The House of Dreams-Come-True. Margaret Pedler
to her with increased insistence.
Broad awake at last, she opened her eyes. Someone—the senator presumably—was standing at the entrance to the little alcove, and she rushed into conscience-stricken speech.
“Oh, have I cut your dance? I’m so sorry——”
She broke off abruptly, realising as she spoke that the intruder was not, after all, the senator come to claim his dance, but a stranger wearing a black mask and domino. She was sure she had not seen him before amongst the dancers in the salle, and for a moment she stared at him bewildered and even a little frightened. Vague stories she had heard of a “hold-up” by masked men at some fancy-dress ball recalled themselves disagreeably to her memory, and her pulse quickened its beat perceptibly.
Then, quite suddenly, she knew who it was. It did not need even the evidence of that lock of poudré hair above the mask he wore, just visible in the dim light of the recess, to tell her. She knew. And with the knowledge came a sudden, disturbing sense of shy tumult.
She half-rose from the divan.
“You?” she stammered nervously. “Is it you?”
He whipped off his mask.
“Who else? Did this deceive you?”—dangling the strip of velvet from his finger, and regarding her with quizzical grey eyes. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. I’d almost made up my mind that you had gone to bed like a good little girl. And then my patron saint—or was it the special devil told off to look after me, I wonder?—prompted me to look in here. Et vous voilà, mademoiselle! How are you feeling after your exploits in the snow?”
He spoke very rapidly, in a light half-mocking tone that seemed to Joan to make the happenings of the afternoon unreal and remote. His eyes were very bright, almost defiant in their expression—holding a suggestion of recklessness, as though he were embarked upon something of which his inmost self refused to approve but which he was nevertheless determined to carry through.
“So you did ‘call to enquire,’ after all!”
As she spoke, Jean’s mouth curled up at the corners in an involuntary little smile of amused recollection.
“So I did call after all?” He looked puzzled—not unnaturally, since he had no clue to her thoughts. “What do you mean? I came”—he went on lightly—“because I wanted the rest of the day which you promised to share with me. The proceedings were cut short rather abruptly this afternoon.”
“But how did you get here?” she asked. “And—and why did you disappear so suddenly after we got back to the hotel this afternoon?”
“I got here by the aid of a pair of excellent skis and the light of the moon; the snow ceased some hours ago and the surface is hardening nicely. I disappeared because, as I told you, if you gave me this one day, it should bind you to nothing—not even to introducing me to your friends.”
“I should have had to present you as Monsieur l’Inconnu,” remarked Jean without thinking.
“Yes.” He met her glance with smiling eyes, but he did not volunteer his name.
He had made no comment, uttered no word beyond the bald affirmative, yet somehow Jean felt as though she had committed an indiscretion and he had snubbed her for it. The blood rushed into her cheeks, staining them scarlet.
“I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly.
Again that glint of ironical amusement in his eyes.
“For what, mademoiselle?”
She was conscious of a rising indignation at his attitude. She could not understand it; he seemed to have completely changed from the man of a few hours ago. Then he had proved himself so good a comrade, been so entirely delightful in his thought and care of her, whereas now he appeared bent on wilfully misunderstanding her, putting her in a false position just for his own amusement.
“You know perfectly well what I meant,” she answered, a tremor born of anger and wounded feeling in her voice. “You thought I was inquisitive—trying to find out your name——”
“Well”—humorously—“you were, weren’t you?” Then, as her lip quivered sensitively, “Ah! Forgive me for teasing you! And”—more earnestly—“forgive me for not telling you my name. It is better—much better—that you should not know. Remember, we can only have this one day together; we’re just ‘ships that pass.’ ” He paused, then added: “Mine’s only a battered old hulk—a derelict vessel—and derelicts are best forgotten.”
There was an undercurrent of deep sadness in his voice, the steadfast, submissive sadness of a man who has long ago substituted endurance for revolt.
“Remember, we can only have this one day together.” The quiet utterance of the words stung Jean into a realisation of their significance, and suddenly she was conscious that the knowledge that this unknown Englishman was going away—going out of her life as abruptly as he had come into it—filled her with a quite disproportionate sense of regret. She found herself unexpectedly up against the recognition of the fact that she would miss him—that she would like to see him again.
“Then—you want me to forget?” she asked rather wistfully.
Her eyes fell away from him as she spoke.
“Yes,” he returned gravely. “Just that. I want you to forget.”
“And—and you?” The words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.
“I? Oh”—he laughed a little—“I’m afraid I’m inconsistent. I’m going to ask you to give me something I can remember. That’ll even matters up, if you forget and I—remember.”
“What do you want me to give you?”
He made a sudden step towards her.
“I want you to dance with me—just once. Will you?”—intently.
He waited for her reply, his keen, compelling glance fixed on her face. Then, as though he read his answer there, he stepped to her side and held out his arm.
“Come,” he said.
Almost as if she were in a dream, Jean laid her hand lightly on his sleeve and he pulled aside the portière for her to pass through. Then, putting his arm about her, he swung her out on to the smooth floor of the salle.
They danced almost in silence. Somehow the customary small-change of ballroom conversation would have seemed irrelevant and apart. This dance—the Englishman had implied as much—was in the nature of a farewell. It was the end of their stolen day.
The band was playing Valse Triste, that unearthly, infinitely sad vision of Sibelius’, and the music seemed to hold all the strange, breathless ecstacy, the regret and foreboding of approaching end of which this first, and last, dance was compact.
It was over at last. The three final chords of the Valse—inexorable Death knocking at the door—dropped into silence, and with the end of the dance uprose the eager hum of gay young voices, as the couples drifted out from the salle in search of the buffet or of secluded corners in which to “sit out” the interval, according as the spirit moved them.
Jean and her partner, making their way through the throng, encountered Madame de Varigny on the arm of a handsome Bedouin Arab. For the fraction of a second her eyes rested curiously on Jean’s partner, and a gleam of something that seemed like triumph flickered across her face. But it was gone in an instant, and, murmuring some commonplace to Jean, she passed on.
“Who was that?”
The Englishman rapped out the question harshly, and Jean was struck by an unaccustomed note in his voice. It held apprehension, distaste; she could not quite analyse the quality.
“The Cleopatra, do you mean?” she said. “That was my chaperon,