“Mr Laydon, are you a medium? I mean, do you often go into trances like this?”
Laydon met the dark, smiling eyes. His own were hard and clear; only his lips smiled.
“I do it professionally on first and third Mondays; but this is a free, gratis exhibition. I’m really awfully sorry.”
Mrs Thursley had her full share of curiosity.
“What on earth were you looking at?” Her eyes roved. “You looked absolutely spell-bound. Oh——”
Evelyn had turned and was facing them. She wore a gold dress that matched her hair. She wore the pearls which had been Jim Laydon’s wedding gift. She smiled with her eyes, and just moved her head in recognition.
“Hullo!” said Marcia Lane. “Evelyn and Chris over there. Elizabeth, did you see them? Tommy, prepare to be blighted. Evelyn’s over there with Chris. What’s the betting you can’t cut him out of a dance?”
Elizabeth’s gay laugh rang out. Her colour had risen. “Tommy, you can rely on me. I’ll make a dead set at Chris. He dances better than anyone else I know—yes, Tommy, he does. If he didn’t, he’d find out that we all think him rather a bore. At present, I know, he thinks we love him for himself alone; and we don’t—it’s for his dancing. Some day I shall say to him ‘Chris, darling’—that’ll be to soften the blow—‘Chris, darling, your dancing is a dream; but you, you, my poor Chris, are a washout.’ Yes,” she concluded meditatively, “I think washout is the right word, because he does so remind me of sketching.”
“My good Elizabeth!” This was Tommy.
Elizabeth waved her hands.
“Well, you know, you make a sketch; and then you wash it; and you go on washing it until the edges have gone and everything is nice and woolly. That’s what Chris reminds me of.”
“By the way,” said Marcia Lane in her abrupt way, “did I catch your name, or didn’t I? Is it Laydon?”
“Yes, it’s Laydon.”
Her curiously bright blue eyes were rather difficult to meet.
“Then are you a relation of Evelyn’s? I know her rather well, but I don’t think she’s ever mentioned you. Are you a cousin or something?”
Laydon laughed rather grimly.
“I’m something,” he said, “Miss Lane. Ask Evelyn what the exact connection is next time you see her?”
Marcia Lane looked puzzled. She had been in Spain for the winter, and had only returned twenty-four hours before; no echo of the Laydon case had reached her. But the ground under her feet felt uncertain.
“Relationships are frightfully complicated things,” she said, and turned her attention to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was enjoying herself wickedly—Jobbles on her left pink with embarrassment; Giles Mostyn and his wife agog with curiosity; Marcia suspicious; and Laydon taking the situation ironically. She was thrilled, amused, and excited.
“I know,” she said. “We’ll get Chris and Evelyn to join us. That’s Helen Temperley with them. And the back of the other man’s head is quite a nice shape. Angela, darling, he shall dance with you.”
Angela looked puzzled. Her attention was a good deal taken up with the entrée. An enthusiastic amateur cook, its composition intrigued her. She did not quite see how she was to dance with the back of anyone’s head; and besides, she had promised all her dances to Major Thursley. She said so in her placid, even voice; and Jobbles became pinker than before.
Elizabeth scribbled rapidly on a menu, held up the next course whilst she explained to a waiter exactly which table she wished her message to be taken to, and then, as Tommy said, neglected her perfectly good food in order to indulge an indecent curiosity as to just how cross Chris would look when he got it.
“Fiend!” said Elizabeth. “Fiend in more or less human shape! He won’t be cross at all; he’ll love to dance with me. Anyone would—wouldn’t they, Giles? There! He’s got it. Now let’s all watch!”
Chris Ellerslie took the menu card, turned it this way and that, frowned over it—“That,” explained Elizabeth, “is because he’s trying to disentangle my signature from the pêches Melba”—, and finally handed it to Evelyn. They saw his lips move, and the bend of Evelyn’s head.
Presently the waiter returned with the menu. Chris Ellerslie had scrawled “Delighted” across it in letters about an inch high, and Elizabeth was duly triumphant.
