The House by the River Part 12

Yes, it was very satisfactory. And now he could get on with the poem about "Chivalry." He sat down at his table and pulled out the scribbled muddle of ma.n.u.script. But he wrote no word that night. He sat for a long time staring at the paper, thinking of the chivalry of John Egerton. And it brought no inspiration.

XI

John went home thinking pitifully of Margery Byrne and vowing hotly that he would sacrifice himself for her sake. In the hall he found a letter from Miss Muriel Tarrant. The neat round writing on the envelope stirred him deliciously where it stared up from the floor. Almost reverently he picked it up and fingered it and turned it over and examined it with the fond and foolish deliberation of a lover for whom custom has not staled these little blisses. The letter was an invitation to a dance. The Tarrants had just come home and they were taking a party to the Buxton Galleries on Sat.u.r.day. And they were very anxious for John to go. It was clear, then, that they had declined to join the faction of Mrs. Vincent, though they must have heard the story, numbers of stories, by this time.

And John, as he argued thus, was almost overwhelmed with pride and tenderness and exultation. He felt then that he had known always that Muriel was different from the malicious sheep who were her mother's friends. And this letter, coming at this moment, seemed like some glorious sign of approbation from Heaven, an acknowledgment and a reward for the deed of sacrifice to which he had but just devoted himself. It was an inspiration to go on with it--though it made the sacrifice itself seem easy.

He took the letter to his bed and laid it on the table beside him. And for a long time he pondered in the dark the old vague dreams of Muriel and marriage which, since the coming of the letter, had presented themselves with such startling clearness. He had not seen her for many weeks, but this letter was like a first meeting; it was a revelation. He knew she was not clever, perhaps not even very intelligent; but she was young and lovely and kind; and she should be the simple companion of his simple heart. He was very lonely in this dark house, very silent and alone. He wanted some one who would bring voices and colour into his home, would make it a glowing and intimate place, like Margery Byrne's.

Poor Margery! And Muriel would do this.

But he would have hard work to bring this about. He knew very little what she thought of him. He would be very accomplished and winning at this dance. Probably there would be four of them--Muriel and himself and her young brother George and some flame of his. They would dance together most of the evening, and he would dance with Muriel. And he must not be awkward--slide about or tread on her toes. He was not "keen on dancing," and he was not good at dancing. But he could "get round"; and Muriel would teach him the rest. She loved teaching people.

But the party was to be a larger affair than John had imagined it. There were to be at least six, if the men could be found. And in the morning Muriel Tarrant came herself to the Byrnes' house and asked if Stephen would come. It was a bold suggestion, for she did not know him very well, and she knew that he seldom danced, seldom indeed "went out" at all in the evenings. But such boldness became a virtue in the post-war code of decorum, and she was a bold person, Muriel Tarrant. This morning she looked very fresh and alluring, with her fair hair creeping in calculated abandon from a small blue hat and a cl.u.s.ter of tiny black feathers fastened at the side of it--tiny feathers, but somehow inexpressibly naughty. They wandered downwards over the little curls at the side of her head and nestled delicately against her face.

Margery was yet in bed, and Stephen took his visitor out into the hot garden, where little Joan was wheeling sedately a small pram and the rabbits lay panting in dark corners. And first he said that he would not go to the dance. He was busy and he did not love dancing; and anyhow Margery could not go. But Muriel perched herself on the low wall over the river, and leaned forward with her blue eyes on his, and a little pout about her lips; and she said, "Oh, _do_, Mr. Byrne." And there was a kind of personal appeal in her voice and her eagerness and her steady smiling eyes that woke up his vanity and his admiration. He thought, "She really thinks it is important that I should go; she likes me." And then, "And I like her." And then he said that he would go. They talked a little in the sun before she went, and when she was gone Stephen felt as if some secret had pa.s.sed between them. Also he wondered why he had thought so little of her existence before. And Muriel went down The Chase, smiling at some secret thought.

