Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, and made a step forward, to take the lamp from her. But after one swift, startled glance, he drew back, colouring furiously. For a moment he could not collect himself: his heart seemed to have leapt into his throat, and there to be hammering so hard that he had no voice with which to answer her greeting.
Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, he had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress.
Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress, or the loose dressing-gown. Now he called himself a fool and absurd; this was how she was obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it was perfectly decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural, overstrained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to him that all dresses were not like this one; also that every girl was not of a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common things of life seen poor and stale.
Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its surface, as if it were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, and out behind her on the floor. But this was only the sheath, from which rose the whiteness of her arms and shoulders, and the full column of her throat, on which the black head looked small. Until now, he had seen her bared wrist--no more. Now the only break on the long arm was a band of black velvet, which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity of the skin, and served in place of a sleeve.
Strange thoughts coursed through the young man"s mind. His first impulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar room it did not seem fitting to see her dressed so differently from the way he had always known her. Before, however, he had followed this sensation to an end, he made himself the spontaneous avowal that, until now, he had never really seen her. He had known and treasured her face--her face alone. Now he became aware that to the beautiful head belonged also a beautiful body, that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful and desirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful reflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation; she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struck him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone down on his knees to her, to implore her to stay at home.
Unconscious of his embarra.s.sment, Louise had gone to the console-gla.s.s; and there, with the lamp held first above her head, then placed on the console-table, she critically examined her appearance. As if dissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the side of her hair, and considered the effect; she took a powderpuff, and patted cheeks and neck with powder. Next she picked up a narrow band of velvet, on which a small star was set, and put it round her throat. But the clasp would not meet behind, and, having tried several times in vain to fasten it, she gave an impatient exclamation.
"I can"t get it in."
As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the room with the thing in her hand. During the few seconds she was absent, the young man racked his brain to invent telling reasons which would induce her not to go; but when she returned, slightly flushed at the landlady"s ready flattery, she was still so engrossed in herself, and so unmindful of him, that he recognised once more his utter powerlessness. He only half existed for her this evening: her manner was as different as her dress.
She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her feet in fur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Maurice found nothing to say as they went. But she did not notice his silence; there was a suppressed excitement in her very walk; and she breathed in the cold, crisp air with open lips and nostrils, like a wild animal.
"Oh, how glad I am I came! I might still have been sitting in that dull room--when I haven"t danced for years--and when I love it so!"
"I can"t understand you caring about it," he said, and the few words contained all his bitterness.
"That is only because you don"t know me," she retorted, and laughed.
"Dancing is a pa.s.sion with me. I have dance-rhythms in my blood, I think.--My mother was a dancer."
He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new images ran riot in his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said no more.
They were late in arriving; dancing had already begun; the cloak-rooms were black with coats and mantles. In the narrow pa.s.sage that divided the rooms, two Englishmen were putting on their gloves. As Maurice changed his shoes, close to the door, he overheard one of these men say excitedly: "By Jove, there"s a pair of shoulders! Who the deuce is it?"
Maurice knew the speaker by sight: he was a medical student, named Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as a skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets in his b.u.t.tonhole.
"You haven"t been here long enough, old man, or you wouldn"t need to ask," answered his companion. Then he dropped his voice, and made a somewhat disparaging remark--so low, however, but what the listener was forced to hear it, too.
Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clattered his chair, Herries persisted, with an Englishman"s supreme indifference to the bystander: "Do you think she can dance?"
"Can"t tell. Looks a trifle heavy."
"Well, I"ll risk it. Come on. Let"s get some one to introduce us."
The blood had rushed to Maurice"s head and buzzed there: another second, and he would have stepped out and confronted the speaker. But the incident had pa.s.sed like a flash. And it was better so: it would have been a poor service to her, to begin the evening with an unpleasantness. Besides, was this not what he had been bracing himself to expect? He looked stealthily over at Louise; considering the proximity of the rooms, it was probable that she, too, had overheard the derogatory words. But when she had put on her gloves, she took his arm without a trace of discomfiture.
They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped unnoticed into the train of those who promenaded. But they had not gone once round, when they were the observed of all eyes; although he looked straight in front of him, Maurice could see the astonished eyebrows and open mouths that greeted their advance. At one end of the hall was an immense mirror: he saw that Louise, who was flushed, held her head high, and talked to him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she made him take her round a second time; and after the third, which was a solitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to the mirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, and, on learning that she had no programme, the latter ran off to fetch one.
Before he returned, a third man had joined them, and soon she was the centre of a little circle. Herries, having returned with the programme, would not give it up until he had put his initials opposite several dances. Louise only smiled--a rather artificial smile that had been on her lips since she entered the hall.
Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind the group. Once Louise turned her head, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively; but a feeling that was mingled pride and dismay restrained him; and as, even when the choosing of dances was over, he did not come forward, she walked down the hall on Herries"s arm. The musicians began to tune; Dove, as master of ceremonies, was flying about, with his hands in gloves that were too large for him; people ranged themselves for the lancers in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight for a moment of the couple he was watching. As soon as the dance began, however, he saw them again; they were waltzing to the FRANCAISE, at the lower end of the hall.
He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, by hearing some one behind him say, in an angry whisper: "I call it positively horrid of her to come." It was Susie Fay who spoke; through some oversight, she had not been asked to dance. Moving slowly along, behind the couples that began a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm, and, looking round, saw Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts, and invited him to a seat beside her. But he remained standing.
"You don"t care for dancing?" she queried. And, when he had replied: "Well, say, now, Mr. Guest,--we are all dying to know--however have you gotten Louise Dufrayer along here this evening? It"s the queerest thing out."
"Indeed?" said the young man drily.
"Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all presumed she was perfectly inconsolable--thinking only of another world. That"s so.
And then you work a miracle, and out she pops, fit as can be."
"I persuaded her ... for the sake of variety," mumbled Maurice.
Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen did not heed his meek reminder that this was their dance.
"That was excessively kind of you," said the big woman, and looked at Maurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. "And no doubt, Louise is most grateful. She seems to be enjoying herself. Keep quiet, Fauvre, do, till I am ready.--But I don"t like her dress. It"s a lovely goods, and no mistake. But it ain"t suitable for a little hop like this. It"s too much."
"How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business."
"Well, maybe not.--Now, Fauvre, come along"--she called it "Fover." "I reckon you think you"ve waited long enough."
Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Madeleine"s voice in his ear. She had made her way to him alone.
"For goodness" sake, pull yourself together," she said cuttingly.
"Every one in the hall can see what"s the matter with you."
Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner--one of the few Germans scattered through this Anglo-American gathering. "Is zat your brozzer?" Maurice heard him ask as they moved away. He watched them dancing together, and found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine, tall and angular, the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time to time they stopped, to allow him to wipe his face.
Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet room beyond.
But as he was edging forward, he ran into Dove"s arms, and that was the end of it. Dove, it seemed, had had his eye on him. The originator of the ball confessed that he was not having a particularly good time; he had everything to superintend--the dances, the musicians, the arrangements for supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen too many ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given their tickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. So far, Dove had been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and he was hot and impatient.
"Besides, I"ve routed half a dozen men out of the billiardroom, more than once," he complained irrelevantly, wiping the moisture from his brow. "But it"s of no----Now just look at that!" he interrupted himself. "The "cellist has had too much to drink already, and they"re handing him more beer. Another gla.s.s, and he won"t be able to play at all.--I say, you"re not dancing. My dear fellow, it really won"t do.
You must help me with some of these women."
Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of the hall where sat two little provincial English sisters, looking hopeless and forlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible to say; but no one wished to dance with them. They were dressed exactly alike, were alike in face, too--as like as two nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed to them. Their hair was of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and they wore brown dresses. He led them out to dance, one after the other, and they were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly tell them apart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one back to her seat, the other sat waiting for her turn.
In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, and he was not slow to catch the looks--cynical, contemptuous, amused--that were directed at him. Some were disposed to wink, and to call him a sly dog; others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had deserted him; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed his advances with a definiteness that left no room for doubt.
Round dances succeeded to square dances; the musicians" playing grew more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often as Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at least made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed her preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and the simpering smile.
They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in particular, gave herself up to the rhythm of the music with an abandon not often to be seen in a ball-room. Something of the professional about it, said Maurice to himself as he watched her; and, in his own estimation, this was the hardest thought he had yet had of her.
At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose birdlike chatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the nerves of one who is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring himself to answer civilly. At the further end of the table, on the same side as he, sat Louise. She was with those who had been her partners during the evening. They were drinking champagne, and were very lively. Maurice could not see her face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his ears.
Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that the sisters had generously introduced him to a friend. But when the first dance was over, Maurice abruptly excused himself to his surprised partner, and made his way out of the hall.
At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; and deserters were again knocking b.a.l.l.s about the green cloth of the billiard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight of stairs that led to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery was in semidarkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one on top of the other; but the two front rows had been left standing, from the last concert held in the building, and here, two or three couples were sitting out the dance. He went into the extreme corner, where it was darkest.
At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with girls he did not care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. He was free to be as wretched as he chose, and he availed himself unreservedly of the chance. It was not only the personal slight Louise had put upon him throughout the evening, making use of him, as it were, to the very door, and then throwing him off: but that she could be attracted by a mere waxen prettiness, and well-fitting clothes--for the first time, distrust of her was added to his hurt amazement.
He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few minutes, when the door he had entered by reopened, and a couple came down the steps to the corner where he was sitting.
"Oh, there"s some one there!" cried Louise at the sight of the dark figure. "Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing here?"
"Sssh!" said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice should carry too far.