IX
A DANCING LESSON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
To enter a cricket-field in mid-winter and a ballroom at midday areanalogous trials, and serious ones to enthusiasts in either arena; butthe former is a less depressing sight in January than in December, whilethere is something even inspiriting about a ballroom the day before thedance.
When, quite early in the afternoon, Alice slipped unobserved into thecool and empty dining-room, her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled, andthe hard boards yielded like air beneath her airy feet. She shut thedoor quietly, though with an elbow; her hands were full. She carried twolong wax candles that knew no flame, two gleaming dinner-knives, and apair of scissors. These were deposited on a chair--provisionally--whilethe young lady inspected the floor with critical gaze.
She frowned--the floor was far from perfect. She slid out one smallfoot, as if trying dubious ice--yes, most imperfect. The other footfollowed; it would be impossible to dance on a floor like this. Nextinstant the lie was given to this verdict by the judge herself, for MissBristo was skimming like a swallow round the room.
Would you see a graceful maiden at her best? Then watch her dancing.Would you behold her most sweet? Then catch her unawares--if you can.Most graceful and most sweet, then--I admit that the combination is arare one, but she should be dancing all alone; for, alas! the ballroomhas its mask, and the dual dance its trammels.
In this instance it was only that Alice desired to try the floor, and toassure herself that her feet had lost none of their cunning; and onlyonce round. No, twice; for, after all, the floor was not so very bad,while the practice was very good, and--the sensation was delicious. Yeta third round--a last one--with quickened breath and heightened colour,and supple curves and feet more nimble, and a summer gown like a silvercloud, now floating in the wake of the pliant form, now clingingtenderly as she swiftly turned. And none to see her!
What, none?
As Alice came to an abrupt pause in front of her cutlery and candles, adeep soft voice said, "Bravo!"
She looked quickly up, and the base of a narrow open window at the endof the room was filled by a pair of broad shoulders; and well set up onthe shoulders was a handsome, leonine face, with a blond beard and apair of bold, smiling eyes.
"Bravo, Miss Bristo!"
"Well, really, Mr. Miles--"
"Now don't be angry--you can't be so unreasonable. I was out here; I sawsomething white and dazzling pass the window twice; and the third time Ithought I'd see what it was. I came and looked, and thought it was anangel turned deserter, and dancing for joy to be on earth again! Therewas no harm in that, was there?"
"There is a great deal of harm in compliments," said Alice severely;"especially when they are wicked as well as rude."
Mr. Miles smiled up at her through the window, completely unabashed.
"I forgot. Of course it was rude to liken you to gods I never saw, andnever hope to see. Forgive me!"
But Alice was thinking that her freak required a word of explanation.
"I was only just trying the floor," she said. "I never dreamt thatanyone would be so mean as to watch me."
"Unfortunately one can't learn from merely watching," Mr. Miles replied,quietly raising himself upon the sill. "You surely haven't forgotten thelesson you promised to give me?"--swinging his legs into the room--"Iclaim that lesson now." He towered above her, a column of gray tweed,his arms folded lightly across his massive chest.
The window by which Miles entered was five feet above the river lawn,and one of three at that end of the room--the other walls had none.Standing with one's back to these windows, the door was on the righthand side, and, facing it, a double door communicating with theconservatory. Before this double door, which was ajar, hung a heavycurtain, awaiting adjustment for the evening.
"I did not ask you in," remarked Alice with some indignation. It wasjust like Mr. Miles, this; and for once he really was not wanted.
"Unfortunately, no; you forced me to ask myself. But about the lesson?You know I never danced in my life; am I to disgrace my countryto-night?"
"You should have come to me this morning."
"You were--cooking, I believe."
"Thank you, Mr. Miles! Then yesterday."
"We were all in town. Now do be the angel you looked a minute since,Miss Bristo, and show me the ropes. It won't take you ten minutes; Iassure you I'm a quick learner. Why, if it's time you grudge, we havewasted ten minutes already, talking about it."
Impudence could no higher climb; but Mr. Miles was not as other menare--at least, not in this house. There was nothing for it but to givein, show him the rudiments, and get rid of them as quickly as possible;for Dick might arrive at any moment.
"Ten minutes is all I shall give you, then. Attention! One, two, three;one, two, three; so! Can you do it?"
Of course he could not, after a niggardly example of half-a-dozen steps:he did not try; he insisted on her waltzing once right round the roomvery slowly.
"Then it is your last chance," exclaimed Alice. "Now watch: you beginso: one--a long one, remember--then two, three--little quick ones. Nowtry. No, you needn't lift your feet; you are not stamping for an encore,Mr. Miles. It is all done by sliding, like this. Now, try again."