They dined hurriedly at Brierleys' that Sat.u.r.day. Muriel and her brother and Stephen and John, and two young sisters of the name of Atholl, to whom George Tarrant owed an apparently impartial allegiance. They were equally plump and unintelligent, and neither was exciting to the outward eye, but it seemed that they danced well. But to young George this was the grand criterion of fitness for the purpose of a dance. John's idea of a dance--and Stephen's--was a social function at which you encountered pleasant people with whom, because there was dancing, one danced. But it was soon made clear to him that these were the withered memories of an obsolete age. For this was the time of the Great Craze. A dance now was no social affair; it was a semi-gladiatorial display to which one went to perform a purely physical operation with those who were physically most fitted to perform it. Dancing had pa.s.sed out of the "party" stage; it was no longer even a difficult, but agreeable and universal pastime; it was practically a profession. It was entirely impossible, except for the very highly gifted, even to approximate to the correct standards of style and manner without spending considerable sums of money on their own tuition. And when they had finished their elaborate and laborious training, and were deemed worthy to take the floor at the Buxton Galleries at all, they found that their new efficiency was a thin and ephemeral growth. The steps and rhythms and dances which they had but yesterday acquired, at how much trouble and expense, pa.s.sed today into the contemptible limbo of the unfas.h.i.+onable, like the hats of last spring; and so the life of the devotee was one long struggle to keep himself abreast of the latest invention of the astute but commercially-minded professional teachers. "For ever climbing up the climbing wave," for ever studying, yet for ever out-of-date, he oscillated hopefully between the Buxton Galleries and his chosen priest; and so swift and ruthless were the changes of fas.h.i.+on and the whims of the priesthood, that in order to get your money's worth of the last trick you had learned, it was necessary, during its brief life of respectability, to dance at every available opportunity. You danced as many nights a week as was physically or financially possible; you danced on week-days, and you danced on Sundays; you began dancing in the afternoon, and you danced during tea in the coffee-rooms of expensive restaurants, whirling your precarious way through littered and abandoned tea-tables; and at dinner-time you leapt up madly before the fish and danced like variety _artistes_ in a highly polished arena before a crowd of complete strangers eating their food; or, as if seized with an uncontrollable craving for the dance, you flung out after the joint for one wild gallop in an outer room, from which you returned, sweating and dyspeptic, to the consumption of an iced pudding, before das.h.i.+ng forth to the final orgy at a night-club, or a gallery, or the mansion of an earl. But it was seldom that you danced at anybody's mansion. The days of private and hospitable dances were practically dead. n.o.body could afford to give as many dances as the dancing cult required. Moreover, at private dances there were old-fas.h.i.+oned conventions and hampering politenesses to be observed. You might have to dance occasionally out of mere courtesy with some person who was three weeks behind the times, who could not do the Jimble or the Double-Jazz Glide, or might even have an attachment for the degrading and obsolete Waltz. On the other hand, you would not be allowed to dance the entire evening with "the one woman in the room who can do the Straddle properly," and there was a prejudice against positive indecency. So it was better from all points of view to pay a few guineas and go to a gallery or a restaurant or a night-club with a small number of selected women, dragooned by long practice into a slavish harmony with the niceties of your particular style and favourite steps. And after all, what with the dancing lessons, and the dance-dinners, and the dance-teas, and the taxis to dances, and the taxis away from dances, and the tickets for dances, and the subscriptions to night-clubs, and the life-members.h.i.+ps of night-clubs which perished after two years, you had so much capital invested in the industry that you simply could not _afford_ to have a moment's pleasure placed in jeopardy by deficiencies of technique in your guests. Away, then, with mere Beauty and mere Charm and mere Intelligence and mere Company! Bring out the Prize Mares and show us their steps and their stamina, their powers of endurance and harmonious submission, before we consent to appear with them in the public and costly arena.

A party selected on these lines, however suitable for the serious business of the evening, could be infinitely wearisome for the purposes of dinner. Stephen thought he had never beheld two young women so little entertaining as the two Misses Atholl. All they talked of and all that George Tarrant talked of was the dances they had been to, and were going to, and could not go to, and the comparative values of various mutual friends, considered solely as dancers. It was like the tedious "shop" of the more fanatical golfers; and indeed at any moment Stephen expected to hear that some brave or other had a handicap of three at the Buxton Galleries, or had become stale from over-training, or ruined his form by ordinary walking. Stephen (or Muriel) had taken care that they should be sitting together, but though she was very lively and charming, and though her talk was less restricted in range than the talk of the Atholls, Stephen began to wish intensely that he had not come. And he thought of Margery, and was sorry that he had left her alone in the house to come and listen to this futile jabbering. She had approved enthusiastically of his coming, for she thought that he went out too little; but she had looked rather wistful, he thought, when he left. She liked dancing herself.

