Chapter IX

Dennis, Clive and the three girls motored over to the dance, and sent the car back for Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood, who were to come on later. It was a very silent drive; Doreen tremulous with anticipation; Ottilie despondent as usual. The symbolism of her costume was powerless to disguise her true Teutonic instincts—no sooner was she arrayed in helmet and shield, than Britannia immediately saw herself as Brunhilde, and this despite the Union Jack swathed around her buxom figure.

Antoinette was feverishly excited by that queer restraint that had characterised Dennis’s manner ever since his first appearance in the nursery that evening. If it was acting, she reflected, it was phenomenally bad acting—too tense and white-lipped; altogether overdone. But he had kept it up all through dinner, and he was keeping it up now, though they sat opposite each other in the car, their knees almost touching. He was not looking at her, but out of the window, and the moonlight showed up the strained set expression of his face. What lay behind it all, she wondered. When that elaborate restraint was broken down, as undoubtedly it would be during the evening, what would she find?

Dinner had been an awkward meal. Mr. Blackwood had insisted on telling Antoinette stories that made Mrs. Blackwood say reproachfully: “Oh, Daddy _dear_ ...” and that left Antoinette in doubt as to whether it were better to incur her hostess’s displeasure by laughing at them, or that of her host by pretending not to understand them....

When they had almost reached their destination, Ottilie broke the silence by saying to Dennis: “Your friend who so excellent piano plays—comes he also to ze ball?”

“I’m afraid not, Ottilie. I left him up in town this morning. Wild horses wouldn’t drag Crispin to a dance, you know.”

“_Schade_ ...” sighed Ottilie, regretting the wasted opportunities which her costume, and Crispin’s appreciation of Wagner might have offered.

When Doreen introduced Antoinette to Mrs. Ryan, that lady favoured the bacchante with a glance not unlike the one with which Grand’mère had surveyed her. Antoinette argued from this that she was looking her best, and prepared to enjoy herself. Her clinging draperies of warm reds and browns and purples, and the vine-leaves in her hair, made her look distinctive enough among the crowd of pierrettes, fairy-queens, peasants and columbines who clustered around the doorway of the drawing-room, booking up their programmes.

“I am delighted to welcome you here—Millie—Amy, this is Doreen’s friend, Miss de Courcy; will you see that she gets some partners?”

Amy, Queen of Hearts, with a golden paper crown upon a head of hair that had been vigorously treated with curling-irons, rushed up to Antoinette. “Tho glad to meet you—let me introduthe Mr. Thanderthon,” presenting a very chubby Arab, “we’ve jutht been out in the garden to thee if everthing ith all right, we’ve had flagth put on the theat in the arbour, tho we than’t thpoil our dretheth....”

Tom having booked his dance with Antoinette, she was handed on to Millie, who wore a composite “national” costume, of which the main ingredients were Dutch sabots, a black velvet bodice, a red gypsy head-dress with coins attached to it, and two straggly little yellow plaits reaching just to her shoulders. She introduced to Antoinette several men whose programmes were already full, and turned to speak to Mr. Griggs, resplendent in a hired “Charles II” costume, several sizes too large, and a very luxuriant wig. The moment he espied Antoinette, he hurried to her side, his would-be majestic gait somewhat impeded by his sword, to which he was not yet accustomed. “Miss Antoinette, I am charmed—charmed—to meet you again. The memory of Charlotte Corday still lingers in my heart, I assure you, and though this time we meet in a different guise, I trust we shall be as good friends as ever.... May I have the pleasure of the second waltz?” suddenly reverting to the business on hand.

Antoinette accorded him the pleasure of the second waltz, and he continued raptly to gaze at her. “That’s a very pretty dress you have on—worthy of its wearer, if I may say so. There’s what you might call a laissay-allay about it——”

“Mr. Griggs,” interrupted the voice of Mrs. Ryan, “would you mind seeing that Miss Holt has a supper-partner? I think she’s in the garden now—dressed as a Draught Board, you know,” she added in a confidential undertone, “we always have difficulty with her, and her people will be so offended if they see her sitting out.”

“She shall have a partner, if I have to bring her one by the scruff of his neck,” vowed the gallant Griggs, and made for the iron stairs that led down into the garden.

