Classic Works from Women Writers

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  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 midstream, 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 anyone 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,” Hirst remarked.

  They were again silent. Rachel was wondering whether he thought her also nice-looking; St. John was considering the immense difficulty of talking to girls who had no experience of life. Rachel had obviously never thought or felt or seen anything, and she might be intelligent or she might be just like all the rest. But Hewet’s taunt rankled in his mind—“you don’t know how to get on with women,” and he was determined to profit by this opportunity. Her evening-clothes bestowed on her just that degree of unreality and distinction which made it romantic to speak to her, and stirred a desire to talk, which irritated him because he did not know how to begin. He glanced at her, and she seemed to him very remote and inexplicable, very young and chaste. He drew a sigh, and began.

  “About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?”

  “I haven’t read many classics,” Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed by his jaunty and rather unnatural manner, while his masculine acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.

  “D’you mean to tell me you’ve reached the age of twenty-four without reading Gibbon?” he demanded.

  “Yes, I have,” she answered.

  “Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. “You must begin tomorrow. I shall send you my copy. What I want to know is—” he looked at her critically. “You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you? Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.”

  Rachel looked at him but said nothing.

  “About Gibbon,” he continued. “D’you think you’ll be able to appreciate him? He’s the test, of course. It’s awfully difficult to tell about women,” he continued, “how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how much is native incapacity. I don�
�t see myself why you shouldn’t understand—only I suppose you’ve led an absurd life until now—you’ve just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.”

  The music was again beginning. Hirst’s eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.

  “I’d like awfully to lend you books,” he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat. “We shall meet again. I’m going to leave you now.”

  He got up and left her.

  Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears of rage.

  “Damn that man!” she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen’s words. “Damn his insolence!”

  She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.

  “There are trees,” she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst? She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women—a form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its blackness.

  “Miss Vinrace, is it?” said Hewet, peering at her. “You were dancing with Hirst?”

  “He’s made me furious!” she cried vehemently. “No one’s any right to be insolent!”

  “Insolent?” Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in surprise. “Hirst—insolent?”

  “It’s insolent to—” said Rachel, and stopped. She did not know exactly why she had been made so angry. With a great effort she pulled herself together.

  “Oh, well,” she added, the vision of Helen and her mockery before her, “I dare say I’m a fool.” She made as though she were going back into the ballroom, but Hewet stopped her.

  “Please explain to me,” he said. “I feel sure Hirst didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  When Rachel tried to explain, she found it very difficult. She could not say that she found the vision of herself walking in a crocodile with her hair down her back peculiarly unjust and horrible, nor could she explain why Hirst’s assumption of the superiority of his nature and experience had seemed to her not only galling but terrible—as if a gate had clanged in her face. Pacing up and down the terrace beside Hewet she said bitterly:

  “It’s no good; we should live separate; we cannot understand each other; we only bring out what’s worst.”

  Hewet brushed aside her generalisation as to the natures of the two sexes, for such generalisations bored him and seemed to him generally untrue. But, knowing Hirst, he guessed fairly accurately what had happened, and, though secretly much amused, was determined that Rachel should not store the incident away in her mind to take its place in the view she had of life.

  “Now you’ll hate him,” he said, “which is wrong. Poor old Hirst—he can’t help his method. And really, Miss Vinrace, he was doing his best; he was paying you a compliment—he was trying—he was trying—” he could not finish for the laughter that overcame him.

  Rachel veered round suddenly and laughed out too. She saw that there was something ridiculous about Hirst, and perhaps about herself.

  “It’s his way of making friends, I suppose,” she laughed. “Well—I shall do my part. I shall begin—‘Ugly in body, repulsive in mind as you are, Mr. Hirst—’ ”

  “Hear, hear!” cried Hewet. “That’s the way to treat him. You see, Miss Vinrace, you must make allowances for Hirst. He’s lived all his life in front of a looking-glass, so to speak, in a beautiful panelled room, hung with Japanese prints and lovely old chairs and tables, just one splash of colour, you know, in the right place—between the windows I think it is—and there he sits hour after hour with his toes on the fender, talking about philosophy and God and his liver and his heart and the hearts of his friends. They’re all broken. You can’t expect him to be at his best in a ballroom. He wants a cosy, smoky, masculine place, where he can stretch his legs out, and only speak when he’s got something to say. For myself, I find it rather dreary. But I do respect it. They’re all so much in earnest. They do take the serious things very seriously.”

  The description of Hirst’s way of life interested Rachel so much that she almost forgot her private grudge against him, and her respect revived.

  “They are really very clever then?” she asked.