To John, too, the talk at dinner and the personality (if any) of the Misses Atholl was inexpressibly dull; and since he was as far away from Muriel as it was possible for him to be, and since she scarcely spoke a word to any one but Stephen, he had nothing to console him but a few provocative glances and the hope of seeing more of her at the dance. And even this hope was dimmed by the presence of Stephen and the intimidating technicalities of the conversation. He did not understand why Stephen had come, and he rather resented his coming. Wherever Stephen was one of the company, he always felt himself closing up socially like an awed anemone in the presence of a large fish. And tonight in that dominating presence he could not see in himself the brilliant and romantic figure which he had determined to be at this party. It was far from being the kind of party he had expected.

The amazing language of young George and the Misses Atholl made it still less likely that that figure would be achieved at the dance. What were these "Rolls" and "Buzzes" and "Slides," he wondered. And how did one do them? The art of dancing seemed to have acquired strange complexities since he had last attempted it eighteen months ago. Then with a faint pride he had mastered the Fox Trot and something they called a Boston.

They had seemed very daring and difficult then, but already it seemed they were dead. At any rate they were never mentioned. John foresaw some hideous embarra.s.sments, and he too wished fervently that he had not come.

But Muriel at least was enjoying herself. She was feeling unusually mischievous and irresponsible. She twinkled mischief at John's glum face, and she twinkled mischief into Stephen's eyes. Only they were different kinds of mischief. She had long been fond of John "in a kind of way"; she was still fond of him "in a kind of way." But he was a slow and indefinite suitor, old John, and he was undeniably not exciting.

However, there was no one she liked better, and if he should ever bring himself to the pitch of suggesting it, she had little doubt that she would take him. His income would not be large, but it would be certain.

But it was slow work waiting, and this evening she had Stephen Byrne; and Stephen Byrne was undeniably exciting. Not simply because he was a great poet,--for though she liked "poitry" in a vague way, she did not like any one poet or one piece of poetry much better than another--but because he had made a _success_ of poetry, a worldly success. He had made a name, he had even made money; he was a well-known man. And he was handsome and young, and his hair was black, and that morning in the garden he had admired her. She knew that. And she knew that she had touched his vanity by her urgency and his senses by her charm, and something naughty had stirred in her, and that too he had seen and enjoyed with a sympathetic naughtiness. And she had thought to herself that it would be an amusing thing to captivate this famous young man, this married, respectable, delightful youth; it would be interesting to see how powerful she could be. And at least she might waken John Egerton into activity.

They went on to the dance in two taxis. John found himself on one of the small seats with his back to the driver, with Stephen and Muriel chattering aloofly together in the gloom of the larger seat. The small seat in a taxi is, at the best of times, a position of moral and strategic inferiority, and tonight John felt this keenly. He screwed his head round uncomfortably in his sharp collar and pretended to be profoundly interested in the wet and hurrying streets. But he heard every word they said; and they said no word to him.

From the door of the galleries where the dancing was done, a confused uproar overflowed into the pa.s.sages, as if several men of powerful physique were banging a number of pokers against a number of saucepans, and blowing whistles, and occasional catcalls, and now and then beating a drum and several sets of huge cymbals, and ceaselessly tw.a.n.ging at innumerable banjos, and at the same time singing in a foreign language, and shouting curses or exhortations or street-cries, or imitating hunting-calls or the cry of the hyena, or uniting suddenly in the final war-whoop of some pitiless Indian tribe. It was a really terrible noise.

It hit you like the breath of an explosion as you entered the room.

There was no distinguishable tune. It was simply an enormous noise. But there was a kind of savage rhythm about it, which made John think immediately of Indians and fierce men and the native camps which he had visited at the Earl's Court Exhibition. And this was not surprising; for the musicians included one genuine negro and three men with their faces blacked; and the noise and the rhythm were the authentic music of a negro village in South America; and the words which some genius had once set to the noise were an exhortation to go to the place where the negroes dwelt.

To judge by their movements, John thought, many of the dancers had in fact been there, and carefully studied the best indigenous models. They were doing some quite extraordinary things. No two couples were doing quite the same thing for more than a few seconds; so that there was an endless variety of extraordinary motions and extraordinary postures.

