‘You cannot help me,’ Laura replied, ‘for Belle’s, or anybody else’s sake. You could not even help me by your own inclination, of your own will, for Mr Voss, Tom, is lost.’
Tom Radclyffe was quite shocked by the ugly music, and by the lurching movements of his partner. The truth that he had let loose made him protest and bluster.
‘If it is second sight that keeps you so well informed, then we are all threatened.’
Whether from emotion, or exertion, he emphasized every other word. But Laura did not defend herself. Almost at once, she left her partner, and went straight to the retiring-room. Chattie Wilson, noticing, wondered whether she should accompany her friend, whose face was shrunk to the extent that it resembled a yellow skull.
In the resilient hall the music continued to ache until it was time for supper.
Mrs Pringle’s triumph was complete when the doors were flung open and her guests burst into the supper-room. If burst is not a refined, it is yet an unavoidable word. For those well-conducted, but prudent people who had quietly stationed themselves in readiness, were propelled from behind by the feckless rout, which had continued to dance, and chatter, and fall in love. Suddenly the two parties were united in one thought, only differently expressed, and although the prudent were protesting, and even leaning back to restrain the flushed, impulsive horde of feckless that continued pushing from behind, their common thought did prevail, in final eruption, which brought them in a rush of churned bodies right to the edge of the long tables, threatening the rosy hams and great unctuous sirloins of bloody beef.
‘It is disgraceful,’ laughed Mrs Bonner, ‘that a gathering of individuals from genteel homes should behave like cattle.’
However, she did really rather approve of all signs of animal health, and might have been alarmed had the company behaved like human beings.
Her friend and hostess, Mrs Pringle, who had been frightened at first, for her condition, and who had sought protection behind a most convulsive palm, now emerged, and was walking amongst her guests, with advice such as:
‘Do let me press you to a little of this fish in aspic,’
or:
‘I can recommend the Salad à la Roosse, Miss Hetherington.’
By her very hospitality, Mrs Pringle, who had wounded many a friend in the name of friendship, was laying herself open to the most savage forms of counter-attack. Now, some of those friends might never have seen her before, while the expression of others suggested they had, indeed, recognized what they must force themselves to endure. As the resigned Mrs Pringle humbly went about her duties, always the servant of their pleasure, the guests were frowning at her from above their whiskers of crimped lettuce and lips of mayonnaise.
Of all those friends perhaps only Mrs Bonner was truly grateful, and she had grown obsequious.
‘Allow me to fetch you a jelly, my dear,’ she begged. ‘Even if, as you say, you have no appetite, a little wine jelly, in your condition, can only fortify.’
For Mrs Bonner, with her head for figures, and her honest beginnings — it was, in fact, not generally known that she had helped her husband with the books — made a habit of reckoning up the cost, and was always flattered by magnificence.
With everyone so busily employed, it was easy for Laura to return unnoticed and take her place amongst the company. Superficially restored, her composure might have seen the evening out if, in the arrangement of things, she had not found herself standing beside Dr Badgery. The surgeon would not, however, suffer her to bite him twice, nor his attention to stray from a helping of beef, and there he might have continued to stand, ignoring the true object of his concern, if their hands had not plunged at the same unhappy moment into a basket of bread.
‘Then, you enjoy yourself at dancing, Miss Trevelyan?’ the surgeon asked finally, while suggesting that her answer did not signify.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no.’
And he recognized the cries of men when their wounds are opened.
‘Why must you return to that?’
Dr Badgery ate his beef, realizing he had begun to feel too deeply to trust himself upon stilts of words. On the other hand, a curious cracking sound, that his jaws always made while chewing, was now turning silence into something painfully grotesque.
‘I did accept the invitations of two partners,’ Laura admitted, ‘one because we had been happy together, as children, the other because, for the present at least, our relationship is inescapable.’
‘That is all very well,’ said the surgeon, ‘and sentimental, and stoical. The past is desirable, more often than not, because it can make no demands, and it is in the nature of the present to appear rough and uncharitable. But when it comes to the future, do you not feel that chances are equal?’
He had rather blunt, white teeth, set in a trap, in his crisp beard.
‘I feel,’ she said slowly, and was already frightened at what she was about to admit, ‘that the life I am to live is already utterly beyond my control.’
Even the dependable Dr Badgery could not have rescued her from that sea, however much she might have wished it. That she did wish, must be recorded, out of respect for her rational judgement and his worthiness. But man is a rational judge only fleetingly, and worthiness is too little, or too much.
So the surgeon returned presently to his ship, and had soon restored the shape to his orderly life, except that on occasions the dark waters would seep between the timbers. Then he would welcome them, he would be drowning with her, their transparent fears would be flickering in and out of their skulls, trailing long fins of mutual colours.
Long after Dr Badgery had fallen asleep in his brassbound cabin, on the night of his last meeting in the flesh with Laura Trevelyan, the ball at Bright’s Dancing Academy, Elizabeth Street, the much discussed, and finally legendary ball that the Pringles gave for Belle, continued to surge and sound. O the seas of music, the long blue dreamy rollers, and the little, rosy, frivolous waves. All was swept, all was carried up and down. To swim was the only natural act, although the eyes were smarting, as the fiddles continued to flick the golden spray, although, in the swell of dawn, question and answer floated out of reach.
‘It is really too much to expect of you, dear Mrs Pringle,’ said Mrs Bonner. ‘Let me order the horses. Could you not simply slip away? Or, supposing I were to go amongst the dancers, and hint to one or two of the more responsible girls, that it is almost morning? I am sure they would listen to reason.’
O reason, O Mrs Bonner, speak to the roses and the mignonette. They will be trampled, rather, or float up and down in the silver seas of morning, together with the programmes and the used napkins.
‘Oh, Mrs Pringle, it has been the most lovely, lovely ball,’ said Belle Bonner, as she woke from her dream of dancing.
Her cheek was still hot.
‘Thank you, Mrs Pringle,’ smiled Laura Trevelyan, who offered a frank hand, like a man. And added: ‘I have enjoyed myself so much.’
Because she was a woman, she was also dishonest whenever it was really necessary.
Then all the dancers were going. Some of the girls, although well acquainted with the Bonners, carefully guided their skirts past Laura Trevelyan, who had observed them all that night as from a promontory, her eyes outlined in black.
When the Bonners returned that morning, and had kissed, and sighed, and gone to their rooms, Laura sat down at her writing-desk, as if she had been waiting to satisfy a desire, and scrabbled in her trayful of pens, and immediately began to write:
My dear Johann Ulrich,
We have this moment come in from a ball, at which I have been so miserable for you, I must write, not knowing by what means in the world it will be possible to send the letter. Except by miracle, it will not be sent, and so, I fear, it is the height of foolishness.