Marcia Lane found herself wondering about the rather silent man at her side. She thought he was watching them all. He had a quality of aloof detachment which puzzled her. He was not shy—no, certainly he was not shy, neither was he bored. On the contrary, that there was something in the people or the situation which interested him to an uncommon extent, she felt convinced. She asked him if he was a keen dancer, and at once he countered with a request for the first two dances.
Marcia said, “All right;” and then, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t dance with me if I told the truth.”
Marcia’s very blue eyes stared a little. When she looked like that they bore a certain resemblance to the round, blue, painted eyes of a cloth doll; her black cropped hair went oddly with them.
“What is the truth?”
“Promise you won’t back out.”
“I never back out.”
“Well, then—I haven’t danced for ten years.”
Marcia gasped.
“Good Lord! Where have you been?”
Laydon’s look was one of amusement. His voice had a tinge of irony.
“Farming,” he said—“just farming.”
And then Elizabeth broke in, talking to the whole table at once whilst her ice became syrup.
“It was an absolutely priceless book. I found it on an aunt’s bookshelf. I believe it was called The Art of Dress. Perfectly and absolutely priceless, my children. No, listen,—it really was. Giles, tell your wife I’ll never speak to her again if she interrupts. There was a woman in it who for thirty years had the reputation of being always well dressed. And how did she do it? Ah, you may well ask.”
“We didn’t ask,” said Barbara Mostyn with her delicate drawl.
“Tommy asks—don’t you, Tommy?—and all my really nice guests. She did it on three black velvet gowns. Yes, they were gowns—three in thirty years. After about ten years the original one descended to second best occasions like family gatherings and so on. The woman who wrote the book laid down the law like nothing you’ve ever read. You either wore black velvet, or else you had to match your hair in the day-time and your eyes at night. Think of me in black all day and changing into a nice dark brown for the evening! And oh! my angel children, what price Evelyn walking down Bond Street in a frock that matched her hair?”
“Ripping!” said Tommy Lane with conviction.
XXIII
“Is it really ten years since you danced?”
Laydon looked down at Marcia Lane in her tight, short dress. The ball-room was filling rapidly. All the women wore dresses of the same scanty type; nearly all of them had short hair. Marcia’s dress would, in colour, have satisfied the arbitrary lady quoted by Elizabeth, since it was a very bright cornflower blue, though nearly covered by a shawl of black net embroidered all over with brilliant silken flowers. In every other respect both Marcia and her dress would have shocked the poor Victorian lady past recovery. Laydon tried to remember how women were dressed in 1914. Not like this anyhow. He said,
“Yes, it’s ten years.”
“How odd!”
“Yes, isn’t it? Shall we begin?”
“But look here, you won’t know any of the dances. What did you dance?”
“Oh, one-steps, Bostons——”
“Oh, Lord!” said Marcia. “Well, if I’m for it, I’m for it. Come along.”
Before they had gone the length of the room Marcia’s spirits had risen. Modern dancing does not require much knowledge of steps, but makes unlimited demands on a sense of rhythm, poise, and balance. Laydon was holding her as only a good dancer holds his partner, with a firm lightness that pr
omised well. When they were nearly round he said,
“This is quite easy. What do you call it?”
Marcia’s suspicion flared.
“Look here, are you pulling my leg? Don’t you really know a fox-trot?”
“No—I’m pure savage.”
“Honest Injun?”
He nodded.
“Yes—really.”
Chris Ellerslie’s party was just coming in. As they passed the arch lined with mirrors, Evelyn stood there reflected, her dress a golden sheath, her neck and arms as white as pearls. Marcia threw her a nod.
“I’m back again. Yesterday.”
Laydon did not speak. He saw Chris and Evelyn melt into the sliding crowd, and lost them there.
“Where was your farm?” asked Marcia abruptly.
“A little past the back of beyond, Miss Lane. I’m really not civilized at all. I didn’t even see a newspaper or get a letter for ten years.”
Marcia showed that she was startled, and he laughed a little.
“No, it wasn’t penal servitude or a lunatic asylum; it really was a farm.”