Some of them shuffled secretly along the edge of the room, their faces tense, their shoulders swaying faintly like reeds in a light wind, their progress almost imperceptible; they did not rotate, they did not speak, but sometimes the tremor of a skirt or the slight stirring of a patent leather shoe showed that they were indeed alive and in motion, though that motion was as the motion of a glacier, not to be measured in minutes or yards. And some, in a kind of fever, rushed hither and thither among the thick crowd, avoiding disaster with marvellous dexterity; and sometimes they revolved slowly and sometimes quickly, and sometimes spun giddily round for a moment like gyroscopic tops. Then they too would be seized with a kind of trance, or, it may be, with sheer shortness of breath, and hung motionless for a little in the centre of the room, while the mad throng jostled and flowed about them like the leaves in autumn round a dead bird. And some did not revolve at all, but charged straightly up and down; and some of these thrust their loves for ever before them, as the Prussians thrust the villagers in the face of the enemy, and some for ever navigated themselves backwards like moving breakwaters to protect their darlings from the rough seas of tangled women and precipitate men. Some of them kept themselves as upright as possible, swaying gracefully like willows from the hips, and some of them contorted themselves into hideous and angular shapes, now leaning perilously forward till they were practically lying upon their terrified partners, and now bending sideways as a man bends who has water in one ear after bathing. All of them clutched each other in a close and intimate manner, but some, as if by separation to intensify the joy of their union, or perhaps to secure greater freedom for some particularly s.p.a.cious manoeuvre, would part suddenly in the middle of the room and, clinging distantly with their hands, execute a number of complicated side-steps in opposite directions, or aim a series of vicious kicks at each other, after which they would reunite in a pa.s.sionate embrace, and gallop in a frenzy round the room, or fall into a trance, or simply fall down; if they fell down they lay still for a moment in the fearful expectation of death, as men lie who fall under a horse; and then they would creep on hands and knees to the sh.o.r.e through the mobile and indifferent crowd.

Watching them you could not tell what any one couple would do next. The most placid and dignified among them might at any moment fling a leg out behind them and almost kneel in mutual adoration, and then, as if nothing unusual had happened, shuffle solemnly onward through the press; or, as though some electric mechanism had been set in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot sideways and stand on one leg, reminding the observer irresistibly of a dog out for a walk; or, with the suggestion of an acrobat nerving himself for the final effort of daring, the male would plant himself firmly on both feet while his maiden laboriously leapt a half-circle through the air about the tense figure of her swain.

It was marvellous with what unanimity these eccentricities were performed. So marvellous, John thought, that it was impossible to think of them as spontaneous, joyous expressions of art. He imagined the male issuing his orders during the long minutes of shuffling motion, carefully manoeuvring into position, sizing up like a general the strategic situation, and then hoa.r.s.ely whispering the final "Now!" And after that they moved on with all the nonchalance of extreme self-consciousness, thinking, no doubt, "It cost me a lot to learn that--but it was worth it."

The look of their faces confirmed this view, for nearly all were set and purposeful and strained, as men who have serious work in hand; not soulful, not tense with emotion, but simply expressive of concentration.

With few exceptions there was nothing of the joy of life in those faces, the rapture of music or of motion. They meant business. And this was the only thing that could absolve many of them from the charge of public indecency; for it was clear that their motions and the manner of their embraces were not the expression of licence or affection so much as matters of technique.

Upon this whirlpool John Egerton embarked with the gravest misgivings, especially as he was conscious of a strange Miss Atholl clinging to his person. Young George Tarrant had immediately plunged into the storm with her sister, and his fair head was to be seen far off, gleaming and motionless like a lighthouse above the tossing heads and undulant shoulders. Stephen had secured Muriel Tarrant, and poor John was very miserable. If he had been less shy, or more intimate with Miss Atholl, he might have comforted himself with the comedy of it all. And if he had been more ruthless he might have bent Miss Atholl to his will and declined to attempt anything but his own primitive two-step. But he became solemn and panic-stricken, and surrendered his hegemony to her, suffering her to give him intricate advice in a language which was meaningless to him, and to direct him with ineffectual tugs and pushes which only made his bewilderment worse. The noise was deafening, the atmosphere stifling, the floor incredibly slippery. The four black men were now all shouting at once, and playing all their instruments at once, working up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale, and all the dancers began to dance with a last desperate fury and velocity. Bodies buffeted John from behind, and while he was yet looking round in apology or anger, other bodies buffeted him from the flank, and more bodies buffeted his partner and pressed her against his reluctant frame. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there is no time to recover from the slap and buffets of one wave before the next one smites you.

