This sort of cool nonsense was safe. It dispelled feelings
of tenseness, and carried them to the place where Sir Nigel
and Lady Anstruthers awaited them. A slight stir was
beginning to be felt throughout the ballroom. The royal guest
was retiring, and soon the rest began to melt away. The
Anstruthers, who had a long return drive before them, were
among those who went first.
When Lady Anstruthers and her sister returned from the
cloak room, they found Sir Nigel standing near Mount Dunstan,
who was going also, and talking to him in an amiably
detached manner. Mount Dunstan, himself, did not look
amiable, or seem to be saying much, but Sir Nigel showed
no signs of being disturbed.
"Now that you have ceased to forswear the world," he said as his
wife approached, "I hope we shall see you at Stornham. Your
visits must not cease because we cannot offer you G. Selden any
longer."
He had his own reasons for giving the invitation--several
of them. And there was a satisfaction in letting the fellow
know, casually, that he was not in the ridiculous position of
being unaware of what had occurred during his absence--that
there had been visits--and also the objectionable episode of
the American bounder. That the episode had been objectionable,
he knew he had adroitly conveyed by mere tone and manner.
Mount Dunstan thanked him in the usual formula, and
then spoke to Betty.
"G. Selden left us tremulous and fevered with ecstatic
anticipation. He carried your kind letter to Mr. Vanderpoel,
next to his heart. His brain seemed to whirl at the thought
of what `the boys' would say, when he arrived with it in
New York. You have materialised the dream of his life!"
"I have interested my father," Betty answered, with a
brilliant smile. "He liked the romance of the Reuben S.
Vanderpoel who rewarded the saver of his life by unbounded
orders for the Delkoff."
. . . . .
As their carriage drove away, Sir Nigel bent forward to
look out of the window, and having done it, laughed a little.
"Mount Dunstan does not play the game well," he remarked.
It was annoying that neither Betty nor his wife inquired
what the game in question might be, and that his temperament
forced him into explaining without encouragement.
"He should have `stood motionless with folded arms,' or
something of the sort, and `watched her equipage until it
was out of sight.' "
"And he did not?" said Betty
"He turned on his heel as soon as the door was shut."
"People ought not to do such things," was her simple
comment. To which it seemed useless to reply.
