Lady Gresson was late. Lady Gresson was always late; she arrived everywhere in a state of frantic haste and rasped temper, declaring that she could not imagine what had delayed her, and blaming Monica, a clock, her car, or the long-suffering Sir Joseph. She came in now, thin, worried, flushed, with a collar of diamonds high about her lean throat, and Monica just behind her, rather sulky in the pale blue which was supposed to flatter her eyes.
Mitchell Dane’s nostrils twitched very slightly. He was thinking that he would have thrown his money into the sea or left it to a cat’s home before he would have taken Monica for his heiress, if she had happened to be Monica Dane.
Martin Fossetter came in with the Gressons. Behind them, Jack Renton and Joyce Langham, and Tim, the other Renton boy, with Chloe. Mitchell Dane’s appraising glance rested on her intently. He noted her entrance; the manner of it; her air and carriage. This was no little work-girl tricked out in a shining dress, but Miss Chloe Dane who came into the great ball-room as if it belonged to her. She was speaking as she came in—speaking and smiling. Tim Renton was asking her for a dance, and next moment she put her hand on his arm and they slipped into the crowd of dancers. Mitchell Dane turned and watched them as they came round the room towards him.
Chloe dancing was Chloe at her best; and Chloe dancing in her silver dress was a sight that might have brought softness into any man’s eyes. Mitchell Dane’s glance did not soften, but it improved. She passed quite close to him, and he heard her pretty laugh. Seen like that, Chloe was more than pretty; she was radiant. Her eyes shone, and the brilliant colour rose to her cheeks, that colour which nature gives so rarely, and which seems to have a life of its own—the expression of youth, warmth, and joy. To-night Chloe carried with her that atmosphere of colour, joy, and youth; it made a radiance about her, and gave her beauty. The light in her eyes, the spring in her step, the lift of her head, and that geranium flush—these filled the eye and rejoiced it.
Mitchell Dane stood quite still by his archway for the next half hour. He watched Chloe dance with Martin Fossetter, and with a young man whose gloomily ferocious expression advertised a hopeless passion.
Chloe always found it difficult to decide whether it was better to refuse to dance with Bernard Austin, and to feel that he was glaring at her from a doorway, or to dance with him and be glared at at close range. In either case Maxton talked—and Chloe usually lost her temper. To-night her mood was kind enough to attempt the impossible. She smiled at Bernard as she had not smiled at him for many a long month.
“If I’m so frightfully happy,” she said. “Bernard, do be a dear and cheer up. I’m a person in a fairy tale—Cinderella, or the goose-girl who turned into a princess,—and I simply can’t do with people being gloomy. You see, this isn’t Maxton at all; it’s the country East of the Sun and West of the Moon; and we’re dancing in a particularly thrilling fairy story that I don’t know the end of.”
Bernard stared at her.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t know myself,” said Chloe. “It wouldn’t be half so exciting if I did. Perhaps my silver dress will turn into a holland overall or some other up-to-date equivalent of Cinderella’s rags; or perhaps a hippogriff will come sailing into the hall when the clock strikes twelve, and carry me off no one knows where; or perhaps the Youngest Son—it’s always the Youngest Son in fairy stories—will step suddenly out from behind one of those pillars and vanish me away with a Cloak of Darkness thrown round us both.”
“What on earth’s a hippogriff?” said Bernard.
Chloe looked shocked.
“What an utterly neglected education you’ve had! And you a schoolmaster, too! It’s a horse with wings of course. Bernard, wouldn’t it be topping if it did come sailing in—the hippogriff I mean. I do adore riding; and a horse with wings—just think of it!”
“I think you’re talking nonsense,” said Bernard gloomily.
Chloe sighed. It was Bernard’s utter inability to talk nonsense which made him so hopeless as a suitor. “Fancy living with a person you had to talk sense to all day long!” she once said to Rose. “I shall write a Moral Tract about it, and call it, ‘Why Women Grow Old.’” She sighed, and said in a little voice:
“Of course I am talking nonsense—I always do when I’m happy.”