“Oh, and—Mr. Griggs!” his hostess recalled him, “you will see they don’t lift the girls off their feet in the third figure of the lancers, won’t you?”

“Your commands shall be obeyed, dear lady,” declared Griggs, and promptly fell down the stairs.

In the meantime Clive had dutifully booked two dances with Antoinette. Handsome in his sullen, black-browed way, he looked very effective as an Indian Chief. Lily had come as a Squaw to match him, but as she disdained the use of external aids to nature, her complexion retained its blameless European hue.

The first waltz had already been played, Antoinette had been whirled round by a perspiring Neptune, and her programme was nearly full, before Dennis made any attempt to approach her.

“Have you anything left for me?” His tone was carefully conventional. She gave him a quick amused look, but as there was no answering twinkle in his eye, assumed that he was not yet prepared to throw off the restraint that was a more effectual disguise than any of the fancy dresses could hope to be. Undoubtedly he was working up to a scene, and had quite definite notions as to how the scene should be played. It was far from her to complain. She appreciated the histrionic instinct wherever she encountered it; and she was quite capable of giving him all the support that he needed.

She answered demurely: “Yes, I think I have one or two dances to spare.”

“May I see?”—he scanned her programme—“I’m not a dancer, but perhaps you’ll sit out the lancers with me?”

“I shall be delighted,” murmured Antoinette.

Mrs. Ryan tapped Dennis’s arm with the end of her ostrich feather fan. “Naughty boy, not to have come in fancy dress.”

He smiled. “I didn’t know in time, Mrs. Ryan.”

“Didn’t you? What a pity. Of course you were on a walking tour. Cornwall or somewhere like that, wasn’t it? Did you have a pleasant time?”

“Very pleasant, thanks.”

“I’m glad ... but I thought your mother had written to tell you it was a _fancy dress_ dance?”

“I think her letter must have been lost,” he lied piously.

“Or perhaps it was you who lost it ... well, well, we must make allowances for these great composers, I suppose. Tell me if there’s anyone you’d like to be introduced to, won’t you? You know you’re quite at home here.”

Released from Mrs. Ryan’s expressions of unwonted amiability, Dennis wandered down into the garden. The trees were hung with Chinese lanterns; the paths picked out with coloured fairy-lights; on the lawn, deck-chairs awaited the couples who, between the dances, would sit there and whisper under the sighing trees. For him the whole scene was imbued with that feeling of horror and oppression which characterizes a nightmare; if he cried out, his voice would not be heard; if he attempted to run away, his limbs would refuse to obey him.... Some volition other than his own, was compelling him to act and speak as he was doing, while part of himself was being tortured, beating against prison bars ... crying out for help, for understanding to a world that would neither help nor understand, but condemn him to eternal suppression, eternal loneliness. This nightmare-sense had overlain the whole of the last dreadful fortnight since he had left Crannack. Passively he had let Crispin drag him round the Cornish coast. He had not wanted to come home just yet, and Crispin at least was restful, because he asked no questions ... no questions, even, concerning a vivid-looking brown boy, who had burst into the little hotel at Crannack, and asked to see Mr. Blackwood, and left again a few minutes later with all the light gone out of his eyes.... And Mrs. Blackwood’s letter, mentioning the dance, lay with some of her other letters in the pocket of Dennis’s tweed suit; he had read them; but the names, the dates, the local gossip she retailed, had conveyed absolutely nothing to him. It was only by chance that he had returned to-day, returned because he was tired of perpetually striving to banish from his mind a companion who asked so much, and to whom he longed to give so much, and to whom he might give—nothing.

At home, at least there would not be those long hours of silent, hard walking, dangerous hours when he had felt that he must take the next train back to Crannack.... He could only keep away, by resolutely shutting Alan out of his thoughts, admitting him but for rare seconds, precious seconds, when the danger of returning to him was minimised by the absence of such things as railway-connections. Even his imagination must be forbidden too much free play.... And all the while, he felt that he was being cruel to the boy in thus keeping him out; pleaded with him in the nights when he lay sleepless and through the days when, unheeding, he tramped along the beautiful Cornish roads: “Don’t you understand that I can’t? That I daren’t? That it isn’t because I don’t love you enough...?”

