11? Let me have a look at your card.”
“No, of course you mustn’t.”
“Yes, of course. Why, I don’t believe you have got one!”
“Yes, I have,” she said, and held it up to him. In a second it was in his hand, as indeed she had intended that it should be.
“Well, now,” said Roland, “as far as I can see you’ve got only Nos. 6, 7, 14 and 15 engaged; that leaves fourteen for me.”
“Well, you can have the four,” she laughed.
In the end she gave him six. “And if I’ve any over you shall have them,” she promised.
“Well you know there won’t be,” and their eyes met in a moment of quiet intimacy.
As soon as he had gone other partners crowded round her. In a very short while her program was filled right up, the five extras as well. She had left No. 17 vacant; it was the last waltz. She felt that she might like Roland to have it, but was not sure. She didn’t quite know why, but she felt she would leave it open.
It was a splendid dance. As the evening passed, her face flushed and her eyes brightened, and it was delightful to slip from the heat of the ballroom on to the wide balcony and feel the cool of the air on her bare arms. She danced once with Ralph, and as they sat out afterwards she could almost feel the touch of his eyes on her. Poor Ralph; he was so clumsy. How absurd it was of him to be in love with her. As if she could ever care for him. She felt no pity. She accepted his admiration as a queen accepts a subject’s loyalty; it was the right due to her beauty, to the eager flow of life that sustained her on this night of triumph.
And every dance with Roland seemed to bring her nearer to the wonderful moment to which she had so long looked forward. When she was dancing with Ralph, Roland’s eyes would follow her all round the room, smiling when they met hers. And when they danced together they seemed to share a secret with one another, a secret still unrevealed.
Through the languid ecstasy of a waltz the words that he murmured into her ear had no relation with their accepted sense. He was not repeating a piece of trivial gossip, a pun, a story he had heard at school; he was wooing her in their own way, in their own time. And afterwards as they sat on the edge of the balcony, looking out over the roofs and the lights of London, she began to tell him about her dress and the trouble that she had had with her mother. “She said I ought to wear a horrid thing with yellow and green stripes that doesn’t suit me in the least. And I wouldn’t. I stole out of the house when she wasn’t looking.”
“You look wonderful to-night,” he said.
He leaned forward and their hands touched; his little finger intertwined itself round hers. She felt his warm breath upon her face.
“Do I?” she whispered. “It’s all for you.”
In another moment he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her, and she would have responded naturally. They had reached that moment to which the course of the courtship had tended, that point when a kiss is involuntary, that point that can never come again. But just as his hands stretched out to her the band struck up; he rested his hand on hers and pressed it.
“We shall have to go,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“But the next but one.”
“No. 16.”
But the magic of that one moment had passed; they had left behind them the possibility of spontaneous action. They were no longer part of the natural rhythm of their courtship. All through the next dance he kept saying to himself: “I shall have to kiss her the next time. I shall. I know I shall. I must pull myself together.” He felt puzzled, frightened and excited, so that when the time came he was both nervous and self-conscious. The magic had gone, yet each felt that something was expected of them. Roland tried to pull himself together; to remind himself that if he didn’t kiss her now she would never forgive him; that there was nothing in it; that he had kissed Dolly a hundred times and thought nothing of it. But it was not the same thing; that was shallow and trivial; this was genuine; real emotion was at stake. He did not know what to do. As they sat out after the dance he tried to make a bet with himself, to say, “I’ll count ten and then I’ll do it.” He stretched out his hand to hers, and it lay in his limp and uninspired.
“April,” he whispered, “April.”
She turned her head from him. He leaned forward, hesitated for a moment, then kissed her awkwardly upon the neck. She did not move. He felt he must do something. He put his arm round her, trying to turn her face to his, but she pulled away from him. He tried to kiss her, and his chin scratched the soft skin of her cheek, his nose struck hers, her mouth half opened, and her teeth jarred against his lips. It was a failure, a dismal failure.
She pushed him away angrily.
“Go away! go away!” she said. “What are you doing? What do you mean by it? I hate you; go away!”
All the excitement of the evening turned into violent hatred; she was half hysterical. She had been worked up to a point, and had been let down. She was not angry with him because he had tried to kiss her, but because he had chosen the wrong moment, because he had failed to move her.
“But, April, I’m sorry, April.”
“Oh, go away; leave me alone, leave me alone.”
“But, April.” He put his hand upon her arm, and she swung round upon him fiercely.
“Didn’t I tell you I wanted to be left alone? I don’t know how you dared. Do leave me.”
She walked quickly past him into the ballroom, and seeing Ralph at the far end of it went up and asked him, to that young gentleman’s exhilarated amazement, whether he was free for No. 17, and if he was whether he would like to dance it with her. She wore a brave smile through the rest of the evening and danced all her five extras.
But when she was home again, had climbed the silent stairs, and turning up the light in her bedroom saw, lying on the floor, the discarded green and yellow dress, she broke down, and flinging herself upon the bed sobbed long and bitterly. She was not angry with Roland, nor her mother, nor even with herself, but with life, with that cruel force that had filled her with such eager, boundless expectation, only in the end to fling her down, to trample on her happiness, to mock her disenchantment. Never as long as she lived would she forget the shame, the unspeakable shame, and degradation of that evening.
CHAPTER V
A POTENTIAL DIPLOMAT
ROLAND returned to school with the uncomfortable feeling that he had not made the most of his holidays. He had failed with April; he had not been on the best of terms with Ralph; and he had found the last week or so—after the Saundersons’ dance—a little tedious. He was never sorry to go back to school; on this occasion he was positively glad.
In many ways the Easter term was the best of the three; it was agreeably short; there were the house matches, the steeplechases, the sports and then,
