The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London people here, except Leslie!
In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band.
Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised _me_ every other dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago----"
Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She tossed a "_so_ sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna"s benefit. With the first bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed, becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone....
Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who _he_ was; Monty Scott, the Dean"s son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and already he had proposed to her twice.
The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which (it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips.
Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve, moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life, thought Leslie"s chum.... But no; as they pa.s.sed Gwenna saw that the black eyes and the red mouth were laughing cynically together; she caught, through the music, Leslie"s clear "Don"t _talk_! _don"t_ talk when you"re dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You _can_ waltz.... You know you"ve never anything to _say_, Mont!"
"I have. I say----"
Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching....
Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave.
Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the side of the tall Airman in evening dress.
He said, through the music, "Who"s your partner for this?"
She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again....
Scarcely realising how it happened--indeed, how do these arrangements make themselves?--this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to spend the rest of their lives together.
Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from the tent-openings, there was flung upon the gra.s.s a broad path of light, across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected, here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a tree.
Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely ""Milk," out of "The Blue Bird."" In pa.s.sing he announced to his cousin that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms.
Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and _making_ themselves into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows, the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more substantial than her other fancies.
More quickly it seemed to be pa.s.sing! Every now and again she exultantly reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is only speaking to me! I have him to myself--I must feel that as hard as I can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If _only_ I could be with him for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular person out of all the world should be enough to make all this happiness!"
With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world"
whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the young girl"s nature even as his waltz-step suited her own.
Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even before the end of the dance the end of _this_ must surely come.
It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the gra.s.s, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat cushions.
Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup.
"I remembered to bring two gla.s.ses, this time," said Paul Dampier.
Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on those silver white-finned minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty.
He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea, wings to your shoes because you"re supposed to be a cherub."
"Oh, but that"s not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that----"
Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted gra.s.s might open at those winged feet of hers and swallow her up!
How could she have given herself away like this? Let him _know_ how she had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn"t even known she was there; hadn"t been thinking about her!
She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes instead of real ones!"
He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh, was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I"d promised to take you flying, and that it"s never come off yet!"
Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort--a tiny reproach.
"Well--it _hasn"t_ come off."
"No, you know--it"s too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy,"
he apologised. "But we"ll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we?
You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked really pleased.
She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time.
Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He _would_ like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger.
Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered the look of that throat of hers; round and st.u.r.dy and white above her low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands about it, and to pretend--quite gently, of course--to throttle the Little Thing. To-night she"d bundled it all up in that sort of feather boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without.
Fellow can"t say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the simple Paul.
So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere,"
and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her; the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee.
Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so quiet....
Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a sound--the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing willows. Then Leslie"s clear, careless voice drifted to their ears.
"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring "_a little_"?... I look upon you as such an infant--in arms----"
Here there was a ba.s.s mutter of, "Make it _your_ arms, and I don"t mind!"
Then Leslie"s insouciant: "I _knew_ you"d say that obvious thing. I always do know what you"re going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A girl _can"t_ want to marry a man when----"
Apparently, then, the Dean"s son was proposing again?
As the couple of free-limbed black shadows pa.s.sed nearer, Paul Dampier kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more noisily.
Good manners wasted!
For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon such occasions, "_And if the others see, what matter they_?"
Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any "others" sitting in the shadows. The couple pa.s.sed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of cigarette-smoke (Leslie"s), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably from the Black Panther.
Leslie"s voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You _had_, last time, "to soften the edges," as you call it."
More audibly her partner grumbled, "What"s a kiss you"ve _had_? About as satisfying as last summer"s strawberry-ice----"