"Would you like anything?" Peter Blakeney asked of his partner while he steered her clear of the crowded dancing floor.
"I am rather thirsty," Rosemary replied, "but I could not stand that awful supper upstairs."
"Well, look here," he urged, "you slip into one of the empty boxes and I'll forage for you."
They found a box on the upper tier, the occupants of which had probably gone off to supper. Rosemary sat down and pulled the curtain forward; thus ensconced in a cosy corner of the box she drew a contented little sigh, glad to be in the dark and alone. Peter went to forage and she remained quite still, gazing—unseeing—on the moving crowd below. She was hot and felt rather breathless, her chestnut hair, below the velvet cap, clung against her forehead, and tiny beads of moisture appeared round the wings of her delicately modelled nose. The last dance had been intoxicating. Peter was a perfect dancer. Rosemary sighed again quite involuntarily: it was a little sigh of regret for those golden minutes that had gone by all too rapidly. Jasper, she reflected, would never make a dancer, but he would make a kind, considerate, always thoughtful husband. The kindest husband any woman could wish for.
Her eyes now sought the dancing floor more insistently. She had just become aware of Jasper's tall figure moving aimlessly amidst the crowd. Dear, kind Jasper! He was looking for her, of course. Always when she was not near him he was looking for her, if not physically and actually, then with his thoughts, trying to find her, to understand her, to guess at an unspoken wish.
"Dear, kind Jasper," Rosemary sighed and closed her eyes, in order to shut out that sudden glimpse she had just had of Jasper's anxious gaze scanning the crowd—in search of her. She pulled the curtain an inch or two further forward, pushed back her chair deeper into the shadow.
Peter returned, carrying a bottle of champagne and a tumbler.
"Will this do?" he asked, and busied himself with the cork.
"Delicious," she replied, "but what about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes; you have brought only one glass."
"The only one I could get. There's a regular fight up there for crockery."
She laughed. "It must be horrible up there," she exclaimed.
"Dante's Inferno," he assented laconically.
He filled the glass till the froth bubbled over and gave it to her to drink, which she did with delight.
"Lovely," she exclaimed.
He watched her as she screwed up her eyes and those tantalising little lines appeared at the sides of her nose.
"I hear you did splendidly at Lord's this afternoon, Peter," she said. "There's a wonderful article about you in the Evening Post."
Then she held the glass out to be refilled. "Your turn next," she said.
"Won't you have some more?"
"Not just now, thank you."
He put the bottle down on the floor, then put out his hand to take the glass from her. As he did so his fingers closed over hers. She tried to withdraw her hand, and in the brief struggle the glass fell between them, and was smashed to smithereens.
"Our one and only glass," Rosemary exclaimed. "Please, Peter," she went on with a nervous little laugh, "will you release my hand?"
"No," he replied, and increased the pressure on her struggling fingers. "I have often been allowed to hold your hand before. Why not now?"
She shrugged her shoulders and ceased to struggle.
"Am I never to be allowed to hold your hand again?" he insisted.
But her head now was turned away; she was apparently deeply interested in the crowd below.
"Oh, Peter," she exclaimed lightly, "do look at Mrs. Opert in that girlish 1840 costume. Did you ever see anything more ludicrous? Do look at her huge feet in those wee sandals. There's Jimmy Ransome talking to her now——"
Again she tried to withdraw her hand and still he held her fast. She turned to him with a frown.
"Peter," she said, "if you are going to be foolish, I'll go."
"What do you call being foolish?" he retorted. "Holding your hand? I held you in my arms just now while we danced."
"I call it being foolish, Peter," she retorted coolly. "Would you rather I called it disloyal?"
"You are too clever to do that, Rosemary," he rejoined, "disloyalty being so essentially a feminine attribute."
"Peter!"
"Oh, I know! I know!" he went on, quite slowly, and then suddenly released her hand. "Presently you will be Jasper's wife, the wife of my best friend. And if I happen to hold your hand just one instant longer than convention permits I shall be called disloyal, a cad—any ugly word that takes your fancy for the moment. So I must become less than a friend—less than a distant cousin—I must not hold your hand—the others may—I may not. They may come near you, look into your eyes—see you smile—my God! Rosemary, am I never to look into those glorious eyes of yours again?"
For a moment it seemed as if she was going to give him a direct answer, a soft flush rose to her cheeks, and there was a quick intake of her breath as if words would tumble out that she was determined to suppress. The struggle only lasted for a second. The next she had thrown bade her head and burst into a peal of laughter.
"Why, Peter," she exclaimed, and turned great, serious eyes upon him, "I never knew before that you read Browning."
Her laugh had half sobered him. But evidently he had not grasped her meaning, for he frowned and murmured puzzled: "Browning?"
