Across the Stream Part 19

There was a dance somewhere that night, but Helena, letting the fact be reluctantly dragged out of her that there was such a thing, only said how nice it would be to go to bed early.

"Are you tired, dear?" asked Lady Tintagel.

Helena made a little deprecating face, the face of the prettiest little martyr in the cause of truth ever beheld.

"No, I can't exactly say I am," she said. "I think--I think I was speaking on behalf of Archie and Jessie."

"But I'm not tired either," said he. "Let's go to somebody's dance. I can't dance an atom, but Helena shall teach me. There's nothing like practice in public. What dance is it, by the way?"

"Oh, that's all right," said she. "It's your Uncle and Aunt Toby. But, Archie, I'm sure you're tired."

"But I'm not, I tell you. It's whether you want to go."

Lady Tintagel struck in.

"If you all go on being so unselfish," she said, "you will never settle anything. Try to be selfish for one moment Helena; it won't hurt. Do you want to go?"

"Enormously," said she, with a sign of resignation.

"And you, Archie?"

"Dying for it. Let's call a taxi."

"And you, Jessie?"

"I should hate it," said Jessie very confidently.

The matter, of course, was settled on those lines, and Helena was duly credited with having wanted to go enormously, but with having done her utmost to efface herself for the sake of others. This was precisely the end she had in view all along, and now, having had the dance, so to speak, forced on her, she was quite free to enjoy herself. She had produced precisely the impression she wanted on Archie and his mother, and, though it was likely that Jessie, with her long familiarity with such manoeuvres, was not equally unenlightened, she knew, by corresponding familiarity, Jessie's loyalty. She gave a little b.u.t.terfly kiss to Cousin Marion, and a murmur of delighted thanks, and went to her sister to finish up this very complete little picture.

"Darling Jessie," she said, "go to bed soon and sleep well. I shall tiptoe in, in the morning, and, if you're still asleep, I shall tell them not to wake you till you ring. May I do that, Cousin Marion?"

Jessie understood all this perfectly well, and her mouth had that curve in it that might or might not be a smile.

"Good-night," she said. "Have a nice dance, and teach Archie well."

To speak of luck is often nothing more than another mode of expressing the success that usually attends foresight; chance favours the wise calculation. Helena last night had dropped the most casual hint to Lord Harlow that she was probably going to this dance to-night, but she was satisfied that he had been attending, and was not unprepared to see him there. Even if she had not been able to come, she suspected that he would do so, and her absence would have been delightfully explained to him afterwards. But there he was, not dancing, but standing about near the door of the ball-room, and quite obviously interested in arrivals.

Undoubtedly he saw the brilliant entry of herself and Archie, but she contrived to put a few of the crowd between herself and him as she pa.s.sed near him, and for the present gave him no more than a glance and a smile, a downdropt eye, and then one glance again, and pa.s.sed with Archie into the ball-room. There an ordinary old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz was in progress, and not one of those anaemic strollings about which were becoming popular, and she slid off with her radiant partner on to a floor not overfull. She had a moment's misgiving when she remembered that Archie had said he couldn't dance, for it would vex her to appear in the clutch of a bungler; but, after all, Archie could hardly be awkward if he tried. Immediately all her fears vanished, for they had hardly gone up the short side of the room before she knew that if any one was the bungler it was she. She might have guessed, from seeing him walk and move, that he could dance; what she could not have guessed was that anybody could dance like this. They floated, they glided; it was the floor surely that moved under them; it was the wind of that swinging, voluptuous tune that wafted them on as in some clear eddy of sunlit water.

"But, my dear, you said you couldn't dance," she exclaimed.

"Oh, this sort of thing," said he. "I meant the steppings and crawlings of the new style."

Helena was too content to talk; her whole being glowed with the satisfaction of this flowing movement. The floor got ever emptier: lines of expectant fox-trotters and bunny-huggers stood round the wall, but none of them objected to watching for a little longer the entrancing couple who now had the floor almost to themselves. Couple after couple dropped off and stood looking, and to Helena's gleaming eyes they pa.s.sed in streaks of black and white and many-coloured hues as she and Archie moved ever more freely and largely over the untenanted s.p.a.ce. She could just see the faces of friends as she pa.s.sed, and knew that Lord Harlow had come in and was standing by the door. There was no question of luck in that; he was but doing what she knew he was obliged to do. Then the web of sound that poured out of the gallery grew more brightly coloured as it quickened to its close, and still Archie and she moved without effort as if they were part of it and of each other. And then the whole fabric of that divine dream of melody and motion was shattered, for the dance was over.

