The Duchess of Wrexe Part 9

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 Ma.s.siter 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, pus.h.i.+ng him on to a sofa, twisted round in front of him, turning on her toes, flas.h.i.+ng 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 att.i.tude 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 ... even 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.