CHAPTER XII
When Susan’s engagement had been approved at home, and made public to any one who took an interest in it at the hotel—and by this time the society at the hotel was divided so as to point to invisible chalk-marks such as Mr. Hirst had described, the news was felt to justify some celebration—an expedition? That had been done already. A dance then. The advantage of a dance was that it abolished one of those long evenings which were apt to become tedious and lead to absurdly early hours in spite of bridge.
Two or three people standing under the erect body of the stuffed leopard in the hall very soon had the matter decided. Evelyn slid a pace or two this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was excellent. Signor Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who fiddled at weddings—fiddled so as to make a tortoise waltz; and his daughter, although endowed with eyes as black as coal-scuttles, had the same power over the piano. If there were any so sick or so surly as to prefer sedentary occupations on the night in question to spinning and watching others spin, the drawing-room and billiard-room were theirs. Hewet made it his business to conciliate the outsiders as much as possible. To Hirst’s theory of the invisible chalk-marks he would pay no attention whatever. He was treated to a snub or two, but, in reward, found obscure lonely gentlemen delighted to have this opportunity of talking to their kind, and the lady of doubtful character showed every symptom of confiding her case to him in the near future. Indeed it was made quite obvious to him that the two or three hours between dinner and bed contained an amount of unhappiness, which was really pitiable, so many people had not succeeded in making friends.
It was settled that the dance was to be on Friday, one week after the engagement, and at dinner Hewet declared himself satisfied.
“They’re all coming!” he told Hirst. “Pepper!” he called, seeing William Pepper slip past in the wake of the soup with a pamphlet beneath his arm, “We’re counting on you to open the ball.”
“You will certainly put sleep out of the question,” Pepper returned.
“You are to take the floor with Miss Allan,” Hewet continued, consulting a sheet of pencilled notes.
Pepper stopped and began a discourse upon round dances, country dances, morris dances, and quadrilles, all of which are entirely superior to the bastard waltz and spurious polka which have ousted them most unjustly in contemporary popularity—when the waiters gently pushed him on to his table in the corner.
The dining-room at this moment had a certain fantastic resemblance to a farmyard scattered with grain on which bright pigeons kept descending. Almost all the ladies wore dresses which they had not yet displayed, and their hair rose in waves and scrolls so as to appear like carved wood in Gothic churches rather than hair. The dinner was shorter and less formal than usual, even the waiters seeming to be affected with the general excitement. Ten minutes before the clock struck nine the committee made a tour through the ballroom. The hall, when emptied of its furniture, brilliantly lit, adorned with flowers whose scent tinged the air, presented a wonderful appearance of ethereal gaiety.
“It’s like a starlit sky on an absolutely cloudless night,” Hewet murmured, looking about him, at the airy empty room.
“A heavenly floor, anyhow,” Evelyn added, taking a run and sliding two or three feet along.
“What about those curtains?” asked Hirst. The crimson curtains were drawn across the long windows. “It’s a perfect night outside.”
“Yes, but curtains inspire confidence,” Miss Allan decided. “When the ball is in full swing it will be time to draw them. We might even open the windows a little.… If we do it now elderly people will imagine there are draughts.”
Her wisdom had come to be recognised, and held in respect. Meanwhile as they stood talking, the musicians were unwrapping their instruments, and the violin was repeating again and again a note struck upon the piano. Everything was ready to begin.
After a few minutes’ pause, the father, the daughter, and the son-in-law who played the horn flourished with one accord. Like the rats who followed the piper, heads instantly appeared in the doorway. There was another flourish; and then the trio dashed spontaneously into the triumphant swing of the waltz. It was as though the room were instantly flooded with water. After a moment’s hesitation first one couple, then another, leapt into mid-stream, and went round and round in the eddies. The rhythmic swish of the dancers sounded like a swirling pool. By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell of kid gloves mingled with the strong scent of flowers. The eddies seemed to circle faster and faster, until the music wrought itself into a crash, ceased, and the circles were smashed into little separate bits. The couples struck off in different directions, leaving a thin row of elderly people stuck fast to the walls, and here and there a piece of trimming or a handkerchief or a flower lay upon the floor. There was a pause, and then the music started again, the eddies whirled, the couples circled round in them, until there was a crash, and the circles were broken up into separate pieces.
When this had happened about five times, Hirst, who leant against a window-frame, like some singular gargoyle, perceived that Helen Ambrose and Rachel stood in the doorway. The crowd was such that they could not move, but he recognised them by a piece of Helen’s shoulder and a glimpse of Rachel’s head turning round. He made his way to them; they greeted him with relief.
“We are suffering the tortures of the damned,” said Helen.
“This is my idea of hell,” said Rachel.
Her eyes were bright and she looked bewildered.
Hewet and Miss Allan, who had been waltzing somewhat laboriously, paused and greeted the newcomers.
“This is nice,” said Hewet. “But where is Mr. Ambrose?”
“Pindar,” said Helen. “May a married woman who was forty in October dance? I can’t stand still.” She seemed to fade into Hewet, and they both dissolved in the crowd.
“We must follow suit,” said Hirst to Rachel, and he took her resolutely by the elbow. Rachel, without being expert, danced well, because of a good ear for rhythm, but Hirst had no taste for music, and a few dancing lessons at Cambridge had only put him into possession of the anatomy of a waltz, without imparting any of its spirit. A single turn proved to them that their methods were incompatible; instead of fitting into each other their bones seemed to jut out in angles making smooth turning an impossibility, and cutting, moreover, into the circular progress of the other dancers.
“Shall we stop?” said Hirst. Rachel gathered from his expression that he was annoyed.
They staggered to seats in the corner, from which they had a view of the room. It was still surging, in waves of blue and yellow, striped by the black evening-clothes of the gentlemen.
“An amazing spectacle,” Hirst remarked. “Do you dance much in London?” They were both breathing fast, and both a little excited, though each was determined not to show any excitement at all.
“Scarcely ever. Do you?”
“My people give a dance every Christmas.”
“This isn’t half a bad floor,” Rachel said. Hirst did not attempt to answer her platitude. He sat quite silent, staring at the dancers. After three minutes the silence became so intolerable to Rachel that she was goaded to advance another commonplace about the beauty of the night. Hirst interrupted her ruthlessly.
“Was that all nonsense what you said the other day about being a Christian and having no education?” he asked.
“It was practically true,” she replied. “But I also play the piano very well,” she said, “better, I expect than any one in this room. You are the most distinguished man in England, aren’t you?” she asked shyly.
“One of the three,” he corrected.
Helen whirling past here tossed a fan into Rachel’s lap.
“She is very beautiful,”