Penelope's English Experiences Part 6

Terence certainly added little to the general brilliancy and gaiety of the occasion, for he stood in a corner and looked at Patricia whenever he was not dancing with her, 'all eye when one was present, all memory when one was gone.'

Chapter XIII. A Penelope secret.

Shortly after midnight our own little company broke up, loath to leave the charming spectacle. The guests departed with the greatest reluctance, having given Dawson a half-sovereign for waiting up to lock the door. Mrs. Beresford said that it seemed unendurable to leave matters in such an unfinished condition, and her son promised to come very early next morning for the latest bulletins.

"I leave all the romances in your hands," he whispered to me; "do let them turn out happily, do!"

Salemina also retired to her virtuous couch, remembering that she was to visit infant schools with a great educational dignitary on the morrow.

Francesca and I turned the gas entirely out, although we had been sitting all the evening in a kind of twilight, and slipping on our dressing-gowns sat again at the window for a farewell peep into the past, present, and future of the 'Brighthelmston set.'

At midnight the dowager d.u.c.h.ess arrived. She must at least have been a dowager d.u.c.h.ess, and if there is anything greater, within the bounds of a reasonable imagination, she was that. Long streamers of black tulle floated from a diamond soup-tureen which surmounted her hair. Narrow puffings of white traversed her black velvet gown in all directions, making her look somewhat like a railway map, and a diamond fan-chain defined, or attempted to define, what was in its nature neither definable nor confinable, to wit, her waist, or what had been, in early youth, her waist.

The entire company was stirred by the arrival of the dowager d.u.c.h.ess, and it undoubtedly added new eclat to what was already a fas.h.i.+onable event; for we counted three gentlemen who wore orders glittering on ribbons that crossed the white of their immaculate linen, and there was an Indian potentate with a jewelled turban who divided attention with the dowager d.u.c.h.ess's diamond soup-tureen.

At twelve-thirty Lord Brighthelmston chided Celandine for flirting too much.

At twelve-forty Lady Brighthelmston reminded Violet (who was a h'orphan niece) that the beautiful being in the white uniform was not the eldest son.

At twelve-fifty there arrived an elderly gentleman, before whom the servants bowed low. Lord Brighthelmston went to fetch Patricia, who chanced to be sitting out a dance with Terence. The three came out on the balcony, which was deserted, in the near prospect of supper, and the personage--whom we suspected to be Patricia's G.o.dfather--took from his waistcoat pocket a string of pearls, and, clasping it round her white throat, stooped gently and kissed her forehead.

Then at one o'clock came supper. Francesca and I had secretly provided for that contingency, and curling up on a sofa we drew toward us a little table which Dawson had spread with a galantine of chicken, some cress sandwiches, and a jug of milk.

At one-thirty we were quite overcome with sleep, and retired to our beds, where of course we speedily grew wakeful.

"It is giving a ball, not going to one, that is so exhausting!" yawned Francesca. "How many times have I danced all night with half the fatigue that I am feeling now!"

The sound of music came across the street through the closed door of our sitting-room. Waltz after waltz, a polka, a galop, then waltzes again, until our brains reeled with the rhythm. As if this were not enough, when our windows at the back were opened wide we were quite within reach of Lady Durden's small dance, where another Hungarian band discoursed more waltzes and galops.

"Dancing, dancing everywhere, and not a turn for us!" grumbled Francesca. "I simply cannot sleep, can you?"

"We must make a determined effort," I advised; "don't speak again, and perhaps drowsiness will overtake us."

It finally did overtake Francesca, but I had too much to think about--my own problems as well as Patricia's. After what seemed to be hours of tossing I was helplessly drawn back into the sitting-room, just to see if anything had happened, and if the affair was ever likely to come to an end.

It was half-past two, and yes, the ball was decidedly 'thinning out.'

The attendants in the lower hall, when they were not calling carriages, yawned behind their hands, and stood first on one foot, and then on the other.

Women in beautiful wraps, their heads flas.h.i.+ng with jewels, descended the staircase, and drove, or even walked, away into the summer night.

Lady Brighthelmston began to look tired, although all the world, as it said good night, was telling her that it was one of the most delightful b.a.l.l.s of the season.

The English nosegay had lost its white flower, for Patricia was not in the family group. I looked everywhere for the gleam of her silvery scarf, everywhere for Terence, while, the waltz music having ceased, the Spanish students played 'Love's Young Dream.'

I hummed the words as the sweet old tune, strummed by the tinkling mandolins, vibrated clearly in the maze of other sounds:--

'Oh! the days have gone when Beauty bright My heart's chain wove; When my dream of life from morn till night Was Love, still Love.

New hope may bloom and days may come, Of milder, calmer beam, But there's nothing half so sweet in life As Love's Young Dream.'

At last, in a quiet spot under the oak-tree, the lately risen moon found Patricia's diamond arrow and discovered her to me. The j.a.panese lanterns had burned out; she was wrapped like a young nun, in a cloud of white that made her eyelashes seem darker.