“And now you’ve come back? Doesn’t it seem strange?”
“Yes, very strange.”
“We must all seem queer to you—different to the people you remember. Is that why you watch us?”
“Do I watch you?”
“Yes. I noticed it at once, and I wondered why. Do we seem very queer?”
“You seem different of course—all this short hair, for instance. Why do women do it?”
“Because it’s comfortable.”
“Never!”—she thought his mocking glance attractive—“Even a savage can’t believe that.”
She laughed frankly.
“Perhaps because it’s the fashion then. Is that better?”
“It sounds more probable.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, and to be quite honest, I think people begin because it’s the fashion; but they go on because it’s comfortable. I wouldn’t go back to hair for the world. But people did stare in Spain, I’ve just come back, you know.” They were standing out for a moment, and she lifted a corner of her brilliant shawl. “I brought this with me. Isn’t it lovely? I’ve got one for Evelyn when she really does make up her mind to have Chris. It’s not given out yet, is it? We were expecting it every day before I went off, I can’t think why she doesn’t take him and have done with it. You know, Elizabeth wasn’t a bit fair to Chris at dinner. Of course he is rather pleased with himself; but he’s really brilliant in his own way.”
“What way?”
“Well, his last book really did put him rather at the top of the tree. Of course Elizabeth doesn’t care for that sort of thing.”
“Doesn’t she?” said Laydon. “Shall we dance?”
His next partner was Barbara Mostyn. She was so small that Laydon looked right down on to the top of a most exquisitely shingled head of dark red hair. But when they had begun to dance she tilted her face up to him, giving him a view of a little peaked oval, tinted to a greenish white. Her eyelashes were heavily darkened, her eyebrows plucked to a single line, and her small, close lips painted a brilliant orange. She appeared to be dressed in about half a yard of flesh coloured tulle and some beads. She felt as thin and light in his arms as a child of six. She danced exquisitely. During the whole time that the music lasted she did not say a single word; only every now and then the black lashes lifted a little, and a pair of grey-green eyes looked up disturbingly.
It was when they were sitting out that Mrs Mostyn made her first remark:
“You don’t dance badly.”
“Thank you.”
“I very nearly didn’t risk it.” Here she paused, and the eyes came into play.
Laydon said nothing, and after a moment Barbara dropped her lashes and said, with her faint drawl,
“Have you forgotten how to flirt—or did you never know?”
Laydon looked at her with complete gravity.
“Which do you suppose? You are, I am sure, an expert.”
She did not speak at once. Her words at all times were few, and she never hurried over an answer. She busied herself with a small gold vanity case, from which she produced a mirror powder-puff, and lipstick. When she had accentuated the orange curve of her lips, she opened them to say—
“Am I an expert?”
“I should imagine so.”
She poised her powder-puff and murmured, “I think you could learn.”
Laydon laughed and shook his head.
“I’m much too stupid,” he declared.
Barbara Mostyn lit a cigarette, leaned back in her chair, blew a very perfect smoke ring, and said in slow languorous tones,
“Yes, you look stupid.” She blew a second ring right at him, and added, “Very,” after which she spoke no more.
It was with some relief that he claimed Elizabeth for the next dance. She began by telling him that he was really frightfully clever, and then immediately said,
“How did you get on with Barbara? She’s the best dancer in the room, and Giles is about the worst, I always give him something at the very end, so that if he does stamp all over my feet, it doesn’t so much matter. He’s a frightfully good sort. He and Barbara have only been married a month—just back from their honeymoon.”
Laydon felt a good deal of pity for Giles. Elizabeth’s gay talk flowed on:
“I hope you liked Marcia. She’s one of the very best. She’s a friend of Evelyn’s too. Oh, isn’t this a ripping floor?”
Later on, when they were sitting out, she said quite suddenly,
“Do you know, I was at school with Evelyn.”
Laydon was rather taken aback, a fact which obviously delighted her.
“I was. You needn’t look so incredulous. We’ve only met about twice since, because I was out in Egypt during the war, and I’ve only just come back to town. Yes, we were at school together. And I was the Awful Warning and she was the Good Example. You know—just like a tract.”