Very tiring, this eternal struggle.... He had imagined that it might be easier at home. And at home there had been Antoinette.... She fitted into the nightmare well enough; he might have expected that she would be in the very centre of it. But so far he had betrayed nothing; he had done the correct thing, asked her for a dance ... and heaven alone knew what he would say to her, when it was his turn to claim her for Number 6!

Voices reached him where he sat in the shadow of a clump of trees.

“That’s all right—I think we’re safe now. Griggs has been dogging me all the evening with a Draught Board, he can’t get rid of her at any price.” It was Neptune who spoke, and his companion, arrayed as Father Christmas, responded: “Yes, for the Lord’s sake, let’s get a quiet smoke. Griggs is the very dickens.... Always trying to introduce me to Little Bo-peep. I don’t know if there are two of her, or if I’ve been introduced twice over, or if I’m seeing double, but I don’t like either of them.”

“Awful rot, these fancy dress hops,” mused Neptune. Father Christmas gloomily assented. “My sisters rigged me up like this—there was no getting out of it.”

“Whatever am I to do with this beastly trident thing? Every time I forget it somewhere on purpose, some silly ass brings it after me and says: ‘I think you’ve lost this.’”

“Oh, just drop it here, and the crowd who call themselves Harvesters can use it as a hay-fork. I wish to goodness I could leave this ghastly beard behind too....”

They strolled off into the more secluded portions of the garden, grotesque figures moving across the background of Dennis’s nightmare.

“Denny darling, I’m having a simply lovely time—even lovelier than I knew it was going to be!” Doreen’s voice now.... The dainty little Dresden Shepherdess tripped across the lawn to where her brother sat smoking, “it’s such a pity you don’t dance, dear old thing, you do miss a lot.”

“Do I, Kid?” He smiled up at her radiant face.

She breathed “Yes ...” and young Hugh, a slim and golden-haired Black Knight from “Ivanhoe,” came and joined them.

“Doreen and I both agree that it’s top-hole, being grown-up.”

“Yes, but I’m only pretending just for to-night,” replied Doreen, “I shan’t be really grown-up till I come back from Heidelberg next year.”

“It’s rotten luck, your having to go there,” said Hugh.

“I know, but you see, I must. I’m the exchange for Ottilie. She says that girls of seventeen can go to grown-up dances over there, but being grown-up in Germany isn’t the same as being grown-up here, is it?”

“The insularity of your views is something appalling, my child,” teased Dennis.

Doreen pouted. “Well, it’s not the same, is it?” she appealed to Hugh.

“Rather not!” he concurred, his eyes resting tenderly on her; then he said to Dennis: “You and I are in luck to-night—I’ve got half the dances on the programme with Doreen, and you’re out of it altogether. The other poor chaps are having an awful thin time, trying to remember whom they’re engaged to. There are so many duplicates—half a dozen Ophelias, four Red Riding Hoods, innumerable Snow Queens, and two Queens of Sheba—I thought there’d be murder there: did you see them glare at each other when they first met?”

“I suppose each thought the other was a distorted figment of her own imagination, and was properly resentful on discovering that she wasn’t,” said Dennis.

Hugh gave his hearty, boyish laugh, and Doreen said, “I think Antoinette’s costume is one of the prettiest, don’t you, Denny?”

“And even that’s been duplicated three times over,” Hugh broke in, “rotten imitations, I grant you. As Amy says, ‘they’re all drethed in thkinth’.... I’ve booked dances with all of them—got ’em down on my programme as ‘Tiger-skin,’ ‘Bunny-skin’ and ‘Hearthrug,’ to be able to tell the difference.”

“And ‘Hearthrug’s’ father is in the fur trade,” Doreen giggled delightedly. “I heard Daddy say that she was a very bad advertisement....”

“Ah well, I daresay there wasn’t enough tiger-skin to go round,” mused Dennis, “let us not be uncharitable.”

“Let’s go across to the arbour, Doreen,” suggested the Black Knight, “I’ll carry you, because you’ll get your shoes damp.”