Bernard looked loftily disapproving, missed his step, and trod on one of the silver slippers.
“Ouf!” said Chloe. “Don’t do that! Bernard, I’ll never dance with you again if you spoil my shoes—there’s a real, solid, practical fact for them instead of the nonsense you disapprove of.”
“I want to talk sense,” said Bernard.
A look that Chloe dreaded came into his eye—the look, not so much ardent as obstinate, which indicated that he was about to rush once more upon his fate.
“I want to talk about you. Chloe, I must have it out with you. You went away in the middle last time, you know; and I never seem to see you alone now.”
Chloe’s chin went up; her eyes warned him.
“Do you call this being alone with me?” she said. “Bernard, if you dare to propose to me with eight hundred people looking on, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
Bernard relapsed into silence and inspissated gloom.
Chloe’s dance with Martin Fossetter left her with a vague feeling of disappointment. He was charming, courteous, the ideal partner as far as dancing went; but all, as it were, from a distance.
“He might be doing a duty dance with Lady Gresson,” was Chloe’s unspoken thought. The dark eyes hardly rested upon her, or when they did, betrayed no interest. Chloe in her silver frock might just as well have been the stout Miss Jones with her red hair and the pink ostrich feather trimming sewn by Chloe’s own fingers upon the garment which she declared had been copied from old Mrs. Duffy’s pink flannelette nightgown.
Mr. Fossetter’s talk touched lightly upon the surface of things in general. The warm sympathy that had tinged his voice the other day was absent from it now. Even whilst he danced with Chloe his eyes followed Monica Gresson round the room, and when the dance was over he rejoined her with alacrity.
It was at this moment that Lady Gresson touched Chloe on the arm.
“Here is some one who wishes to make your acquaintance, my dear—your—your cousin, Mr. Mitchell Dane.”
Chloe looked up; she had to look up a long way, because Mitchell Dane was so very tall. She saw him standing there before her, very tall and very thin, an old man with a face that puzzled her because it reminded her of something, she did not quite know what. She thought of a splinter of ice, of a fine steel thread, and of grey snow-clouds. These three images came into her mind and brought with them a chill. Her colour changed a little. It was as if, coming out of a warm and lighted room, she had met the stab of the east wind. All this in just the second when their eyes met. Cold—that was the key-note of the impression. She thought he looked as if he had never been warm in his life: eyes a faint, icy blue; lips just a pale line.
“I’m afraid I do not dance,” he said. “Can you bear to sit out whilst other people are dancing?”
Chloe smiled at him. It was rather an extra nice smile, because she felt sorry for anyone who looked all frozen up like that—this was Chloe’s own way of putting it.
“I should like to talk to you for a little, if I may,” said Mitchell Dane.
They went up into the gallery. From where she sat Chloe could see the swing and movement of the dance, the light and colour below. Mitchell Dane sat with his back to the room and his eyes on Chloe.
“Do you remember Danesborough?” he asked; and Chloe answered:
“Oh, yes. I was nine years old, you know; I can remember things that happened when I was four.”
“It’s sometimes a mistake to remember too much,” said Mitchell Dane. “Half the people in the world make their own troubles by forgetting what th
ey ought to remember; and then they keep ’em alive by remembering what they ought to forget.”
“Ought I to forget Danesborough? It doesn’t make me discontented, you know. It’s like a nice secret that I can take out and look at.”
“You liked Danesborough then? You remember it pleasantly? All the secrets that people take out and look at when they are alone are not pleasant ones, you know.”
Chloe felt as if he had touched her with a cold finger. She was sorry for him, because she thought he must be very lonely. She was interested too, and a little excited.
“You liked Danesborough then?” he repeated.
“I loved it,” said Chloe. Her voice was warm with memory.
“What did you love? Tell me a little about it. You see I’m interested because I live there—you know that, I suppose.”
