THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE A BALLKOOM EEPENTANCE BY ANNIE EDWARDES AUTHOR OF "aKCHIE LOVELL," "OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?" ETC. IN TWO VOLS. VOL. L LONDON KICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. ^Pufalisfjcrs in ©riinarg to l^cc fHajrstD the ©urrn 18 81' All rights 7-eseii'ed. / Printed hy R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. VMiT. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER I. The Doll Tribe, Generally ... 1 CHAPTER n. Concerning Old Violins ... 29 CHAPTER m. A Moonlit Sonata . . . . 72 CHAPTER IV. Asking for Trumps . . . .90 CHAPTER V. Those Oysters . . . . . ' 98 86G95S vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER YI PAGE Too Deep for Tears . . . 115 CHAPTER VH. Charlotte and Werther . . .139 CHAPTER VHI. Lord Byron's Isle . . . .169 CHAPTER IX. John Farintyre rises to Dignity . . 190 CHAPTER X. Ether 199 CHAPTER XI. Cats and Red Clover . . . . 211 CHAPTER XII. Intellectual Coquetry .... 232 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XIII. PAGE This Terrible Mrs. Pinto! . . . 257 CHAPTER XIV. Deterioration . . . . . 265 CHAPTER XV. She that is Kindest . . . .275 CHAPTER XVI. To Monte Carlo . . . . .291 CHAPTER XVII. Sold ....... .305 CHAPTER XVIII. Between the Lines . . . .331 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTER 1. THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. " A PAIR of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case." Lake Leman sleeps five hundred feet below; a plain of sapphire, lit up by gleams of emerald, by fitful opal shafts, that melt, Jura- ward, into the crystalline air depths of sun- set. In the middle distance a solitary lateen sail cleaves the blue. The opposite Savoy mountains, though August does but wane, are powdered with fresh-fallen snow. The swallows, already thinking of Africa, are trying their wings in figures -of- eight over- VOL. I. B 2 A BALLROOM REPENTAXCE. head. Oleanders, magnolias, and standard roses make sweet tlie garden of a certain Grand Hotel Sclierer that towers among chestnut avenues and sweeps of vineyard, high above Clarens. And the voice of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs breaks the stillness. A j)leasant voice, despite its sing-song drawl, a voice suggestive of hammock-swing- ing, negro ±ly-flappers, starlit flirtations, and every insidious mixture of ice and alcohol that it has entered into the heart of South American man to concoct. " My word, yes ! That was about the figure of Mrs. and Miss Dormer's luggage. A pair of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case. My maid watched them as they rode round from the cars. I surmise their dresses are innocent of Worth or la Ferriere. I surmise their dresses just came out of some London dry goods store. I spent a week in London, last spring," goes on Mrs. Scipio Leonidas THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 3 mournfully, " and tlie fog so aflfected my dyspepsia I never got round to see tlie Parks but once. That once was enough. My dear, there wasn't a well toiletted woman there, except, of course, some of our people from home and a few Parisians. A orentleman friend of mine from New York State remarked to me, ' The Aboriginal ladies we see around us do not dress. They clothe themselves. And as for their beauty — I just guess/ he observed, ' they look strong. Solidly built up of beef and beer. Calculated to ride fox- chasing, and to resist the vicissitudes of wind and rain. Climate,' my friend added, ' is not a word for this longitude. You get a deal of mixed weather, mostly bad, in England. Climate there is none.' " Mrs. Colonel Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs — I love to register the lady's full title, although she, herself, will not unfrequently drop the final monosyllable — is a native of South 4 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Carolina, and despite her fragile looks is inter- viewing Europe with a will and thoroughness that might put the whole strong - minded sisterhood of Britain to the blush. The Colonel — so Mrs. Scipio Leonidas confesses when she has occasion to speak of her absent lord — is having a beautiful time over the other side. my, yes ! a lovely time. He is quite an unselfish man this accommodating Colonel; a pattern husband. They both hold emancipated ideas of the domesticities, Mrs. Scipio will tell you, within five minutes of your introduction to her. The Colonel don't want her to cross back till she has swallowed all the different waters of the Continent. It's the state of her gastric organs that's her trouble, and none of the physicians in Europe can fix her up. Homburg, Carlsbad, Vichy, she has tried them all. Her life has been spent going round the mineral baths two years and more, and she is right THE^DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 5 down fagged and finished in consequence. My dear, yes ! just look at her. And Mrs. Leonidas will languidly extend a taper, diamonded slip of a hand for your inspection. What is she ? Don't deceive her. She is a sal- low, dyspeptic bundle of nerves, now, isn't she '\ She is a fine-featured colourless invalid, of two or three and thirty, with large, restless, over -brilliant eyes, the foot (inadvertently, she shows it often) of a child, and the grace . . . of a South American. What simile could be found to express as much ? An invalid, more than half imaginary, precariously existing on a regimen of French novels, rich dishes, and mineral waters. A creature of the great Doll tribe, unquestionably ; dressed, jewelled, satin-slippered, here among Swiss mountains, as she was last spring in Paris, or will be next winter at Naples or Florence ; and still, a doll with a brain. In England we have dolls enow. Wax dolls, wooden 6 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls that open and shut their eyes, that speak, sing, dance ; some, even, that kneel. The doll with a brain is of foreign manufacture, chiefly American or French. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas has mixed in the vividest circles of Boston and New York, is brimful of advanced social theories, some- what crude and garish, it may be, if you sift them finely; knows Italy like a guide-book, and is as well versed in recent Paris gossip of Church, senate, salon and greenroom, as a genuine Parisian. Dinner is her weakness, dress her passion. She is of an organisation so sensitive that the neighl3ourhood of a cat, the odour of certain flowers, will cause her to faint. And she has been known to travel from Biarritz to Madrid in the dogdays in order to be present at a bullfight. '' Yes, a pair of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case." So the lady resumes, for the benefit of such louns^ers as are drinkino- after- THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 7 dinner coffee in the hotel garden. "And Mrs. Dormer, one of your aristocrats, no doubt, a duke's daughter, or baronet's widow, or earl's second cousin, does not condescend to show in the public parlours." It is a boast of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs that she cares not enough for lineage to distinguish one English title from the other. Yet, I suspect, if she should cross his path, the society of a living duke, or baronet, or even of an earl's second cousin, would not be distasteful to her. " Surely you can furnish us with chapter and verse out of the Peerage, Mrs. Skelton. Who are the owners of the portmanteaus and violin case that they should give themselves airs when they travel round these lakes ? " " Dormer . . . Dormer," repeats the personage addressed as Mrs. Skelton. " Dian, my love, have we not heard that name before ? yes, — I recollect !" And the speaker draws a wisp of red shawl virtuously around her thin, 8 . A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. angular slioulders. " It will be found, no doubt, that this misguided young Farintyre, whom everybody pities, is in attendance on them. Miss Joyce Dormer's latest victim." " And future husband ?" asks Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, with awakening interest. " Ah, that is a very different matter. I knew the Dormers last winter, in Nice — by sight, only. In my position, my dear Mrs. Scipio, no gentleman of the party, it is an actual duty to weed one's travelling acquaintance, to keep clear if possible of scandal. My girls, you see, are so unsophisticated ! Pansy and Dian, until we came abroad, never mixed in any but the best circles of Cathedral society, and our giddy little Aurora, of course, was still in the schoolroom." A young English lad, tall, bronzed, Oxford- suited, stands, enjoying his after-dinner cigar- ette, and the view of lake and mountain, at some paces distant from these ladies. At the THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 9 touching reference to our little Aurora's giddi- ness, a smile, somewhat doubtful in its import, hovers around the corners of his lips. " Miss Aurora Skelton is not exactly what in our American circles we should call a Bud. I should judge Miss Aurora to be near upon my own time of life ?" The tone of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs is friendly. She smiles like one who makes an amiable, but somewhat rose-coloured concep- tion to human weakness. Yet does her voice imply a query. Aurora's mamma, too wary a veteran to be provoked to battle on so dangerous a field as age, changes the subject deftly. She is a sharp, chirruping, altogether terrible, little old woman, this Mrs Skelton ; an old woman, dressed in the extreme of youthful mode, yet, withal, so patched, so powdered, so wizened, so shrivelled, she looks as though she must fall to pieces at a touch. For a short 10 A BALLROOM EEPEXTANCE. lialf-liOTir you might judge her, by reason of her frivolity, to be harmless. Mention her in any of the Eiviera pensions that are her winter haunts, if you would know the depth of emotion her name is capable of inspiring in the breast of unwedded and unguarded man ! Per- sistent and metallic is Mrs. Skelton's voice ; mirthless her jerky laughter. In lieu of honest gray hairs, a small pink cap is perched on the summit of her head. Her hollow cheeks are rouged ; her smile is fixed upon the very newest principles and warranted ; a smile glistening, adamantine, as the longest established firm in Hanover Square can supply. She is a very libel on old age ; a sermon — not in stones, but paste, and whose text is the rottenness and vanity of all human desire ! Around her, in sallow greens, brickdust crimsons, and dull golds, are grouped a trio of elderly girls, each in an attitude, her daughters. " My children are not handsome, according THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 11 to rule/' the Veteran will allow, ingenuously. " As regards feature, indeed, tlicy take after the Preljendary's family rather than my own." This absent, never-appearing Prebendary is a somewhat dark subject, brought forward only when the best Cathedral societ}^ fails of effect, as a garnish to Mrs. Skelton's tallest talk. " But they are the delight of artists, each in her different genre. 'The Miss Skeltons are more than beautiful,' the great Thoreau said to me when we were last in London. ' The Miss Skeltons are deliciously, quaintly pictur- esque!'" So to the great Thoreau's charge, perhaps, may be set down the golds, greens, and crimsons of which we have spoken. The eldest. Pansy, is florid, stout, short, and in her thirtieth year. Pansy dresses in chintz, with flame-coloured " housewife " pina- fores, wears her hair in a tangle above a pair of beetling brows, knits socks for the jDoor, even 12 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. between the courses of a table d'hote dinner, and is ofttimes put warmly forward by the Veteran, in the absence of the younger sisters, or in the neighbourhood of curates, as a Home Treasure. The second, Diana, is tall, acidulated, intellectual ; a Diana with a greenish com- plexion, a tip-tilted nose, improvised eyebrows, and the least excellent voice that ever issued from a woman's lips. She represents the genius of the group ; is seldom without a Cambridge text-book in her hands, talks about Greek particles and the Differential Calculus, affects the First Eepublic as regards her flow of drapery, and in feature is said, by lier relatives, to resemble Charlotte Corday. Aurora, aged twenty-six, is peony-cheeked, laughing, indiscreet ; the hoyden, the irre- pressible, gushing, spoilt child of the family. On the present occasion Aurora wears a short white frock, a sash, and very brilliantly- THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 13 coloured stockings. Her sleeves are tied, baby- fashion, on her shoulders with crimson knots ; Ijuttercups and daisies, in a wreath, are twined amidst her dishevelled locks. "The cottage maid of AVordsworth, who had a rustic wood- land air," so Diana A\'ill whisper to you in sisterly confidence, " is thought by painters to be well embodied in our little wild Aurora." " Yes, if we were at our own place at home, the naughty child would be in the schoolroom still," runs on Mrs. Skelton archly ; " but we manage, Di and I between us, to coax her sometimes to her lessons. Aurora is sadly backward at her French verbs, — you are not a mother, Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, you know nothing about these minor worries, — and her arithmetic still falls short of the mark. On the other hand, her proficiency in music is beyond her years. Rora, my sweetest, don't you see that Mr. Longmore is hojDing for his after-dinner song ! " 14 A BALLKOOM REPENTANCE. To other eyes than those of maternal affection it might look as though Mr. Long- more were hoping for nothing ; with so nnex- pectant an air does the young Oxonian enjoy his after-dinner smoke. •' Not brought down your notes ? Now, Eora, that is only shyness, and, indeed, after the sums your poor papa and I have spent on your music, you ought to be able to sing with- out a book at all. Don't you remember the bishop's daughters in our charming Auchester circle? No, it was before your introduction into society. Pansy and Dian will recollect them. How quite too delightfully they were able to give us song after song without notes ! On one occasion, when we were dining at his Lordship's, I can recall Mr. Archdeacon Pretty- man observing " *' I know it would bore Mr. Longmore into fits to have to listen," interrupts Aurora, roll- ing her black eyes deprecatingly in the young THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 15 Oxonian's direction. "Mr. Longmorc knows my songs by heart from beginning to end. He has told me so, often. And then the men are such horrid inconstant creatures ! ' One foot on shore, and one ' Don't listen, Mr. Longmore, I won't allow you to listen, of course we are not talking of you — they care for nothing but change and novelty. I declare I'll never sing to please a man again while I live. I vowed so only last night, didn't I, Di?" Mr. Longmore, at this pathetic declaration, throws away the end of his cigarette, and crosses the terrace. He glances down, as admiringly as he may, at the peony-cheeks and shoulder-knots, the brilliant stockings, the dishevelled locks, the withered daisies and buttercups of poor Aurora. " You don't w^ant me to repeat what I have so often said — that it gives me pleasure to hear you sing. Miss Skelton?" 16 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. A certain tenderness is in his voice, or his hearer thinks so. Aurora Skelton bridles, hangs down her head, then moves away towards the salon window. The girl is really prettyish, despite the exceeding vulgarity that comes to her by education and inheritance ; has, at least, the negative charm of being fresher, fairer than her sisters. She has also fallen in love, of an easy kind, with the good-looking- undergraduate, who, during the past fortnight, has been vainly endeavouring to " read " in the Grand Hotel Scherer ! And Hugh Longmore is weak enough to feel flattered. The young fellow, in very truth, has over- high ideals of womanly grace and refinement. Aurora Skelton, educated partly on the pave- ment of an English cathedral town, and partly in the public rooms of foreign hotels, is a flirt in the fullest acceptation of that most odious word. As well ask grapes from thistles as THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 17 look for modest feminine charm in the daughter of such a mother ! From her maiden bower on the second floor, Aurora casts down eye- shots at young Longmore, while her hair is still en i^apillote of a morning. She intercepts him on his way to breakfast, pursues him from terrace to terrace, breaks in upon his morning's reading in the remoter corners of the gardens, informs him, half a note flat, during the after- noon hours that she is "weary," "alone," "fading away," or "owre young to marry;" and she jars upon every finer sense the lad possesses, at all times. But Aurora has bold black eyes, a pair of ruddy lips, white teeth, and a dimple in her left cheek. She has also a mother. And Longmore, unguarded by sister, cousin, oi- friend, is in greater peril than he suspects. Refined, fastidious youths, fresh from the cloisters, of taste the most conservative, have ere this been seen to form lifelono- alliance VOL. I. 18 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. with coarseness, possibly through chivalrous inaptitude at repulsion ; possibly through some mysterious physical affinity hard to understand. The rosemary, we know, wdll not live with the laurel, nor the laurel with the vine, nor the cabbage with the olive. Yet does garlic planted in the neighbourhood of the rose supply the flower with a richer fragrance ? " If Mr. Longmore wishes for his song, Aurora, run for your notes at once. . . . That dear girl's diffidence must positively be got over," whispers Mrs. Skelton into Longmore's ear when Aurora has obediently tripped away. " You cannot think what it costs her, Mr. Longmore, even to sing before you. ' I know Mr, Longmore is a finished critic,' the child will often declare to her sisters. ' Such exqui- site classic taste, such knowledge, such culture ! If I could only feel sure of his approval ! ' " "Of my approval — madam," stammers Longmore, looking wretched. THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 19 " In my singing days I was in the light and comic style," cries the Veteran, skittishly tapping the young man's arm with her fan. "Indeed, there are some who still care to hear me in ' Misthress Malone.' " But Aurora is all for the pathetic. You know, Mr. Longmore, I am quite a believer in community of soul, and I must say you seem to have the same tastes in everything. . . . Ah, Kora, my dear," the young lady at this moment peeping forth from the salon window, a music book under her arm, " be sure you give Mr. Longmore something good and serious — ' The Lost Chord,' say, to lead off with." And Aurora gives it him ; out of time from first to last, and thumping a heated accom- paniment, every third bar of which contains at least one wrong note. But Longmore, although a passionately keen lover of music, is not a stern judge to-night. The critical faculty, at two-and-twenty, is apt to be partial when a 20 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. show}- girl, more than half in love with one- self, heaves palpitating sighs and flings upward melting glances through her eyelashes as she sings. " The Lost Chord" (how often do Aurora's hearers wish that chord had been lost indeed ! ) is ruthlessly murdered. Then follows a mas- sacre of Schubert's " Ave Maria " and of the " Serenade " of Gounod. Hajjpily, there are states of mind in which a man can be distinctly possessed by two sets of impressions at once. Leaning over Aurora's shoulder, patiently turning the pages of her book and enduring alike her wrong notes and her ogles, Hugh Longmore catches a reflected glimpse of Leman in an opposite mirror ; can imagine himself on the lake's blue breast half a dozen miles away, the dip of the sculls, the light lap of the waves, the trickle of mountain rivulets for music ; his pipe, his iEschylus, and the delicious sense of being alone and unbored for companionship. THE DOLL TRIBE, (iENEKALLY. 21 By the time they return to the terrace the sun has sunk over Jura's purple crest ; Venus shines tremulously in his wake ; the light-for- saken mountains have gone from amber to crimson, from crimson to ashen gray. Already a few faint points of light stud the deep vault of heaven. '"The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,'" quotes Mrs. Skelton playfully. " I don't know how the young ones feel, Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, but to me the air strikes chilly. Pansy, Dian, my loves, why not take a last turn round the gardens while you have still light ? Coax some flowers out of Monsieur Scherer, if you can find him, for to-night's ball." Thus craftily does the Veteran ever dis- pose of her contingent forces. Pansy and Diana have had, or have not had, each her day ; they must leave Aurora an open field when Aurora's star chances to be in the ascendant. 22 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. " As for you two delinquents," she cries, kissing the tips of her fingers with gruesome gaiety to Longmore and his companion, " I do not doubt you have some mischief still to plot together. Aurora, sweetest child, be steady ! Don't let your spirits run away with you. I am sure Mr. Longmore would like a description of that last Au Chester Festival, and the delight- ful county people you and your sisters met at the Palace." Aurora replies by a burst of discordant Skel- ton laughter ; and Longmore, with nerves abso- lutely set on edge by the sound, gives a moral shiver. Hopeful sensation for a man on the brink of folly ; impossible sensation for a man on the brink of love ! . "Ma does go on so about that dull old Auchester. As if I cared a fig for square-toed canons and musty bishops' Palaces." Thus Aurora, dancing with infantine vivacity, shoulder -knots, buttercup wreath and all, THE DOLL TRIBE, OENERALLY. 23 along the terrace. " For my part, I never want to set foot in an English cathedral town again. Do I look suited for stiff parties, Mr. Longmore, for clerical society, in general, and bishops' breakfasts in particular 1 " "You ask me, honestly. I am afraid I must answer : ' no.' " " A place like Auchester did all very well for Dian. Di is so awfully clever. Not a book you mention but she is up in it, and as to the maojazines — Di can read eleven serials at once, and keep the eleven different love affairs clear in her head. Pansy, of course, was in her element, because of the curates. I am not clever, as you, Mr. Longmore, must have found out, and with regard to cur- ates " " With regard to curates 1 " repeats Long- more, as Aurora Skelton pauses. The young lady is taken afresh with a fit of laughter, somewhat more hysterically dis- 24 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. cordant tlian the last. Bad creature that he is ! What does, what can, Mr. Longmore mean ? Curates, indeed ! He will be asking her opinion of barristers next. A shame, that it is, to chaff her like this, but she, Aurora, knows what he is hinting at. Mr. Longmore is to be a barrister himself before very long, is he not ? An alarming depth of meaning is in her voice. Young Longmore glances away to- wards the valley of the Rhone, away tow^ards the mountains, upon whose topmost peaks the fairy-like pink after-glow has once more shone forth. Abruptly, the thought flashes on him that a train will leave Clarens Station for Aigle at seven thirty-five to-morrow morning. At Aigle a man has only to buckle his knap- sack across his shoulder, start for the moun- tains, and " The one place on earth for me is London," says Aurora, shrewdly translating THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 25 for herself the expression of the lad's face, and becoming cured of hysterics on the instant. " We have quite a legal connection in London. Aunt Julia, a sister of my papa's, is married to Sir Joseph Sweeting's cousin. The great Q.C., you know." Longmore knows. How often has that apocryphal legal connection been tantalis- ingly waved, like the matador's red flag, before the embryo barrister's sight ? " And next season I hope to pay Aunt Julia a visit. You will come and see me, won't you, Mr. Longmore, if you are in town ? " " I should be delighted at all times, in all places, to do that. Miss Skelton." " And we can look back to these happy Clarens days," says Aurora, speaking with the. stereotyped little glow and little shiver, and punctuating the sentence with sighs. '' We shall have sjrown wis"fer, both of us. 26 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. We shall wonder, I dare say, how we could ever have been so foolish ! " " We . ,. . you . . . will have abundant opportunity for hearing good music in London," answers Longmore, returning with laudable presence of mind to his muttons. Miss Aurora Skelton glances at the young man sharply. He is still watching the distant valley of the Rhone, and his countenance does not play him traitor. " When I stay with my Aunt Julia I shall be in the very highest musical circles, and T. S. can always run up from Aldershot to take me about to concerts and operas." T. S. is a fond abbreviation of "Thomas Skelton," the only male hope of the family, and a lieutenant in one of Her Majesty's marching regiments ; of whom we shall be forced to see more, hereafter. " Hearing the best professionals," proceeds Aurora, " or, if Aunt Julia is generous, a dozen THE DOLL TRIBE, GENERALLY. 27 good finishing lessons would give my singing a little of the bravura style, would they not ?" " Finisldng lessons ! " repeats Longmore, his emj^hasis supplying unintentional irony. " Yes. Just enough to learn a few show songs, you know. Of course I've done with solfeejoios." Aurora Skelton manufactures her barbarous Italian plural unblushingly. "What I want is bravura. I had a course from one of the best masters last winter at Nice, and that is what he told me I wanted — bravura." Longmore's eyes are still turned in the direction of the mountains, and he remains silent. The last changeful hues of the day that is dead have paled, re-flushed, gone pale again. A greenish flame -like lustre shows forth, in inky relief, the angular peaks of Cubli and the Jaman. " La, gracious, if there isn't the moon ! I do so love to see the moon rise." Like Emerson's young lady, poor Aurora adores 28 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. poetry, roses, the moon, the sky, and — cavalry officers. "If we turn sharp round the left corner of the terrace, we shall see her come up over the Dent du Midi to perfection." And turning sharp round the corner of the terrace proves, as chance will have it, the immediate salvation of Hugh Longmore. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 29 CHAPTER 11. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. For he and his companion are brought within focus of a balcony on the first floor of the Hotel. And across the balcony railing leans a girl whose eyes, even in this half light, sees farther than most people's, whose brain is rapid at deduction as a child's, and whose incisive promptness of action might quicken jealousy in the breast of an Alexander or a Bismarck. Across the balconv railino;. serenelv con- templative of lake and mountains — yet in the very mood of restless idleness that renders the human heart promptest at meddling in the love afl'airs of others — leans Joyce Dormer, 3Q A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. the younger of the ladies whose violin case and whose exclusiveness — it may be the attendance of whose Latest Victim — have fired so many feminine breasts in the Hotel Scherer with indignant curiosity. A girl in a sad-coloured gown, tall, grace- ful, fair, and twenty ; a girl slender of throat and limb, with a face on whose sweet outlines the peachy bloom of childhood seems yet to linger, hands so charged with expression it sets you dreaming of fine harmony but to look at them, and a pair of large, admirably lucid blue eyes. Such, at a glance, is Joyce. She catches sio-ht of Lonomore and his companion, hears a scream or two of Aurora's laughter, a burst of Aurora s mock enthusiasm, then draws hastily back behind a half-closed Venetian shutter and watches them : watches them, not that she may gather facts where- upon to rest a theory, but contrariwise. It is Joyce Dormer's habit to feel ere she thinks, CONCEENING OLD VIOLINS. 31 to judge of things, women and men by in- stinct, and at first sight. Facts have to fit themselves into her judgments, afterwards, as best they may. " Mr. Farintyre, come hither." Low is her voice and tuneful, yet does a certain slowness of utterance, a suo-o-estion rather than an actual tone of weariness, con- trast pathetically with her airy girlish figure, with the blooming summer of her face. A very fat, very blonde young man (of the order of men evidently whose fortune is in their pockets, not their brains) lies dozing on a sofa at some little distance. He rouses himself after one or two inefi'ectual efforts, rubs his eyes with both very fat, very blonde hands, then rises and, without much lover-like alacrity in his movements, crosses the room to Joyce's side. Quite of the first water must be this young man's tailor, idem, his haberdasher 32 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. and bootmaker. You think of them all, tailor, haberdasher, and bootmaker, at the earliest moment of your introduction to him. You seem to hear the jingle of his money at every movement. Frankly vacuous are his round, reddish-bro.wn eyes, vacuous is the smile by which, no very perceptible jest to the fore, he shows the whiteness of his teeth. His expression is one of heavy good humour, of contentment with the world that affords daily physical enjoyment to Mr. John Farin- tyre. And he wears ostentatious jewellery. Miss Dormers sway can, surely, not be so absolute over him as current gossip alleges. He wears ostentatious jewellery ! " Do you see those two people in the garden ! " says the girl, beneath her breath. " Do not look at me, please — I must tell you, Mr. Farintyre that you have fallen into a terribly bad habit of doing so, lately. And do not look at the sky above or in the lake CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 33 below, Tiy," j)roiiouncing each word, syllabi- cally, like one who smooths down a hard sentence for a child's comprehension, " to pull your scattered faculties together and to do simply and literally as you arc bidden. You see that good-looking English boy, and the — the young person he is talking with on the terrace yonder ?" Joyce's lover, if lover he be, shakes his head and rubs some still lingering mists of sleepiness out of his eyes. Then, in the perfectly level, flat voice whereby fatigued young gentlemen of the present day give expression to their feelings, he ejaculates : " Longmore of Corpus, by Jove ! With a lady." " Longmore of Corpus, not with a lady," repeats Joyce rather cruelly. " Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Farintyre, that yonder poor lad is a college friend of yours ?" " Friend," observes Mr. Farintyre, " is a VOL. I. D 34 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. strong word. Hugh Longmore and I were in different sets at Oxford " " Of that I am perfectly sure," interrupts Miss Dormer, with emphasis. " Believe he may have got introduced to me at some of the college wines — quite a different set of fellows, you see. Lincoln- shire rector's son — screwing along on a ^vTetched three hundred a year, reading man, went in for professors' lectures and tea, aesthetic culture — tell me if I've got hold of the jargon right — and all that sort of thing." " I understand. Never smuggled a fox- terrier into college in a brown paper parcel, never drove tandem through plate-glass win- dows in the High Street, nailed up a Proctor's door, or painted any of the public statues pea- green. In spite of these demerits," says Joyce Dormer coolly, " he is an exceedingly nice, re- iined-looking boy, and, friend or no friend, he A CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 35 is a fellow-creature and shall be saved. Please do not look at me, Mr. Farintyre," with a quick impatient movement turning her head aside, "but listen attentively to what I am saying. Longmore of Corpus shall be saved." Mr. Farintyre, forbidden the first natural use of his eves, does the next best thing; — at how immeasurable a distance — open to him. He looks at Aurora Skelton. " Handsomish 2,url, that ! " The remark is made in a tentative tone rather than one of certainty. " Not very unlike Rosie Las- celles of the Ambiguity, only worse form." " Has Rosie Lascelles of the Ambiguity a false ear ? Has Rosie Lascelles the flattest, harshest voice that ever issued from a human throat ? " " Rosie pipes like a linnet. Ask any one who saw her in that burlesque on Frou-frou " — Mr. Farintyre looks almost interested — " if Rosie Lascelles sings in tune ! " 36 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. " Then, what right have you to libel her l>y such a comparison. The young person with shoulder-knots has been singing false notes at Longmore of CorjDUs half the after- noon, and again since dinner. How can I tell it ? At whom should the false notes have been sung, if not at him ? " " At — at some other fellow, perhaj^s." " Mr. Farintyre, I did not think you would have attempted to argue in such a cause. Neither should I have suspected you of ill-timed attempts at humour. Far from his natural protectors, poor little lad ! " Longmore of Corpus stands just within six feet one in his slippers. '^ A stranger, in a foreign land — it is your duty, as an English- man, to look after him." " Oh, Longmore will get along all right," remarks John Farintyre lazily. " The gurl looks the sort to draw him out. Shy of ladies, generally, high ideals, you know — CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 37 « looks upon women as superior sorts of beings, and that. Not a man I ever had anything to say to." Forth darts a mischievous flash from Joyce Dormer's blue eyes. "^ You will have something to say to him now, yes, before another two minutes are over. ' Will you come into my parlour,' asks the spider of the fly ? And the innocent fly, through your moral support and agency, Mr. Farintyre, shall take courage and answer: ' No.' Go down to the man who is not your friend, and tell him that I, Joyce Dormer, desire to make his acquaintance. Does that not please you ? Then exercise your fertile brain in hitting upon some better excuse. And quickly ! The spider draws her webs closer — the lady's voice has sunk to a whisper. There is not a moment to lose." A wooden staircase descends, chalet fashion, from the long; line of balconies on the first floor 38 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. to the flower o-ardens of Hotel Scherer. Down this staircase a heav}-, not too willing figure makes its way ere another minute has passed ; Miss Dormer, her fair head powdered with silver by the moon, keeping wateh over the development of the plot from above. Mr, Jolm Farintyre whistles, somewhat tunelessly ; he gazes round at lake, sky, and mountain, then, hands in pockets, lounges up to the pair of sentimentalists on the terrace, and by a drawled : "How are you?" renews his college acquaint- ance with the man who is not his friend. Will the spider affrighted run ? AYill Miss Aurora Skelton take refuge in the proprieties. Miss Aurora Skelton does nothing of the kind. Too artless a child of nature to wait for an introduction, the young lady enters, at a moment's notice, into the freest, easiest con- versation in the world with the newcomer. She seats herself on the ivy-grown parapet that at this point divides the terrace from a slope CONCERNINO OLD VIOLINS. 39 of purple vineyard ; then, clasping lu-r hands round her knee, in an attitude copied, doubt- less, from some illustrated love scene in one of Diana's eleven serials, rolls up her black eyes ingenuously in the direction of Mr. Farintyre. " How well she Avould suit him, in the absence of Eosie Lascelles of the Ambiguity ! " This, or some analogous thought, crosses Miss Dormer's mind as she looks down, un- noticed herself, upon the group. " A moonlit trip to Chillon ? Well, to be sure 1" So rino- the loud exao-ore rated accents O CO of Aurora Skelton. " What an au fully jolly idea !" " After an acquaintance of one minute and a half," interpolates Joyce mentally, " to credit poor John Farintyre with ideas !" " I should like it aivfully, any evening you choose, that is to say if ma would give me leave, and I know she would. Dian and I used often to row about with the gentlemen at home, I 40 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. mean from the Pension Potpourri down at Nice. Besides T. S. is coming in a day or two, and he could chaperon us. What do you say, Mr. Longmore?" " I say," repeats Joyce half aloud, and with growing determination, " that Mr. Longmore shall be rescued. Yes, John Farintyre may conduct the awfully jolly expedition to Chillou, with or without T. S, , if he likes. Longmore of Corpus shall be rescued. Now, for the means of his deliverance. . . . Ah, I have it — Stradiuarius I" She flies across the room at the inspiration ; three or four moments later, behold her gliding softly back, her violin between her hands, to the window ! Standing within its embrasure, just where a slant of moonlight falls with ivory whiteness on her figure, Joyce Dormer begins to play. The strain she chooses is admirably suited to the scene and moment : one of those Nativities CO^'CERNING OLD VIOLINS. 41 in wliicli the old composers loved to reproduce the tunes performed in early summer, by the Pifferari, before the street shrines of the Virgin ; a strain pure, passionless, as her own girlish face. Execution is not her strong point. While she lives. Miss Dormer will possibly never compass a grand bravura passage, a single striking or bizarre effect. In the true Italian quality of making her violin sing, in the broad simple vocal character of music like this, music in whose traditional triple tempo one "feels the starlight," Joyce is already, at twenty years old, an artist. After the nativity, she begins a solo sonata, one of the famous Twelve of Corelli. Ere the first andante movement is half over a hasty step crosses the terrace, approaches stealthily up the wooden stairs, then stops. And a smile of victory steals round Joyce's lips. She throws herself with spirit into the quick tripping 42 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. movement, the sparkling semiquavers and bril- liant staccato runs of the second part. Witli mincrled fire and delicacv her bow lins^ers over the third movement, a broadly majestic adagio. Few amateurs can plav a fine adamo, for the reason that here the spontaneous gift of melody, Joyce's special endowment, is the only thing that avails. By the time she reaches the last bars of the final presto, a man's figure throws its shadow suddenly between herself and the moonlight. Miss Dormer starts away with a little frightened gesture, that, to say the least of it, is ben trovato. At the same moment the big- drawling voice of John Farintyre at once dis- pels every suspicion of romance, and explains tlie situation. " Mr. Hugh Longmore, college acquaint- ance, fond of Mozart and Beethoven, up in classical music and that sort of thinff. Mr. Hugh Longmore — Miss Dormer." '^o* CONCERNING OLl^ VIOLINS. 43 Joyce bends her head coldly. !She stands motionless, her eyes downcast, her violin clasped between both white hands upon her breast. And Lonomore feels that he lias committed an indiscretion. Where is all the easy assurance, where the confidence in his own power and the weakness of woman engendered in him during his quasi love-affair mth Aurora ? What is there in that cold salutation, in that pair of slender folded arms, that they should paralyse him back to the worst shyness of his schoolboy days ? " I am afraid you will call it a great intru- sion, but I hoped — I mean, I feared — that is to say, Mr. Farintyre thought that you might be prevailed upon to play again." For a few moments Joyce refrains, obdur- ately, from helping him. She stands mute, frozen, while the poor fellow stammers and colours and repeats himself; enjoying his con- 44 A BALLROOM REPP:NTAXCE. fusion, perhaps, as a cat enjoys the palpitatmg misery of a mouse. Then she lifts up her gaze of sweet, most steadfast blue, to the young man's face. "Do you care for the violin truly f" she cries, moving a step towards him in the indis- tinct light. " Do you ask mo to play, as people ask one to dance a quadrille, from a sense of duty, or because my playing would give yourself pleasure ? Oh, if you are a real music-lover, you shall hear just as much of my Stradiuarius as you choose — I will get my mother to accompany mo. Mr. I'arintyre, run up to the second floor, please. Mamma's number is fifty-five, the room exactly over this one, and say we should like some music. Come in, Mr. Longmore." And by a little wave of the hand, by a softening that just falls short of a smile around the lips, she promotes young Longmore, on the spot, to the rank of an acquaintance. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 45 Mr. Fariutyro obeys Joyce's commands with the promptness of one well broken to the duties of fetching and carrying, and Longmore, a man of conjectural halnt of mind, finds him- self speculating, with a sensation of absurdly keen jealousy, as to the probable relations that exist between the two. Farintyre, though Ijrainless, is rich, the only son of a long-established, well-accredited city stock -broker. Farintyre drove the best turn-out of his time in Oxford ; rode the best horses at the Heythrop meet ; gave the most extravagant wines and dinners of any man at Merton. The Dormers are poor, travelling around the Swiss lakes, according to Mrs. 8cipio Leonidas, with a pair of portmanteaus, a shabby violin case, and ... " Fa, fa, sol, fa,'' goes a rapid sweep of Joyce's bow across the strings. Even in this moment's preliminary tunings 46 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Longmore receives an impression, never to be eifaced, of the girl's rare and finished excel- lence of posture ; the quiet shoulder-joint, the firm and flexible wrist, the exact right -angle of bow ; delightful graces all of them to one who appreciates with ear and eye alike. " Flat, again ! The air of Lake Geneva most certainly disagrees with violins. Stradi- uarius is as sensitive to every change of weather as a barometer. You care something for Cremona violins, I hope, Mr. Longmore?" still screwing up the strings as she speaks. " Then you will envy me mine. It belongs to the master's finest period, and does not bear the name of Amati like the earlier ones. If you like to look nearer you will see the label, ' Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis faciebat, 1720.'" Young Longmore crosses to her side. " I don't know whether you can read the letters at that distance," she remarks, warily holding CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 47 out her Stradiuarius for his inspection. " The second morning call Mr. Farintyre made on my mother and myself he adroitly managed to let my violin fall, and on that occasion I vowed never again to trust it into less sure hands than my own. Perhaps you would like to come just a fraction closer ?" This fraction brings Miss Dormer's silky hair somewhat dangerously near the young Oxonian's face. She continues her lecture on (Vemona violins with undisturbed gravity. "1720, yes, that was in the master's golden rime. Hear," tapping the sounding board lightly with her linger, •' how the very pores are full of music ! Look, when one holds it sideways, at the marvellous curve of the back, at the cutting of the F holes. One can believe that violin wood was taken only from the sunny side of trees. A kind of sunshine seems to linger here still, under the mellow varnish, and as for the weight — feel . it ! I am not 48 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. afraid, now that I know you two minutes better, of trusting Stradiuarius into your Lands." Longmore looks over the violin, inch by inch ; he detects beauties here, asks questions there ; shows, altogether, so singularly keen an interest in the history, ancient and modern, of this instrument, that the lecturer's blue eyes begin to glance gravely at him in the moon- lii^ht. " It was through undeserved good fortune that my Stradiuarius ever became mine." As she remarks this, Miss Dormer moves sliohtlv away from the young man's side. " When I was quite a girl, more than two years ago, it was my whim to possess a genuine eighteenth century violin, and ... a friend mamma and I had at that time promised me a Stradi- uarius, if love or money, chiefly money, could procure one." " Not Mr. Farintyre ? " interrupts Long- CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 49 more, who is at an age still, when men's lips, wisely or unwisely, blurt out the uppermost thought. For an appreciable instant Joyce hesitates, looking at him with direct, discerning glance. " Mr. Farintyre ! We made his acquaint- ance in the course of this last London season," she remarks quietly. "Mr. Farintyre must have been at Oxford in his mid-career of academical idleness at the time I talk of. No, the friend who gave me my Cremona, my dear old Stradiuarius " Taking back the violin abruptly from Longmore's hand, she clasps it with a gesture that in another woman one would be tempted to call affectation to her heart. Precisely at the same! moment the door opens, Mrs. Dormer and John Farintyre enter the room, and the history of Stradiuarius — not without its importance as regards Hugh Longmore's life — remains a fragment. VOL. L E 50 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. " This is Mr. Longmore," says Joyce, in her subdued voice, with the total absence of that artificial compound usually called manner. " Mr. Longmore wishes to hear my violin, mamma. Will you accompany me ? " During the past fortnight, Longmore has grown to associate the terrible word "Mamma" with rouge, wrinkles, warranted smiles, a scarlet shawl, pink cap-ribbons, and an ever- impending sense of his own capture. He finds himself in the presence of a girl, or so Mrs. Dormer looks, seen through the dusky gauze of moonlight ; a girl with a sleek little uncovered head, with an infantine profile, and with a pair of big, blue-gray eyes, over-inno- cent in their expression. Over-innocent ! That, I believe, is Long- more's first, perhaps it may prove his final, thought on the sul)ject of Mrs. Dormer. The expression of those big, blue -gray eyes is over-innocent. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 51 She advances, John Farintyre in the background (did ever woman tread so softly as do these two ?), and offers the young Oxonian her hand with an amount of cordi- ality nicely proportioned to the lightness of his purse and the undoubted advantages of his person. For Mrs. Dormer conspicuously possesses the finer shades of manner her daughter lacks ; makes up, indeed, by ultra- proficiency in the science, for whatever inten- tional disregard of the ritual of Mammon may be shown by Joyce. " Very pleased, indeed, to make Mr. Longmore's acquaintance." This is said in a voice soft as an Eolian harp, yet with a certain frigidity of accent that young Long- more feels he is intended to feel. " A college friend, Mr. Farintyre has been telling me, so I think, Joyce, dearest, we may already say, a friend of ours. And a lover of music ? Ah, these are, truly, the charming accidents 52 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. of travel. We are moving slowly south, Mr. Longmore, to join my husband. Mr. Dormer has, for years, been an impassioned bric-a-brac hunter, and at the present moment, is literally so laden with cinque cento carvings. and old china as to be anchored at Naples. Darling Joyce, is it not true ? Your poor papa's brackets and teapots have anchored him fast r Darling Joyce has crossed to the piano : with her Stradiuarius tucked, in true virtuoso style, under her chin, she stoops, and after striking "Fa" sharply, for her pitch, goes on with the screwing-up of her violin strings. " The piano is neither Erard nor Pleyel," she observes, glancing across towards Long- more. " But poverty will make the best musician accustomed to sorry companionship — will it not, Stradiuarius ? " And lightly, with a Cjuick change of position, she rests her cheek, or Longmore CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 53 suspects her lips, upon the time - blackened sounding-board of her violin. At the obnoxious word ''poverty/' John Farintyre, who has sunk resignedly down upon the sofa, reddens to the roots of his hair. "Your beloved Stradiuarius will have as good companionship as you choose before long," he observes, in a tone, half gallantry, half growl. " I am afraid not," cries Joyce. And for the first time Longmore sees her smile. Miss Dormer has the rare charm of laughing scarcely at all, and of smiling only when she is really amused. " As soon as we are settled in our Nice lodgings for the winter, mamma will hire a piano from Eberius. The good old Jew has the very worst instruments in the world, and I fancy gives us the worst of all he possesses, probably because our circum- stances compel us to bargain about price." " Price ! As if the price of a thing could 54 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. ever matter." John Farintyre remarks this with the air of a Sardanapalus. " It matters a good deal when you are hiring a piano in a Eiviera watering-place," is Miss Dormer's calm answer. " It matters infinitely when you have at once an ear for music and a limited purse. ' A soul by nature pitched too high' — is the quotation correct, Mr. Longmore ? — ' by fortune brought too low.'" "I must accompany you so well as to make everybody forget the quality of our piano," cries Mrs. Dormer, in her conciliatory smooth voice. " My love " — in that short, sweet appellation there lurks a tone that Longmore, prone to judge by trifles, recog- nises as a distant reprimand — "what kind of music, I wonder, would our audience like best ? " " We will play, Mr. Longmore, a selection of airs from 'Carmen' first," answers the CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 55 girl briskly. " ' Carmen,' I must tell you, Mr. Longmore, brings back my youtli, my first season, more than any other opera. . . . Oh, it is very easy for you to look disdainful, Mr. Farintyre. I hold that old things are best, and that it is wholesome to be reminded every now and then of dates." When the mother and dauojhter have taken their places, Longmore's glance wanders from the two fair heads to the accessories by which they are surrounded. The room is but the ordinary private salon of Swiss hotels : a room bare of furniture, destitute of adorn- ment. But Mrs. and Miss Dormer, after inhabiting it a day, seem to have filled every nook and corner with the delicate charm of their own presence. Music lies on the piano, a bunch of wild flowers and a little gray glove are beside the case of Joyce's violin on a side-table ; two or three leather - bound books, within the embrasure of the window, 56 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. a morsel of half-finished tapestry, a work- basket — and the picture is complete. Mrs. Skelton and her daughters devastate Europe encumbered by no inconsiderable stock of stage properties. " Impossible to live," says the Veteran, " without one's ong- tourage ! My girls, you see, have such delight- ful reclierchey tastes, Di in particular. Diana positively cannot exist without elegance." And so, in each fresh room the Miss Skeltons inhabit, are scattered around carvings, statu- ettes, photographs, engravings ; things of artistic value, it may be, in themselves, and yet that become simply so many unsuggestive details of vulgar upholstery when taken with their context — the Miss Skeltons. Mrs. Scipio . Leoniclas travels around with luggage sufficient for a caravanserai ; with morning, afternoon, dinner, and ball dresses ; with diamonds ; with a Eussian Samavar, an English medicine-chest, a pug-dog, an abigail, CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 57 and scrophulous French novels, ad libitum. " My habits of life are that luxurious," the lady has been heard to confess, " that 1 cannot stop a night on the road without opening at least three of my overland cases." And her drawing-room (she invariably takes the costliest one of every hotel at which she stays) is — the faithful reflex of Mrs. Colonel Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs. The Dormers' dress is plain, almost to eccentricity. They have no lady's - maid ; they have no statuettes ; no ongtourage ! Yet it comes to pass that the mere atmo- sphere they inhabit, the unadorned evidences of their everyday occupations, affect Hugh Longmore like some flower's unexpected fragrance. As he listens to their music, as he watches the two soft profiles in the moonlight, as he yields himself up, without a struggle, to the electric, perilous influences of the moment, 58 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. the young undergraduate is sensible of grow- ing and distinctly inimical feelings towards Mr. Jolm Farintyre. That gentleman, in an attitude of more than ease on a sofa, contrives to keep his eyes open through the hammering rhythm of the opera's introductory theme ; he nods vigorously through the bull-fighter Escamillo's song, and is comfortably asleep by the time Joyce's bow, with suave and sonorous power, is rendering the striking phrase in D minor, the pathetic leading motive of the work. When a final fortissimo at length betokens that Jose has plunged his dagger into Carmen's heart, Mr. Farintyre raises himself drowsily about a cou|)le of inches, drawls " Thanks, very pretty," between two yawns, and then remarks that it is time to light up the gas. " Light up the gas, keep out the moon- light," cries Joyce, " close the piano and the windows, and let us settle down to a game of CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 59 Napoleon or ecarte. Do not defend yourself, Mr. Farintyre ; I know that is what you mean. Poor Mr. Farintyre detests music," she adds, turning with an explanatory air to Longmore, " and an evil fate seems to have decreed that he shall, for a while, be our travelling com- panion. The usual story of the square peg in the round hole. Instead of lightinsf the gas we will decide on our next piece. Shall we play a duet of old Viotti's for a contrast ?" " We ought to consult the opinion of our hearers," says Mrs. Dormer, turning her head and giving Longmore the full benefit of her large eyes. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would call them handsomer eyes than her daughter's ; they are, indeed, Joyce's, but thawed ; to the hundreth man the charm mioht be in the ice. " Our taste, Mr. Longmore, is, I am afraid, severely old-fashioned. With the exception of this somewhat tinsel piece of work, Carmen, there is scarcely one piece of 60 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. popular music that Joj'ce can be prevailed upon to play. " ' Carmen, mia Carmen, aclorata,'" sings Miss Dormer, in a low voice. " Don't say anything against poor Bizet or his opera to- night, mother." " I repeat only what the best critics have written, my love. The Wagnerish notion of introducing the Leitmotiv — those two singular bars, with their superfluous second, at every critical moment, is striking, but scarcely more than a trick. Most certainly it is not original. Is not the entire opera of ' Lohengrlin ' based upon the change of the A major chord to that of F sharp minor V " I shall love Carmen for ever and ever," says Joyce Dormer with decision. " So I sup- pose it is certain that my taste inclines towards tinsel. Mr. Longmore, what shall be our next performance ? We look to you for a decision." " I should like whatever you are kind CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 61 enough to play for me," says Longmore, crossino; to the instrument. " A duet of Viotti's," he adds, making a bold, hut hazard shot, "most of alL" " Ah, you know him, you care for Viotti's simple, grand old music?" cries Joyce, raising her bow, eagerly. " I know that you mentioned his name, Miss Dormer. Nothing more." "Viotti should feel flattered! Under circumstances like these, mamma, you are the best judge of what is suited to us all — Mr. Longmore, ourselves, and — and Mr. Farintyre. You have an instinct for majorities, you know — which flatterer of our acquaintance told us that ? — and I have not." " If I am to decide," says the elder lady, " and as it is too dark for us to see a note, I propose that we keep to something unamlji- tious : ' From North to South,' say ; the piece Mr. Farintyre likes." 62 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. And Mrs. Dormer chooses well. The piece "Mr. Farintyre likes" is a popular, simply-set collection of the world's national anthems. The crustiest tune-hater could scarcely demur at patriot h}Tiins, rendered with spirit, in an exquisite hour of mingled dusk and moonlight, by dilettante fingers fair as these ! John Farintyre, waking up, applauds appre- ciatively. Is not " God save the Queen," one of the two melodies he can distinguish nega- tively from all others, brought into the per- formance ? " Brava, brava ! " he cries, with a resound- ing clap of his big hands. " I call that good music. None of your blessed sonatas and cantatas, your Corelli's and Viotti's, but some- thino' a man can understand. Music with a jingle in it ! " Joyce turns quickly round — a little pivot- like curtsey enabling Longmore to see that her foot is of make as slender as her hand. She CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 63 gives Farintyrc a mockiug glance of her blue eyes. "After sucli a graceful compliment, Mr. Farintyre, you shall be rewarded by our shut- ting up our instruments. Not another note of Corelli's or Viotti's shall you hear to-night. "Would it be too great an exertion, do you think, for you to look about for my violin case ( Is her manner one of entreaty, command, indifference ? Longmore, fond of puzzling over rigidly unanswerable questions, puts this one to himself. The lad comes fresh from the schools and all that the schools can teach ; has Grote and Mommsen at his fingers' ends ; brims over with Plato, " sawn up into quantities by Aristotle," and is not unversed in the latest German philosophies. He is also, by tem- perament, an analyst, given to geometrical subtleties, for ever asking the wherefore of abstract passion and of possible motive. 64 A BALLROOM REPENTAXCE. In common everyday human concerns, especially such concerns as happen to be com- plicated by the working of a girl's heart, Hugh Longmore, at two-and-twenty, is ignorant as a child. " The night is a great deal too fine to be wasted within doors," observes Joyce, when she has carefully locked up the case of her Stradiuarius. " What do you say to a moon- lit stroll, mother I Do you remember the little plateau high among the hills to which you and I scrambled our way two autumns ago ? Why not all adjourn there now ? " " The plateau above the chestnut woods — with the wonderful panorama of Chillon and the upper lake. Charming " But here an ominous sound causes Mrs. Dormer to stop short. She glances, interroga- tively, at the face of Joyce's suitor. He is yawning, without even the decent shame that prompts us to suppress our yawns. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 65 Lakes and moiTntains of a morning, Corellis and Viottis of an evening, are by no means poor Mr. Farintyre's ideal of enjoyment ; no, not with the added delight of a moonlit stroll, the intellectual treat of hearing Joyce discuss books and music with the man who is not his friend ! And, reading aright the expression of her intended son-in-law, Mrs. Dormer's own taste for chestnut woods and wonderful panoramas cools on the instant. " I think I shall let you young people find your way to the plateau without me," she remarks, sinking into an arm-chair, and passing her white fingers over a brow fair and un- furrowed as a child's. " I have just a suspicion of headache, and am more in a humour for quiet and rest than for scaling romantic hill- sides." " Not in a humour for ecarte, of course ? " suggests Farintyre, getting up with an eff'ort VOL. I. F 66 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. from the sofa, tlien crossing over towards the bell. "The very thing to do me good, Mr. Farintyre. It is only fair you should wipe off that heavy score of gloves you lost to me at Grindelwald. King, please ! " Mrs. Dormer is a little woman made up of pleading emphasis, of soft cooing italics, of the constant indirect flattery that makes itself felt through tones, rather than words. " We will begin our fight at once. Gas, we will have none of — only a couple of wax candles to enable us to see the moonlight the better. Joyce, my dear, be ad- vised. AVe have had enough fatigue for to-day." Miss Dormer moves to the window ; she looks out with longing eyes across the lake, clearly purple as the sky above, the fairy-like lights from half a score of boats dotting its surface, and with a glorious silver path shining straight away towards the mist-girt valley of the Khone. CONCEENING OLD VIOLINS. 67 " Star-gazing versus ecarte," she remarks, as a wave of cool and delicate night air flows in across her face. '' If it were not for bravinsf the dragons — I mean for running the gauntlet of the salon windows — I should be tempted to make my way through the chestnut avenue towards Glion. I want to see how the first snows look by moonlight on the Col de Jaman." " The dragons will muster in greater force than usual," says Longmore, who has followed her. " M. Scherer has promised us a ball to- night, and an extra row of dowagers will be sure to line the salon windows. If you will accept my escort. Miss Dormer, I think you might perhaps get past them, alive." " But is your time at your own disposal ? " asks Joyce, rather maliciously. " Are you not wanted for the ball ? Are you positive your friends will not get up some moonlit expedi- tion later on in the evening, to the castle of ChiUon ? " 68 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. "Oh, Cliillon is for another occasion/' cries out John Farintyre. " I got let in for Chillon by moonlight before I knew what I was about. Decidedly approachable, that friend of yours, Longmore, and not half bad-looking for the sort of style. By the way, what is her name ? The young woman with ribbons, you know, that you were spooning on, down by the wall, there ? " ^'Spooning!'' repeats Hugh Longmore, his bronzed face reddening like a girl's. " Or she on you ; much the same thing, isn't it ? Afraid I came up at a critical moment, from the embarrassed look of both parties." " The young lady was Miss Aurora Skelton, a recent acquaintance, a — a daughter of Prebendary Skelton," says Longmore, a certain look in Joyce's blue eyes provoking him to stand on his dignity. " Mrs. Skelton is obliged to live most of the year out of England, for CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 69 climate's sake. I believe they generally spend their winters in the South ! " " Skelton, surely that name ought to be familiar to me/' Mrs. Dormer remarks placidly. " Skelton. Yes, I am convinced we must have met Mr. Longmore's friends often ... on the Promenade des Anglais, at Nice (if you insist on going out, child, you must really wrap up). There was a Mother." Singular what keen- edged meaning a flute-like voice can throw into so simple a statement of facts. "And there were Daughters." "Daughters, very decidedly," says Mr. Farintyre, growing jocular. "The moment I saw your friend, Longmore, she reminded me of Kosie Lascelles of the Ambiguity — Eosie Lascelles, minus the form, and minus the talent. If an actress does go in for attitude," here Mr. Farintvre's tone becomes one of con- viction, " she does it well." xA.t this second mention of Kosie Lascelles 70 A BALLROOM REPENT AXCE. of the Ambiguity, Joyce Dormer steps out on the balcony. She says something in a low tone to Longmore, who is at her side, then makes the usual feminine pretence at " wrap- ping up " by knotting a small caml^ric hand- kerchief about her throat. " Joyce, my love, why should you not play us a solo," cries Mrs. Dormer, glancing round from the table where John Farintyre is organising candles and cards. " One of your own compositions, darling ; or, better still, an improvisation. Depend upon it, Mr. Long- more would like to hear you improvise." "Mr. Lona:more shall be o-ratified on some future day, mother. We are going out now to have a look at the first snows on the Jaman. Perhaps I may prevail on Mr. Longmore to give me a lesson in astronomy." "Dehghtful night for a stroll," observes John Farintyre, with a tolerable show of magnanimity. CONCERNING OLD VIOLINS. 71 " In the gardens of the hotel, yes." And Mrs, Dormer takes one of her quick looks at the young man's face. "But not beyond. Crime is positively becoming of everyday occurrence in Switzerland. I see, in the Lausanne Courie?^ that the diligence was stopped last Thursday, near Chambery. A Sister of Mercy was robbed of her purse and an elderly Swiss banker " "Mother," interrupted Joyce, a w^ell-defined shade of impatience in her tone, " is this Cham- bery ■? Am I a Sister of Mercy, or a diligence ? Is Mr, Longmore an elderly Swiss banker? Play out your match at ecarte — amuse your- selves well — and if I am not back by mid- night, let the lights be extinguished and the hotel shut up. All that remains of me will be found somewhere between this and the summit of the Col de Jaman, to-morrow." 72 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTER III. A MOONLIT SONATA. The salon windows are innocent of dragon or dowager ; the salon, itself, newly beeswaxed and garnislied for dancing is, as yet, empty. Joyce Dormer and Longmore pass out through the silent, dew-freshened gardens to the high road, white, as though paved with marble, in the moonlight, they turn away by a narrow footpath in the direction of Glion, and after a quarter of an hour's steep ascent find themselves on the ojoen mountain's side. Straight before their sight stands black, pine- covered Cubli. To the extreme right are the seven peaks of the Dent du Midi : a world of purple vineyard lies at their feet. Crystal A MOONLIT SONATA. 73 clear has grown the atmosphere. The big, near stars flash and palpitate in many-coloured fires of emerald and ruby. The sharp, needle- like Jaman, the lofty Nez, are printed in dense relief against a background of luminous sky. It seems to Longmore in this ampler ether, in this pale Elysium light, as though he and Miss Dormer had been acquainted for years. " Star-gazing on the whole is better than ecarte," the girl remarks, seating herself with the bon-garcon air of brusqueness that she carries off with such grace, upon a projecting point of boulder among the heath. "And star-gazing might be improved by one's under- standing a little about the stars. Years ago I recollect gaining an astronomy prize in some class mamma made me attend in Paris, and at the present hour I do not know a planet from a star of the first magnitude, when I see them together. Of course you have the heavens at your finger-ends. What boys learn is so 74 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. S ground into them at scliool that, in spite of their best endeavours, they cannot lose it all again as girls do." " The Girton girls, for instance," suggests Longmore. " No Winchester schoolboy in my day knew more about stars than that they existed." " But you could tell their places ? You must have learnt something in that grand observatory at Oxford. You know, at least, where that came from." As she speaks the great vault has suddenly whitened with the hundred thousand miles glissade of some shooting meteor. " I have a notion that I could find the Great Bear and Cassiopea," says Hugh Longmore. " I might even discover Arcturus, perhaps, on a pinch." " Point them out to me. If you will kneel down on the heather, here, our eyes will be on the same level. It would never do to tell my A MOONLIT SONATA. 75 mother and Mr. Fariutyre that, although they may have enjoyed their ecarte, our astronomy lesson came to nothing. We will begin with Arcturus." " Arcturus," says the young Oxonian, taking his place somewhat shyly at Miss Dormer's side, " is the large very yellow star just in front of us." " You must be more explicit, Mr. Long- more. I see a dozen large very yellow stars just in front of us." " Arcturus is immediately above the tallest of those three large trees. You are looking quite in a wrong direction. Miss Dormer — follow the direction of my finger." Joyce inclines her head, in grave obedience, until it is within a few inches of Longmore's. Her eyes follow the direction towards which he points. " And has Arcturus a proper motion?" she asks, much as though she were questioning a 76 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. professor of sixty with a watchful mamma and governess in chaperonage. " You see how thor- oughly I have forgotten everything. Can Arc- turus be the old Bootes, going fifty-four miles a second, that we used to learn about in Paris ?" The lesson on astronomy is a long and a serious one. Seriousness characterises Joyce Dormer's smallest movements, heightens what I should call the moral picturesqueness of her character. Sweet though her face be, it is unsmiling ; her voice is below the concert pitch of artificial society-talk. Bright, sympathetic, full of unafi*ected interest in life, it requires an effort to imagine this girl of twenty getting out of breath about anything. Pre-eminently does she inspire you with a sense of rest, subtlest of charms, at all times, trebly subtle to a man who for a fortnight has suff'ered under the galvanic gushes, the over-strained noisy enthusiasm, equally false and equally little, of an Aurora Skelton ! A MOONLIT SONATA. 77 When young Longmore's last word on the subject of stars is spoken, Miss Dormer con- sults her watch. "What! must you return?" he asks. " Are you afraid that Mrs. Dormer is nervous still over her recollections of elderly Swiss bankers and the Chambery diligence ?" "Not the very least in the world. My mother and I flatter ourselves we do not pos- sess a nerve between us. As long as mamma can make another person happy she is con- tented. Of course she makes Mr. Farintyre supremely happy by playing ecarte." " Oh, of course," assents Longmore. And a sudden uncertainty comes over him as to whether John Farintyre be most in love with the mother or with the daughter. " He is not, as a rule, amusable, I should say," observes Miss Dormer casually. " Who — Farintyre ? Well, really I knew little of his tastes at Oxford. My father is the 78 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. rector of a poor Lincolnshire parish, Miss Dormer, and the keeping of college terms, for me, meant money. Farintyre's father is a millionaire. You can imagine that our paths lay wide of each other. A man reading eight hours a day, and finding all the pleasure he can afford in a walk along the high road, or a quiet pull on the river, is not likely to come across " "The undergraduate who is an adept at Loo, Van, and Nap (these are Mr. Farintyre's own recollections of the Alma Mater), and whose only reading is of BelVs Life and the Sporting Times. Precisely. It is because Mr. Farintyre is fond of cards and not fond of books that I should call him unamusable." After this, there is a moment's silence, then: "You, of course, should know best?" suggests Longmore, a note of interrogation in his voice. " I have had fair opportunities for judging A MOONLIT SONATA. 79 during the past three weeks. Out of the twenty-one days we have spent in Switzerland, we have had eleven of rain — Mr. Farintyre is to a certain extent travelling with us, I mean, he stops when we stojD, he sees what we see — and these eleven days have enlightened us all as to our several resources. I, personally, am never dull ; I have Stradiuarius. My mother is the most occupied little creature living, a great reader, a good worker, an indefati- gable correspondent. But Mr. Farintyre ! — If mamma were not so clever and so patient at card-playing, I think the poor fellow w^ould have been bored into committing suicide." "Bored when he was — I mean," says Longmore, happily stopping short on the brink of a compliment, " when he could have as much good music as he liked." " De gustibus non est disputandum," says Miss Dormer, pronouncing her Latin very prettily. "You, perhaps, Mr. Longmore, 80 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. might not be bored if you were to travel with mamma and me." The point-blank coolness with which she advances the surmise renders a flattering answer impossible. "But Mr. Farintyre does not know one note from another, boasts, indeed, that he can- not distinguish between Mozart and Madame Angot. Sometimes I think Mr. Farintyre is to be envied. When one remembers all the bad music there is in the world, the possession of an over-fine ear, or even of a cultivated taste, would seem a doubtful benefit." The subject of bad music brings them down with inductive celerity, with few fine intermediate shades, to the recollection of Aurora Skelton. " That young lady deliberately slaughtered the ' Ave Maria ' of Schubert in your presence this evening, and you abetted her. She sang three modern English songs, each more out of A MOONLIT SONATA. 81 tune than the last. You listened. You ap- plauded. Why?" " Because — because I had no choice of doing otherwise," is Longmore's answer. " Mr. Longmore, that defence is too lame. Do you not know, as a physical fact, the highly destructive effect false notes have on the nerve-centres ?" " I am afraid I know only too well experi- mentally." " But have you mastered the theory ? ' Whenever two series of aerial undulations interfere with one another ' — my first German music teacher made me learn this by heart — 'the efi"ect upon the auditory nerves is that special form of discomfort cognised as a dis- sonance.' Your friend's singing throughout is ' that special form of discomfort cognised as a dissonance.' Yet you not only listen ; you encourage her. Will you tell me why ?" If Longmore were discussing the question VOL. I. G 82 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. with a man, discussing it, say, in the truthful atmosphere engendered by midnight tobacco smoke and a bachelor fireside, he would pos- sibly make mention of poor Aurora's personal charms, of the dimple in the cheek, of the bold black eyes that consciously flatter every person of the opposite sex who looks into them. On this lonely mountain side with Joyce Dormer's quiet gaze encountering his own, he replies, stammering, that he supposes bad music, if one has a musical taste, is better than none, in out-of-the-way places. That is to say, it is an atrocious thing to hurt people's feelings, and Miss Aurora Skelton was so good- natured as to ofi*er to sing for him to-day, and " And Mr. Longmore was content to play the part of Tartuffe," cries Joyce, rising to her feet. '* Don't attempt to vindicate yourself, sir. Bad music is infinitely worse than none, A MOONLIT SONATA. 83 and you or I, knowing it to be bad, ought to stamp it out whenever we have a chance. Do you hear the cry of that far-off grasshopper ?" she goes on. " Those two cracked, monotonous thirds seem to me more pathetic, fuller of a real impassioned song, than half the ' Kemem- brances ' and ' Alones,' with their pretentious far - fetched accompaniments, that fill the Regent Street shop- windows." "But if 'Remembrances' and 'Alones' give pleasure to the majority?" says Longmore, " to the millions of men and women, mostly what Mr. Carlyle calls them, for whom such things are written?" " The poorest song may at least be sung in tune. Mr. Longmore, if you are so warm in your defence of false notes I shall begin to think bad things of you. It may be wise to change the subject. Would yonder goat-track lead us down to Clarens, do you suppose, or over the brow of the cliff? Over the brow of 84 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. the cliff. Then, by all means let us take it. You may be pioneer." As she speaks, Miss Dormer surrenders her hand to the lad's keep- ing. '*' But we will meet our fate in company. If we could get just sufficiently far into danger to make one's heart beat quicker!" But no danger of a physical kind awaits them. The goat-track leads, not across the brow of the cliff, but to a tiny knoll of green- est velvet, hemmed in by mountain larches, carpeted with upland flowers, a spot where it would scarce surprise you to come upon Caliban and Ariel discoursing in the moon- light, or to see Cobwxb and Moth and Pease Blossom playing hide-and-seek among the grass. A look of genuine, childish pleasure bright- ens over Joyce Dormer's expressive face. " This is worth eleven days of rain ! Worth all the dismal evenings we have spent since we came to Switzerland. ' Au clair de la lune.'" A MOONLIT SONATA. 85 Under her breath she runs through a bar or two of LuUi's delicious melody. " I have to thank you, Mr. Longmore, for lighting on anything so charming. We must bring my mother here the first fine afternoon, and Mr. Farintyre, and a kettle, and drink our five o'clock tea, al fresco." "Five o'clock tea, with music," suggests Longmore. "It is a promise that I shall hear you play something of your own composition, and the violin, like the voice, needs no accom- paniment out of doors. Would you trust me, for once. Miss Dormer, to be the bearer of Stradiuarius ?" " Not on the occasion of the tea-party," answers the girl. Hugh Longmore, reading between the lines, interprets her tone to mean not in the society of Mr. Farintyre ! "If time were at my own disposal — or rather, if I had genius, not facility, it would be good, indeed, to bring Stradiuarius to a wild place like this — 86 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. to seek one's ideas, not from the printed score of others, but from Nature direct. Unfortun- ately, we, amateurs, are echoes of echoes. I can embroider a little with my bow, as you shall hear, any day you choose ; but it must be on some real musician's motive. My im- provisations, as mamma good-naturedly calls them, are pale copies of the old Italian pas- torals. I just approach the threshold of origi- nality, and yet stand outside in the cold for ever." Speaking thus. Miss Dormer moves a few yards onward, and then stops short. Around, behind her, is the never-to-be-forgotten little glade — the glade with its quiet larches, its fresh, wet grass, with Arcturus shining over- head. Immediately in front, a footpath leads dowTi to the prosaic region of white-walled vineyards and gardens, to the Hotel Scherer, to a pair of prosaic card-players losing gloves to each other at ecarte. A MOONLIT SONATA. 87 Joyce pauses for a second or two, her gaze turned skyward, her bare head surrounded by an aureole like a saint's. The wind, keen off the mountains, blows back the soft hair from her forehead. "Did you ever remark, Mr. Longmore, that flowers have their moonlight smell ? It surrounds us at this moment. Well, in the hottest London concert-room that peculiar cold sweetness comes back to me always when I hear Beethoven's ' Moonlight Sonata.'" "The sonata dedicated to the Countess Guicciardi," says Longmore, looking hard at his companion's clear face, her buoyant airy figure. " The coquette who, after being loved by Beethoven, married a composer of ballet music. No, Miss Dormer, I know nothing about the efl'ects of moonlight on vegetation. Flowers, with one or two exceptions, give out their strongest scent in the caloric rays of the sun. As facts prove, however, that the electric 88 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. light is equally efficacious in producing chloro- phyl in leaves, it may be assumed " "Please don't be scientific!" breaks in Joyce, imploringly. " One may like a little exact science as regards the stars, but about flowers — No. Facts ? Oh, if you are so scep- tical as to require them, I will convince you instantly." She hesitates, looking around her; then stoops above a mound overgrown with wild thyme. She bruises a mass of the dewy, odorous blossoms between her fingers. "Flowers must have the caloric rays of the sun upon them, you tell me, in order to smell sweet. Then what, pray, do you say to this?" And, abruptly, two little perfumed hands, white, cold as the moon's light itself, are held up across the young Oxonian's face. Will the scent of wild thyme ever fail to recall this moment's intoxication to Huofh A MOONLIT SONATA. 