by Hugh Walpole
But, alas! the dinner had been a terrible failure. She had sat between Lord Crewner and Lord Massiter, and had no word to say to either of them. Lord Massiter was middle-aged and hearty and kind, and he had done his best for her, but she had been paralysed. They had talked to her about the opera, the theatres, hunting, books, Munich; she had had a great deal to say about all these things, and she had said nothing. Always within her there seemed to be rivalry between the Beaminster way of saying things and the other way. When Lord Crewner said to her, “What I like in music is a real cheerful little piece that one can go to after dinner, you know,” there were a whole number of Beaminster observations to make. But as soon as they rose to her mouth something within her whispered, “You know that you don’t mean that. That’s at second hand. Give him your opinion.” And then that seemed presumption, so she said nothing.
It was all wretched and quite endless. Uncle John sent her encouraging smiles every now and again, but she felt that he must be disappointed at her failure. The food choked her. The tears filled her eyes and it was her pride only that saved her. Through it all she felt that her grandmother upstairs in her bedroom was planning this.
Afterwards the Princess, seeing perhaps that she was unhappy, was kind and motherly to her, and told her funny stories about her childhood in Berlin. But all the time Rachel was saying to herself, “You’re a fool. You’re a fool. You’ve got no self-control at all.”
She had been dreading the introductions to so many young men, but she found that that was easy enough. They were not young men; they were simply numbers on her programme and they vanished as soon as they came.
Then the band in the distance began to play an extra, whilst the young men wandered about and discovered their friends, and the sound of the music cheered her. It amused her now to watch the people as they mounted the stairs. She noticed that all the faces were grave and preoccupied until a moment before the arrival at Aunt Adela, and then a smile was tightly fastened on, held for a moment, and then dropped to give way to the preoccupation again.
The room was so full now that it seemed that it would be quite impossible for any dancing to take place. Uncle John was working very hard at introducing people to one another, and as she saw his good-natured face and his white hair her heart went out to him. If everyone were as kind as Uncle John how nice the world would be! Meanwhile her eyes anxiously watched the stairs, and as every woman turned the corner at the bottom the question was— “Was this May Eversley?”
There had been a battle about May. Aunt Adela did not like her, disapproved of her, would not hear of inviting her. Very well, then, Rachel would not come to the ball at all. They could give the ball for somebody else. If May were not asked Rachel would not come.
So Lady Eversley and May had both been asked, and of course they had accepted.
Rachel waited and gazed and was continually disappointed. The extra was over and soon the first dance would begin; with the second dance would arrive the Prince and Rachel would have no talk with May at all. It was too bad of May to be late. She had promised so faithfully — Ah! there she was with her air of one confidently conducting a most difficult campaign. She mounted the stairs like a general, gave Lady Adela the tiniest of smiles, and was at Rachel’s side.
That clasp of May’s hand filled Rachel’s body with confident happiness. May’s hardy self-control, her discipline derived from some stern old Puritans, dim centuries away, was all waiting there at Rachel’s service.
“How late you are!”
“Mother was such a time. And then we couldn’t get a cab. How are you, Rachel?”
“Dinner was terrible — all wrong. I hadn’t a word to say to anyone. I’m better now that you’ve come.”
“Is the Prince here?”
“Yes. I’m dancing the next dance with him. The Princess was very kind after dinner. Oh! May, dinner was a disaster, an absolute disaster!”
“Not nearly so bad as you thought, you may be sure. Things always seem so much worse.”
And now May had been discovered. Gentlemen young and old dangled their programmes in front of her, were received, were dismissed. May had the air of a general, sitting fiercely in his tent and receiving reports from his officers as to the progress in the field. Confident young men were instantly timid before her.
The first dance was over. Against the white splendour vivid colours were flung and withdrawn. Threads and patterns crossed and recrossed, and then presently the glittering floor was waste and deserted; on its surface was reflected dark gold from the shining walls.
The second dance came, and with it the Prince. Rachel had now lost all sense of the ball having been given in any way for herself. The dancing, it comforted her to see, was not of the very best, and at once she found that she had herself nothing to fear. The Prince danced well, and soon she was lost to all sense of everything save the immediate joy of rhythm and balance, and the perfect spontaneity of the music and her body’s acknowledgment of it.
When it came to an end, and they were sitting in a corner, somewhere, he was a fat middle-aged man again, and she Rachel Beaminster, but she knew now for what life was intended.
After that, for a long period, her dancers did not concern her. They were there simply to supply her with that ecstasy of rhythm and movement. Sometimes they could not supply her because they were bad dancers, and one of her partners was indeed so bad that she ruthlessly suggested, after one turn round the room, that they should sit out. Then she sat in a room near at hand, irritated by the sound of that glorious music, and paying very scant attention to the young man’s stammered apologies, his information about his experiences of Paris and the way that he shot birds in Scotland.
She was to go down to supper with Roddy Seddon, and she was waiting that experience with some curiosity. If her grandmother were so fond of him, then he must be a disagreeable young man, and yet his appearance was not disagreeable.
He looked as though, like Uncle John and Dr. Chris, he were one of the comfortable people. Dr. Chris, by the way, had not arrived. He had told her that he might not be able to escape until late hours.