“Yes—oh, yes—Monica Gresson told me.”
“Well, what did you love at Danesborough?”
“I think everything. It’s being so big—that was one thing. I could get right away from everyone and play hide-and-seek. And I did love the horses, and the dogs, and all the creatures.”
“Creatures?”
“Birds, and squirrels,” said Chloe nodding, “and fish in the ponds—everything except the hens. I don’t think I could ever love a hen; they’re so stupid, and hot, and feathery.”
“Would you like to go back to Danesborough?” said Mitchell Dane. He looked very directly at Chloe as he spoke, and saw her colour brighten, “You can if you like,” he added without waiting for her to speak.
The brilliant colour faded. Chloe’s hand tightened on the arm of her chair. Her eyes never left Mitchell Dane’s face.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Something quite simple. I can put it into quite a few words, I think. I have a great deal of money. I have Danesborough. And—I have no relations except yourself. I think that states the facts correctly.”
“Are you a relation?” said Chloe; and then wondered whether she had been rude.
Mitchell Dane actually smiled.
“Well,” he said, “the relationship is certainly a distant one. I couldn’t tell you just where my great-great-grandfather left the family tree and started a family on his own account; but we needn’t bother about that, I think. Danesborough and the name make better links than any half-forgotten pedigree. I don’t know if you understood what I meant just now when I said that you could come back to Danesborough if you liked. I am asking you to come back to Danesborough.”
A sensation of terror passed over Chloe. It did not enter her consciousness, but it passed like a cold breath and was gone. Some reflection of it showed in her eyes, for Mitchell Dane saw it there.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “I am proposing to adopt you, and to make you my heiress. I want the place to go with the name, and you’re the last of the old stock. I’m not counting the Australian Danes; they’d never make roots here now. And I have a curious desire to found a family.”
Chloe sat bolt upright. Her colour was all gone, but her eyes were steady. In a voice that was just over a whisper she said, “I don’t know you—I don’t know you at all.”
He nodded approvingly.
“No, that’s quite true. You don’t know me; but you can get to know me. There’ll have to be beginnings. As a beginning, perhaps you will pay me a visit with Miss Gresson. My secretary is married, and his wife, Mrs. Wroughton, is good enough to do the honours for me. Will you come?”
Chloe did not speak at once. Then suddenly the words came—quite simple words:
“It’s so big, Mr. Dane! I’m frightened. I’m not ungrateful, but it’s all—” She broke off.
Her hand fell from the arm of the chair and brushed against the silver of her skirt. At the touch the colour sprang into her cheeks. She caught a silver fold and held it out.
“You—you gave me this. I knew it wasn’t Lady Gresson, really. People can’t suddenly do things like that. It was you. It was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was I. Perhaps you will not be offended if I explain a little. I wanted to see you. Well, I could have called on you in Maxton, or Lady Gresson could have asked me to meet you at Ranbourne. I wanted more than that: I wanted to see you in the sort of setting which Danesborough would give you; and I wanted to do this without committing myself. To be quite frank, I might have found you quite unsuited to my purpose. Well, if that had been the case, you would have been none the wiser; you would have had your frock and the ball, and there would have been no hurt feelings. I should have gone away and left my money to one of the many admirable institutions which are continually asking me for subscriptions.” After a little pause he continued: “Will you come and spend a week at Danesborough? I daresay Lady Gresson and her daughter could be persuaded to come too. You need not make any decision just yet. Caution is a virtue which I very much approve; my experiences have taught me that most men, and all women, would be the better for a little more of it.”
He rose as he spoke, and Chloe got up too. She found that she was trembling a little.
“I work,” she said. “I’m not free to pay visits—you know that.”
“Would you like to come? I think it could be arranged very easily.”