89 Longmore ? Would the cynicism of every man of tlie world living convince him that Joyce Dormer was not acting from a pure and girlish impulse ? 90 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTEE IV. ASKING FOR TRUMPS. Gaslight streams forth, murdering the moon- beams, through every open window of M. Scherer's state salon. Mrs. Skelton, in plumes and paint, thumps a waltz tune upon a piano, tinkling, worn-out, sharp of tongue as herself. The three Miss Skeltons fly around in the arms of three thick-booted, tweed-jacketed tourists, newly kidnapped, poor fellows, on their descent, footsore and blistered, from the mountains, and who will depart, afiiighted, by the earliest train for Lausanne to-morrow ! Twice, regu- larly, each week is a like batch of Innocents Abroad mercilessly executed, to pianoforte ASKING FOR TRUMPS. 91 accompaniment, by Miss Aurora Skelton and her elder sisters. Mrs. Dormer and Jolm Farintyre, their match at ecarte ended, watch the baUroom from the grass terrace outside ; Mrs. Dormer's neutral-tinted dress, her soft, fair face, her composed step, affording a grateful contrast to the be-ribboned, over-heated votaries of noise and glare and rapid movement within. " We say, every day, that the world is a small place, Mr. Farintyre. It seems to me that the world affords human beings a pretty wide scope for the exercise of their bad taste. These dear creatures, with their piano, and their smart- ness, and their gas, think they are enjoying the mountains, are enjoying them, doubtless," adds Mrs. Dormer liberally, " after a fashion." " Well, yes, there is no accounting for taste," John Farintyre assents, with a some- what surly glance in the direction of Glion. " Some old-fashioned people, you see, might 92 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. call this a fitter hour of the night for dancing than for making mountain excursions." " Are you thinking of Joyce ? Oh, there is not the smallest occasion for fear," returns Mrs. Dormer, with admirable maternal philosophy. " Some weak-nerved mothers are in a constant fever about their children. I have never been in a fever about Joyce. It was not my system. From the time Joyce was in short coats I have trained her to take care of herself. And she has done so. I positively do not remember her meeting with a bruise or a scratch like other children." Mr. Farintyre's wits do not seem to furnish him with an adequate rejoinder. He glances still, and with undiminished surliness, in the direction of Glion. "I must confess it would be as wise to start on these little expeditions by daylight. But in Joyce's case one must always make allow- ance, must one not, for artistic proclivities ? " ASKING FOR TRUMPS. 93 " Artistic proclivities ! A very convenient phrase ! " says Mr. John Farintyre. No change of feature or of voice betrays that the ill-humour of this speech strikes home to Mrs. Dormer. "Joyce is an artist to her heart's core, although, hajDpily for herself, dear child, she is destined to lead the life of any ordinary woman. Joyce seeks inspiration for her music in situa- tions where other girls of her age " " Would be content, no doubt, to seek a flirtation," interrupts Farintyre. It will be seen that this young gentleman's manners have been formed among such disciples of progress as hold Lord Chesterfield obsolete. "Men, un- fortunately, do not draw these fine distinctions. Miss Dormer's numerous admirers judge of her when she is in the inspiration-seeking mood, as they would judge of girls who are not geniuses, and get their vanity flattered accordingly ! Now this young prig, Longmore " 94 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. " Longmore ?" exclaims Mrs. Dormer, rest- ing her taper fingers upon the arm of her son- in-law presumptive. " And who is Longmore ? . . . Ah, of course," after a moment's innocent hesitation, " the young Oxonian you introduced to us this evening — Longmore or Longford, did you say ? A nice, refined fellow he seems — like all j)rigs." In her inmost soul is Mrs. Dormer guilty of a sarcasm ? " Mr. Longford, one may feel sure, knows the district well. This makes Joyce's safety doubly certain." "Her safety?" repeats John Farintyre between his teeth. But Mrs. Dormer does not, or will not, detect the ill-humour of the ejaculation. " If your friend plays whist we might organise a rubber occasionally. It is time Joyce stored up provision for her old age by learning to like the game. And talking of whist reminds me, Mr. Farintyre, you said something to-day at lunch that I did not clearly ASKING FOR TRUMPS. 95 follow." Mrs. Dormer unable to follow a re- mark of Farintyre's ! " Some story, was it, showing that you may not ask for trumps after you have already had the lead and refrained from playing one "?" She draws him away, bearing her weight on his solid arm, looking up, her fine eyes full of interest, to his face. When the whist-table story has been set forth with such dramatic liveliness as poor John Farintyre possesses : " I held knave of clubs, you understand, fourth round. Queen put on second hand ; diamonds led through me, and then I called for trumps, and — and, begad, my partner returned the diamond and lost the trick!" — when that in- comprehensible story, I say, has been stumbled through, criticised, retold, she glides cautiously on to matters connected with the hunting-field — matters about which Mr. Farintyre, like many another young city Croesus, knows little, and loves to talk much. 96 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. " We women are so engrossed with small aims — our charities, calling-cards, art, music, and the last shape of bonnet with which we are threatened for the winter — that we scarcely know more than the outside names of men's pursuits. You were giving us an absurd account the other day of how some French- man headed the fox in the Pytchly hunt, and I believe Joyce and I both laughed without knowing why. Now tell me, exactly and truly, what ' heading the fox ' means." The explanation takes time. John Farin- tyre does not readily warm to the expressing of ideas, even his own, even when the ideas relate to the three or four subjects which awaken in him genuine interest. But Mrs. Dormer, with the acuteness of a Q.C., cross-questions here, throws out a note of admiration there, from the hunting-field gets him to Ascot, from Ascot to Norfolk, from Norfolk to Hurlingham, When the ingenuous youth is once brought ASKING FOR TRUMPS. 97 to Hurlingham lie becomes loquacious. In re- collections of handicap sweepstakes, exciting- ties, birds "grassed at thirty yards," and all the other details of pigeon-slaughter, one may surely hope that the lover has merged in the sportsman, that the unhappy subject of moon- light walks and artistic proclivities will be for- gotten ! John Farintyre becomes loquacious, and Mrs. Dormer, set free from that heaviest of social labours, conversation -making, lapses, gratefully, into silence. VOL. I. H 98 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTEK V. THOSE OYSTERS. At this very time Joyce and Hugh Longmore are slowly re-entering the Hotel Scherer gardens. Afar off, Joyce recognises the figures of Farintyre and of her mother, and stops short. " I can see," she cries, " by the bend of Mr. Farintyre's head that he is amused — for the first time, I really believe, poor fellow, since we came to Switzerland. What happy inspiration can mamma have lighted upon "? In any case, you and I are not wanted, Mr. Longmore. It would be cruel to interrupt them." " The night is young. We have not seen THOSE OYSTERS. 99 the early snows upon the Jaman," suggests young Hugh Longmore. Incipient sentiment is in his tone, and Miss Dormer crushes him promptly. " We have not seen the snows, but w^e have had quite as much star-gazing as is good for us," she remarks. " We have sung our roman- tic moonlit duo at the back of the staofe. Now for a comic scene or two before the footlights. What is life but a mixed opera ? — an opera, in this case, it seems, with a ballet ! " As she speaks Joyce turns down a dark, trellised path which, at the end of twenty or thirty paces, brings them directly in view of the ballroom windows. The dancers still dance ; the Veteran, with unflagging fingers, still thrums antiquated waltz tunes upon the battered piano. In a low and somewhat mischievous tone, Joyce Dormer recjuests Longmore to point out " his friends " to her. 100 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. " Miss Aurora Skelton I recognise. Hei- relatives I can guess at. Who is the thin little lady waltzing backwards ? — the lady with a profile, a Spanish mantilla, diamonds, and eyes ( " That," answers Longmore, " is Mrs. Colonel Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs, of New Orleans. Her partner is an Anglo-Saxon- speaking Parisian, freshly arrived in Clarens, and between them they are executing the only civilised dance to which the world has yet attained, the Boston. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Brio-gs would herself call it the ' Bors'on.'" "Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs is that marvellously rare being — a graceful woman." For Joyce has all an artist's generous apprecia- tion of the good points of others. " Yes, Mr. Longmore, and she is so in spite of the ' Bors'on , in spite of her exaggerated partner. "We Nineteenth Century Englishwomen atti- tudinise and mimic," adds Miss Dormer. " We THOSE OYSTERS. 101 get painters to design our dresses, we take the celebrities of all the ages for our models, and succeed ... to the point of becoming articu- lated lay-figures ! The first little American girl one meets, overloaded though she may be with French finery, as much surpasses us in her grace of movement as the Eoman women surpass us in their walk and carriage. Perhaps the sun is wanted for the ripening of this kind of beauty, as it is for grapes and olives." "Have you lived all your life in sunshine?" asks Hugh Longmore quickly. Ere he has had time to repent, as Joyce would certainly give him occasion to do, of the compliment, the piano ceases. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs and her partner come forth into the night. The invalid wears a dress of amber satin, a colour that well suits her pallid alabaster skin. A Spanish lace mantilla is thrown over Mrs. Seipio's head. Among the carelessly-arranged 102 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. waves of lier black hair rests a solitary purple- damask rose. Her partner is a young gentleman with nervous eyes, a waxen complexion, and a head of the type that schoolgirl novelists describe as Shelley -like — plenty of intellectual brow, plenty of fair curls, plenty of nose : mouth and chin wanting. This young gentleman's accent is nasal, his manner Frenchified ; his clothes are made by a Parisian tailor ; a gar- denia is in his buttonhole, " Passable outline," he remarks, indicating the finest sweep of mountain in Europe, with a couple of languid, primrose fingers, and the air of a man who has heroically resolved to endure Nature — for a fortnight. " Well, the Alps are handsome," Mrs. Scipio Leonidas admits. "If I was a well person," she has been dancing the Boston for exactly sixteen minutes without halting to draw breath, " I should take some sublime THOSE OYSTERS. 103 trips around among these scenes. But I am quite too sick and fragile for strong exertion. It's my dyspepsia, you see, that's my trouble." She is looking lovely as a dream. The darkness of the night seems reflected in her lustrous eyes, one diamonded hand clasps her lace mantilla across her throat, the other rests upon her partner's arm. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs by moonlight is more than pretty. She is poetic. The mood of the Shelley-like young gentle- man softens. It occurs to him, perhaps, that Nature, in some society, might be endured — a little longjer than a fortnio-ht. He hints at the loneliness of his partner's lot, at her quasi - widowhood, at the evil efi'ect of moral unhajDpi- ness upon a sensitive organisation. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas shakes her head : a quiver comes around her finely chiselled lips. " It's more than half of it the diet," she remarks with feeling, and in a tone of deep 104 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. earnestness. " The diet in these watering-place hotels is vile. That's about the key-note to my dyspeptic trouble. Look at my hand ! Was ever such a bird's claw seen? My dresses fall off me. I'm positively obliged to give up wearing my marriage ring. My — yes ! I wrote and told the Colonel so, last mail. But w^hat can you expect with such a cuisine ? Why, to speak of oysters alone," says Mrs. Leonidas, warming up with her subject. "They give you what they call oysters, certainly — poor shrivelled tasteless bivalves, here in Europe. Think of them in New York !" A look of soft and mournful retrospect crosses the lady's features; her voice modulates. " You get those oysters with breakfast, roasted on the half - shell, or devilled, or steamed. You get them as an appetiser before dinner, raw, luscious, and juicy — my yes ! sweet, tender, portly. You get them at dinner, stewed, tossed up in crumbs, cooked in THOSE OYSTERS. 105 pies, put into sauces. You get them at all times, for about one franc, French money, the dozen. These regrets are weak, I know. It don't do in absence to talk about home." And something very like a tear shines in Mrs. Scipio's dark eyes. " But you see, sir, one's heart feels like overflowing at times. Moun- tains and lakes, and travelling around may suit for a well person. A dyspeptic invalid wants a considerable deal more nourishment than can be taken out of handsome scenery." And upon this, Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, deli- cate, ethereal-looking as moonlight itself, glides away upon her partner's arm into the deeper shadows of the terrace. At the same moment, the figures of John Farintyre and Mrs. Dormer come suddenly within the full glare of the salon windows. " You have returned, Joyce darling," cries Mrs. Dormer, her voice moved by just a tremble of soft anxiety. " In spite of Mr. lOG A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Farintyre's laughing at me, I was beginning to shiver at the thought of possible robbers and precipices." "We did our best to get into danger," answers Joyce carelessly ; " but, alas ! in vain. It seems part of my fate always to be safe, over safe. How did your ecarte get on, mother?" she adds, as rarint}'Te and young Longmore stand face to face, in the true attitude of men who never mean to like each other, and with- out exchanging a word. "You have won half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, I hope, from Mr. Farintyre ?" " Mrs. Dormer has won a dozen and a half pairs of gloves of me," says Farintyre, in a tone that jars, inexplicably, on Hugh Long- more's ear. Joyce's small feet twinkle a step or two, keeping time to the dance music within. " Victory ! mamma and I wear the same size. When you write to Jouvin, ask my THOSE OYSTERS. 107 advice, Mr. Farintyre, as to the colours you shall order." Mr. Farintyre does not answer. He stands, heavily shifting from one foot to the other. He makes a sorry attempt at whistling, look- ing steadily the while across Longmore's shoulder in the direction where Joyce Dormer is not. As he stands thus, a stir of muslin flounces, a flutter of ril^bons, make themselves heard at the nearest salon window. Aurora Skelton, dishevelled from the dance, but partnerless, gives him a speaking glance through a fold of curtain. And a quick, revolutionary movement stirs in poor John Farintyre's breast. He is free : how many times a day has Joyce Dormer not reminded him of the fact, on rainy days spent in Swiss inns, especially ? What shall hinder him from striking out an original path of action? Why shall he not try 108 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. reprisals, show this girl who makes his torture her amusement, that others can play the same game, enlist the same jealousies as herself? Why should he not invite Aurora Skelton to dance ? " Capital polka that ! Looks a tolerable floor, too," he observes, moving somewhat nervously away from Mrs. Dormer as he pro- duces a pair of gloves from his breast-pocket and returns the glance of Aurora Skelton's eyes with interest. " More than half a mind to go in for a turn — 'take the creases out of my knees,' as the Californian young lady said in Punch." "You think of going ivhere, Mr. Farintyre ?" asks Joyce, advancing a perceptible inch or two, still in time with the music, in his direction. John Farintyre repeats the joke, feeling that it does not sound more witty in the second edition. He makes some halting remark to the effect that 2;entlemen being; scarce this THOSE OYSTERS. lOl) evening, he, as a dancing man, ought to do his duty. Ladies seem to be standing out, and " Do you mean that you would condescend to dance, really and truly ? Well, then," cries Miss Dormer, as though moved by a sudden impulse, "I invite you to be my partner. We will have an extra dance of our own, here, on the greensward, and with the moon to light us. Do you refuse ?" In this moment Joyce is seduction personi- fied. A smile — that rare, delightful smile — irradiates the face upheld to Farintyre's ; her hands (the odour of wild thyme, no doubt, still clinging to them) are clasped towards him in a gesture of mock entreaty ; an aureole of yellow light shines round her blonde and graceful head. Hugh Longmore says to himself with con- viction that he detests her ! " I thought you made a point of not danc- no A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. ing extra dances, that that was one of your very few principles," says Farintyre, ironically emphatic. " You have told me so, I am sure, pretty often " " In crowded London ballrooms, no doubt I have. What mortal being could want to do more than stern duty at a London ball ? In Clarens it is quite another thing." " You put jDrinciple aside. Miss Dormer, in Clarens ?" " So thoroughly, that I am a suppliant for the honour of Mr. Farintyre's hand. Am I successful ?" And in another moment Farintyre's arm encircles the girl's slight waist. She rests her finger-tips upon his shoulder . . . ta-ra, li-ra goes the thumping polka tune on M. Scherer's piano . . . and off they dance along the terrace, now receding out of sight, now reap- pearing amidst the stage-like ebon and ivory effects of the moonlit garden. THOSE OYSTERS. Ill Mrs. Dormer watches the two figures with serene absorption for some seconds, marking the polka - rhythm by one soft palm on the other. Then she remembers her good breed- ing, and young Hugh Longmore's existence. " Have you remarked the singular greenish colour the lake puts on at night, Mr. Long- more ? You can trace it at this moment like a river from Bouveret to Evian. Perhaps you would see what I mean if we were out of reach of gaslight." And across the terrace with noiseless, youthful tread, Joyce's mother glides, Hugh Longmore, feeling a culpably lukewarm inter- est as to greenish colouring of the lake, follow- ing her. " ' Clarens, sweet Clarens,' " repeats Mrs. Dormer presently. " ' Birthplace of deejD love.' Do you care for Lord Byron's verse, or, like most men of this generation, are you a believer in Browning only ?" 112 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Hugh Longmore cares little for verse of any kind ; Latin hexameters and Greek iambics having drilled the taste out of him at as early an age as they drill it out of most English public -school boys. He confesses the truth : over bluntly, perhaps. " Well, I believe all the best poetry is, at this stage of the Nineteenth Century, written in prose. If poets, like Gothe, would only exer- cise their imaginations upon a basis of fact ! " Saying which, Mrs. Dormer gives her com- panion a quick and comprehensive glance. A lad of his years who cares not for verse must, at the world's present age, she decides, care for science. And (although Hugh Longmore, personally, may be regarded as detrimental, a good-lookino; human factor much better omitted from the present sum of Joyce's love affairs) fragmentary feminine science-talk is an accomplishment which Joyce's mother can never refrain from exhibiting. THOSE OYSTERS. 113 " When we came to Switzerland, three weeks ago, we put Tyndall's ' High Alps ' and, of course, ' Childe Harold ' into our port- manteaus. We have been reading the two books alternately, with a marked preference for the ' High Alps.' Byron's raptures about mountains and glaciers seem tawdrily theatri- cal, side by side with the plain speaking of the man of science. You remember that magnifi- jCent passage in which the sun is called the sculptor of the Alps ? ' It was he who raised aloft the waters which cut out these ravines, he who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, he who, acting through the ages, will finally lay these mountains low, so that the people of an older earth shall see mould spread and corn wave over the rocks which, at this moment, bear the weight of the Jungfrau.'" Mrs. Dormer's sparkling, dim2:)led face has grown grave, as with trained tone and delivery she makes the quotation. Thought is in her VOL. I. I 114 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. eyes, a tremble of emotion round her mouth. Had this young undergraduate's taste inclined towards Rousseauism she could, with her talent of lending herself entirely to the moment, have recited for him the necessary half-dozen stanzas from ' Cliilde Harold ;' have recited them with an interest in self-torturing sophistry, fevered lips, and beautiful madness, as warm as that which she now expends on glaciers and on mountains. But Hugh Longmore, whatever his belief in his own knowledge of the world, is, at heart, no cynic. Hugh Longmore, unversed in the little feints and doublings of intellectual coquetry, never doubts that Mrs. Dormer'slove for geologi- cal learning and scientific prediction is sincere. And John Farintyre a short quarter of an hour ago believed the same ; of course with the unimportant sul^stitution of pigeon-shoot- ing for geology, as the object of Mrs. Dormer's enthusiasm ! TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 115 CHAPTEE VI. TOO DEEP FOR TEAPuS. " You see, mamma, your liking is at second- hand. The chie to much fine philosophy may be found in that. If I had a sister or a cousin, placed as I am placed, depend upon it I could be attached to Mr. John Farintyre, vicariously !" " We can, most of us, like where and how we choose, Joyce. Take me for an instance. I was not romantically attached to your papa when first we were ensfao^ed, when first we CO ' were married, even." "And afterwards?" cries Joyce, opening her blue eyes wide. As long as the girl can remember any- 116 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. thing, her parents, divided by a quarter of a century in age, have lived heroically apart : Mr. Dormer writing charming little lover-like letters to his absent wife, Mrs. Dormer con- stantly on her dutiful road to join her husband and his teapots in Italy — but apart, never- theless. " Afterwards, child, I exercised myself strenuously in the most precious virtue a woman can possess or practise — toleration. Your poor father's artistic tastes — (I am quite ready to admit the delicacy of his health) — drew him towards the soft do-nothingness of a Southern life. By an effort of will I early put myself so much in his place as to imagine that — for Mr. Dormer — such an existence might be the highest possible ! Quite other duties lay to my hand, Joyce. I had to think of you. When you were little, it was needful to live in climates," notably London and Paris, unless Joyce's memory be at fault, " where TOO DEEP FOE TEARS. 