A Comedy of Masks: A Novel

by Ernest Christopher Dowson; Arthur Moore

CHAPTER XXXIII

"Now, isn't it a pretty dance?" murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously, as she sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of the kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark's drawing-room, and opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended to express her beatitude.

Colonel Lightmark, to whom Mrs. Dollond addressed this complimentary query (which, after all, was more of an assertion or challenge, in that it took its answer for granted), was arrayed in the brilliant scarlet and silver of the regiment which had once the honour of calling him Colonel; his tunic was so tight that sitting down was almost an impossibility for him, and Mrs. Dollond, who looked charming in her powder and brocade, could not help wondering whether any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the other hand, the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that standing, for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to conceal. And yet the veteran was happy—he was positively radiant. He felt that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society considerably enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe a portion of his brilliance to borrowed light—and tonight one could not count the celebrities on the fingers of both hands.

The old hero-worshipper gazed complacently at the little ever-shifting crowd which surrounded his nephew and his niece (so he called her) at their post near the doorway, and he listened to Mrs. Dollond's sparkling sallies with a blissful ignorance of her secret ambition in the direction of a partner who would make her dance, and for whose edification she would be able to liken the Colonel's warlike figure to a newly-boiled lobster, or a ripe tomato.

"Regular flower-show, isn't it?" he suggested, naïvely reinforcing his simile. "I don't know what the dickens they're all meant for, but a good many of them seem to have escaped from the Lyceum—Juliets, and Portias, and Shylocks, and so forth."

"Yes," said Mrs. Dollond. "I think the Shylocks must be picture-dealers, you know. But their conversation isn't very Shakespearian, is it? I heard Hamlet say, just now, that the floor was too perfect for anything, and Ophelia—she was dancing with a Pierrot incroyable—told her partner that she adored waltzing to a string band!"

They both laughed, the Colonel shortly and boisterously, Mrs. Dollond in a manner which suggested careful study before a looking-glass, with an effect of dimples and of flashing teeth.

"What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely. "Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"

"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's Lady Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett, though I've often heard of her. What is her dress—whom is she intended to represent? I don't see how the dickens one's expected to know, but you're so clever."

"Oh, she's dressed as—as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people—real people, you know—there are here to-night! Dear me, there's the music again already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do hope my partner's dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's the worst of fancy dress balls; they really ought to be stage-managed by a painter, and the period ought to be limited. One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? Yes, I think it must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"

And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not unwelcome solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages of possessing a nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and rich enough—though that was partly his affair—to cultivate the very pink and perfection of smart society. He regarded Dick in the light of a profitable investment.

When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the avuncular hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of the harbour devoted to derelicts.

The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering numbers when he came home from India, and retired, with a newly-acquired fortune and a vague halo of military distinction about his person, into the ranks of the half-paid, were beginning to find him rather old and, frankly, a considerable bore; but the timely benevolence which he had extended to his nephew was, it appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a kind of reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of (how he hated the word!) fogeydom.

When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow groove among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once more established his foothold among the people of to-day.

Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and Marguerites, hoping that she would like his uniform.

There was one person, at least, in the room who made no attempt to assure herself that she was enjoying the vivid gaiety of these parti-coloured revels.

Mary Masters, when she had time for solitary thought, found that the atmosphere of the charming room was full of mockery. For her, the passionate vibrations of the strained, incessant strings seemed to breathe the wild complaint of lost souls; the multitudinous tread of gliding feet, the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet perfume of exotic flowers, all had a new and strange significance; the effect of an orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression of a frenzied heartlessness, a great unrest.

The girl was completely unstrung. Since Charles had brought her news, which, after all, had been merely a corroboration, her nerves had played her false; the balance of her mind was thrown out of poise; and the fact that she was there at all seemed only a part of her failing, an additional proof of her moral collapse.

Seated on a low ottoman, in a little recess among the tall palms and tree-ferns, which lined the passage leading from the ball-room to the studio, she was startled presently from her reverie by Mrs. Lightmark, who confronted her, a dainty figure in the pale rose colour and apple-green of one of Watteau's most unpractical shepherdesses.

"Not dancing, Mary!" she protested, smiling a little languidly. "What does it mean? Why are you sitting in stately solitude with such an evident contempt for our frivolity?"

"Frivolity!" echoed Miss Masters. "I have been dancing, this last waltz, with Lord Overstock. I have sent him to find my fan. I told him exactly where to look, but I suppose he can't discover it. He's not very clever, you know!"

"Poor Lord Overstock! I hope he won't find it just yet and come to turn me out of his seat. I'm so tired of standing, of introducing men whose names I never knew to girls whose names I have forgotten, and of trying to avoid introducing the same people twice over. It's so difficult to recognize people in their powder and patches!"

"Yes," said Mary slowly, with a kind of inward resentment which she could not subdue, although she felt that it was unreasonable, "I almost wonder that you recognised me."