Laydon looked angry.
“I’m sure she wasn’t a prig. She——”
“I never said she was.”
“That’s what you meant.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“My Aunt Elizabeth, the one I’m called after, always said that the end of my tongue wanted snipping. I expect she was right. Do you really want me to talk discreetly about nothing at all? I will if you like.”
“It might be dull.”
“It would be dull—ditch-water dull. But I’ll do it if you like. I can do it beautifully. Of course,” she added, “I’d rather not. Indiscretion is really the only thing that’s the least bit interesting—isn’t it?”
Quite suddenly she allowed a softness to veil the lively mockery of her glance. Elizabeth pensive was really lovely enough to melt even the savage that Laydon had proclaimed himself.
“I’m going to be indiscreet,” she said. “Why do you just stand and look on?”
“Do I?”
“You know you do. Why do you do it? don’t you just plunge in and let yourself go?”
There was a long pause. Then he said,
“I’m sorry I seem to—watch.”
Elizabeth’s colour rose brightly.
“But I didn’t mean that at all. No, I didn’t—really. I—my tongue does want snipping, you know. I only meant——” She tripped over her own words and came to a standstill.
The sheet of ice which Laydon felt between himself and all the world thinned for a moment. Elizabeth’s warm colour, her shaken voice, her real distress, touched him humanly.
“Mrs Thursley,” he said, “please don’t. I don’t mind. Please don’t think that I do.”
“Yes, but you ought to,” said Elizabeth. “You ought to mind frightfully. That’s what I meant. You ought to mind—and you don’t.”
Laydon nodded.
“Why don’t you?”
He felt at once the impulse towards confidence and the complete impossibility of giving way to it. An
icy loneliness that sheltered behind indifference; the sense of irreparable loss, of unnatural aloofness; the dream-like quality of all the relationships over which ten empty years had passed—these were things not to be put into words. He did not resent Elizabeth’s touch; he even welcomed it. It was warm and kind; and it was meant for him, the Laydon of to-day, and not for some half-remembered shadow of long ago.
The music of the next dance blared out, racing violently from one discord to another. Laydon stood up and held out his arm. They passed into the ball-room, and came face to face with Tommy and Evelyn.
Elizabeth, still a little tremulous, broke into a flood of teasing nonsense:
“I won’t have my dance cut, Tommy—I give you fair warning—not for anyone. I’ve got a perfectly frightful bone to pick with you, and I’m going to pick it without stopping till the next dance begins. This crash-bang thing they’re playing is most appropriate. If it isn’t called the Dentists’ Drill, it ought to be.”
“None of the best dentists use drills that crash and bang. My dear girl, who do you go to?”
Tommy swept her into the circle of dancers, and Laydon found himself standing with Evelyn. He had not meant to speak to her. He certainly had not meant to dance with her; but without a word being spoken, he found himself holding her, moving with her over the smooth, polished floor. The strident strains of the best jazz band in London softened into a sudden reminiscence of a Grieg melody.
The astonishing irony of the situation brought a bitter smile to Laydon’s lips. After all the years, to hold Evelyn in his arms again, not in a lover’s embrace, but in this light, conventional clasp as he had just held Marcia—Barbara—Elizabeth! He moved with her, not in a lovers’ solitude, but in this brilliant thronging crowd under a glare of lights. The Grieg melody mocked him with its echo of streams, and trees, and birds; through it a jazz nightingale uttered a brassy, syncopated trill.
They made the round of the room once, and neither had spoken a single word. Evelyn had as little intended to dance with Laydon as Laydon had intended to dance with her. Since his return he had touched her twice. Once she had given him her hand, and he had taken it as any stranger might have taken it. Once he had caught her wrist in anger. Now his arm was about her, and memory drove the touch of it deep into her consciousness. She did not speak, because she could not speak. Her feet moved to the rhythm of the dance, and, like Laydon, she felt the glare of lights in the golden room, the noise, the intolerable pressure of all these people.
The Amazing Chance Page 17