117 English children thrive. Later on, I had to think of masters and governesses ; later still, to keep up old connections, to form new friends. To the best of my power I fulfilled my duties, both as wife and mother ; guided, enlightened, always by one princij)le, that of toleration." " You have an even temper, mamma," says Joyce, a little remorsefully. " I have not. You can put up in others, in John Farintyre, for example, with all the qualities most unlike your own. I cannot. And be- sides, mother — yes, you have told me so yourself" — for a moment Joyce's fair face blazes from temple to throat, then grows white again — " although you were not, as you say, romantically in love with my father, you never cared for any one else. Toleration, remember, may have come to you through other channels than it does, or ever can, come to me." The village clocks along the lake shore 118 A BALLKOOM REPENTANCE. one after another have struck midnight, the lights are extinguished in Hotel Scherer, the revellers at rest. But Mrs. Dormer and Joyce still linger at the open window of their sitting- room. A certain look upon the faces of both — of pained entreaty, despite its power, on the girl's; of cool determination, despite its smooth- ness, on the mother's — betokens that their talk is of other things than charities, calling cards, art, music, or even the last shape of bonnet with which we are threatened for the winter. " Too much ' caring,' as you express it, for another ends in not caring enough for oneself. You ought to have learnt that bitter truth." "Did I ever say I had not learnt it, mother?" " I do not see that you carry the lesson into practice. If on the threshold of life a girl chance to fall into any . . . well," hesi- tates Mrs. Dormer, vainly seeking an euphe- mistic phrase — " any deplorable sentimental TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 119 mischief, it should, if she be wise, and when the first smart is over, become a stepping- stone, not a stumbling-block, for the rest of her days." "It seems to me I am very wise," says Joyce. "Although the first smart of the sentimental mischief, after more than two years, is not over ! In what way am I open to the charge of not caring enough for myself ? My life is one long selfishness." " You care, seriously and deeply, for nothing — except, of course, your violin-play- ing," remarks Mrs. Dormer, with an accent of quite unwonted humour. " Think of Sir Kenneth Grant — of your levity " " Mother," interrupts the girl, turning briefly round, then standing so that the two face each other full, "if we are to have re- criminations let us also have plain-speaking. I accepted Sir Kenneth at a time when reason was dead in me. My heart was breaking over 120 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. my great sorrow — yes, my heart was breaking, thougli I wore no black, and went to operas and balls and garden parties through it all. And Sir Kenneth Grant was kind and so old — papa's age, or more ! And I thought, God help me, he would look for no love of that kind from me, and you said that once married I should forget my pain. ..." " And when the wedding orders had been given," observes Mrs. Dormer coldly, as the words die on Joyce's passionate lips, " and when the marriao;e settlements were drawn out, you told Sir Kenneth, one of my oldest, dearest friends, that you held it would be better to die, yes, and that you besought Heaven, night and morning, for death, sooner than that you should stand before the altar as his wife." " Sir Kenneth himself gave me an open- ing," exclaims Joyce, with a face of marble. " He came upon me, suddenly, one morning — TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 121 have I not told you the story before? Sir Kenneth came in, unannounced, just as I was trying, through my tears, to look over some jewels that he had sent for me to choose from. And when he asked me the meaning of my tears, I answered him truly. You know the rest. You know how he was good and loyal and pitiful enough to absolve me of my word." " And poor young Vesey Armytage ? " "Poor young Vesey Armytage was, really, and in fact, an admirer of yours, mamma," cries the girl, but in a lighter voice. " I will not be made responsible for Vesey Armytage's blighted happiness." " And now, John Farintrye ?" " And now, John Farintyre. Mother, why this tragic tone? John Farintyre likes, it would seem, to travel about the world in our wake, carrying our shawls and losing our tickets and our luggage at the railway stations, 122 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. and hearing harsh things said to himself from morning till night. If, after seeing a great deal of each other, I do not grow to dislike him very much more, and if, as years go on, I decide on marrying at all, it is a settled thing between Mr. Farintyre and myself, that — we should begin to think over the question of becoming engaged in earnest." Mrs. Dormer's cheek kindles : a flash of the eyes makes one understand how Mr. Dormer has found it in his heart to live apart from this angelic little wife of his during a good three-fourths of his married life. " John Farintyre has more brain and more heart than you give him credit for, Joyce. He was talking to me, seriously, this evening, about a matter he has not courage to touch upon to you. If you could have seen his face after you had started with Mr. Longmore for your lesson in astronomy," adds Mrs. Dormer with emphasis, " you would realise, perhaps, TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 123 that John Farintyre's patience may, one day, come to an end." " I thought John Farintyre honestly and truly preferred playing cards with you. John Farintyre does not know one star from another. He does not care for pine woods and mountain wild -flowers, and talk about Beethoven hy moonlight. His friend Mr. Longmore does. Such a nice boy Mr. Longmore is, mamma, and without a shilling in the world, he tells me, unless some day or other he should be able to work for one. I wonder," says Joyce musingly, " why the people I like are invari- ably people without a shilling." " Do you mean to say that you ' like ' this exceedingly commonplace, stiff'-jointed under- graduate, after half an hour's acquaintance ?" " I feel that I could make a companion of Mr. Longmore, certainly. Why do you smile, mother?" " I was thinking of some of your mistakes. 124 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. child ! — of the people all over Europe you have felt positive would be companionable," says Mrs. Dormer mildly, "until — you grew tired of them." Joyce walks restlessly away from her mother's side. "That is the worst thing of all, 'until I grew tired.' Yes, and I grow tired of every- thing, except of my Stradiuarius, which does not belong much to our outward life. It is useless, I am afraid, mother, this searching into the faults of my character. There is a fatal warp in me. I know it. On the day I lost hajDpiness, something in myself, ay, in my very heart, was lost too. Mr. Farintyre must be content to make the best of me, faults and all, or to leave me." " Do you wish him to leave you, Joyce ? Be honest. Would you have been content this evening, even, for him to join the dancers in the salon — to join them," adds Mrs. Dormer, TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 125 " with a Miss Aurora Skelton, a partner too low for possible rivalry ?" Joyce reflects for some moments before answering : o " If John Farintyre were to marry some person better suited to him than I — say, if he were to marry Kosie Lascelles of the Ambi- guity — I should feel relieved. Fancy never hearing the jingle of the Farintyre money again ! As long . . . well, as long as things remain as they are — as long as the only son of the house thinks fit to run about the world in our society — I prefer seeing him at his best. He would not have shown to his best in the too congenial atmosphere of a Swiss hotel ball." "I am pained by your tone, Joyce : Lady Joan Majendie assures me that the Farintyres are a most excellent family." "Mother!" "John Farintyre's great grandfather, Mr. 126 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Duncan Farintyre, was a Scotch laird living at the end of the last century on his father's small estate, in , . . Peebles, I think — Some- where." " Lady Joan's family histories want back- bone. Must not everybody's great grandfather at the end of the last century have been living on his father's small estate . . . Somewhere ? " " But in the general social disruption that followed," says Mrs. Dormer, with large vague- ness, " upon the first French revolution, Duncan Farintyre, like hundreds of other gentlemen's sons, had to seek his fortune, to sustain the family name, in business. How^ the good blood has displayed itself since, how honourably the Farintyres, step by step, have made their way, is proved by the brilliant fortune of the present head of the firm. On the score of cultivation, everything has been done for the son that Eton and Oxford can do." " That is not saying much for Eton and TOO DEE? FOR TEARS. 127 Oxford. John Fariiityrc rode tlic best horses of any man in his college, was celebrated for his ratting successes, and got sent down twice for practical wit with screwdrivers and paint- pots. Also, not having passed mods, by the end of his eighth term of residence, he was asked by those in authority to remove himself elsewhere. You look sceptical, mother. We will use Mr. Farintyre's own words in speaking of this part of his career : ' Was humbugged out of Oxford by the dons.' " " I know too well what your tone means," cries Mrs. Dormer, with chill displeasure. " I know too well how these hypercritical judg- ments are likely to end. You will keep John Farintyre (or John Farintyre's successor) in a state of cruel suspense for years, caring not so much for him as you would care for a dog who had been trained to fetch and carry obediently. Then when the best part of a woman's life, when the bloom of your youth is wasted " 128 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. "Jolin Farintyre (or John Farintyre's successor) will throw me over, and you, mamma, will have a crabbed, disappointed daughter, looking a dozen years older than your- self, upon your hands. Never mind, little mother," adds Joyce lightly, " if our fortunes come to the lowest ebb, there will be Stra- diuarius. My music masters have all told me I could make a name as an artist. We will leave ' a name ' alone. I could earn a living, probably, by going out to play dance-music — violin, harp, and French horn — at evening parties." A scene of the kind I am describing is rare exceedingly between Mrs. Dormer and Joyce. So superficially alike, that their everyday tastes and wishes are identical, so unlike, in truth, that each can barely guess at the other's deeper feelings, this mother and daughter continually approximate, yet, like certain geometrical lines known to mathematicians, never blend. TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 129 When the polished surface of their lives does become ruffled, when a conversation by accident takes a pungently personal turn, or a situation borders on the dramatic, Mrs. Dormer on the instant rises to vantage ground. Is it not a commonplace in domestic politics that a certain engaging and lachrymose weakness of manner shall always triumph over dry-eyed moral strength ? What weapons cannot a soft little woman with " weeps " at command bring against an antagonist who loves her, and whose own emotions happen to lie too deep for tears ? " You confess that there is a warp in your character, that you have lost hope in life, that you care persistently for nothing. I know, I feel it. Ah, Joyce, and when you were little, was ever a child so quite too pathetically loving ! " Here the large, over-innocent gray eyes reach suffusion-point. " I was very ill, once, when you were five or six years old, and VOL. I. K 130 A BALLROOM BEPENTANCE. I was of course alone. Witli all his pleasant- ness of temper, with all his very genuine amiability, the witnessing of sujffering in others was distasteful then, as now, to your poor father. Well, you stretched yourself outside across the door (I was quite affected at what * the nurse told me afterwards), you declared you would not eat, would not be moved, dead or living, till you saw my face. Ah, and your joy when I got better ! How you threw your dear little arms around my neck — how " But Mrs. Dormer's utterance is choked. Tears are coursing down the fair cheeks on which eight-and-thirty years have left no disfiguring trace ; and in another moment Joyce, on her knees, is at her mother's side. "Mamma, I love you, as I have always done. What have I on the earth to love but you ? Forgive me ! " And quickly contrite, she covers Mrs. Dormer's hand with Idsses. " Tell me only what you wish, and I will try, TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 131 if I have sufficient strength, to obey. Oh, why cannot we be all in all to each other, as we used to be in the happy light-hearted years when I was a girl ? " " Before Eoger Tryan came between us," exclaims Mrs. Dormer, adroitly introducing, in her emotion, a name she seldom has courage to mention in cold blood. " And sometimes you wonder that ... in my poor mother's heart ... I cherish so much bitterness against that man ! " The aim is clever ; the mark overshot. Joyce is sensible of a recoil of feeling, a certain uncomfortable suspicion of stage effect. She rises promptly from her knees. " I wonder at nothing, mamma. I know that vain regrets do not kill, that I may have to live another forty or fifty years, and to make the best of them : to wake and sleep and dine and dress, and be as other people. It seems a necessity that some man's peace shall 132 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. be risked by my marrying," she adds after a little pause. " Well, money can buy — not happiness, but the means of forgetting one is unhappy. If sacrifice there must be, as well select a rich victim, John Farintyre or another." " Would not such things as these be better unsaid, Joyce ? " " I think not, mother. The time is coming on when I may have, perforce," once more a marble whiteness overcomes the youthful blood-hues of her cheeks, "to be dumb ! Let us be sincere, now, accustom ourselves to look evil in the face, but never pretend we think evil good. You have been talking this even- ing with John Farintyre about a subject that he has not courage to broach to me himself. What is it ? " Mrs. Dormer's answer is given with infinite tact, with gentleness, with delicacy, with the lightest ornamental touch of tears : tears that might be compared to the fioritura of Italian TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 133 song, superadded notes, airily falling on the central melodic figure ! But Joyce knows, were it only by the deadness of her own heart, that in that soft and flowery answer is couched an ultimatum. "John Farintyre pleads but for one encouraging word," remarks Mrs. Dormer suavely. " Every detail of his fate is to be left in your hands. You are both so young ! An engagement of some months might be a really wise test of the fidelity of both. At the end of those months, we shall, I hope, be in Rome " " Having wintered at Nice on our road ! " interrupts the girl, with meaning even Mrs. Dormer cannot disregard. "And near Nice lies Monte Carlo, and to the gambling -tables of Monte Carlo come visitors. As you have broken the ice yourself, mamma, you must not be angry with me for mentioning Roger Tryan's name. Did you ever hear that he 134 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. arrived in Nice a very short time after you and I had left last winter ? " Joyce asks the question with an obvious effort. Turning her head aside, she makes a pretence of consulting the timepiece on a neio-hbourino; mantelshelf. " Last winter ? — let me think ! Yes, of course. Lady Joan Majendie did mention in one of her letters that Mr. Tryan, with his friends, the Pintos, was spending the spring in Nice. Very deplorable whispers, too," adds Mrs. Dormer, mth soft asperity, " were current as to poor Mr. Tryan's card losses ! As long as he did not gamble, one might trust — trust in his reformation ! But as Lady Joan says " " Could a man not play, as girls occa- sionally go to balls and garden parties, out of sheer weariness of S23irit ? " " I am no casuist, Joyce. I believe wrong to be wrong, and Roger Tryan lost." TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 135 Mrs. Dormer is in earnest. Her accents all but rise to tragedy. " You class him with his associates, in short ? " " I desire to think neither of him nor of them, I do not see what connection persons like these can have with the subject of which we are speaking." " Persons like these mio-ht chance to return to Nice another winter." " And even if they did so ? Surely, child, you would not wish me to change our plans because there is a remote prospect of coming across Mr. Eoger Try an and Mrs. Pinto ? " At this cruel, intentional juxtaposition of names, Joyce winces, like one in bodily pain. " Not only would I keep to our plans, mother ; if opportunity came, I would seek, once again in this mortal life, to meet and speak with Eoger Tryan. Has he ever had an actual honest chance of righting himself 136 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. with me ? That question forces itself upon my mind pretty often." " When a man's conduct proves him faith- less, one would be disposed to value his pro- testations lightly. You could scarcely wish to hear," says Mrs. Dormer, " that, next to the society of Major and Mrs. Pinto, and roulette, Eoger Tryan still likes you best ? " Joyce Dormer raises her eyes, a look of piteous entreaty in their blue depths, to her mother's. "No, mamma. It w^ould be a kind of death to hear that ! I have had experience. I know, too well, that there can be no second- best in love." '' And I may give, at least, a gleam of hope to John Farintyre ? " " Tell him to hope wisely. It is the friendliest word that can be spoken to him." " I shall deliver the message intact, know- ing well," cries Mrs. Dormer archly, " what TOO DEEP FOR TEARS. 137 bright interpretation the poor fellow's heart will put upon it. You would feel happier yourself, Joyce, were the future more settled. We are to be in Kome by March. Let it be a fixed thing that the wedding shall take place after Easter." " Or all thoughts of the wedding be finally and for ever given up. The conditions are just on both sides." These are Joyce's last words as the mother and daughter part for the night. " I shall be twenty-one in the fourth week of April, old enough, certainly, to know my own mind ! And if I can — be sure you use the word, italicised, when you speak to Mr. Farintyre — if I can, I will say ' yes ' to him." She runs upstairs with a buoyancy that her mother, easily hopeful, is fain to take as an auspicious omen, the burthen of " Carmen, mia Carmen adorata,'' upon her lips. But deep on in the night, when the moon has sunk 138 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. chill behind the snow-tops of the Savoy moun- tains, when Mrs. Dormer, warm asleep, is dreaming the good dreams of a conscience and digestion at rest, Joyce, at her open window, keeps vigil, her heart in revolt, a passion of dumb lono-ino; on her face. " When a man's conduct has proved him faithless, one would be disposed to value his protestations lightly. " No disputing the truth of copy-book aphor- isms. And yet, if she might come across her old sweetheart's path, hear Eoger Tryan's voice, feel his hand -clasp, it seems, in this hour, to Joyce Dormer's illogical mind, that she could die content. CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 139 CHAPTER VII. CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. During the next five days Hugh Longmore sees, hears, tastes, with quickened senses. Mountain and lake and sky look bluer to him, music sounds more musical, the thin Swiss wine served round at Monsieur Scherer's table is as nectar. In these five days is compressed the greatest happiness of his life, a happiness so thorough, he tells himself, 'tis impossible he can be undergoing that series of morbid changes often philosophically watched by him in other men, and which are the sure forerunners of the great unhappiness, love ! The first sound that greets him in the morning is Joyce's violin practice. 140 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. his room, surely by providential arrangement, being in tlie same wing of the hotel as Mrs. Dormer's apartments. His first vision is of Joyce herself on the balcony, her blonde head shining in the eastern sun, as she spreads out a breakfast of crumbs for the sparrows — those delightful, familiar sparrows that are a speci- ality of Clarens. On such occasions, especially I fear if Mr. Farintyre be hovering nigh (black jealousy at his heart, a blacker pipe between his lips), she will throw down a passion-flower or rose, or sprig of jasmine to the young Oxonian ; and when she does so, be assured that Longmore would change places with no crowned head in Europe ! After this, the sparrows being dismissed, books and papers are brought out, and the ladies "study." Poring, or seeming to pore, over his Greek tragedy, in some shaded corner of the terrace, Longmore will catch an occasional tone of Miss Dormer's voice as she reads aloud from the CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 141 Fortnightly, or the Nineteenth Century, or an article in the Times, or the Revue des deux Mondes, or perhaps the Lancet. Who knows better than Mrs. Dormer the amount and scope of reading that a life of gracefully intellectual Nomadism demands? By -and -by, an early lunch over, comes the afternoon's excursion, to-day around the lake, to-morrow to Glion, the next to Geneva ; excursions in which, by seeming hazard, always, young Hugh Long- more is asked to join. And then there are the evenings — moonlit, cloudless, suave — evenings, made odorous by flowers, poetised by music, lifted curiously beyond the level of the lad's hitherto prosaic English experience, by the society of the two fair women who have so sud- denly held out to him the hand of fellowshij:). In after times, it may well be that Long- more shall look back on Clarens with disrelish ; shall remember the lake and its lateen sails, the terrace and its roses, the balcony and the 142 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. girlish head that used to lean across its balus- trade, with disgust rather than tenderness. Once let next morning's headache set in, and few men recall the sparkling primeval gaiety engendered by hock or champagne with zest. But for these five days, in spite of common sense perpetually hinting to him that he is in a fool's paradise, in spite of Farintyre's uncon- genial presence, in spite of the fact that Mrs. and Miss Dormer will start for Como next Saturday, young Hugh Longmore dreams out his dream, and is contented. For five days ; on the fifth, mainly through Miss Aurora Skelton's agency, comes the chill process of awakening, some four-and-twenty hours earlier than, in the natural course of events, it need have done. Under the first smart of LonQ;more's defal- cation, poor Aurora's policy resolved itself into one of compromise. She essayed the appeal, direct — in two flats. Would he not come CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 143 back to her, Douglas, Douglas ? Aurora would ask, at the summit of her voice, whenever Douglas ventured within earshot of the crazy salon piano. Keceiving no answer, she essayed rice-powdered cheeks, Aurora's nearest possible approach to sentimental pallor, essayed banter, pouting, coyness : all in vain. At length, guided, by the superior tact of Diana — if Pansy, oh, ye curates, have the virtue, and Aurora, oh, ye men of the world, the beauty, has not Diana, oh, ye seekers after culture, the intellect of the family ? — guided and sustained by the superior wisdom of Diana, the younger Miss Skelton bethought herself of a new line of conduct : of Mr. John Farintyre, of reprisals. Abandoning guerilla warfare, she determined to carry the campaign straight into the very camp of the enemy. We shall see with what success. " This long-talked-of expedition to Chillon 144 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. has not come off vet, it seems." Mr. Farin- tyre is tlie speaker, looking hot and uncom- fortable, like a man at odds with his con- science. " And the moon is just at her full. Let us see ! To-day is Friday. You threaten to start for the Italian lakes to-morrow's even- ing. Now, what decent excuse could be found — I'm sure I don't know how to invent one — for not going to Chillon to-night with all these ladies ?" " An excuse for not going to Chillon with ladies !" exclaims Joyce, looking round at him with an air of pleasant surprise. She is drink- insf afternoon tea with her mother and Farin- tyre on the terrace ; young Longmore, by accident, absent. " Mother, is it possible that you have been planning moonlight boating- parties without my consent ? This sort of wild conduct must be looked to." Kedder and redder grows the guilty face of poor John Farintp-e. CHARLOTTE AND WEIiTHER. 145 "It is a party got up, you see, by some of the other ladies in the hotel — not a boatino- party at all. An excursion steamer from Lausanne is to stop at the Clarens landing-place and take us on to Chillon. I spoke — or rather she spoke — I mean Longmore introduced me to — ah — um — to Miss Aurora Skelton, the second evening I was here, and " "And you have been improving the ac- quaintance ever since," observed Joyce, in a voice, soft, unthreatening as the lake -breeze among the roses. " I believe I saw the lady talking to you, did I not, as you smoked your third pipe this morning ? A lady with black eyes, damask cheeks, and a hearty laugh ? Yes. And so, you and Miss Aurora Skelton are planning a moonlight expedition to Chillon for this evening ?" There is something in the rippling acqui- escence of Joyce's tone that Mrs. Dormer likes not. VOL. I. L 146 A BALLROOM BEPENTANCE. "This evening will be our last in Clarens, Mr. Farintyre. I had intended to take a drive in the direction of Ouchy." " Mother,'^ cries Joyce decisively, " Chillon by moonlight is a thing to be done ; Cook's coupons include the steamer fare, and Murray, I forget the exact page, supplies the needful 'Childe Harold.' You have, of course, accepted Miss Aurora Skelton's invitation, Mr. Farin- tyre?" " The invitation was from Mrs. Skelton and Mrs. Colonel Scipio Leonidas Briggs — jolly little American woman, you know, with the eyes and the Spanish mantilla," says Farintyre, looking more and more miserable. " They passed by the smoking-room window this morning, all of them together, and asked me. And the Skeltons' brother has arrived, T. S. as they call him — an outrageous little cad he is, too — and Miss Aurora added, as there were ladies in my party " CHAKLOTTE AND WERTHER. 