"Why, yes," she said gaily. "I forget exactly how it goes, but something like this: 'I will hold your hand, just as long as all may. Or so very little longer.'"
He made no sign that her flippancy had hurt him; he sat down beside her, his hands clasped between his knees.
"Why should you hate me so, Rosemary?" he asked quietly.
"Hate you, my dear Peter?" she exclaimed. "Whatever put that quaint notion into your head? The heat must have been too much for you this afternoon. You never will wear a cap."
"I know that I am beneath contempt, of course," he insisted, "but when one despises a poor creature like me, it seems wanton cruelty just to kick it."
"I did not mean to hurt you, Peter," Rosemary rejoined more gently, "but when you are trying to talk nonsense, I must in self-defence bring you back to sanity."
"Nonsense? Would to God I could talk nonsense, act nonsense, live nonsense. Would to God my poor brain did refuse to take in the fact that you have promised to become Jasper's wife, and that I, like a fool, have lost you for ever."
"Lost me, Peter?" she retorted, with just the faintest tremor of bitterness in her voice. "I don't think you ever sought me very seriously, did you?"
"I have loved you, Rosemary," Peter Blakeney said very slowly and very deliberately, "from the first moment I set eyes on you."
Then, as the girl shrugged her shoulders with an obvious attempt at indifference, he said more insistently: "You knew it, Rosemary."
"I know that you often said so, Peter," she replied coldly.
"You knew it that night on the river when you lay in my arms just like a lovely pixie, with your haunting eyes closed and your lips pressed to mine. You knew it then, Rosemary," he insisted.
But now she would no longer trust herself to speak. She had drawn herself further back within the shadows. All that Peter could see of her was the exquisite oval of her face like a cameo carved against the dark, indefinite background. Her eyes he could not see, for they were veiled by the delicate, blue-veined lids, but he had a glimpse of her breast like mother-of-pearl, and of her small hand clinging tightly to the protecting curtain. The rest of her, swathed in the rich folds of her brocaded gown, was merged in the shadows, her auburn hair hidden by the velvet cap. Just by looking at her face, and on that clinging hand, he knew that everything within her was urging her to flee, was warning her not to listen, not to allow her memory to recall that wonderful night in June, on the river, when the honey-coloured moon threw shafts of silver light on the tall grasses bending to the breeze, and a nightingale in the big walnut tree sang a lullaby to its mate. Intuitively he knew that she wished to flee, but that a certain something held her back, forced her to listen—a certain something that was a spell, an enchantment, or just the arms of her sister-pixies that clung around her and would not let her go.
"Don't let us talk about the past, Peter," she murmured at last involuntarily, with a pathetic note of appeal in her voice.
"I mean to talk about it, Rosemary," he retorted quietly, "just this once more. After that I will fall out of your life. You can cast me out and I will become one of the crowd. I won't even take your hand, I will try not to see you, not even in my dreams. Though every inflection of your voice makes my bones ache with longing, I shall try not to listen. Just now I held you while we danced; you never once looked at me, but I held you closer than any man ever held woman before. I held you with my soul and heart and body—just now and for the last time. And though you never looked at me once, Rosemary, you allowed me to hold you as I did—not your body only, but your soul—and whilst we danced and your sweet breath fanned my cheek you belonged to me as completely as you did that night on the river, even though you have pledged your word to Jasper. Though why you did that," he added, with a quaint change of mood, "God alone knows."
"Jasper wants me," she murmured. "He loves me. He sets me above his ambition——"
Peter Blakeney gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.
"Dear old Jasper," he said, "even he would laugh to hear you say that. Ambition! There's no room for ambition in the scheme of Jasper's life. How can a man be ambitious when all the beneficent genii of this world presided at his birth, and showered gifts into his lap. It is we, poor devils, who have ambitions—and see them unfulfilled.”
"Ambitions which you set above your love, above everything," Rosemary broke in, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. "You talk of love, Peter," she went on with sudden vehemence, while the sharp words came tumbling out at last as if from the depths of her overburdened heart. "What do you know of love? You are quite right, I did lay in your arms that night, loving you with my whole being, my soul seeking yours and finding it in that unforgettable kiss. My God! How I could have loved you, Peter! But you? What were your thoughts of me the next day, and the next day after that, whilst I waited in suspense which turned to torture for a word from you that would recall that hour? What were your thoughts? Where were you? I was waiting for you at the Lascelles as you had promised you would come over from Oxford the very next day. You did not come—not for days—weeks——"
"Rosemary!"
"Not for days—weeks——" she insisted, "and I waited for a sign—a letter——"
"Rosemary, at the time you understood!"