Miles bent his six feet three into five feet nothing, and slid gravelyround with an anxious watch upon his feet.
"Why, you are bent double," cried Miss Bristo, sharply; "and, let metell you, you will never learn while you look at your feet."
Miles stopped short.
"Then how am I to learn?" he asked, gazing helplessly at hisinstructress.
Alice burst out laughing.
"You had better lock yourself in your room and practise hard untilevening. The ten minutes are up; but you have exactly six hours andtwenty-nine minutes before you, if you make haste."
"Well, you shall suffer if I cut a poor figure to-night, Miss Bristo,and it will serve you right, for I intend to have my share of yourdances."
"That remains to be seen," said Alice tritely.
"Stay, though," said Miles, drawing himself up to the last of hisseventy-five inches, and speaking in that smooth, matter-of-fact tonethat ushered in his most astounding audacities, "suppose we two try--indouble harness--now?"
"Mr. Miles!"
"Miss Bristo, I am sure I should get on a thousand times better. Is itso very much to ask?" he added humbly--for him.
The inner Alice echoed the question: Was it so very much to ask--or togrant? The answer came at once: To anyone else, yes; to Mr. Miles, no;grave, heroic, middle-aged Mr. Miles! With a mighty show ofcondescension, Miss Bristo agreed to one round, and not a step more. Shewould not have been called prude for the world; but unluckily, pruderyand prudence so often go hand in hand.
The two went whirling round the empty room. Before they were half-wayround, Alice exclaimed:
"You have cheated; never danced, indeed!"
He murmured that it was so many years ago, he thought he had forgotten.Having thus discovered that she could teach her pupil nothing, it wasAlice's plain duty to stop; but this she forgot to do. Mr. Miles, forhis part, said not a word, but held her firmly. He, in fact, waltzedbetter than any man she had ever danced with. Tworounds--three--six--without a word.
Even if they had not been dancing they might have failed to hear abuoyant footstep that entered the conservatory at this time; for theworst of an india-rubber sole is the catlike tread that it gives themost artless wearer. But it was an unfortunate circumstance that theydid just then happen to be dancing.
There is no excuse for Miss Bristo, that I know of. Pleas of faultytraining or simplicity within her years would, one feels, be futile.Without doubt she behaved as the girl of this period is not intended tobehave; let her be blamed accordingly. She did not go unpunished.
After waltzing for no less a space than five minutes--in a ballroom bareas a crypt, in broad daylight, and in silence--Alice, happening to lookup, saw a look on her pa
rtner's face which made her tremble. She hadnever seen a similar expression.
It was pale and resolute--stern, terrible. She disengaged herself withlittle ado, and sank quietly into a chair by the window.
"A fine 'one round'!" she said demurely; "but it shall be deducted fromyour allowance this evening."
She could not see him; he was behind her. His eyes were devouring theshapely little head dipped in the gold of the afternoon sun. Her face hecould not see--only the tips of two dainty ears and they were pink. Buta single lock of hair--a wilful lock that had got astray in the dance,and lay on her shoulder like a wisp of sunlit hay--attracted hisattention, and held it. When he managed to release his eyes, they rovedswiftly round the room, and finally rested upon another chair within hisreach, on which lay two wax-candles, two dinner-knives, and a pair ofscissors.
A click of steel an inch from her ear caused Alice to start from herchair and turn round. Mr. Miles--pale, but otherwise undisturbed--stoodholding the scissors in his right hand, and in his left was a lock ofher hair. For one moment Miss Bristo was dumb with indignation. Then herlips parted; but before she could say a word the door-handle turned, Mr.Miles dropped the scissors upon the chair and put his left hand in hispocket, and the head and shoulders of Colonel Bristo were thrust intothe room.
"Ah, I have found you at last!" the old gentleman cried with anindulgent smile. "If you are at liberty, and Alice don't mind, we willspeak of--that matter--in my study."
"My lesson is just over," said Miles, bowing to Alice. He moved towardsthe door; with his fingers upon the handle, he turned, and for aninstant regarded Alice with a calm, insolent, yet tender gaze; then thedoor closed, and Alice was alone.
She heard the footsteps echo down the passage; she heard another dooropen and shut. The next sound that reached her ears was at the otherside of the room in which she sat. She glanced quickly toward thecurtained door: a man stood between it and her. It was Dick.
Alice recoiled in her chair. She saw before her a face pale withpassion; for the first time in her life she encountered the eyes of anangry man. She quailed; a strange thrill crept through her frame; shecould only look and listen. It seemed an age before Dick spoke. When hedid speak, it was in a voice far calmer than she expected. She did notknow that the calm was forced, and therefore the more ominous.