I looked once, because the moonbeam led me into it before I realised; then I stole away from the window and into my own room, closing the door softly behind me.

We had so far been looking only at conventionalities, preliminaries, things that all (who had eyes to see) might see; but this was different--quite, quite different.

They were as beautiful under the friendly shadow of their urban oak-tree as were ever Romeo and Juliet on the balcony of the Capulets. I may not tell you what I saw in my one quickly repented-of glance. That would be vulgarising something that was already a little profaned by my innocent partic.i.p.ation.

I do not know whether Terence was heir, even ever so far removed, to any t.i.tle or estates, and I am sure Patricia did not care: he may have been vulgarly rich or aristocratically poor. I only know that they loved each other in the old yet ever new way, without any ifs or ands or buts; that he wors.h.i.+pped, she honoured; he asked humbly, she gave gladly.

How do I know? Ah! that's a 'Penelope secret,' as Francesca says.

Perhaps you doubt my intuitions altogether. Perhaps you believe in your heart that it was an ordinary ball, where a lot of stupid people arrived, danced, supped, and departed. Perhaps you do not think his name was Terence or hers Patricia, and if you go so far as that in blindness and incredulity I should not expect you to translate properly what I saw last night under the oak-tree, the night of the ball on the opposite side, when Patricia made her debut.

Chapter XIV. Love and lavender.

How well I remember our last evening in Dovermarle Street!

At one of our open windows behind the potted ferns and blossoming hydrangeas sat Salemina, Bertie G.o.dolphin, Mrs. Beresford, the Honourable Arthur, and Francesca; at another, as far off as possible, sat Willie Beresford and I. Mrs. Beresford had sanctioned a post-prandial cigar, for we were not going out till ten, to see, for the second time, an act of John Hare's Pair of Spectacles.

They were talking and laughing at the other end of the room; Mr.

Beresford and I were rather quiet. (Why is it that the people with whom one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one loves to talk?)

The room was dim with the light of a single lamp; the rain had ceased; the roar of Piccadilly came to us softened by distance. A belated vendor of lavender came along the sidewalk, and as he stopped under the windows the pungent fragrance of the flowers was wafted up to us with his song.

'Who'll buy my pretty lavender?

Sweet lavender, Who'll buy my pretty lavender?

Sweet bloomin' lavender.'

The tune comes to me laden with odours. Is it not strange that the fragrances of other days steal in upon the senses together with the sights and sounds that gave them birth?

Presently a horse and cart drew up before an hotel, a little further along, on the opposite side of the way. By the light of the street lamp under which it stopped we could see that it held a piano and two persons beside the driver. The man was masked, and wore a soft felt hat and a velvet coat. He seated himself at the piano and played a Chopin waltz with decided sentiment and brilliancy; then, touching the keys idly for a moment or two, he struck a few chords of prelude and turned towards the woman who sat beside him. She rose, and, laying one hand on the corner of the instrument, began to sing one of the season's favourites, 'The Song that reached my Heart.' She also was masked, and even her figure was hidden by a long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over her head to meet the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and such feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circ.u.mstances like these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,'

which rang out into the quiet street with almost hopeless pathos. When she descended from the cart to undertake the more prosaic occupation of pa.s.sing the hat beneath the windows, I could see that she limped slightly, and that the hand with which she pushed back the heavy dark hair under the hood was beautifully moulded. They were all mystery that couple; not to be confounded for an instant with the common herd of London street musicians. With what an air of the drawing-room did he of the velvet coat help the singer into the cart, and with what elegant abandon and ultra-dilettantism did he light a cigarette, reseat himself at the piano, and weave Scots ballads into a charming impromptu! I confess I wrapped my s.h.i.+lling in a bit of paper and dropped it over the balcony with the wish that I knew the tragedy behind this little street drama.

Willie Beresford was in a royal mood that night. You know the mood, in which the heart is so full, so full, it overruns the brim. He bought the entire stock of the lavender seller, and threw a s.h.i.+lling to the mysterious singer for every song she sung. He even offered to give--himself--to me! And oh! I would have taken him as gladly as ever the lavender boy took the half-crown, had I been quite, quite sure of myself! A woman with a vocation ought to be still surer than other women that it is the very jewel of love she is setting in her heart, and not a sparkling imitation. I gave myself wholly, or believed that I gave myself wholly, to art, or what I believed to be art. And is there anything more sacred than art?--Yes, one thing!

It happened something in this wise.

The singing had put us in a gentle mood, and after a long peroration from Mr. Beresford, which I do not care to repeat, I said very softly (blessing the Honourable Arthur's vociferous laughter at one of Salemina's American jokes), "But I thought perhaps it was Francesca. Are you quite sure?"

He intimated that if there were any fact in his repertory of which he was particularly and absolutely sure it was this special fact.