Miss Atholl whispered, "Hold me tighter," and John, blus.h.i.+ng faintly at these unnatural advances, tightened a little his ineffectual grip. The result of this was that he kicked her more often on the ankle and trod more often on her toes. Close beside him a couple fell down with a crash and a curse and the harsh tearing of satin. John glanced at them in concern, but was swept swiftly onward with the tide. He was dimly aware now that the black men were standing on their chairs bellowing, and fancied the end must be near. And with this thought he found himself surprisingly in a quiet backwater, a corner between two rows of chairs, from which he determined never to issue till the Last Banjo should indeed sound. And here he sidled and shuffled vaguely for a little, hoping that he gave the impression of a man preparing himself for some vast culminating feat, a sidestep, or a "buzz," or a double-Jazzspin, or whatever these wonders might be.

Then the noise suddenly ceased; there was a burst of perfunctory clapping, and the company became conscious of the sweat of their bodies.

John looked round longingly for Muriel.

But Muriel was happily chattering to Stephen Byrne in a deep sofa surrounded by palms. Stephen, like John, had surveyed the new dancing with dismay, but his dismay was more artistic than personal. He was as much amused as disgusted, and he did not intend, for any woman, to make himself ridiculous by attempting any of the more recent monstrosities.

But, unlike John, he had the natural spirit of dancing in his soul; so that he was able to ignore the freakish stupidities of the scene, and extract an artistic elemental pleasure of his own from the light and the colour and excitement, from the barbaric rhythm of the noise and the seductive contact of Muriel Tarrant. So he took her and swung her defiantly round in an ordinary old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz; and she, because it was the great Stephen Byrne, felt no shame at this sacrilege.

When they had come to the sofa, she talked for a little the idle foolishness which is somehow inseparable from the intervals between dances, and he thought, "I wonder whether she always talks like this. I wonder if she reads my poems. I wonder if she likes them." He began to wish that she would pay him a compliment about them, even an unintelligent compliment. It might jar upon him intellectually, but, coming from her, it would still be pleasing. For it is a mistake to suppose that great artists are so remote from the weaknesses of other men that they are not sometimes ready to have their vanity tickled by a charming girl at the expense of their professional sensibilities.

But she only said, "It's a ripping band here. I hope you'll come here again, Mr. Byrne." And he thought, "What a conversation!" How could one live permanently with a conversation like this? But old John could!

But as she said it she looked him in the eyes very directly and delightfully, and once again there was the sense of a secret pa.s.sing between them.

Then they went to look for John, and Muriel determined that she would be very nice to him. The next dance was, nominally, a waltz, and that was a rare event. John asked if he might waltz in the ancient fas.h.i.+on, and though she was being conscientiously sweet and gracious to him, and though she had made no murmur when Stephen had done as John would like to do, some devil within her made her refuse. She said that he must do the Hesitation Waltz as other people were doing. The chief point of this seemed to be that you imitated the dog, not by spasms, but consistently. Even the most expert pract.i.tioner failed to invest this feat with elegance and dignity, and the remainder, poising themselves pathetically with one leg in the air, as if waiting for the happy signal when they might put it down, would have looked ridiculous if they had not looked so sad. Stephen, revolving wearily with the younger Miss Atholl, wished that the Medusa's head might be smuggled into the room for the att.i.tudes of this dance to be imperishably recorded in cold stone. Then he caught sight of the unhappy John, and was smitten with an amused sympathy. John's study of the habits of dogs had evidently been superficial, and he did not greatly enjoy his first dance with his love.

He held her very reverently and loosely, though dimly aware that this made things much more difficult, but he could not bring himself to seize that soft and altogether sacred form in the kind of intimate clutch which the other men affected--Stephen, he noticed, included. It was a maddening complexity of emotion, that dance--the incredible awe and rapture of holding his adored, however lightly, in his arms, the intoxication of her nearness the fragrance of her dress, and the touch of her hair upon his face--and all this ruined by the exasperating futility of the actual dance, the vile necessity of thinking whether he was in time with the music and in time with Muriel, and if he was going to run into the couple ahead, and if there was room to reverse in that corner, and whether he should c.o.c.k his leg up farther, or not so far, or not at all. He envied bitterly the easy accomplishment of the circling youths about him, who, for all the earnestness of their expressions, had each of them, no doubt, time to appreciate the fact that they held on their arms some warm and lovely girl.

Yet Muriel was very kind and forbearing and instructive, and at the end of it he did feel that he had made some progress, both with his hesitating and his suit. They sat in the interval on the same sofa, and Muriel was still gracious. She told him that he would pick it up very quickly, that it was all knack, that it was all balance, that it was all practice, that no practice was needed. And John believed everything and was much excited and pleased. He thanked her for her advice, and vowed that he would take lessons and become an expert. And Muriel thought, "He will never be able to dance; could I live permanently with a man like that?" She thought what a prim, funny "old boy" he was. But he was a nice "old boy," and that rumour about the maid-servant was positively ridiculous.