  “Of course they are. So far as brains go I think it’s true what he said the other day; they’re the cleverest people in England. But—you ought to take him in hand,” he added. “There’s a great deal more in him than’s ever been got at. He wants someone to laugh at him … The idea of Hirst telling you that you’ve had no experiences! Poor old Hirst!”

  They had been pacing up and down the terrace while they talked, and now one by one the dark windows were uncurtained by an invisible hand, and panes of light fell regularly at equal intervals upon the grass. They stopped to look in at the drawing-room, and perceived Mr. Pepper writing alone at a table.

  “There’s Pepper writing to his aunt,” said Hewet. “She must be a very remarkable old lady, eighty-five he tells me, and he takes her for walking tours in the New Forest … Pepper!” he cried, rapping on the window. “Go and do your duty. Miss Allan expects you.”

  When they came to the windows of the ballroom, the swing of the dancers and the lilt of the music was irresistible.

  “Shall we?” said Hewet, and they clasped hands and swept off magnificently into the great swirling pool. Although this was only the second time they had met, the first time they had seen a man and woman kissing each other, and the second time Mr. Hewet had found that a young woman angry is very like a child. So that when they joined hands in the dance they felt more at their ease than is usual.

  It was midnight and the dance was now at its height. Servants were peeping in at the windows; the garden was sprinkled with the white shapes of couples sitting out. Mrs. Thornbury and Mrs. Elliot sat side by side under a palm tree, holding fans, handkerchiefs, and brooches deposited in their laps by flushed maidens. Occasionally they exchanged comments.

  “Miss Warrington does look happy,” said Mrs. Elliot; they both smiled; they both sighed.

  “He has a great deal of character,” said Mrs. Thornbury, alluding to Arthur.

  “And character is what one wants,” said Mrs. Elliot. “Now that young man is clever enough,” she added, nodding at Hirst, who came past with Miss Allan on his arm.

  “He does not look strong,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “His complexion is not good. Shall I tear it off?” she asked, for Rachel had stopped, conscious of a long strip trailing behind her.

  “I hope you are enjoying yourselves?” Hewet asked the ladies.

  “This is a very familiar position for me!” smiled Mrs. Thornbury. “I have brought out five daughters—and they all loved dancing! You love it too, Miss Vinrace?” she asked, looking at Rachel with maternal eyes. “I know I did when I was your age. How I used to beg my mother to let me stay—and now I sympathise with the poor mothers—but I sympathise with the daughters too!”

  She smiled sympathetically, and at the same time rather keenly, at Rachel.

  “They seem to find a great deal to say to each other,” said Mrs. Elliot, looking significantly at the backs of the couple as they turned away. “Did you notice at the picnic? He was the only person who could make her utter.”

  “Her father is a very interesting man,” said Mrs. Thornbury. “He has one of the largest shipping businesses in Hull. He made a very able reply, you remember, to Mr. Asquith at the last el
ection. It is so interesting to find that a man of his experience is a strong Protectionist.”

  She would have liked to discuss politics, which interested her more than personalities, but Mrs. Elliot would only talk about the Empire in a less abstract form.

  “I hear there are dreadful accounts from England about the rats,” she said. “A sister-in-law, who lives at Norwich, tells me it has been quite unsafe to order poultry. The plague—you see. It attacks the rats, and through them other creatures.”

  “And the local authorities are not taking proper steps?” asked Mrs. Thornbury.

  “That she does not say. But she describes the attitude of the educated people—who should know better—as callous in the extreme. Of course, my sister-in-law is one of those active modern women, who always takes things up, you know—the kind of woman one admires, though one does not feel, at least I do not feel—but then she has a constitution of iron.”

  Mrs. Elliot, brought back to the consideration of her own delicacy, here sighed.

  “A very animated face,” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Evelyn M. who had stopped near them to pin tight a scarlet flower at her breast. It would not stay, and, with a spirited gesture of impatience, she thrust it into her partner’s button-hole. He was a tall melancholy youth, who received the gift as a knight might receive his lady’s token.

  “Very trying to the eyes,” was Mrs. Eliot’s next remark, after watching the yellow whirl in which so few of the whirlers had either name or character for her, for a few minutes. Bursting out of the crowd, Helen approached them, and took a vacant chair.

  “May I sit by you?” she said, smiling and breathing fast. “I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she went on, sitting down, “at my age.”

  Her beauty, now that she was flushed and animated, was more expansive than usual, and both the ladies felt the same desire to touch her.

  “I am enjoying myself,” she panted. “Movement—isn’t it amazing?”

  “I have always heard that nothing comes up to dancing if one is a good dancer,” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at her with a smile.