"I only understood," she retorted with cold irony, "that you blamed yourself for having engaged my young affections—that you had your way to make in the world before you could think of asking a girl to share your poverty—and so on—and so on—every time we met—and in every letter you wrote—whilst I——
"Whilst you did not understand, Peter," she went on more calmly. "Whilst you spoke of the future, of winning fame and fortune——"
"For you, Rosemary!" he cried involuntarily, and buried his head in his hands. "I was only thinking of you——"
"You were not thinking of me, Peter, or you would have known that there was no poverty or toil I would not gladly have shared with the man I loved."
"Yes, poverty—toil—on an equal footing, Rosemary; but you were rich, famous: already you had the world at your feet——"
"And you did not care for me enough, Peter," she said with a note of fatality in her voice, "to accept wealth, comfort, help in your career from me——"
"Peter Blakeney the cricketer," he declaimed with biting sarcasm; "don't you know, he is the husband of Rosemary Fowkes now. What a glorious career for a man, eh, to be the husband of a world-famous wife?"
"It would only have been for a time," she protested.
"A time during which youth would have flown away on the wings of life, taking with it honour, manhood, dignity——"
"And love?"
"Perhaps."
There was silence between them after that. The last word had been spoken, the immutable word of Fate. Peter still sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees—a hunched-up figure weighed down by the heavy hand of an inexorable past.
Rosemary looked down at the bent head, and there, in the shadow where no one could see save the immortal recorder of sorrows and of tears, a look of great tenderness and of pity crept into her haunting eyes. It was only for a moment. With a great effort of will she shook herself free from the spell that for a while had held possession of her soul. With a deliberate gesture she drew back the curtain, so that her face and figure became all at once flooded with light, she looked down upon the kaleidoscopic picture below: the dusky orchestra had once more begun to belch forth hideous sounds, and hellish screams; the puppets on the dancing floor began one by one to resume their gyrations. Several among the crowd, looking up, saw and recognised Rosemary: she smiled and nodded to them, waved her fan in recognition. She was Rosemary Fowkes once more, the most talked-of woman in England, the fiancée of Jasper Tarkington, queen of her set, admired, adulated, the comet of the past two seasons.
"There's that tiresome George Orange," she said in her coldest, most matter-of-fact tone. "He is making desperate and ludicrous signs. I strongly suspect him of making straight for this box. Shall we try and give him the slip?"
Her quiet voice seemed to act like an anodyne on Peter's jangled nerves. He straightened out his tall figure, quietly pulled the chairs away, to enable her to pass. She, too, rose and prepared to go. It seemed difficult not to say another word, or to look him once more straight in the eyes; and yet to speak words now, after what had just passed between them, seemed more difficult than anything. His hand was on the door handle. The other side of the door people were moving up and down, talking and laughing. Another second or two and she would pass out of his sight—pass out of his life more effectually even than she had done when she gave her word to Jasper Tarkington. Another second. But just then she raised her eyes, and they met his.
"Rosemary!" he said.
She shook her head and smiled gently, ironically perhaps, indulgently also as on a rebuked child.
"I had better go now, Peter," she said quietly. "I feel sure George Orange is on his way to drag me to his wife's box."
Just for another second he did not move. "It is no use, Rosemary," he said, and in his turn smiled as on something very dear, very precious, wholly unattainable. "It is no use, my dear."
"What is no use, Peter?" she murmured.
"Thinking that all is over."
"In six months' time, if I am alive," she rejoined coolly, "I shall be Jasper Tarkington's wife."
"I know it, dear. Jasper is my friend, and I would not harbour one disloyal thought against him. But you being the wife of an enemy or of my best friend is beside the point. I cannot shut you out of my life, strive how I may. Never. While I am as I am, and you the exquisite creature you are, so long as we are both alive, you will remain a part of my life. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you, whenever I hear the sound of your voice, my soul will thrill and long for you. Not with one thought will I be disloyal to Jasper, for in my life you will be as an exquisite spirit, an ideal, greater or less than woman. Just you. If you are happy I shall know it. If you grieve, Heaven help the man or woman who caused your tears. I have been a fool; yet I regret nothing. Sorrow at your hands is sweeter than any happiness on earth."
It was quite dark where they stood side by side in this moment of supreme farewell. Each felt the inevitableness of it all—the fatality. Pride on either side had built a barrier between them: honour and loyalty would consolidate it in the future. Too late! Everything was too late!
Peter bent his knee to the ground and slowly raised the hem of her gown to his lips. But Rosemary did not move: for that one instant her limbs had become marble, and in her soul she prayed that her heart, too, might turn to stone.
Then Peter rose and opened the door, and she passed out into the world again.