The next dance she had promised to Stephen. The four black men were playing a wild and precipitate tune. A certain melody was distinguishable, and it had less of the lunacies of extravagant syncopation than most of their repertoire. But it was a wicked tune, a hot, provocative, pa.s.sionate tune, that fired a man with a kind of fever of motion. Faster and faster, and louder and louder, the black men played; and though it was impossible for the dancers to move much faster because of the press, their entranced souls responded to the gathering urgency of the music, and they clutched their partners more tightly, and they were conscious no more of the sweat upon their bodies, of their sore toes, or disordered dresses, they forgot for a moment the technical details of the movements of their feet, and they were whirled helplessly on in a savage crescendo of noise and motion and physical rapture towards the final Elysium of licence to which this dance must surely lead them.

Stephen Byrne felt the fever and enjoyed it. He enjoyed it equally as a personal indulgence and as an artistic experience. He held Muriel very close, and found himself dancing with an eager pleasure which surprised him. Yet as he danced, he was noticing his own sensations and the faces of the people about him, the intense faces of the men, the drugged expressions of the women. He saw oldish men looking horribly young in their animal excitement, and oldish women looking horrible in their coquettishness. And he saw them all as literary material. He thought, "This is good copy."

Muriel, he knew, was enjoying it too. Her eyes were half-closed, her face, a little pale, had the aspect of absolute surrender which can be seen in churches. But sometimes she opened her eyes wide and smiled at Stephen. And this excited him very much, so that he watched for it; and when she saw that she blushed. Then he was swept with a hot gust of feeling, and he realized that he was dangerously attracted by this girl.

He thought of Margery and the late vows he had made, and he was ashamed.

But the mad dance went on, with ever-increasing fury, and the black men returned with a vast tempestuous chord and a shattering crash of cymbals to the original melody, and all those men and women braced themselves to s.n.a.t.c.h the last moment of this intoxication. Those who were dancing with bad partners or dull partners were filled with bitterness because they were not getting the full measure of the dance; and those who held the perfect partners in their arms foresaw with sorrow the near end of their rapture, and began, if they had not already begun, to conceive for each other a certain sentimental regard. Stephen thought no more of Margery, but he thought tenderly of Muriel and the moment when the dance must end. For when it ended all would be over; he might not hold her in his arms any more, he might not enjoy her loveliness in any way, because he was married, and she was dedicated to John. She was too good for John.

But because he was married he must stand aside and see her sacrificed to John or to somebody like John. He must not interfere with that. But he would like to interfere. He would like to kiss her at the end of the dance.

The dance was finished at last, and while they sat together afterwards, hot and exhausted, Muriel said suddenly, "What's all this about Mr.

Egerton--and--that maid of yours--? There are some horrid stories going round--Mrs. Vincent--Mother said she wouldn't listen to any of them."

Stephen was silent for a little. Then he said, in a doubtful, deliberate manner:

"Well, I've known John as long as anybody in The Chase, and I know he's a jolly good fellow, but--but--It was an extraordinary affair, that, altogether. I don't know what to make of it." He finished with a sigh of perplexity.

Then he sat silent again, marvelling at himself, and Muriel said no more.

John came up and stood awkwardly before them. He wanted to ask Muriel for the next dance, but he was too shy to begin. His dress-suit was ill-fitting and old, his hair ruffled, his tie crooked, and as she lay back on the sofa Muriel could see a glimpse of s.h.i.+rt between the top of his trousers and the bottom of the shrunken and dingy white waistcoat, where any p.r.o.nounced movement of his body caused a spasmodic but definite hiatus. His s.h.i.+rt front had buckled into a wide dent. Of all these things poor John was acutely conscious as he stood uncertainly before the two.

Stephen said heartily, "Hallo, old John, you look a bit the worse for wear. How did you get on that time?"

John stammered, "Not very well--I want Miss Tarrant to give me some more--some more instruction." And he looked at Muriel, an appealing, pathetic look. He wished very fiercely that Stephen was not there--so easy and das.h.i.+ng, and certain of himself.

And Muriel had no smile for him. She glanced inquiringly at Stephen, and said, with the hard face of a statue, "I'm sorry, I'm doing the next with Mr. Byrne." And Stephen nodded.