"I have only one thing to ask," he began hurriedly, in a low tone: "wasthis a plot? If it was, do say so, and so far as I am concerned itseffect shall be quick enough: I will go at once. Only I want to know theworst, to begin with."
Alice sat like a stone. She gave no sign that she had so much as heardhim. Poor girl, the irony of Fate seemed directed against her! She hadinvited Dick on purpose to consult him about Mr. Miles, and now--andnow--
"You don't speak," pursued Dick, less steadily; "but you must. I mean tohave my answer before either of us leaves this room. I mean to know allthere is to know. There shall be an end to this fooling between ustwo!"
"What right have you to speak to me like this?"
"The right of a true lover--hopeless of late, yet still that! Answer me:had you planned this?"
"You know that is absurd."
How coldly, how evenly she spoke! Was her heart of ice? But Dick--therewas little of the "true lover" in his looks, and much of the true hater.Yet even now, one gentle word, one tender look from him, and tears ofpity and penitence might still have flowed. His next words froze them.
"No conspiracy, then! Merely artless, honest, downright love-making;dancing--alone--and giving locks of hair and (though only bycoincidence!) the man you loved once and enslaved for ever--this man ofall others asked by you to come at this very hour, and, in fact, turningup in the middle of it! And this was chance. I am glad to hear it!"
Men have been called hard names for speaking to women less harshly thanthis--even on greater provocation; but let it be remembered that he hadloved her long years better than his life; that he had wrenched himselffrom England and from her--for her sake; that during all that time herimage had been graven on his soul. And, further, that he had led a roughlife in rough places, where men lose their shallower refinements, andwhence only the stout spirits emerge at all.
When recrimination becomes insult a woman is no longer defenceless;right or wrong in the beginning, she is right now; she needs no morethan the consciousness of this to quicken her wit and whet her tongue.
"I do not understand you," exclaimed Alice, looking him splendidly inthe face. "Have the goodness to explain yourself before I say the lastword that shall ever pass between you and me."
"Yes, I will explain," cried Dick, beside himself--"I will explain yourtreatment of me! While you knew I was on my way to you--while I was onthe very sea--you took away your love from me, and gave it to anotherman. Since then see how you have treated me! Well, that man--the man youflatter, and pet, and coquette with; the man who kennels here like atame dog--is a rogue: a rogue and a villain, mark my words!"
In the midst of passion that gathered before his eyes a marble statue,pure and cold, seemed to rise out of the ground in front of him.
"One word," said Alice Bristo, in the kind of voice that might come frommarble: "the last one. You spoke of putting an end to something existingbetween us--'fooling' was the word you used. Well, there was somethingbetween us long ago, though you might have found a prettier word for it;but it also ended long ago; and you have known that some weeks. Therehas since been friendship; yes, you shall have an end put to that too,though you might have asked it differently. Stay, I have not finished.You spoke of Mr. Miles; most of what you said was beneath notice;indeed, you have so far lost self-control that I think you cannot knownow what you said a minute ago. But you spoke of Mr. Miles in a cruel,wicked way. You have said behind his back what you dare not say to hisface. He at least is generous and good; he at least never forgets thathe is a gentleman; but then, you see, he is so infinitely nobler, andtruer, and greater than you--this man you dare to call a villain!"
"You love him!" cried Dick fiercely.
Instead of answering, Alice lowered her eyes. Stung to the quick--sickand sore at heart--revenge came within her reach in too sweet a form tobe resisted.
Never was lie better acted. Dick was staggered. He approached herunsteadily.
"It is a villain that you love!" he gasped. "I know it--a villain and animpostor! But I will unmask him with my own hands--so help me God!"
He raised his pale face upward as he spoke, smiting his palms togetherwith a dull dead thud. Next moment he had vaulted through the openwindow by which Miles had entered so short a time before--and was gone.
* * * * *
Meanwhile an interview of a very different character took place inColonel Bristo's sanctum. It ended thus:
"Then you are quite sure that this hundred will be enough for you to goon with?"
"More than enough; fifty would have done. Another Queensland mail is duea month hence; and they can never fail me twice running."
"But you say you are so far up country that you do not send down to meetevery mail. Your partner may not have thought you likely to run short."
"I wired him some weeks ago that I had miscalculated damages. I shouldhave had my draft by this mail but for the floods. I feel confident theyhave prevented him sending down in time; there has been mention of thesefloods several times in the papers."
"Well, my dear Miles, if you want more, there is more where this camefrom. I cashed the cheque myself this morning, by the way; I happened tobe in the bank, and I thought you would like it better. Here theyare--ten tens."
"Colonel Bristo, I can never express--"
"Don't try, sir. You saved my life."