Doreen argued that as she had been standing on the grass all this time, her shoes were already as damp as they were ever likely to be; but Hugh, with a gallant show of mastery, picked her up in his arms and carried her across the lawn. The figure of the Black Knight and the light blur of Doreen’s dress receded from Dennis’s vision, as the sound of their mingled voices faded from his hearing.

He reflected quite dispassionately that it was odd that he should still be able to talk to the others as if he were one of them; odd that they should not divine the gulf that yawned between himself and them. But it was a strain.... He became conscious afterwards of how great the strain had been. He was alone again now, and could relax, grant himself a few moments’ respite from effort. Wearily he wondered when and how the next demand would be made upon him. He could hear voices not far off.

“Shall we stay here for a little while, Miss Millie?”

“Yes, I should like to, Mr. Griggs. I’m sure you deserve a rest after all your hard work.”

“Everything that I do in your service, is pleasure, Miss Millie.”

“Oh, Mr. Griggs....”

A very cross Little Boy Blue here interrupted the budding tête-à-tête. “I say, Griggs, can you tell me whom I’m dancing the next with? I can’t read what I’ve got on my programme.” He presented the crumpled programme to Charles II, who rallied him in debonair fashion. “Now—now—now, what’s all this? Someone’s always in trouble and coming to me for help. Can’t say I admire your calligraphy, old chap—are these the lady’s initials?” He deciphered slowly: “‘Goggle—eyes—and—flat—feet——’”

Little Boy Blue snatched away the programme: “Not there, man, not there—here!”

“Oh, _here_ ... why, that’s Miss Baumgartner, surely—Britannia—or is it the Queen of Sheba?”

“I didn’t know we’d got the next one together too,” Little Boy Blue stared reproachfully at his partner.

“We haven’t,” retorted she coldly, “I’m engaged to Neptune.”

“And Neptune’s dancing with Dolly Dickson, the other Queen of Sheba—I just saw them go in,” said Millie.

“If two people _will_ come as the same thing——” began Little Boy Blue with resentment.

“I should have thought it was easy enough to tell us apart,” said the Queen of Sheba haughtily, “her costume’s home-made and mine came from Clarkson’s.”

“Yes, that was what the other one said too ...” murmured Little Boy Blue, and evaporated into the shrubbery. Griggs palmed off the Queen of Sheba on to an unsuspecting Highwayman, who had come out to have a peaceful cigarette. Then he sank back into his chair and mopped his manly forehead.

“Poor Mr. Griggs,” cooed Millie, “how tired you must be.”

“Oh, Miss Millie, I would willingly incur far greater fatigues if only to hear you say ‘poor Mr. Griggs’ in just that tone....” He put his hand to where the hilt of his sword should have been, but finding that he had mislaid the sword, arrested the gesture half-way. “I love that costume you’re wearing. National, isn’t it?”

“Yes, national.”

The voices became inaudible for a space, then—“I don’t know very many of the steps—there are such different ways of doing it, aren’t there? But perhaps if you’ll teach me....”

“It will be a labour of love, Miss Millie.”

... Retreating footsteps and silence. Then the music, faintly audible, struck up again; but instead of the accustomed beat of waltz or two-step, came the less familiar, haunting rhythm of a tango.

“_If anyone played one of those tango-tunes that were all the rage in London before I came down here, I believe I’d weep...._”

Piercing through the stupor which, for the moment had numbed pain, came memory, keen and poignant as a rapier-thrust. Alan was before him again, looking up into his face with eager, burning eyes.

“You can stay with me a minute, boy,” Dennis whispered to him, “there’s nobody looking.... Would you like to be dancing the tango in there? I could easily introduce you to Mrs. Ryan—she’d think you a delightful acquisition.... How we could have laughed over all this together, you and I.... Are you eating your heart out in loneliness, Alan, as I am—as I am? You must go now—I—the others are coming....”

Obediently the vision faded.

The dancers were straggling out into the garden again, grouping themselves upon the lawn. Griggs picked up the trident from the ground. “What have we here? Anybody claim this valuable article? Is it yours, Madam?” offering it to the home-made Queen of Sheba, who paused, wondering perhaps if she could not use the weapon upon her rival from Clarkson’s.