147 " In your party !" The exclamation comes in staccatoed ac- cents from Mrs. Dormer. " "Well, no, I don't mean that ; she said as I had arrived the same day with Mrs. and Miss Dormer, she — they — would be glad if — " a look in Joyce's blue eyes causes the words to freeze on his lips — " if you would excuse the shortness of the notice, and join the expedition." " I think, mamma," says the young girl, giving Mrs. Dormer a brief, suggestive glance, " that the answer would come more fittingly from you. These ladies, with whom Mr. Farintyre has A Smoking Acquaintance, are civil enough, through Mr. Farintyre, to invite us on board one of the Lausanne excursion steamers ; shall we accept ? " "It is impossible that Mr. Farintyre can be in earnest," says Mrs. Dormer, failing to see humour in the situation. " An overture 148 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. that one cannot call well-bred was made to him. His moral courage may have given way for the moment, but " " Mr. Farintyre is thoroughly in earnest — are you not, Mr. Farintyre ? You have every intention of accompanying Miss Aurora Skelton and her friends to Chillon to-night ?" " I don't see how a fellow could get out of such a thing," answers John Farintyre sheep- ishly. " All very well to talk of ' moral courage,' sitting here, like this protected — I mean, of course, with you and Mrs. Dormer. A girl meets you on the staircase, out in the garden, at the door of the smoking-room. . . . Dash it all ! A girl meets you everyivhere^ and puts the question to you plump. ' Was I engaged for this evening, or was I not ?' Miss Skelton said !" " And you answered truthfully, that you were not," observes Joyce approvingly. " If any one, meeting me constantly, on stair- CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 149 cases, in gardens, at the doors of smoking- rooms, were to ask me plump, ' AVas I engaged or was I not?' I should display just the same want of moral courage as you did, Mr. Farintyre. I should answer emphatically : Not." Dark gathers the cloud in a moment on John Farintyre's low forehead. His regard for Joyce Dormer is, doubtless, after a fashion sincere. Still, could one analyse this regard (in the promised moral laboratory of the future, say, that laboratory wherein the ultimate elements of human character shall be chemically tested), it would prove to be made up of somewhat doubtful ingredients. Joyce Dormer is fair, well-born, gifted. Joyce Dor- mer is also, or has the reputation of being, hard to win : and John Farintyre's vanity is flattered by the vision of unsuccessful pre- decessors. But, in his heart of hearts, he is afraid of her, ever ready to misconstrue her 150 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. kindest smiles, to detect a latent ii'ony in her sweetest speech. A man in choosing a wife should seek to better his connection. A man who marries an actress loses caste for ever. These are the doctrines in which Farintyre's newly enriched, staunchly conservative parents have reared him, the doctrines upon which he is now duti- fully acting. And yet — the thought crosses him a dozen times a day — if social prejudice were less rigid, if Rosie Lascelles were inside the pale of eligibility, how joyful might be his wooing of her, how smooth their married life! For Rosie Lascelles of the Ambiguity, mentally and morally, is on his own level. And although some exceptional women may prefer the tiptoe attitude in love, men of the calibre of Mr. John Farintyre do not. " There is no need for you to make these confessions, Miss Dormer. Your actions show. CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 151 plain eiiougli, that you consider yourself a free agent." " Free as air," responds Joyce gaily, " and with no prospect of becoming fettered. I wonder how you and I can console ourselves this evening, mamma, while all the world goes to Chillon ? Mr. Longmore shall offer a sug- gestion." The young Oxonian, his good-looking face glowing after an icy swim in the lake, makes his appearance at this critical moment ; and Mrs. Dormer pours out a cup of tea for him with more cordiality than her wont. A passionless observer of human character stands on somewhat the same vantage ground as the political leader of a minority. Both are vested Avith the sacred irresponsibility of Opposition. Mrs. Dormer is absolutely pas- sionless. She watches the moral twists and turnings of her fellow-mortals with less emotion than many naturalists sustain as they watch the 162 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. movements of the creatures in an aquarium. Hence, probably, tlie soundness of her judg- ments. At the first signs of insurrection shown by Mr. John Farintyre, that young Croesus must, she decides, be made to feel himself in the cold. She reads the weak, ungenerous temper far too accurately to try conciliation, as her own finer tact and_culture might prompt her to do in the case of a differently moulded man. John Farintyre must be made to feel him- self in the cold. A cu^ of tea is poured out graciously for Hugh Longmore. Joyce, with an air of business, sets herself to the cutting of bread and butter. For afternoon tea in Monsieur Scherer's establishment is a reality, not a pretence. "Are you not reminded of the great bread- and-butter scene in 'Werther'?" She smiles at Longmore with her eyes rather than her lips as she asks him this. " We have got the lake, the mountains, the bread and the butter." CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 153 " And certainly the Charlotte," adds Long- more, overlooking Farintyre's presence. *' But where is Albert?" The brow of the man of shares grows darker. He draws forth a tobacco pouch from his breast-pocket. " You have an intermittent dislike, I know, Mrs. Dormer, for tobacco smoke." Under the influence of jealous temper John Farintyre almost utters a sarcasm. " So I may as well take myself off. Miss Dormer and Mr. Long- more, evidently, have mutual acquaintance to talk over." "Mutual acquaintance !" cries Joyce, clap- ping her slender white hands. " Oh this is delightful! Mr. Farintyre, after all the culture of Eton and Oxford, do you not know who Charlotte and Albert are ?" " Of course I don't, and I have no curiosity to," says Farintyre, savagely ungrammatical. " All of us are free as air — you reminded me 154 A BALLEOOM EEPENTANCE. of that just now — free, Miss Dormer, to make as many or as few new acquaintance as suits us." " But these are intimate friends, people we have known for years." Never has Longmore seen Joyce in a mood at once so danojerous and so tantalisino;. She turns her face, lit with archness that is more bewitching than a smile, full upon Farintp'e. " Charlotte and Albert are characters in a novel, sir! Gothe's 'Sorrows of Werther.' You never read it? — never read the book that, a hundred years ago, set half the gilded youth in Europe thinking of suicide ? " If any man in real life ever made use of the expression written down in old-fashioned plays and romances as "Pshaw 1" I should say it was John Farintyre at this moment. Turn- ing upon his heel, he moves some paces away from the rest, and there stands, surveying the blue expanse of lake, with eyes that in reality CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 155 see only the mocking girlish face of Joyce Dormer, the compressed smile, that he, Farin- tyre, construes into one of irony, around the lips of Longmore. " We are going to spend quite a lonely, for- saken evening, mamma and I," remarks the voice that Mr. Farintyre loves and hates alter- nately. "There is some moonlight exjDedition, Mr. Longmore, got up by the ladies in this house, to which all the world is going — you, perhaps, among the rest ?" " I think not," answers young Hugh Long- more. " Some one in the hotel was good enough to write me a note of invitation, but " " You found it possible to get out of the way of temptation?" interrupts Joyce. "Or had you actually moral courage enough to plead a previous engagement?" " I refused, Miss Dormer, without excuse or extenuation. If the whole duty of man 166 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. requires one to visit Chillon by moonlight, at least let the visit be srot through alone." "Ah, this is disappointing to our hopes. If you had not used the word ' alone ' we might have thrown ourselves on your compas- sion. My mother and I will be left to our own resources to-night — Mr. Farintyre, of course, going with the crowd ! And so, as you are a good rower, I thought, perhaps, you would take us out, just far enough to get a distant view of Chillon from the lake. What do you say, mamma ?" To Joyce's surprise Mrs. Dormer is acqui- escent; prognosticates neither sore throats, low fever, storms, brigands, nor Mrs. Grundy. And John Farintyre, anathematising woman's frailty in his soul, is forced to listen, with what grace he may, while the evening's pro- gramme is canvassed in detail. By-and-by comes a suggestion, originating obliquely from Joyce, that every one's " Byron " would be the CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 157 better for rubbing up. How if Mr. Longmore should read aloud the " Prisoner of Chillon'"? There will be ample time for him to do so between this and dinner, while she and her mother work. " Charming ! 1 will run for the book at once," cries Mrs. Dormer, rising with youthful vivacity to her feet. John Farintyre, cynical and jealous, feels convinced that the scene has been rehearsed between Mrs. and Miss Dormer beforehand. The most innocent, unpremedi- tated word savours to his jaundiced moral perception of "tag." "Will you be idle or work your tapestry, dear child ? Work your tapestry. Then I will bring it out for you with my own knitting, and the 'Prisoner.'" And five minutes later Lono-more is clear- ing his throat, looking red, and feeling about as happy as he felt on the first occasion when he stood in the presence of Oxford examiners, while his companions, cool, fresh, as the roses 158 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. that grow about their heads, are settling them- selves to work. If all the pretty things men of genius have written about women and needles could be collected on a page together, the picture of Mrs. and Miss Dormer at this moment would offer a fair apology for their extravagance. The elder lady's work is a stocking of softest pearl -gray silk, precisely at the stage of development — does it ever, I wonder, get beyond that stage ? — when you may say, " there is a stocking," yet when no vulgar anatomical suggestions distress the eye. Joyce, with a very bright needle, and a very long thread, stitches dreamily at a scroll of mediseval tapestry, worked and sold at South Kensington, with a minimum portion of grounding to be finished by the buyer — an enigmatic, low-toned mediaeval scroll, in perfect artistic keeping with the sober-tinted dress on which it rests, and the fair and serious face that bends above it. CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 159 '"My hair is grey, but not with years.'" So Longmore begins, witli well-trained cadence, his voice sufficiently moved by boyish diffidence to give the reading enhanced interest. And the swallows circle low above the sultry lake, the boatmen's lateen sails droop motion- less. Mr. John Farintyre, pipe in mouth, paces up and down a neighbouring path (the fall of his footstep furnishing no inappropriate refrain to the story of the poem), gloomily speculating as he walks. Joyce Dormer has aroused his vanity rather than conquered his senses. The Kubens col- ouring, the ample outlines of a Rosie Lascelles, nay, even the coarser charms of an Aurora Skelton, are, in very truth, on a nearer level with his tastes than the blonde ethereal graces of the girl whose pleasure it has been, during the past three months, to enthral and torture him alternately. This side the altar, chances of failure still 160 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. giving ardour to pursuit, such capricious, bitter-sweet relationship as exists between them, may be tolerable. But afterwards? What kind of future lies stored up for him ? What are his own personal chances of happi- ness ? What comjDanionship can he hope for in a wife whose heart died with the loss of her first lover — candidly did she confess that truth to him in the earliest hour, when he hinted to .her of his own passion — a wife whose tastes are divided between music, which he honestly dislikes, and books, of which he never willingly reads a line ? " One event, at least, is certain," decides Mr. Farintyre, barbarously cutting off a car- nation head with the point of his cane, " departure from Clarens. The successes of this young puppy, Longmore of Corpus, draw to a close. Let him talk of Albert and Char- lotte, read his Byron, go in for attitude, while he may." The lad is lying outstretched, in CHAELOTTE AND WERTHEE. 161 quiet, unconscious picturesqueness, upon the terrace at the ladies' feet. "It is his final score. Longmore of Corpus and Miss Dormer will have no more starlit walks, will spend no more long intellectual hours in each other's society, while they live." In which prediction John Farintyre, as events turn out, proves singularly wrong. Throughout the afternoon the air continues warm to oppressiveness. The sun sets above Ouchy in a bank of copper- coloured cloud. The wind sinks lower and lower. Monsieur Seherer, shaking his head as he taps the fast- falling barometer at the hall door, warns such of his guests as it may concern, of certainly- approaching storm from the Jura mountains. All the time, however, the lake lies tranquil ; the sky, save on that western horizon, looks blue and settled. And so, when the Lausanne steamer is duly telegraphed at the appointed VOL. I. M 162 A BALLROOM EEPENTANCE. hour, it comes to pass tliat Monsieur Scherer is pronounced a false prophet, and tliat the moon- worshippers, with Mrs. Skelton and her daugh- ters as commanders-in-chief, get under way. ^ quarter of an hour later Joyce Dormer and her mother are waiting on the little Clarens jetty while Longmore brings round his boat. The banks of western cloud have become more and more cojDper-coloured. The lake glows like one vast mirror of burnished steel. The stillness is a thing to be felt. "We ought to have listened to our landlord," remarks Mrs, Dormer, whose face has lost its smiles. " It might be amusing to tease poor John Farintyre by the threat of starting, but there is such a thing as carrying a practical joke too far. Our wisest course now is to turn back while we can. Madness to think of going on the water at such an hour, and with such a sky over our heads ! " adds Mrs. Dormer with a shudder. She possesses, I should say, as much stout CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 163 courage as any woman of her weight in Europe. Ask lawyers, with whom at odd times she has had to deal, ask creditors, ask society at large and her husband's family in committee, if little Mrs. Dormer cannot display nerve on occasion ! The wilder moods of nature interest her moderately. Storms, theories of storms, may have, like glaciers, to he studied for conversa- tional purposes. But are not all such subjects better ''got up'' out of a science text-book than from experience 1 Mrs. Dormer, in short, has not one poetic fibre belonging to her. In fairness, it may be added that, even on a lake, Mrs. Dormer is liable to sea- sickness. " If this is madness, who would choose to be sane?" exclaims Joyce. " The sky is simply glorious, mother, all the more so for its uncertain promise. Look at those black and amber streaks along Jura ! Look at the moon above those masses of dappled marble cloud. 164 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. at that solitary star shining over the Dent de Jaman I It is just the moment the German storm-song tells of — the moment when the Sturmgeist holds his breath before bursting his chains asunder." Even as Joyce speaks, a moan sweeps across the surface of the lake. The willows along a neighbouring embankment give a menacino: shiver. There is a second's breath- less silence ; and then — a long low rattle of thunder reverberates from peak to peak, among the far-off mountains. *' Mr. Longmore, I make my appeal to you ! " cries Mrs. Dormer, as Hugh Longmore pulls in sight, round the head, of the little landing-place. " In boating questions one really looks upon an Oxford or Cambridge man as infallible. Do you consider it perfectly safe for us to venture forth ? " '' Perfectly safe ! " interposes Joyce. "My dear mother, for what human undertaking that CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 165 is pleasant can perfect safety be guaranteed ? We shall be in no greater danger than all the honest souls who have gone to Chillon before us in the steamer." " It will be a long time yet before the storm bursts, if indeed it reaches this part of the lake at all," says Longmore evasively. He has been holding a not too auspicious weather talk with the Clarens boatmen, has received more warnings as to Aveather signals, streams and currents, than his knowledsre of patois Swiss French enables him jDractically to grasp. " In any case we may pull far enough out to see Chillon." The postscript is added in obedience to some mute command on Joyce's face. "Even if the badness of the weather sends us back at once." " And if the lake is safe for a steamer, with thirty chartered sentimentalists on board, it ought to be safe for a rowing-boat with three," 166 A BALLROO:\I REPENTANCE. persists tlie girl, with admirable feminine casuistry. " Our portmanteaus are packed. Stradiuarius is labelled ' Como.' If a catas- trophe happens, we shall have the satisfaction of leaving our possessions in good order." She steps lightly into the boat, then stretches back a hand to her mother's aid. " I am suffering from vertigo ; I cannot measure distance," hesitates Mrs. Dormer, looking more and more uncomfortable. "Morally, I am not a coward, as you know, Joyce, but to-night some bodily weakness must have overtaken me. I doubt if I could keep myself upright in the boat." " Then remain contentedly on dry land, mother. Mr. Longmore and I will row out far enough to see — or to be able to say we have seen — Chillon by moonlight, alone." And fate, not unkindly, often, in smoothing difficulties for the imprudent, gives an impetus in the direction where impetus is least required. CHARLOTTE AND WERTHER. 167 The boat's head touches the jetty, Joyce's hand is still outheld, when Madame Scherer, mere, and a brace of grandchildren, issue from a house not twenty paces distant. What can be simpler than for Mrs. Dormer to return to the hotel under their escort, leaving Joyce and Longmore, when they have had their glimpse of moonlit Chillon, to follow ? " If you would give a serious promise to take care of yourselves." Promptly recover- ing from her vertigo, Mrs. Dormer skips, land- ward, joyfully. " I really think I shall put myself under Grandmamma Scherer's wing. The babies walk slow — I daresay you will reach home before me. And Mr. Longmore, if he likes, can have some farewell music, while we pity the infatuated j^eople exposed to the weather at Chillon. If you would give me a serious promise ? " " We give you a faithful promise," cries Joyce, as Longmore, nothing loth, pushes the 168 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. boat off from the jetty. " There shall be no thunderstorm on Lake Geneva to-night — if we can help it." " And we will retm-n ivhen we have seen Chillon," says Hugh Longmore. " You know, of course, Miss Dormer," he adds, when two or three strokes have put a deep iron-blue gulf between themselves and the shore, "that it will take an hour's steady pulling before we come in sight of the castle 1 I feel it a matter of conscience to tell you." " Conscience ! I know that we inhabit the best of all possible worlds," answers Joyce Dormer, in her gayest voice. " I know that the lake is like crystal — pray admire these jeweller's shop similes — the sky like marble and sapphire. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can, Mr. Longmore. Conscience and thunderstorms will come upon us quickly enough, without our going one yard out of the way to meet them ! " LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 169 CHAPTER VIIL LORD BYRON's isle. For a time Miss Dormer's spirits continue higher than their wont. She jests, sings, draws her hand, with the physical momentary enjoyment of a child, through the ice-cold lake water ; by-and-by she suggests so gravely that Louomore for a moment is deceived bv her voice, that they shall land and look after the thirty steamboat sentimentalists when they reach Chillon. " There can be no doubt poor Farintyre needs looking after," the lad answers, in the same tone. " I saw Miss Aurora Skelton pin- ning a flower in his buttonhole as they left the hotel. I saw, also, that the pau' lingered long 170 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. in the rear of tlie rest. Farintyre is innocent of the world's ways. He will be getting into an entano-lement before he knows what he is about." " I do wish he would !" cries Joyce, clap- ping her wet hands gleefully. "It would be a situation, and that is just what we all need. This wandering hotel life is a flat affair, abso- lutely deficient in dramatic points. But I am afraid one cannot hope for anything so charm- ing as that sensible John Farintyre should compromise himself. In the first place — time is too short ; Mr. Farintyre leaves Clarens to- morrow. In the second — a man must have imagination to get into that kind of trouble. Now if it were . . . don't be offended with me, Mr. Longmore ... if it were you !" " You think I am more wantinor in common sense than Farintyre ? " As Longmore asks this question, he rests idly on his sculls, looking, with a pleasure he LORD BYEON'S ISLE. 171 does not seek to hide, at the girl's fair and sparkling face. " I am afraid common sense is one of the subjects I am not at home in. The first even- ing I saw you on the terrace — how many days ago is that ? What, can it be only five days since you taught me where to look for Arcturus on the mountains, yonder ! That first evening I certainly thought you in danger. I credited you with an unsafe amount of imagination." " That first evening — when I listened, not knowing your name, as you played Corelli's • Nativity.' Afterwards, you gave me a lecture on old violins, do you recollect. Miss Dormer ? We were interrupted just as you were beginning to tell me the history of your Stradiuarius." Miss Dormer's jeweller's-shop simile holds good still. The lake is like crystal, the sky like marble and sapphire. But it would seem that to Miss Dormer, herself, this best of all possible worlds has of a sudden grown gray 172 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. and over-clouded. Youtli, brightness, bloom, have died out from her face. Her lips have fallen into their most unsmiling expression. No sound is there for a minute's space, but the drip of Longmore's suspended sculls, and a vague inarticulate murmuring from the hither shore. Lake Leman — the frail boat ever drift- ing farther away among its currents — lies darkly, unnaturally motionless. " Stradiuarius came into my possession more than two years ago," with a visible effort Joyce Dormer at last begins. " It was a birthday present, given to me on the day I was eighteen. I have already told you, Mr. Longmore, that at that time we had a friend . . . who would have done his best, I think, to obtain the planet Mars, had I cried for it, such a friend as people do not meet with twice in their life, let them be ever so lucky. AVell, two or three weeks before my birthday, I was asked to choose a gift — one that should be costly, hard to come LORD BYEON'S ISLE. 173 by, and that I would prize irrespective of the giver, for its own sake. Diamonds and pearls and filigrees I would have none of. The worst people," observes the girl emphatically, "have some one virtue in their composition. I am not mercenary, in little things." " In little things !" repeats Longmore, wdth a certain jar of feeling that he might find it hard to account for. " In those days, at least, I was not mercen- ary. But I have lived a great deal since. I have had more than my share of experience. You must not run away with the idea that I am a simple kind of girl. I am a woman with a past. Well, I looked round the London shop -windows. I exercised my imagination ; I appealed even to my mother. In vain : I was so rich in myself ! The world, it seemed, held nothing that could add to my happiness." Joyce Dormer's eyes are suffused, her face kindles with a passion of which, until to- 174 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. night, young Longmore had not believed it capable. This story of Stradiuarius, told, with no au- dience save himself, and with the poetry of lake and mountain and coming storm as adjuncts, begins to affect him — vicariouslv, of course. " At last I fell back on the dream of my whole life — a Cremona. After a fashion, I had played the violin from the time I was six years old. Here was something costly, with a vengeance, something hard to come by, and that I should dearly prize for its own sake. I made my choice, and on the morning of my eighteenth birthday the Stradiuarius you know, bought in Vienna at I dare not say what price, was put into my hands." " Your friend must have been a rich man," says Longmore, narrowly w^atching Miss Dormer's pure and limpid face. " One hears of these Cremona violins selling for five or six hundred guineas." LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 175 " If Stracliuarius were worth a thousand guineas or a few shillings, it would be the same to me," cries Joyce. " I shall never part from my violin w^hile I live . . . perhaps because I am parted for ever from the donor. Guineas ! Why, one would no more reckon up the price of one's soul than think of the market value of Stradiuarius. ' Stained through and through,' as the Autocrat says, ' with the concen- trated tones and sweetness of all the har- monies which have kindled and faded on its strings.' " Her speech is modulated by rich and sorrow- ful feeling. Bending her head low, she gazes intently down into the transparent water. "A woman with a past." The moods, then, the gravity, the weariness of this girl of twenty are rooted in experience, of which she has had more than her share ! . . . And the boat drifts on — on, into deadliest peril, for Longmore, absorbed wholly in his companion and in the 176 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. half - confidence she has made to him, rests inactive, still, upon his sculls. Miss Dormer's voice recalls him with a start from speculation to reality. " If nineteenth-century miracles were pos- sible, I should say that a miracle was taking place now. You have not been rowing for the last ten minutes, Mr. Longmore, have you ? Well, look behind : see the distance we have drifted. What is it that bears us away from the shore with such weird swiftness ?" It is the strong back current of the lake towards the Rhone valley — the current that has hurried so many victims to a blue and fathomless sleeping - place. In an instant young Longmore's hands grip tighter hold of the sculls ; with very might he makes a few fruitless efi'orts at backing water, and then — the boatmen's warnings and the gravity of the situation burst upon him. If the weather remain calm, as it has been LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 177 for days past, he knows the extent of the peril. Let the boat only float with the current as far as Villeneuve, and the worst will be over. A couple of hours' steady sculling close to shore will bring them back to Clarens. But the sky during the past quarter of an hour has turned black ; the moon shines cold and wan from behind the mass of cloud that threatens in- stantly to overwhelm her ; a tremulous, uneasy motion of the boat tells that storm is already agitating the western portion of the lake. " Well," asks Joyce Dormer with tolerable self-command, " what is the meaning of it all ? Do not be afraid to speak out. Why do we go at this extraordinary rate with no outu'ard or visible means of locomotion ? Why " A blaze of lio-htninsr irradiates mountain, ^'illages, and lake with fierce efiulgence. The question dies on Joyce's lips. Ere she can recover her breath comes such thunder as onl}' the meeting of mountain clouds engender, and VOL. I. N 178 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. mountain crags echo back. There is a lull, resembling in its sickening intensity some moment of keenest moral suspense . . . two or three seconds later the rain and wind in hurricanes are upon them ! A rough tarpaulin has been left under a seat by one of the boat- men. This, with exceeding difficulty, Long- more draws around his companion's shoulders. And then, facing each other still — for Joyce holds mechanically to the rudder, he to his sculls — they crouch and await their fate. The storm has burst so suddenly that neither of them, perhaps, at first can grasp the full awfulness of their position. Five minutes ago and they were gliding over a sea of glass, talking in soft whispers, transported into youth's fairyland of romance, sweet in its very bitterness. And now . . . No, the prospect of danger and death must be dwelt upon longer than this ere it can be realised ! " Poor little mother!" so Joyce exclaims at LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 179 last, with all the energy she can command. " Mr. Longmore, should you think the storm is as wild at Hotel Scherer as here ?" But Longmore answers not, hears her not. The voice of a cannon were, indeed, scarce dis- tinguishable amidst the tumult of sound, the Babel of every angry element at once, that rages around them. Their boat, a broad-built little lake craft, holds her own stoutly, but each surmounted wave, Hugh Longmore too truly knows, may be the last. Accident, a succes- sion of accidents, have alone kept them, up to this, from shipwreck. And the storm has not reached its height, the lake has not risen to its full fury. Estimating roughly the length of time that has passed since they left Clarens, he judges that they must be about midway between the shores, cut off from all possibility of help. A lifeboat exists at Vevey, manned by a stalwart crew and a brave one. But Vevey is miles away. Mortal heart knows not of their danger, 180 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. and unless rescue come in the next quarter of an hour, they perish ! With the condensed retros^iective memory of a man dying by violent death, young Long- more goes back over his twenty- two years of life. A thousand little incidents make his Winchester schooldays, his Oxford terms, ap- pear before him in a flash. He looks forward to that final examination in jurisprudence (honours) which he will certainly not pass. He knows a brief, exceeding bitter pang, re- membering the country parsonage that a short paragraph in the Times may render desolate. And then — he thinks only of his companion, the girl whom, after a week's acquaintance, he has come so near to lovino-, and to whom death, not life, shall unite him ! He bends forward, and during a moment's break in the tempest, speaks so that Miss Dormer can hear. Is she very cold ? very wet ? Is there anything he can do for her ? LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 181 In real life, even at its supremest moments, men's speech is so much tamer than their feel- ings, so seldom rises from the monosyllables of Saxon commonplace to the dignified periods of the drama ! "Do for me?" echoes Joyce, and, keenly listening for her reply, Longmore detects a sound like laughter beneath the tarpaulin. " Well, yes. Keep me from drowning, if you can." Then almost in the same breath, " Look ! there is the shore ; there are trees just ahead of us," she cries, in a voice wild and broken with excitement. "There! — in that last fiash of lightning I saw the outlines plainly. Great heaven ! We are close upon it. We are lost!" The boat, as she speaks, eddies round as a leaf might eddy in a whirlwind, under the influence of some new opposing force, then, with one wild shock, is flung broadside on upon tenxi Jirma. For a few seconds Joyce 182 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Dormer loses consciousness — such, at least, in attempting to picture tlie scene afterwards, is the outcome of her confused recollection. With the dawn of returning sensation, she realises that she is on dry land : stunned, giddy, surrounded still by the spray of surg- ing waves, but with a pair of strong arms holding her tight, with solid ground, not a frail and swaying plank beneath her feet. " Where am I ?" she utters faintly. "Are we on shore ? Have we got safely back to Clarens V " We are on shore," Longmore answers ; " but, I am afraid, far enough away from Clarens ! The boat ran ao-round for a few seconds," he adds, still holding her closely to his side, " and by some desperate turn of luck we struffscled, both of us, throuo;h the surf." "And we shall return to my mother the moment the storm lessens ? Listen 1 The thunder is growing more distant, is it not ? LOED BYRON'S ISLE. 183 In another few minutes we will start — on foot, of course. We will not trust ourselves to the tender mercies of the lake again to-nio;ht." No reply is needed from Longmore. At this instant a flash of lightning, longer, more lurid than any of the preceding ones, gives the vividly significant answer of facts to Joyce's question. The scene of their shipwreck is the little isle of Byron's prisoner, a small patch of lake- girt land immediately oj^posite the embouchure of the Khone ; the little isle whose " three tall trees " are groaning, as if in agony, under the storm, and across whose narrow confines the surf and spray are dashing with dangerous strength. Blacker than ever has grown the moonless sky, fiercer the wind. No friendly light from village or beacon-tower is to be descried along the dimly visible shore. "I call this charming!" exclaims Joyce, 184 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. when two or three breathless minutes have gone by. " All my life I have been longing for one good, solid, genuine adventure. I have got my desire at last. So this is shipwreck ! " Her teeth chatter with cold as she speaks. " Have not one's clothes a queer, heavy, Ancient Mariner sensation about them ? We must be nearly wet through." Nearly ! They are as honestly drenched as though they had been to the bottom of the lake. In the struggle of making good their landing, the supreme struggle in which Long- more had to fight for two lives at once, the boatman's tarpaulin was carried, with the boat, away. Not an inch, not the possibility of an inch of shelter, is between them and the skies. " If one had to brave it for half an hour, it would be nothing," says the lad miserably. " But we may have to pass hours here before we can be picked up. Miss Dormer, what LORD BYRON'H ISLE. 186 have I led you into ? How will you ever be able to pull through such a night as this ?" "Don't make the worst of thin2;s, Mr. Longmore," is Joyce's prompt answer. " One feels chiller than is comfortable, j)eThaps, and heavy. I can hardly bear my own weight. Otherwise there is not much to complain of. The lifeboat people at Vevey will hear from Monsieur Scherer that we are abroad. There is no fear as to our being found eventually." " If I could only shield you from the rain, meanwhile !" He stands between her and the storm ; he takes off his jacket, fortunately of thick pilot cloth, and buttons it round her shoulders ; then strives to bring life into her death-cold hands by chafing them between his own. And the fury of the night w\ixes fiercer, the lightning becomes incessant. A stifling sulphurous smell is in the air. Of himself, stout English lad that he is, 186 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. young Longmore thinks nothing ; but Joyce — will the delicately nurtured, fragile girl ever live throuQ-h the hours between this and dawn ? He stoops, afraid lest she be losing conscious- ness, and whispers — the first futile question that conies to his lips : AYliat is she thinking of? " I was thinking," says Joyce in her quiet, cadenced voice, "how opportune it was of Lord Byron to invent this island. But for the poet, Mr. Longmore, where would you and I be now i " And you are not extremely wretched, not in actual suffering 1 " persists Longmore. *' I feel so horribly guilty of all this ! If you would only say " — in spite of himself, a foolish, half-tender shyness infuses itself into his tone, " that you forgive me ! " "I have to thank you for the two best things I have got out of Switzerland," says Joyce. " First . . , incline your ear a little LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 187 closer . . . first, for our moonlight dingle, where the wild thyme grew, and now for our magnificent shipwreck. This is the very stufi" inspiration is made of ! " A crash of louder thunder rives the air as she speaks, followed after a second's pause by lightning, forked and sheet, intermingled in one wild blaze. " This makes one appreciate Wagner's Donner und Blitzen music, does it not — makes one think of Weber's great overture more resj)ect- fully ! Listen to the moaning of the lake ! Hear how the 'three trees' wail, as though they were sorry for our plight. Oh, this is grand ! One knows now how Beethoven came to write the Prisoners' Chorus in ' Fidelio.' " And in the intense electric whiteness of the moment Longmore sees her face distinctly. The sensitive, mobile features are aglow with feeling ; warmth has returned to her cheeks ; a fire of sweet, perfectly natural enthusiasm is in her blue eyes. At this moment Joyce 188 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Dormer is an artist, filled with an artist's self- forgetfulness. She remembers neither her present companion, nor her absent suitor, no, nor the ever-present sense of lost happiness which, walking with her, hand-in-hand, is the shadow of her young life 1 Beethoven's giant outcry, that chorus in " Fidelio," into which the sufferings of our w^hole race seem crushed — she can hear the like of this in winds and waves and thunder ; can feel, girl though she be, that an hour may come when she, in her weakness, shall, like the master in his strength, give adequate utterance to the pent-up emotion of years, and that the world shall say : This is Art! But Hugh Longmore misjudges her. Hugh Longmore, it may be urged in his justification, is twenty- two years of age, un- versed in the world's ways, ignorant of the sharp, thin line that divides friendship from sentiment, and both from love. He sees the LORD BYRON'S ISLE. 189 warming cheek, the pafted lips, the blue eyes sweetly fired ! A wild, a desperate hope seizes his heart, and he whispers words that to this hour burn him with humiliation, even in the retrospect. " I cannot hear a syllable," cries Joyce. Did ever man receive so sincere, so un- conscious a rebuff! "Please let me answer when I have got my wits more about me." Of a truth, she is in a land far distant from this outward and visible one, is listening to messages too subtle even for lovers' languasfe — messages that in her excited brain are form- ing themselves into wild, unearthly music. " Don't think me uncivil, Mr. Lonofmore . . . for the first time in my life, I feel original . . . I have got hold of a motif ! Oh, if we had only put a pencil and a sheet of scored paper in our pockets ! " 190 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTER IX. JOHN FARINTYRE RISES TO DIGNITY. When youth lingers, abnormally long, on the face of man or woman, you may theorise, pretty surely, as to the relative amount of feeling that accompanies it. Are not love and love's anxieties the tools that carve out hollows around too fond eyes, and delve unseemly parallels on cheeks and foreheads ? Little Mrs. Dormer at nine-and-thirty looks a girl. AVithout malice, it may be said that little Mrs. Dormer never makes more of trouble than is picturesquely needful, never, under any conditions, goes forth to meet the thing that is unpleasant on the road. During her daughter's childish ailments — JOHN FARINTYRE RISES TO DIGNITY. 191 and twice or thrice Joyce's small feet came near to entering the dark portals — Mrs. Dormer was ever ready, with or without a change of symptom, to accept such optimist hopes as doctors and nurses held forth to her. During the bitter love -sorrow of the girl's maturer years, Mrs. Dormer felt it a moral obliga- tion to go to dinners and dances and operas (" Keep our places, in this all-forgetting London, open," she used to say, with a moistened eyelash), imtil such time as Joyce's stricken heart should wdn its way back to health. She does not forsake her standard of duty to-night. Regretable, doubtless, for conven- tion's sake, that one of these mountain storms should burst at the time when Joyce, unchaj)- eroned, had rowed a few hundred yards forth on the lake to see Chillon. But there is no cause wdiatever for grave anxiety — so Monsieur Scherer, smooth smiles around his Swiss lips, 192 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. and dire forebodings in his Swiss soul, assures her. The dread is, that Joyce may be delayed longer than John Farintyre, with whom it were unwise just now to risk serious misunderstand- ing. Social rujDture, however, trivial or serious, was never mended by brooding over it before- hand. If reconciliation be needed when these hot-headed young people return, Mrs. Dormer, you may be sure, will come to the fore, with all the tact that knowledge of their weakness and of her own strength can engender. And in the meantime . . . In the meantime, she draws the curtains of her salon, lights her reading lamp, arranges lamp and books cosily on a low table beside the sofa, and settles down to the latest positivist philosophy as set forth in the current number of the Bi-monthly ! So things go on, rose-coloured theories still tenable, for half an hour or more. Then the storm, that hitherto has swept obliquely over JOHN FARINTYRE RISES TO DIGNITY. 193 Clarens, circles back round the eastern head of the lake, after the manner of Lake Leman storms, with the strength of a cyclone. The lightnings blaze, until reading - lamps seem useless and positive philosophy dark ; thunder rolls ; winds roar ; slates Hy. There comes a crash, a fall, and then a hurried cry that one of the hotel outbuildings has fallen. Finally, at the very zenith of confusion — waiters rush- ing this way and that, servant-women wringing their hands, small children and Swiss grand- mammas screaming on upstair floors — in walk the storm-beaten sentimentalists, John Farin- tyre at their head, from C-hillon. But no Hugh Longmore — waiting, by this time with a quick- ened pulse, on the stairs, Mrs. Dormer is forced to swallow the unwelcome truth — no Hush Longmore ; no Joyce. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas is in loud hysterics (a waxen-faced, Shelley-like partner, lost some- where on the road). Her do the hall-porter's VOL. I. 194 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. strong arms bear, nolens volens, off tlie scene. The Skelton family is in worse plight still. The Skelton family, to use a phrase com- mon in haberdashery, " does not wash." The Veteran's pencilled eyebrows have dissolved, gone from her lips is the summer bloom, the warranted smile gleams corpse-like. And her daughters ? Ah ! if the great Thoreau could see them ! Her daughters' complexions are in a putty, their spirits at zero, their voices hollow. Has not Joyce Dormer's suitor been grim, absent, unsmiling, the one moral element needed to crown the general fiasco ! Limp, draggled, discomfited, these ladies take refuge, with what speed they may, in the sanctuary of their own apartments, and upon Mr. John Farintyre devolves the telling of the tale. Scarcely had the excursion steamer started, before the captain, tardily weatherwise, de- clared his intention of getting on to Villeneuve for the night. The party from Hotel Scherer JOHN FARINTYRE RISES TO DIGNITY. 195 were put ashore at Cliillon with injunctions to return, as the nature of their tickets permitted them to do, by raiL But the last train to Lausanne had already passed ere they reached the station. Not a vehicle, in face of the coming storm, was to be hired. And the sentimentalists, unless they would spend the night at Chillon, had no choice but to make their way back through rain and tempest on foot, arriving in such sorry condition as we have seen. "In short, you who stayed behind have had the best of it," concludes Farintyre, turn- ing morosely on Mrs. Dormer, who has met him at the entrance of the hall. " I can fancy how you and Miss Dormer, and that young Long- more, have been making merry at our expense." "I — I am looking for Joyce's return at every minute." Mrs. Dormer falters this, turn- ing very white. " I had hoped to see Joyce come back wdth the rest, but " 196 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Further explanation is cut short by Mon- sieur Scherer, who comes up suavely, rubbing his hands, the professional Swiss smile round his mouth, and wdth a new source of hopeful consolation to offer to Mrs. Dormer. Monsieur Scherer has this moment received a telegram from Vevey. Sympathising in the parental anxiety of Madame, he despatched a messenger thither more than an hour since, and learns that the lifeboat put forth at the first threatenings of storm. On such a night as this the lifeboat's crew will row straight away towards the embouchure of the Rhone, picking up, we may feel certain, whatever un- wary strangers shall unfortunately be still upon the lake. Madame need be under no fear, with the Vevey lifeboat afloat (but Monsieur Scherer has children of his own : his thin lips falter as he speaks). With the lifeboat afloat there is not the smallest little doubt in the world about the safety of cette chere Mademoiselle JOHN FARINTYRE RISES TO DIGNITY. 197 and of the young English gentleman who accompanied her. "A lifeboat certainly does give one a sense of security," observes Mrs, Dormer, raising her soft eyes, floating in tears, to John Farintyre. "Lifeboats are manned bv such maernificent fellows always, are they not ? And — and " She breaks off short, scared by a certain fixed look upon her prospective son-in-law's face. " Mr. Hugh Longmore, I assume, is the young English gentleman?" For once in his life, John Farintyre almost rises to dignity. " Cette chere Mademoiselle is not spending the night abroad without a comj)anion ?" And Mrs. Dormer knows that her position is a critical one. She is not cruelly perturbed about Joyce's exposure to the storm, as a weaker or a stronger woman might well be. Why torture oneself with vain nervousness, when a landlord who understands the country, the climate, and the 198 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Vevey lifeboat, gives a positive assurance that everything will come right in the end ? But she is shaken to the inmost fibre of her being by this fixed expression, this index of resolution already formed, that she can decipher on Farintyre's face. " I ... am not strong enough for such anxiety. Joyce — my child — come back to me . . ." Thus cries Mrs. Dormer, moved by an in- spiration of that genius which is the most graceful substitute society ofi'ers for real feel- ing. Then, stretching forth a pair of white, appealing hands, she faints away with the loveliest decorum — with Monsieur, Madame, and Grand' Mere Scherer looking on, respect- fully sympathetic — into John Farintyre's arms. ETHER. 199 CHAPTER X. ETHER. And so, when Joyce and Longmore do at length return, when — drenched hero and heroine of the hour — they have gone through an ovation from hosts, hall-porters, servants, guests, and find themselves outside the door of Mrs. Dormer's salon, it comes to pass that the fumes of ether greet them. And Joyce's heart turns cold ! At many an important turning-point in her young life's journey, ether has been made to play a leading and successful part. Once, notably, on a breezy day, when her father — lawyers present — decided in black and white what settlement he should annually make upon 200 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. the wife from whom the exigencies of bronchitis and bric-a-brac divided him ; once again, years later, when the cruel letter was composed and despatched that broke for ever with Roger Tryan. With forebodings, all the keener, probably, by reason of her overwrought bodily state, the girl's heart informs her that ether will be successful now. "It is best for us to say good-night, Mr. Longmore." Pausing at the half-opened door, she gives the young Oxonian her frozen hand. " But for you I should be at the bottom of the lake. Well, if by to-morrow morning I find the taste of living sweet again, I shall be able to thank you more heartily. Now, I must think only of my mother." She walks into the salon, feverish, poor child, from exhaustion, her clothes dripping, her hair disordered, her blue eyes wild and pale, to find — this picture : A reading-lamp, becomingly softened by a ETHER. 201 porcelaiu shade ; the current number of the Bi-monthly, turned face-downwards on a table ; a white shawl ; cushions ; a pretty dimpled hand holding a morsel of cambric to a morsel of a nose and — ether ! To these details, Mr. John Farintyre, pacing up and down the room with much the gait and amiability of a caged bear, forms an effective background. A feeble : " Well, Joyce !" in the tone the girl knows too well, proceeds from Mrs. Dormer; and in a moment Joyce, on her knees, is at her mother's side. " Mamma, poor dear mamma." She covers Mrs. Dormer's warm little hand with repentant kisses. " I am more sorry than I can say to have caused you such anxiety. Oh, mother, you must indeed have gone through a terrible time." Mrs. Dormer, it would seem, does not notice her daughter's j)allor, the weariness of her eyes, the cold and stiffened condition of 202 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. her drenched garments. Mrs. Dormer lays a hand on the approximate region of her own heart. In an almost inaudible voice she murmurs a word or two about "palpitations." She gives a glance at the dark, bear-like figure of John Farintyre. " Another escapade like this will be the death of me. You know, Joyce, every one knows, how feeble the action of my heart is ; how all the doctors have bidden me avoid strong emotion as I would avoid poison." Never surely was patient more obedient to physician's orders ! " Escapade ... is this my welcome ? " cries Joyce, and shrinking away, she rises instantly to her feet. Alas ! the moment's keen disappointment is no new experience for her. Since she was four years old, it has been a familiar one whenever she has most lavished generous love, or generous confidence, on Mrs. Dormer. " I started with Mr. Longmore, as ETHER. 203 you know, mamma, almost by your own pro- posal, to get a moonlight view of Chillon. The storm came on too suddenly for us to return to shore, and but for Mr. Longmore's skill and courage, we must have been lost. An escapade ! You do not think I have stayed out on such a night, in such a condition as this," extending an arm from which the water literally streams, "for pleasure?" " And where, may I ask, Miss Dormer, were you and the courageous Longmore lucky enough to find shelter?" exclaims Farintyre, brusquely pausing in his walk, " No business of mine to inquire, you will say, perhaps. I think it is my business, for another half- hour at all events, to inquire into everything that concerns Miss Joyce Dormer's good name." For a second or two Joyce looks at him as though the meaning of his speech failed to reach her. Then she turns indignantly away. 204 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Crimson flows the blood over her wan-sunken cheeks. "Mother, am I forced to listen to such a reproach as this ? I went out on the lake by your approval, and in excellent charge. Our boat drifted into one of the back currents of the Ehone before we knew our danger, and then the storm burst, suddenly, and but for a miracle, we must have been lost " "A miracle, or Mr. Hugh Longmore?" Farintyre interposes the question, not too graciously. " You know Lord Byron's Island, opposite Villeneuve, mamma ? On that tiny speck of ground, thanks to Mr. Longmore's gallant courage, we made good our landing. There we remained, our boat gone, without shelter, numbed, drenched, until those fine lifeboat men — yes," with a look of fierce disgust at John Farintyre, with an involuntary clenching of her cold hand, " 7nen as gentle as they were ETHER. 205 brave, saved us . . . straight, it seems to me now, out of the jaws of death. And then, coming home to you, mother, rescued, one hears such paltry talk as this of ' good name ! ' Oh, if you loved me, sir," and she turns again towards Farintyre, a glow of eloquent anger on her young face, " if you loved me — and I know what I say, I know what love is — you would be so glad to see me safe ; there would be no room in your mind for paltrier feeling." A lover standing on Joyce Dormer's level, mentally, would, I think, make answer by taking her, faults and all, to his heart. For he would understand her. John Farintyre — no exceptionally black Othello, but common- place, through and through — John Farintyre feels himself at once injured and unmoved. " Tall talk is above my head. Never was good at acting — private theatricals and char- ades, and — and that sort of thing. And you are. Oh, -it's no good smoothing matters over, 206 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Mrs. Dormer." For here poor Mrs. Dormer struggles to edge in a conciliatory word. " I can't hold a candle to Miss Dormer in the way of cleverness, leave that to more fortunate men than myself ! But I have my notions of what is, and what is not the correct thing for a girl to do. And I believe I have the honour of looking forward, some day, to becoming Miss Dormer's husband. And, by George ! " he goes on, gradually lashing himself to fury with his own powers of invective, " I'll stand no more of this sort of work, engaged or married. You can break the whole thing off, or not, just as you choose. But if you keep to me at all, you shall obey me. You hear, obey!" And with a couple of strides, Mr. Farintyre has crossed the room ; the murderous, crushing grasp of "his heavy fingers encircles Joyce's wrist. And now, if never in her life before, does ETHER. 207 Mrs. Dormer practically show how great a role ether can be made to fill in the drama of human lives. Contempt, disgust, righteous^ indignation, are struggling for mastery on Joyce's face ; mistrust, that it needs but a breath to kindle into open revolt, is on the face of John Farin- tyre. Another half minute and words beyond all recall would probably part these two ill- suited people for ever, did not little Mrs. Dormer rise mistress of the situation. " My heart ! " she moans, stretching out her hand to the ether bottle, which in her agitation, or her agony, she oversets. "I — I feel this painful excitement is too much for me. Mr. Farintyre — pardon ..." And then, for the second time on this miserably fateful evening, she loses conscious- ness. One does not care to dwell over-much on the scene that follows. It is long ere Mrs. 208 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. Dormer recovers from her state of fainting — I feel in doubt as to the fittest spelling of this word ! When, at length, she speaks again, Joyce, partly influenced by the fumes of ether, partly by sheer bodily weariness, has reached a helpless shivering condition in which she would probably answer " yes," were the sug- gestion made of leading her to instant execu- tion. " The mischief arose from want of thought. My darling girl has caused me this wretched- ness unintentionally," murmurs Mrs. Dormer, taking up the thread of her ideas with singular clearness for one newly returned out of the dark know-nothing world of syncope. " And you, dear Mr. Farintyre, will forgive, will you not, as all of us must hope to be for- given i " If Joyce chooses to shake hands over it all, things may go on smoother for the future than they have ever done." Farintyre's tone ETHER. 