Archie had not spoken either since he intimated that he had alluded to steppings and crawlings, and now he paused for a moment in the middle of the room, breathing just a little quickly and bewildered as with some dazzling light. Ever since he had put his arm round the girl and taken her hand in his, he had had that sense of sinking into sunlit waters, where he arrived at his true and naked self. Now he had swum up again, and he was clothed in black coat and white s.h.i.+rt, and Helena was standing a step apart from him, and every one else at the edge of the room was very far away. Instantly a mingling of wild consternation and triumph seized him.

"Oh, Helena, were we doing that all by ourselves?" he said. "How frightful! Let's get out of it. But wasn't it divine? May we do it again soon? Or will they have nothing but crawlings?"

It appeared that crawlings were to be the next item, and Archie noticed that in the crowd that now came about them again a particular man had his eye on them, and was unmistakably burrowing towards them.

"Yes, Archie; of course we will," said the girl. "Go and see your aunt, and ask if we may have another waltz ever so soon. Oh, here's Lord Harlow; I want to introduce you."

This was done, and Lord Harlow turned to Helena again.

"I feel as if I had been present at some Bacchic festival," he said in a very precise voice. "But you should have vine-leaves in your hair, and er--your partner a tunic and a thyrsus. I feel myself as prosaic as a Bradshaw. But may I be your Bradshaw?"

Helena looked from one to the other; if she had had a tail she would certainly have been switching it.

"Ah, do," she said. "A Bradshaw is quite indispensable. Archie, go and get a thyrsus--will a poker do, Lord Harlow?--and persuade Mrs. Morris to have another waltz before long."

Now that the sheer animal exhilaration of that adorable waltz, which quite precluded talking, was over, it seemed perfectly suitable, as she plodded along the weary way of the fox-trot, to talk again, and in answer to Lord Harlow, who had not caught Archie's name, she said:

"Yes, Lord Davidstow. Surely I told you about him" (she knew that she had purposely not done so). "He is Lady Tintagel's son, with whom I am staying."

Lord Harlow quietly a.s.similated this as he turned slowly round.

"And does he do other things as well as he dances?" he asked.

"I think he does," said she, "though I never really thought about it.

When people are such dears as Archie, one doesn't consider what they do.

They just are."

"He certainly is. He appears very much alive."

"Yes, he's madly alive."

She gave him a swift glance, and, guessing she had gone far enough on that tack, she put about.

"I think it's possible to be too much alive," she said. "It's like a hot-water bottle that is too hot: it burns you. But you can't help being carried off your feet by it--I don't mean the hot-water bottle."

He paused a moment for the purpose of phrasing.

"I must weight you with a Bradshaw," he said. "That will keep you to earth. We can't spare you."

Helena laughed.

"You say things _too_ neatly," she said. "What a delicious notion! What have you done all day?"

"I have waited for this evening."

"And I hope it doesn't disappoint you now that it has come," she said.

"It is up to my highest expectations just now," said he.

Suddenly it flashed into Helena's mind that this was the temperature of his wooing. He was engaged in that now: those neat and proper sentences, turned as on a lathe, were the expression of it, they and the mild pleased glances that he gave her; and yet, discreet and veiled as it all was, she divined that, according to his nature and his years, it was love that inspired it. She found it quite easy to adjust herself to that level, and if his kiss (when the time came for that) was of the same respectful and finished quality, she could deal with that too. But she wondered how Archie would make love... It was necessary to fox-trot a little longer, and, while trotting, trot also conversationally, and with intention she let herself press a little more against his arm.

"Oh, I am glad of that," she said lightly. "It is such a dreadful pity when people are disappointed. But I think I would sooner antic.i.p.ate something nice and fail to get it, than not antic.i.p.ate at all. Can you imagine not looking forward to the delicious things you want?"

"Do you want very much?" he asked.