“No, it’s not mine; it’s yours, isn’t it, Neptune?”

“I’ve been trying to lose it all the evening,” he groaned, “can’t you raffle it or use it as a tooth-pick or a toasting-fork? I don’t care what you do with the damn thing!”

Mrs. Ryan’s opulent aigrette appeared upon the balcony.

“Not catching cold, any of you, I hope?” ... and in answer to the chorus of: “Oh, no, Mrs. Ryan....” “It’s lovely out here....” “The garden looks ripping....” “It’s such a perfect evening ...” the hostess nodded benignly. “That’s right. I like to see you all enjoying yourselves—Oh, what is it, Susan?” She turned to Mrs. Blackwood’s faithful retainer who had been lent to her for the occasion, and who had come out on to the balcony to speak to her.

“Please, M’m, it’s the freezing-salt,” Susan announced in sepulchral tones.

“Well, what about it?”

“It’s got into the strawberry ice, M’m.”

“Dear me, how very careless. What can we do?”

“We can’t do anything, M’m, the ices’ll just have to taste salt, only I thought I’d better tell you.”

Susan withdrew and there was a burst of laughter from the group on the lawn.

“Never mind, Mrs. Ryan, they’ll be cold even if they are salt,” cried Tom Sanderson.

“Some people like them better that way—more piquant,” from Hugh.

“Yeth, quite a novelty, ithn’t it?” from Amy.

“Yes, rather ...” from the chorus.

Mrs. Ryan was very distressed. “You’re dear, sweet children to take it like that, still there are plenty of other good things for you, so you won’t starve.... Now, have you all got your partners for the lancers?”

Dennis waited till the group on the lawn had re-assorted itself and paired off into different combinations of incongruity; then, as the last couple disappeared into the house, he went across to fetch his partner.

Father Christmas, with whom she had just been dancing, was taking his leave of her, and as Dennis appeared at the foot of the steps, his father, together with Mr. Ryan and Dr. Clavering, came out on to the balcony.

“Here’s Romeo come to fetch his Juliet,” Mr. Blackwood jovially apostrophised his son, “lucky young dog—I wish I were your age!” with an appreciative glance at Antoinette.

“Yes, that’s all very well—all very well when you’re young”—Mr. Ryan was a stout little red-faced man with a wheezy voice—“but I can’t understand this preference for sitting about in the damp, with next to nothing on. It would kill me!”

The doctor smiled and Mr. Blackwood guffawed. “It wouldn’t kill me, but then perhaps I’ve got a stronger constitution, eh, Doctor?” He threw out his chest and positively winked at Antoinette.

“You needn’t boast,” snapped Mr. Ryan, “your gout is as bad as mine any day, isn’t it, Clavering?”

“There’s not a pin to choose between you,” declared the doctor, a twinkle in his humorous grey eyes. He was clean-shaven and soldierly in appearance; a very pleasant type to look upon. Young Hugh could be glad if he resembled his father in twenty years’ time.

Mr. Blackwood began again: “That boy of yours, Doctor, and my little girl ... hitting it off very well, eh? Haven’t seen the young rascals all the evening....”

“One is only young once,” smiled Clavering.

“... Trio of dear old gentlemen,” murmured Dennis, as he and Antoinette walked across the lawn. The “trio of dear old gentlemen,” after a little more facetious banter, and digging of each other in the ribs, returned to their game of cards.

In silence they entered the arbour. Dennis swept aside the flags with which the seats were draped. “I don’t like the patriotic decorations in conjunction with your costume.”

She laughed with easy response to his mood. “Isn’t it rather a waste of Amy’s forethought?”

He did not answer, and she wondered, not without a trace of impatience, when at last he was going to throw aside his pose. Antoinette herself was feverishly strung-up; every nerve in her craving the relief of some violent scene, some violent emotion. The whole dance, dull enough in itself from her point of view, was but a preliminary, an accompaniment, a working-up to this moment.

Still he sat silent; and at last, unable any longer to bear the strain, she took the initiative. “You have quite a genius for making dramatic entrances, just in the nick of time, when everybody has given you up for lost. Your arrival at Amberhurst was good enough, but to-day was more effective still.”