And so, as the evening advanced, her happiness grew; impossible now to understand that speechlessness at dinner, impossible to find reasons for that earlier misery. She danced now both with Lord Massiter and with Lord Crewner, and said exactly what she thought to both of them; impossible now to imagine anything but that the world was an enchanting, thrilling place especially invented for the happiness of Miss Rachel Beaminster.
III
Uncle John had been promised a dance; his moment arrived. He had watched her during the early part of the evening, and had been afraid that she was not at all happy.
She was so unlike other girls, and that first miserable hour seemed to him the most tragic omen of her future career.
“How is she ever to get on if she takes things as badly as this? I wish I could help her. I know so exactly how she must be feeling.”
But imagine him now confronted with a figure that shone with happiness, with success, with splendour!
She caught his arm— “Come, Uncle John, we won’t dance. We’ll talk. Up here — There’s no one in this room.”
She ran ahead of him, found a corner for them both, and then, pushing him on to a sofa, twisted round in front of him, turning on her toes, flashing laughter at him, sitting down at last beside him, and then kissing him.
“Oh, my dear! I’m so glad,” he said. “I thought you were miserable.”
“So I was — at first — perfectly wretched. Now it’s all splendid — glorious!”
This was to him an entirely new Rachel. In her movement, her excitement, her immediate glad acceptance of the life that an hour ago she had feared with such alarm, he perceived an element that was indeed foreign to all things Beaminster. And this new attitude reminded him with renewed sharpness that he could not now hope to hold the old Rachel with the intimate affection that had been his before. She was slipping from him — slipping ... ev
en as he watched her, she was going.
She laid her hand upon his arm: “Uncle John, I’m a success! I am really. I can dance, dance beautifully! I can put these young men in their places. They’re frightened!... really frightened.”
“Of course — you’re lovely — the biggest success there’s ever been. But what was the matter with you at dinner?”
“Yes. Wasn’t that dreadful? Everything went wrong, and the only thing I could think of was how glad grandmamma would be. I had a kind of paralysis.”
Uncle John nodded his head. “I know exactly what it’s like.”
“Well, I shall never let myself be so stupid again — never! I swear it!” They sat in silence for some time, she, restless, straining towards the music, he a little overcome by her happiness.
There was a pause between the dances and then the band began once more.
“Have you danced with Roddy Seddon yet?”
“No. What’s he like?”
“Oh! he’s nice — you’ll like him.”
“I don’t expect to. He’s a friend of grandmamma’s. Hark! There’s the band again!... Come along, back we go!”
Smiling, radiant, she hung upon his arm. Afterwards, standing in a doorway, he watched her.
He sighed. “What a selfish old pig I am!... But she’ll never be mine again.”
IV
Uncle John held only for a moment Rachel’s attention. No single person now, but rather a gorgeous pattern that the whole evening was weaving about her. She saw the lights, she heard the music, she felt the movement of her body, she gathered through a haze of happiness the faces of her uncles and Aunt Adela and others whom she knew, but now for the first time in her life she knew what happiness, happiness without thought, or doubt, or foreboding could be.
Thus it was that she came to Roddy Seddon, who was certainly enjoying himself: this, however, was not the first ball of his life nor even, if all the truth were known, his best. He had expected it to be solemn and sedate — you could not hope to find here the jolly kind of dance that they had had at the Menets’, for instance, last week; that would not be possible in a Beaminster household.
It was all, to be honest, a little old-fashioned. Things were moving a bit faster nowadays. Waltzes and Lancers were all very well, but one might have had a cotillon, something unexpected! However, May Eversley and one or two other girls had had the right kind of go about them. He smiled a little and tugged at his short bristling yellow moustache, and then discovered that it was time to take Rachel Beaminster down to supper.
This event was of more than ordinary interest to him. He was perfectly aware that most of his friends and relatives thought that it would be a very good thing for him to marry Rachel Beaminster. He was, himself, not scornful of this idea.
He was thirty-two, and it was time that Seddon Court in Sussex had a mistress; his life had been varied and exciting and it was right now that he should make some ties. There were a number of other reasons in favour of his marrying.
As to Rachel Beaminster, she was not pretty, but she was interesting. She was unusual; moreover she was a Beaminster, and an alliance with that ancient family would be, past dispute, a magnificent alliance. But the element in it all that intrigued him most was the fact that nobody could tell him anything about Rachel, even May Eversley who knew her so well was not sure about her. “You’ll go on being surprised,” she had said.
Surprise, indeed, was waiting for him this evening. On the few occasions that he had seen Rachel he had seen her grave, shy, a little awkward, most reserved. Now she met him as though she had known him for years, glowing, almost pretty, so burning were her eyes. At supper she laughed, called across the room to May, agreed with everything that everybody said, and with it all was younger than any girl that he had ever known. The girls who were Roddy’s friends talked about life at times more boldly than he would have talked with his men friends, and were, at all events, for ever hinting at the things that they knew.
Rachel hinted at nothing; she kept nothing back, she allowed him no disguises.