209 is that of a man who recognises the generosity of his own conduct. " I don't think I stipu- late for anything extraordinary," he adds, with a tentative side glance at Joyce's face. " Let the engagement be called an engagement. Let a fellow know what ground he stands upon . . . feel a little sure " " You hear, Joyce," interrupts the fainting woman, raising herself briskly, and fixing a pair of expressive eyes on her daughter's face. " Mr. Farintyre asks only for the security to which he is entitled. Make me happy, child, after all I have been called upon to suffer this night. Give him your hand." Joyce Dormer stands mute, irresolute, sick at heart. " If the thing is to be, I suppose one may as well cry Kismet !" So, at last, she answers, with a kind of forced spirits, with pale and quivering lips. " But I cannot admit, mamma, of that word security. There shall be a loop- VOL. I. p 210 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. hole left. The engagement, as Mr. Farintyre wishes it, can be called an engagement — that is all. If either of us see fit to change between this and Easter it shall not be counted as false- hood. We are free, still." John Farintyre, it would seem, is satisfied. He takes possession of Joyce's hand — she has not the strength, physical or moral, to with- draw it ! Then, emboldened by this negative consent, he draws her to him, and officially, here in her mother's presence, touches her cheek with his lips. Joyce Dormer feels that she will never get over the shame of that first, bartered, loveless kiss while she lives. CATS AND RED CLOVER. 211 CHAPTER XL CATS AND RED CLOVER. But human souls, alas ! the pity of it, do per- force get over everything. Our troubles kill themselves, if they fail of killing us ; and the Registrar-General does not even make a return respecting the number of men and women who, in this nineteenth century, die in England from moral causes. With the definite prospect before her of becoming John Farintyre's wdfe next Easter, Joyce Dormer must rise, go to rest, eat her meals, adjust a becoming fold, a soft-tinted knot of ribbon before her looking- glass, just as in the happy days when she had promised herself, with all her faults, and all her virtues, to the man she passionately loved. 212 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. During two short days — days, who shall say of what secret, what wild rebellion — she keeps her room. "My dear Joyce is sleeping off the effects of storm and shipwreck," her mother whispers, towards the close of Saturday to Hugh Long- more. Mrs. Dormer has had the thoughtful- ness to send for the young Oxonian — just to give him a hand-pressure, to bless him, dewy thankfulness in her soft gray eyes, for his nohle, heroic conduct of the previous night. " I am not a friend in general to crystallised hell." Mrs. Dormer slides with grace over the mono- syllable. "After such a fright, such a wetting, however, one felt that four-and-twenty hours' sleep would be priceless, and Joyce was per- suaded to take a small half - teaspoonful of Hunter's syrup. We have put off our depar- ture until Monday morning," adds Mrs. Dormer cheerfully, " so my daughter will have ample time to say all the pretty things the situa- CATS AND RED CLOVER. 213 tion requires with her own lips to Mr. Long- more." And, early on the morning of Monday, Longmore receives a little three - cornered pencil-written note — it seems to his imagina- tion with some faint odour of wild thyme clinging around its folds — from Miss Dormer. He has, I need scarcely say, indulged m pretty frequent speculations on a certain inter- esting "problem" during the fifty -six hours since the shipwreck ; the nett result of such speculations being that he, Hugh Longmore, has tumbled, headlong and hopelessly, into love. Wisdom recommends an alibi : " Get clear of Clarens," says the monitress, "flee from the blue eyes that have so effectually put com- mon sense and peace of mind to flight." And he has already determined to be wise, has looked up hours of departure in the train-bills, has commenced a rough and desultory packing of his Gladstone, when that three-cornered 214 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. note, with its imaginary odour of wild thyme, is handed to him. "Dear Mr. Longmore — We are to leave for Italy this morning. Mamma and I hope yon will drink five o'clock tea with us for the last time. If you would like some music, come round to our salon in the afternoon. Would three be too early ? Joyce." It is a fine occasion for a man to display the philosophy that is in him. Wisdom, looking back upon Lord Byron's Isle, and upon words uttered there in a moment of madness, recommends an alibi. Joyce Dormer invites to five o'clock tea. Young Hugh Longmore unpacks his boots and hairbrushes, and, exactly as the Clarens clocks strike three, walks along the corridor, his heart most unphilosophically beating, that leads to Mrs. Dormer's salon. He finds Joyce alone at the piano, a com- CATS AND RED CLOVER. 215 plicated score before her, which she is very evidently not studying. Her flice looks pale and aged. As she rises, on Longmore's entrance, her eyes meet his somewhat less frankly than their wont. "You deserve all sorts of pretty speeches, Mr. Longmore." So she remarks, after the first stereotyped anxieties have been uttered and set at rest. Some day, if I find that being alive is really sweet again, I will make them to you in a letter. My mother declares that if she had been rescued from destruction, she would write a whole book of sonnets and dedicate it to her preserver. But poor mamma thinks life so enjoyable ! She credits all us worn-out people of a younger generation with having the same relish for it as herself. You have come early for some music, have you not?" Longmore has come early — that he may be as long as possible in Joyce Dormer's society. Sensible of this fact he gives his answer with- 216 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. out hesitation. Yes. He has come early — for music. " You said once you would like to hear some of my poor compositions." Crossing to a table, Joyce takes out her Stradiuarius from its case. "As mamma is still busy, packing, I will play you two little songs for the violin that I wrote long ago. The first is called, ' In the Campagna.' You must suppose it to be a morning of Eoman spring." Her face begins to colour as she softly coaxes her instrument into tune. " The asphodel bloom is white, the myrtle in fresh foliage, the air full of violets. And a pair of foolish human beings are think- ing, with beating hearts, that all the rest of life will be as happy as to-day. You under- stand?" "Too well, I'm afraid, Miss Dormer." Philosophic though he be, Hugh Long- more's answer is given with a marked strain of tenderness in his tone. CATS AND RED CLOVER. 217 " I don't know that music can really repre- sent sunshine, and violets, and foolish human dreams, as some fanatics of the Schumann school declare. Anyhow, you know how I wish my poor little attempt to be interpreted. I am like Mark Twain's artist," adds the girl, her heaviness, it seems to Longmore, attempt- ing to find relief in raillery. " ' It is useless to disguise the fact from you any longer,' he tells the showman. ' These rocks in the fore- ground air horses.' Well, these sounds I am going to draw from my violin strings air asphodel blooms, blue sky, and marble ruins — with a pair of exceedingly foolish young people dreaming in their midst. Wait a second or two, until I have resined my bow, and you shall hear." " In the Campagna" is one of those simple Songs without Words, to which every kindred listener can supply the text in his own soul ; a song of such human happiness as is born of 218 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. young blood and warm skies, flowing without effort, to pure and ringing harmony. As Longmore listens, as he watches the sweet unstudied attitude, the hands, the lips of the girlish composer, he bethinks him, with a pang, of what, after a seven days' dream, the years are likely to be, without Joyce Dormer ! How shall he, once having drank of this divinest madness, turn back to common exist- ence, common law ? How take interest in Blackstone and Markby, in the litigations, over wills or marriage settlements of Brown, Jones, and Eobinson, while the one woman who could have turned life's flat prose to poetry, walks apart from him upon the face of the earth ; likelier than not, as the wife of Mr. John Farintyre ! " It is full of faults, as a composition," cries Joyce, when he has stumbled, with British awkwardness, through a few stiff praises. " My life has not been ruled by my own CATS AND RED CLOVER. 219 ambitions, or I should have gone, when I was fifteen, to the Leipsic conservatorium to make music my study. As it is, I shall only be an amateur, with a pretty taste, and tolerably dexterous fingers, to the last." " If the world contained a few more such amateurs. Miss Dormer!" " Mr. Longmore, you are trying to be com- plimentary. As a punishment, I shall play you my second song. I called the first, ' In the Campagna,' thinking of Browning's ' Love among the Ruins.' I call this, ' When Summer Dies,' from Keats's line in 'Endymion.' Our pair of foolish lovers, you must imagine, are begin- ning to discern that April-time and wind-blown asphodels and violet scents do not last for ever." And speaking thus she plays again — a can- tata with a wider sweep of meaning than the first, with a subtle wail of pain underlying the surface joyousness of the centric melody. Hugh Longmore asks himself, with an 220 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. absurdly keen twinge of jealousy, if experience so rich in passion can have been drawn actually from the girl's own life ? Is the song inspired by a woman's remembrance or by an artist's prophecy ? Joyce Dormer seems to guess his thoughts. " My compositions have the trick of emotion about them, have they not ?" As she makes this somewhat cynical remark she lays down her Stradiuarius, fondly, gently, as though some invisible, vanished hand received it from her own. " But I am afraid the trick is artificial, a thing one has learnt, together with one's fugue and counterpoint, at so much an hour, from some German music -master. Shall I do better, I wonder, in the future ? As we shivered under Lord Byron's three tall trees the other night, I told you that I had found a motif. It has seemed to me since that a picture of absolute loss and ruin, the shipwi-eck of the two foolish lives that set out amidst CATS AND RED CLOVER 221 April sunshine and violet scents, would fitly end my trio of songs." " The folsest art in the world, my dear ! Never end anything with a shock!" Mrs. Dormer, who has quietly entered, offers this advice. "An episode in minor occurs in most lives. Music should render it as an episode only. Shipwreck, absolute loss, whatever girls and boys may think at twenty, are of their nature inartistic. As much thunder and lightning as you choose early in your work. Leave your hearers when you finish in a state of calm repose. People who commit irretriev- able fiascos are only in their place on the boards of a transpontine theatre. Mr. Longmore, how do you do ? Quite sad to think how soon we must say good-bye? And you would like — Joyce, darling, where is your violin ? — Mr, Longmore, no doubt, would like to hear you play for the last time in Hotel Scherer." They play to him for nearly an hour, bright 222 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. and airy music, selected, doubtless, by Mrs. Dormer on artistic principle, tbe principle of making final impressions cheerful ones. But Joyce's heart is not in her fingers this after- noon. It would seem that her eyes read other notes than those written on the score. The performance is spiritless. At five o'clock a waiter enters with tea, and Mrs. Dormer shuts the piano a little abruptly. " We never played so badly in our lives. I forbid Mr. Longmore to applaud. Where are your thoughts, my dear Joyce ? In our half-packed portmanteaus or " " My thoughts are with the people who commit irretrievable fiascos," answers Joyce. " I was thinking neither of Gounod nor Berlioz, ])ut of the episode in a minor key that has yet to be written ; the episode that shall have for its title ' Shipwreck.' " Mrs. Dormer seats herself at the tea-table and begins talking about nothing with a per- CATS AND RED CLOVER. 223 sistent vivacity that disperses sentiment by force. Sad to leave tliis fresh, blue Switzer- land behind, yet charming — if friends could only accompany one — to think that another twenty-four hours will see them in the land of Fata Morgana — on the south side of the Alps. People go on existing in all the other countries of Europe. In Italy 07ie lives ! It is the kind of commonplace that carries with it a superficial ring of sincerity. But it is only a commonplace. Who should know better than Mrs. Dormer that a pretty, agree- able little woman may "go on existing," quite as enjoyably in London or Paris as elsewhere ? "And you, Mr. Longmore, is there no remote chance of our seeing you in the South ? We shall spend the remainder of the autumn at the Italian lakes ; during winter we shall be in Nice. Those tyrannical doctors insist upon my breathing the air of the French Eiviera until spring breaks." (And the 224 A BALLEOOM REPENTANCE. gaieties of the Nice season decline ! ) " Easter will find ns, as it finds most other vagabond English people, in Eome. Joyce, my love," and Mrs. Dormer says this with intentional meaning, " we should be very pleased should we not, if Mr. Longmore chanced to be in Rome next Easter ? ' " Joyce is standing beside the window, her violin still between her hands, her whole attitude one of nerveless dejection. At the mention of her own name she starts round ; then busies herself in packing away her Stradiuarius in its case. " I — I was speaking of Italy," Mrs. Dormer repeats, discreetly leaving the question of next Easter alone. " And do you know, my child, if we mean to start upon our journey to-night we have not very much time to lose. Madame Scherer says we ought to leave this house punctually at seven. What can John Farin- tyre be about ? " OATS AND RED CLOVER. 225 '' John Farintyre is on the terrace, mother," cries Joyce, with an air of mock alarm, " and I don't like the look of things. I hope nothing is about to happen to any of us, but these un- canny manifestations frighten me." Longmore cannot but think that the girl when she speaks thus is putting a force upon herself. The effort, if it be one, is, however, successful. To any but a solver of problems, the artificial tone of banter might pass for flow of spirits. " John Farintyre has got a book in his hands. And that book is neither a yellow-backed novel nor a 'Cavendish.'" " Mr. Farintyre has a strong natural taste for reading," observes Mrs. Dormer suavely. " A taste rather undeveloped perhaps at present, l^ut quite certain to show itself in the future. I lent him a volume of Darwin this morning, and he is simply wrapped up — lost in it ! I am convinced John Farintyre would take the keenest interest in works of scientific VOL. L Q 226 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. research if lie only allowed himself more time for study." And when young Croesus comes sauntering in, some minutes later, book in hand, with countenance more hopelessly void of mind than usual, she, forthwith, begins to chatter Dar- winism and Huxleyiana for his benefit. Full of tact, of cleverness, up to a certain level, there is one matter in which Mrs. Dormer is prone to err. She overrates the power possessed by Mrs. Dormer of moulding men to her wishes. The great barrier, she honestly believes, between Joyce and Farintyre is an intellectual one. Then John Farintyre's intellect must be cultivated. What, on the surface, can be easier? Make him skim over some nice popular little text-books of science, imbue him with the last subversive ideas in history, put a volume or two of erotic, mystic verse into his hands, and spice the whole with some well - CATS AND BED CLOVER. 227 translated German rationalism. To this, in due course, must be added tlie proper amount of feminine coaching : the coaching that teaches you how to find staple for conversation out of the slightest materials ; to recognise the sul^jects on which you may safely assume the responsibility of an opinion ; above all, to know when to be silent. If Mrs. Dormer could inspire an ignorant man with tliat knowledge, she would have cause to be proud, indeed, of her own powers ! " The chapter I marked for you is delici^ ously suggestive, is it not ? Mr. Longmore, 1 am sure, will remember it — the chapter in which Darwin gives instances of plants and animals, remote in the scale of nature, who are yet bound together by a web of complex relations ? " " I am afraid the subject is out of my depth," says Hugh Longmore, with the repug- 228 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. nance sensible men feel to scientific prattle at the tea-table. " It may be deep for you," cries Farintyre aggressively. "To me the whole thing seems as plain as a pike-staff", if once you accept Darwin's facts. Of course," he goes on with the solemn complacency of dulness, " one must start from some kind of premisses, take some- thing for granted. I do accept Darwin's premisses. I believe in primitive germs. I am an out-and-out . . . what the doose is the term ? An out-and-out " " Evolutionist, perhaps." As Joyce makes the suggestion, she bends her head down over her plate, and Longmore notices that her colour deepens. She is beginning, already, to blush for Mr. John Farintyre. " Now, there's the cats and the red clover. You couldn't have a better proof of inter- dependence than that. Ordinary people, you CATS AND RED CLOVER. 229 know, Longmore, would not see any connec- tion between the two. But the man of science can tell you better. There could never be much red clover about in a district where there were no cats." "Indeed! How does the man of science make that out?" Huejli Lono-more asks inno- cently. " I am one of the ordinary people — are not you, Miss Dormer ?" "An ordinary person, waiting for enlighten- ment," says Joyce, looking pained. " Mother, suppose you tell us more about these wonder- ful cats." But Mr. John Farintyre does not mean to have his story taken from him. " The fact is, don't you know, it's all because of the humble-bees. Clover won't fertilise in any quantity in a district without humble-bees." And Mr. John Farintyre helps himself, with an air of conviction, to bread-and-butter. 230 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. " Keaily ? As you come fresh from the fountain - head, we must accept the facts," remarks Longmore. " But we have a right to ask that facts shall be explained. You can never have red clover in a district where there are no cats, because humble-bees are necessary for its fertilisation I I am more out of my depth than ever." " I — I'm quite positive I'm right," says Far- intyre, growing hot and confused. " Where's the good of turning everything into an argu- ment ? The humble-bees determine the quan- tity of the red clover, and the cats . . . doose take it, man ! You can't expect me to have it all, chapter and verse — the cats, of course, determine the quantity of the humble- bees." "Don't you think we have omitted one important factor — the field-mice?" asks little Mrs. Dormer. Longmore looks across at Joyce. Her CATS AND RED CLOVER. 231 eyes are downcast, her delicate face is suffused from brow to cliin. And lie knows, as plainly as tlioiieli the communication had been made to him in words, that John Farintyre is Miss Dormer's promised husband. 232 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. CHAPTER XII. INTELLECTUAL COQUETRY. " I CAN tell you one thing, my dear Rora," and Mr, Thomas Skelton, as he speaks, arranges his polished, pointed boots in an attitude of graceful ease above the level of his head. " Neither of the three Miss Skeltons is looking younger. For Pansy there never was much hope. Our fond mamma destined her from her infancy for the Church, but churchmen, as far as I can see, look upon thick ankles and solid waists much in the same lis^ht as the rest of us. Diana might have done better ; she was not a style I admire myself," says Mr. Skelton with an air of connoisseurship. "Wiry, light -fleshed, plainish head, and a INTELLECTUAL COQUETRY. 233 good deal more than enough of bone ! Still, among the small Eastern Counties' squireens, Diana's were a style of looks that might have passed for l)reeding, if you had all had the sense to keep in England. Her day is over J) now. "This brings it to me," oliserves Aurora blankly. " I suppose, T. S., you will be say- ino- next that I am an old maid ? " T. S. glances round, languidly critical, at his younger sister's too rubicund charms. Aurora is dressed, as usual, like a caricature of some other caricature. Three rows of mock pearls are arranged, Grecian fashion, round her head. She wears a peacock-hued pinafore with the singularly inappropriate motto, Thomme jproiDOse, worked in old English characters around the hem ; bangles are about her wrists ; beads about her throat : oiarino; knots of poppy-coloured ribbon seem to have descended upon her whole person in a shower. 234 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE, " You are not an old maid yet, my dear, but your state is cachectic — highly ! You know Punch's advice to unmarried persons, as a body ? My advice to the three Miss Skel- tons is : whatever the suitor, and whatever his fortune : Do." Mr. Thomas Skelton is a cadaverous, rather elderly young gentleman, holding the rank of lieutenant in one of Her Majesty's foot regi- ments ; a young gentleman be-ringed up to the knuckles, redolent of pretension, Ess bouquet, and tobacco smoke, and who glories in knowing his own small world in jDarticular, and human nature in the aggregate, on the very seamiest side. Not to be done at cards, or about a horse, or a billiard match, is T. S. ; not to be deluded into believing in the honesty of man, far less of woman ! In his mysterious theatrical information, his familiar stories of Lord A. or Viscount B., and his straight tips for the big races, Thomas Skelton is equally INTELLECTUAL COQUETRY. 235 reliable. Sometimes lie is amusing ; especially when in an ultra-boasting vein, or delivering scraps of wliat one may call curagoa-and-seltzer philosophy at second-hand. Such men in his regiment as possess money or titles, know him — to their cost. So, according to the Skelton family legends, do the higher circles of London society. Into these higher London circles we may not aspire to penetrate. A solitary illustra- tion of Mr. Thomas Skelton's family relations bears so closely upon the history of other per- sonages in this little drama that it must, with a somewhat reluctant hand, be portrayed. " Very easy for you to say : Do ! No girls ever had such a poor chance as us." Aurora's English grammar is not perhaps up to the level of her other accomplishments. " Living about in invalid places where not a man you meet has got an inch of lung left, never going to any parties but those wretched pension 236 A BALLROOxM KEPENTANCE. dances, and obliged to hesitate over every penny we sj)end in dress !" Aurora glances ruefully at tlie actual, not over-fresli, condition of lier poppy -coloured ribbons, " I must confess you are ratlier heavily weighted," says T. S., turning over a foot, in order that he may feast his eyes, as he dis- courses, on the faultless perfection of its boot and gaiter. " In the first place — well, 'Hand- some is as handsome does,' the proverb says, but, as regards marriageable girls, the proverb says bosh. No one at the present age of the world cares a fig about a girl's doings, so long as she handsome is. And the three Miss Skeltons are not handsome. In the second place there is the mamma." Alas, for the man, said Jean Paul Richter, who has not learned, in reverencing his own mother to reverence all womankind ! " Men, you see, have a trick of looking at INTELLECTUAL COQUETRY. 237 a girl's mater, and thinking wliat the girl, her- self, is likely to become. And men — you ought to learn this, all of you, from the mamma, downwards — you ought to work it in golden letters round these ridiculous pinafores, men abhor electro-plate." " Electro-plate ! I declare, T. S. , you get more rude in your manners every time you come to see us." " Perhaps," says T. S. coolly, " I see more, every time, to make me rude. I have a vested interest, remember, in my sisters marrying or not marrying. Each year you go on like this, wandering from the Riviera to Switzerland, and back again from Switzerland to the Riviera, you spend more capital. Each year the pro- spects of my own final smash grow more dis- tinct " " T. S. 1 For gracious' sake, take care you are not overheard ! " The brother and sister are exchanfrino; these 238 A BALLROOM REPENTANCE. affecting confidences while Thomas Skelton smokes his after-dinner pipe on the Hotel Scherer terrace ; and Aurora glances round, with alarm, in the direction of the salon windows. " I don't mean to say that anything could stave the smash off, now," proceeds Mr. Skelton, in a lower voice. " Unless I can marry an old woman with the ready, another six months will see the end of it." And this candid young gentleman thrums a tune uj^on the arm of his chair with the fingers of his cadaverous, prematurely nerveless hand. "If my sisters had found husbands in their youth and — well, if anything had happened to the mamma, and she had only cut up decentl}', I might have gone to the dogs at a less rapid pace than I am doing now," There is a minute or two of silence after this. Then, " If a girl happens to be the fashion, men follow each other, like a flock of INTELLECTUAL COQUETRY. 239 sheep, in their admiration of her," cries Aurora tearfully. " We see that in the case of this weak, foolish young Longmorc I have l^een telling you about. Now honestly, T. S., for- getting that I am your sister, do you not think I have as much pretension to beauty as Joyce Dormer?" Mr. Thomas Skelton turns his head with the natural indifference that the subject engen- ders in him. He looks at Aurora, slowly, from head to foot. " Quite honestly, my dear, and forgetting altogether that you are my sister, I think you were nicer looking four or five years ago." This is his ingenuous answer. " At the same time, you are a long way the best of the family. There, I speak without reserve. If I was forced to take one of my sisters about the world, for a wager, say, as belonging to myself, I — dash it all!" cries T. S., immensely tickled by his own delicate humour, "I believe, when 240 A BALLHOOM REPENTANCE. it came to the push, I should put the three Miss Skeltons, impartially, in a hat, and