Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct comprehension of her mood. But he was stirred by it. For a little while they looked at one another without any words. The air about them in that still hall vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan Whitworth was the first to break the dangerous silence.
"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will remember that in pity, won"t you?" she said lightly.
Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.
"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.
Joan crossed to where he stood.
"That"s all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box is cleared regularly."
"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am going to post it."
The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.
He looked up at Joan.
"You despise racing, don"t you?"
"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."
"You are!" he cried eagerly.
"Of course."
He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the tumult within him pa.s.sed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.
"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys" ball, aren"t you?"
Harry Luttrell smiled.
"But you despise dancing."
"I? I adore it!"
She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.
The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that gla.s.s letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with.
It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell returned to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.
"When I left England," he said slowly, "people were dancing the tango.
That is--one couple which knew the dance, was dancing it in the ball-room, and all the others were practising in the pa.s.sage. That"s done with, I suppose?"
"Quite," said Joan.
Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.
"I should have liked to have practised with you in the pa.s.sage," he said ruefully.
"Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth suggested. "The one-step?"
"That"s going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.
"In an unusual att.i.tude," Joan added demurely. "Do you know the fox-trot?"
"A little."
"The twinkle step?"
"Not at all."
"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.
"Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we"ll dance it in the pa.s.sage."
"But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room," Joan objected.
"That"s why," said Harry Luttrell, and they both laughed.
Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner of the room. She was tempted, but she must have that letter written first. She would dance with Harry Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were written and posted first.
"Will you put a record ready on the gramophone, whilst I write a note,"
she suggested. "Then I"ll teach you. It"s quite a short note."
Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She wrote the first lines easily and quickly enough. But she came to explanations, and of explanations she had none to offer. She sat and framed a sentence and it would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open and ready, the record fitted on to the disc of green baize and her cavalier in impatient attendance. She must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be, the more slowly her thoughts moved amongst awkward sentences which she must write. She dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such emergencies. "I will write to you to-morrow," addressed and stamped her letter and dropped it into the letter box. The letter fell in the gla.s.s box with the address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about that, did not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.
"I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later the music of "The Long Trail" was wafted to the astonished ears of the tennis players in the garden. They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown crept to the window of the hall and looked cautiously in. He stood transfixed; then turned and beckoned furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet mallets. Dennis Brown led them by a back way up to the head of the broad stairs. Here a gallery ran along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them from the floor above the music of the gramophone.
Joan"s: "That"s the twinkle."
Luttrell"s: "It"s pretty difficult."
"Try it again," said Joan. "Oh, that"s ever so much better."
"I shall never dare to dance it with any one else," said Luttrell.
"I really don"t mind very much about that," Joan responded dryly.
Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cautiously she and her party advanced on tiptoe to the bal.u.s.trade and looked down. Yes, there the pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.
"Do I hold you right?" asked Harry.
"Well--I shan"t break, you know," Joan answered demurely, and then with a little sigh, "That"s better."
Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured pa.s.sionately, "Oh, you minx!"
As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.