“Oh! don’t I wish,” she cried, “that this night could go on for ever just like this” — and he, taking the compliment to himself, agreed with her. He had expected to find someone haughty and cold, a young Aunt Adela with a dash of foreign temper.
He found someone entirely delightful. Afterwards, when they sat out on a balcony overlooking Portland Place, he was encouraged to talk about himself.
“I like all this, you know,” he said, waving his hand at the grey mysterious street that the pale lamps so mournfully guarded. “I like this air comin’ along from the park. I’m all for the open, Miss Beaminster — horses and dogs and rushin’ along with the wind at your back. It’s a rippin’ little place I’ve got down in Sussex. I hope you’ll see it one day — old as anything, with jolly Roman roads and such hangin’ around, and the most spiffin’ lot of gees. Look, the sun will be gettin’ above the houses soon. I’ve seen some sunrises in my day. You ought to be on the Downs at night, Miss Beaminster.”
Roddy was surprised at himself at the way that he was talking, but she really looked quite beautiful there in the window with her dark hair and her eyes and white dress.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, when it was time for them to part, “how much all you say interests me. I love horses too, and I adore dogs — —”
“I’ve got a dog I’d like you to have,” he began. “It’s a — —”
“Oh no,” she answered. “Aunt Adela would never let me keep one here. Thank you all the same. But you’ll let me come down to Seddon Court one day, won’t you?”
“Let you!” Roddy could find no words.
She flung one glance at the square, where the dawn was beginning, and then was back in the ballroom again, dancing, dancing, dancing....
The sky was all pink above the roofs, and the birds were making a whirl of chattering, when her bedroom received her again.
Her maid was sleepy but proud.
“They all say it’s been a great success, Miss Rachel.”
“Success!” She stood for a moment in the middle of the room with her arms extended. “Oh! It’s been glorious, glorious. I’ve never — —”
She paused. Her arms fell to her sides— “Oh! Dr. Chris! Dr. Chris! He never came — he said that he mightn’t be able. It was the only thing that was wrong” — Then more slowly, as she moved to her dressing-table— “And all the last part I never missed him.”
“Well, I dare say,” said Lucy, standing behind Rachel’s chair and staring at the white face in the mirror, “that with his patients and the rest he couldn’t get away — —”
“Oh! But I ought to have missed him,” said Rachel, and afterwards, lying in bed, sleepless with excitement, it was Dr. Christopher’s face that she saw.
CHAPTER VI
FANS
“Il est doux de sommeiller a l’ombre chaude, sur le tiède oreiller d’un mal épicurisme et d’une intelligence ironique, très simple, assez curieuse, et prodigieusement indifferente, au fond.”
Romain Rolland.
I
On the afternoon that followed the ball Lady Adela took Rachel to tea with Lord Richard.
It was a superb May afternoon; white clouds, bolster-shaped, were piled in the heavens and made, so rounded were they, the blue sky seem an infinite distance away. It was a day of sparkling dazzling gaiety — the air seemed electric with the happiness of the world, and, as they drove down to Grosvenor Street, Rachel felt that the little breeze that just touched the hats and coats of the people on the omnibuses was created simply by the joy of the beautiful weather.
As they moved slowly down Bond Street Rachel looked at the world and thought of last night. She looked at the men with their shining hats and shining boots; at the messenger boys and the young women with parcels and the young women without; at the old men who thought themselves young and the young men who thought themselves old; at the fish shops and the picture galleries, at the jewellers’ and
the book shops, at the place where they taught you Swedish exercises and the place where there was a palmist with a Japanese name, and it was all splendid and magnificent and simply carried on the glories of the night before. Before the turning into Grosvenor Street there was a great crush of carriages and a long pause. In the carriage next to Rachel there was a very stout, very richly coloured lady with a strong scent and a pug dog. A little farther away there were two young gentlemen in a smart little carriage, and their hats were so large and their expression so haughty and the top of their canes so golden that it seemed absurd that they should have to wait for anybody, and near them was a small boy on a little butcher’s cart and near him an omnibus with a red-faced driver and any number of interested ladies, and all these incongruities seemed only to add to the haphazard happiness of this shining afternoon.
Rachel had many things to consider as she sat there. Aunt Adela did not interfere with her thoughts, because she never talked when she was in a carriage, but always sat up and looked wearily at the people about her. She had never very much to say, but the open air made her feel stupid.
Rachel was aware that last night had altered her point of view for all time. She was aware, as she sat there in sunshine, of a new world. By one glance at Aunt Adela was this new world made apparent. Aunt Adela had hitherto been important — Aunt Adela was now unimportant.
Had this afternoon been wet and gloomy, then Rachel might have doubted that passionate discovery of the world that she now felt was hers, but here with this blazing sun and sky the note was sustained. Surely never again would Rachel be afraid of her grandmother, surely never again would she be afraid of anyone. Holding herself very proudly in a dress that was a soft primrose colour and in a hat that was dark and shady, Rachel looked round about her on the world.
“There’s Lady Massiter!” Lady Adela smiled lightly and bowed a very little— “Monty Carfax is with her.”
Rachel thought of Lord Massiter, and wondered again at last night’s dinner— “How could I have been like that? How could I?”