Part 38 (1/2)

”Everything in this house is last year's. There's not a turkey-trot on the place, or a tango.”

A little later she spoke again, ”Here's a bit of ancient history.” She cranked up the machine, set the needle to the disk, and ”The Beautiful Blue Danube” came tw.a.n.ging forth from a scarred record that riddled the melody with curious spatterings.

The once world-victorious rhapsody had almost a dirge-like tameness now; but it brought Willie to his feet, and he began to circle the room with Persis. She drooped over his inferior shoulders like a wilted flower.

Ten Eyck scooped Alice off the floor and danced in double time. Forbes bowed to Winifred, but she waved him away with a heavy hand. Mrs. Neff beckoned him.

”I'd rather be second choice than a wallflower. That music takes me back a thousand years.”

She glided with an old-time dignity. Forbes tried to keep his eyes from Persis and heed Mrs. Neff's reminiscences.

”Waltzes, waltzes!” she wailed. ”How much they meant once to me. There are no dances like the old dances.”

”There never were,” said Forbes. ”I reckon that twenty years from now old folks will be shaking their heads and telling how sweet and dignified the turkey-trot was compared with the epileptic crawl and the hydrophobia skedaddle they'll be doing then.”

”I reckon so,” said Mrs. Neff. ”I can just remember when the polka was considered immoral.”

Other waltzes were played, but Willie's appet.i.te for them was quenched after the first. He sank into a chair by the living-room table and took up a story in an old magazine.

Persis waltzed with Forbes more often than with the others; but Willie never knew. In fact, it was not long before his head grew heavier and heavier, and finally, with his chin in his necktie, he slept.

The dancing, the copious wine, and the sudden warmth of the weather soon led to the opening of doors. From the music-room one stepped out into a kind of cloister opening on the lawn.

Eventually Persis set a two-step record whirling on the machine. Forbes asked her to dance with him. As they were pa.s.sing one of the doors a little gust of summer-night air blew upon them so appealingly that Forbes swung Persis across the sill and stepped out into the cloister, where the moonlight streamed like a distant searchlight.

The music followed them, but m.u.f.fled, by the pat of their feet along the tiled floor. To silence this noise Forbes danced across the margin of stone out upon the smooth, short, silent gra.s.s. Persis made no resistance, and he danced always a little deeper into the lawn, a little farther from the house. He danced her round the inky plumes of a cl.u.s.ter of cedars. These shut out the lights from the door. The music was quite lost here, and Persis hummed the tune herself; seemed to croon it into his very heart.

The music must have stopped in the house long before they knew it, and some one must have put on a disk in whose hard-rubber surface was embedded the voice of Sembrich singing a waltz-song of Chopin's.

This angelic melody floated on the air as if it came from nowhere and everywhere, and Forbes and Persis fell into the swift rhythm of it. They must needs dance furiously fast to keep up; but the music brought with it some of its own resistless energy.

Out here in this moon-world they seemed to be utterly aloof from the earth. They seemed to whirl like twin stars in a cosmic dance to the music of the spheres, the song the stars sing together. The Milky Way was but moonlit dew on the lawn of the sky. And they darted between the planets in a divine rhythm on a vast orbit, until at last a breathlessness of soul and body compelled Persis to end the occult rite.

The moonlight fell about her in a magic veil, and Forbes could not let her go. He caught her closer to him. But before his lips could brush her cheek, she broke his clasp and said:

”We must get back.”

”Oh, please!” he implored.

”The others will wonder.”

”What of it?”

”We can't afford to set them talking.”

”We can't afford to waste a night like this in a stuffy room.”

”There will be other moonlight nights.”

”How do you know? We can't be sure.”