Part 13 (1/2)
And turning from him she saw that her husband stood a few paces off, watching them with a thoughtful scrutiny that caught at her heart.
Gliding across the polished floor, she slipped a hand under his elbow, and leaned close to him.
”Darling,” she whispered, ”I am so glad this is ours.” Without a word, he put his arm round her, and swept her into the crowd.
For a while Lenox followed them with his eyes, as they circled smoothly in and out among the dancers, as notable a couple as the room contained. Then he raked the s.h.i.+fting crowd for Quita's grey-green figure,--in vain. Neither she nor Garth was to be seen. It needed small perspicacity to locate them: and grinding his teeth Lenox went out again into a night jewelled with the unnumbered bonfires of the universe. Striking a match, he lit his pipe, in defiance of the knowledge that for the past few weeks he had been persistently overstepping his self-imposed allowance, and fell to pacing the railed path outside the building.
Was it altogether his own fault, he wondered bitterly, that he stood thus, cut off from the core of life, breaking his teeth upon the husks of it, and making believe that they satisfied his hunger? In the tragedies resulting from 'the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things,' that question flung, again and again into the 'derisive silence of eternity,' mocks the soul with echo's answer.
Where lies the blame? Where, indeed? For all his vaunted supremacy man is not always master of his fate. Circ.u.mstance, heredity, the despicable trifle, the inexpert finger, which a certain type of human is so zealous to thrust into an alien life, compa.s.s him about with a cloud of witnesses to his own impotence.
With which conclusion, softened by the kindly influence of drugged tobacco, Lenox knocked the ashes out of his pipe; and decided that since he was here to observe his wife and Garth, and to cure himself of an undignified infatuation, it would be well to return to the ballroom till number twelve.
But as he moved forward a low laugh, near at hand, chained him to the spot. Then Quita emerged from a patch of shadow, closely followed by Garth. She tilted her chin, and flung a smiling threat at him over her shoulder.
”If you can't be more reasonable, I shall cancel your remaining dances and give them to the Riley boy.” Which announcement brought him swiftly to her side; and Lenox failed to catch his murmured reply.
They pa.s.sed on without perceiving him; and he followed . . . merely from a sense of duty!
At one of the open doorways, that flung panels of light across the verandah, they paused; and he paused also, a few paces off. The couples within were forming themselves into ordered squares.
”Lancers,” she said, in a tone of distaste.
”Are you dancing them?” he asked.
”No.”
”Come and sit out again, then; and I'll be as reasonable as you please.”
She glanced quickly round the room, as if in search of something.
”Very well,” she said: and turning on the threshold, came face to face with her husband.
With a scarcely perceptible start, she acknowledged his grave bow of recognition, and drew back to let him pa.s.s. But he remained close enough to catch what followed.
”I'd rather dance than sit out, after all,” she announced, with a brisk change of manner.
”But, dear lady, . . . why?”
She laughed. ”What a question! I thought you pretended to know something about women? I claim the divine right of whim. _Voila, tout_! One can't spend the evening in explanation. The spirit moves me to romp. It's infinitely more wholesome than mooning under the stars. All we want now is a cheery _vis-a-vis_. Ah . . . there's Michel. The very man!”
She signalled across the room with her fan, and Michael came skidding and slithering towards her, a delighted girl clinging to his arm:--a girl in the glamour of her first season, a-thrill to her white kid finger-tips because these rested on the sleeve of a living artist, who had already paid her one or two chivalry-coated compliments.
”Now why the deuce did she weather-c.o.c.k round like that?” Lenox wondered, floundering in the quicksands of masculine ignorance.
But no answer suggested itself; because this woman, who was his, and yet not his,--this woman, with her many-hued personality, rich in subtle contradictions--was a sealed book to him, and seemed like to remain so. And what, after all, are the hearts that beat closest to our own but sealed books, which we open from time to time, at random; too often at the wrong page? But a ballroom is no fit place for abstract meditation. The l.u.s.t of eye and ear, the pride of life, challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems a mighty bloodless affair.
Lenox moved back to the doorway, leaned against the woodwork, and folding his arms, surveyed the scene before him with the apathetic interest of the large and mystified. The long room was crowded with jumbled atoms of colour, like a damaged kaleidoscope; with talk and laughter; with the whisper of sweeping skirts, and the clink of spurs.
Then the first provocative bars set every foot in motion; and the kaleidoscope effect was complete.
Lenox,--towering isolated, amid a world of light-hearted couples,--was aware that beneath his surface indifference there lurked a certain shamefaced envy of these bewildering mortals who could shuffle off the years, and revert, unabashed, to the entrancing follies of childhood; and who could yet, in lucid intervals, grapple undismayed with intricacies of Indian legislation, lead a forlorn hope, love and suffer and die, if need be, with a stiff lip, and an obstinate faith in 'the ultimate decency of things.' For of a truth, the earth holds no more fantastic farrago of folly and heroism than your average human being; and musing on these things, Lenox decided that there must have been some radical flaw in his own education.