Chloe did not know whether she could say truthfully that she would like to come. She felt an unreasoning desire to run away. She felt as if she were really Cinderella, and as if the shining dress which had made her so happy had turned to rags; she wanted to take it off and never see it again. And all the time her conscience told her how ungrateful it was to have such thoughts as these. She walked silently down the gallery stairs, and was sad for her vanished fairy tale.
Chapter VIII
Chloe danced again with Tim Renton, a cheerful youth with a free tongue and a good conceit of himself.
“What’s happened to you?” he said. “No chit-chat, no light and airy badinage—in fact, no anything! Make a remark about the weather, there’s a good soul, or the whole of Maxton will say that I’ve proposed to you and been turned down. I should hate that.”
“Which part of it?”
Tim Renton grinned.
“Being turned down, of course. What on earth did the old buffer who looks as if he’d just come out of cold storage say or do to cast such a horrid blight?”
“I’m not in the least blighted,” said Chloe.
“Well, you look it. Did he say, ‘Fly with me, and with all my worldly millions I will thee endow,’ or words to that effect?”
Chloe tried to look very severe.
“Tim, you haven’t any manners at all. I don’t know why I dance with you.”
“I expect it’s because I’m so beautiful,” said Tim. He had the kind of ugly, flat face that goes with green eyes, freckles, and a grin.
Chloe laughed, and felt more cheerful.
“If he was proposing that you should fly with him, I wouldn’t go—I don’t believe even the millions would make it worth while. Lady Gresson says he is going to adopt you; but, personally, I should hate to be adopted by a sort of survival from the ice age. Now you go right ahead and tell me just what kind of a neck I’ve got to butt in on your affairs. You’ll do it awfully well, and I shan’t mind a bit, so we’ll both be quite happy. Your lead, partner!”
The bright, angry colour ran up into Chloe’s cheeks.
“How dare Lady Gresson go about talking like that! It’s not her business. I should think Mr. Dane would be furious.” Then, with a sudden change of manner, “Tim, why did you say that?”
“Say what?”
“You know—about Mr. Dane. If he did want to adopt me, why shouldn’t I say ‘Yes’?”
For once in his life Tim Renton looked serious. The ugly face showed a promise of strength and sense.
“I don’t know. I was chaffing.”
“But you meant something.”
“I don’t know what I meant. At least—”
“Tell me!” said Chloe imperiously.
“My dear girl, there’s nothing to tell. I like you; and I don’t like him—that’s all.”
The words kept coming back to Chloe then and later. As nearly as possible they defined the definable. There are people you like, and people you don’t like. You don’t always know why you like people; and you don’t always know why you dislike them.”
Chloe did not let her other partners find her silent; but the bloom had gone from the evening. She did not dance again with Martin Fossetter. Of course, as Chloe put it quite firmly to herself, she did not care in the very, very least whether Martin Fossetter asked her to dance with him or not. It vexed her to think how intimately she had talked to him that afternoon at Ranbourne; and of course it would have been pleasant to have had the opportunity of snubbing him a little. She had, in point of fact, made up her mind to be very distant to Mr. Fossetter, and it was annoying not to have been able to put this good resolution to the proof.
Towards the end of the evening Bernard Austin succeeded in producing his rather well-worn proposal.
“You can’t say there are eight hundred people looking on now, Chloe, and I must have it out with you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Chloe crossly. “It’s not the slightest use. I can’t think why you want to when you know it isn’t the slightest use.”
Chloe had been sitting out an interval with Jack Renton. She made a movement to rise, but Bernard dropped into the empty chair beside her.
“It’s this way,” he began. “You say it’s no good; but as long as I go on seeing you I have the feeling that in the end you’ll listen to me. Why shouldn’t you? I’m making enough to give you a comfortable home; and a schoolmaster like a doctor—he’s bound to get married. Indeed he’s much more bound to get married than a doctor is. As a matter of fact, and quite apart from being in love with you, I’m bound to get married.” He brought an acquisitive gaze to bear upon Chloe and said firmly, “I need a wife.”
The Black Cabinet Page 4