He said: “Amberhurst—yes, I remember. They were hoping I’d play for the theatricals, and I wouldn’t. It’s a pity that anticlimax seems inevitably to succeed what you call my dramatic entrances.”

“You shouldn’t let it, then!” she cried, “surely it’s in your power to prevent it.”

“Not always.”

She became aware then, of the utter weariness of his tone, the weariness of his deep-set brown eyes. It seemed incredible that this was the man who had written her those wonderful letters. Where was the promised continuation of the long, intimate talks that had been started in them? Where was his anticipated delight at seeing her again? Had he ever really told her about himself and Eric Rubenstein? Taken for granted her understanding of all his moods? Said to her: “I want you here beside me in my dream-place....”

Well, she was beside him now, and there was nothing wrong with the place—stars twinkling in a pale blueish sky, wind rustling faintly in the trees, and swaying the Chinese lanterns to and fro—but he made no attempt to break the oppressive silence, or in any way to shatter that impalpable barrier which seemed to have arisen between them. Curiously, critically almost, she watched him, as she leant back in her corner of the arbour, and smoked her cigarette.

... And to him also the silence was becoming oppressive. He had not found, in talking to the other figures in the nightmare, the same appalling difficulty as he found in trying to talk to Antoinette. The soft light of the lantern, swinging from the roof of the arbour, fell upon the slim, lithe curves of her body; on the white throat and shoulders above the wine-coloured draperies; on the flushed face and hair tumbled to a riotous mass of curls. The face and hair and body of a bacchante, indeed.

He was fully aware of her decorative value; admitted it at every point; but of the appeal which she might once have made to his senses, nothing remained. Alan, with his virile personality, had blotted out for Dennis the fainter magic of Antoinette, so that he could no longer perceive it—or if he did perceive it, then but dimly, remotely, as something not felt at all, but just seen through a misty glass. He had wondered once—it seemed a very long time ago, now—if Antoinette were not the one girl in a thousand, in a million, with whom he could find happiness and rest from the ceaseless internal wars of his own nature. And while he had still been doubting, wondering, playing with the idea, writing letters to a girl of his dreams, Alan had come....

Yet he knew that he owed her some explanation; that she expected one of him. But what was he to tell her? What could he tell her? The truth...? He suddenly felt a mad desire to tell her the truth. Groping back to his first impression of her at Amberhurst, he was still convinced that she would understand. She too, or so it had seemed to him, was different from other girls, just as he—And it would be just a little less lonely, if he could tell her....

The strains of the “Chocolate Soldier” lancers floated out to them with bursts of clapping and laughter between the figures. Antoinette sat listening with concentrated attention to the music. The fourth figure was nearly over now; soon the dancers would come swarming into the garden, encroaching upon their solitude, which might have been such a thing of wonder ... and had merely been a thing of emptiness. She resented the waste of the good moment, of the good setting—of herself....

Dennis seemed suddenly to awaken from his stupor. He said, “I’m sorry—about anticlimaxes, but believe me, they’re not my fault. They happen—just happen—like everything else in this world that’s crazy and cussed and without rhyme and reason. I——”

But already the dancers were pouring down the stairs into the garden, and the voice of Britannia, deep and lugubrious, uprose upon the still night air. She was addressing a Pierrot, whom Griggs had jockeyed into asking her for the supper-dance, not knowing that Little Boy Blue, in self-defence against the joint Queens of Sheba, had previously engaged her for it. “Ach, no, I cannot. I have got von man already, and zey say I must not have more zan von ...” as regretfully she refused the second offer. “Ach, to zis England shall I never myself accustom....”

“Poor Ottilie,” murmured Dennis, “it’s a hard life.” He was secretly relieved at the diversion that had checked the confession on his lips. After all, it would have been a great mistake to tell her—he must have been crazy even to have contemplated it. He must guard against these incalculable impulses in future. For the present he was safe, thanks to Ottilie.

“They might have let her have her Pierrot as well—what would it have hurt?”

But Antoinette made no answer. She was possessed by a dull fury, her nerves strained to snapping-point.

He had cheated her of a sensation.