Eve glanced at her, struck by her tone, trying to read her expression in the dim light, a shadow of bewilderment passing over her own face and for a moment lowering the brilliancy of her eyes. Then she smiled again, dismissing her thought with a little laugh which broke off abruptly.

"One so soon forgets!" the other added, with an intention in her voice, an involuntary betrayal which she almost immediately regretted.

"Forgets!"

Eve caught up the word eagerly, almost passionately, her voice falling into a lower key.

"Forget! Forgive and forget!" repeated Mary quickly and recklessly, letting her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet of delicate, scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it had fallen on the floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds!—is perhaps—and yet—I have not so much to forget—or to be forgiven!"

The last words were almost whispered, but for Eve's imagination, poised on tiptoe like a hunted creature blindly listening for the approach of the Pursuer, they were full of suggestion, of denunciation.

She remembered now, with a swiftly banished pang of jealousy, that this girl had loved him.

Her thought sped back to a summer evening nearly a year ago, when it had seemed to her that she had surprised her friend's secret.

"What do you mean, Mary?" she demanded courageously. "What have I to be forgiven? Don't despise me; don't, for Heaven's sake, don't play with me! I am all in the dark! Are you accusing me? Do you think because I say nothing that I have forgotten—that I can forget? Is it something about—him?"

Mary cast a rapid glance at her.

"Are you afraid of his name, then?"

Eve dropped her hands despairingly.

"Ah, you do! You are playing with me! About Philip Rainham, then! For Heaven's sake speak! Do you know what I only guess—that he was innocent? For God's sake say it!"

It was Mary's turn to look bewildered, to feel penitent. She began to recognise that there were greater depths in Eve's nature than she had suspected, that her indifference might, after all, prove to have been merely a mask.

"You guess—innocent—don't you know, then?"

"Nothing, nothing! I only suspect—believe! I have been groping alone in the darkness—and yet I do know! He was innocent—he played a part?"

"Yes," said Mary gently; "he sacrificed himself, for another!"

"He sacrificed himself—for me. Ah, say it! say it!"

Mary was greatly puzzled and at the same time moved—filled with a supreme compassion for this woman who was yet such a child, so dainty and frail a thing to confront the deadly knowledge that she had made a shipwreck of a life, of lives.

And yet, was there not also a ring of exultation, a challenge in her last words?

At least, her sorrow was ennobled. She was invested with a sombre glory, as one who had inspired a rare and perfect devotion.

And, after all, had she not already been considered enough?

A silence ensued, during which Eve seemed to be wrapped in steadfast thought.

She grew calmer, picking up her bouquet, and sedulously arranging its disordered foliage; while Lord Overstock, who had arrived with Mary's fan, poured forth elaborate apologies, protesting that she must give him another dance—the second extra—to make up for the time he had lost.

Already the music was beginning for the next dance, and people passed in couples, laughing and talking gaily, a motley procession, on their way into the ball-room.

"I thought your brother would have told you," said Mary softly, bending over her programme and gathering her skirts together with a suggestion of departure.

"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him—always his enemy!"

"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this afternoon."

Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could see her prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely whether Eve accepted the alternative, whether she realized that, to prove Philip innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his original wrong-doing, and subsequent cowardice.

"But—Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"

Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She stepped back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant cavalier.

"One of Philip's friends told him to-day—proved it to him, he says.
It was a Mr. Oswyn."

A minute later Mary found herself in the ball-room, making heroic efforts to divide her entire attention impartially between the strains of the band and the remarks of her partner.

She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes which had seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval between two waltzes?

For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight, she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did not, however, carry her further than the middle of the dance.

The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with her partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler atmosphere of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid, retrospective glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her arduous part of hostess.

Never had actress more anxiously awaited the fall of the curtain upon her scene. Her husband, in the gallant russet of a falconer, was dancing now with Mrs. Dollond: she could hear his frequent laughter, and, though she turned her eyes away, see him bending over his partner to catch the words, trivial enough no doubt, which she seemed to whisper with such an air of confidence. But, though she had heard him address Mrs. Dollond by her Christian name, she did not pay him the compliment of being jealous: the time for that had passed. The account which she had to demand of him related to a matter far more serious than the most flagrant of flirtations—she only longed to confront him, to tear from him a confession, not so much with a view to humiliate him as to enlighten herself, and to force him to make the only reparation in his power.

When the music had ceased, and the measured tread of feet lapsed into the confusion of independent wanderings, Eve turned to find her husband close behind her, and Mrs. Dollond firing off a neat little speech of congratulation, panting a little, and making play with her elaborate fan.

She was quick to seize the opportunity for which she had waited so eagerly; with a few words of smiling apology to Mrs. Dollond and the others who were gathered round her, she intimated to her husband that she wished him to come with her, to attend to something: she assumed a playful air of mystery.

"Oh, you must go!" said Mrs. Dollond, "your wife is planning some delightful surprise for us: I can see it in her eyes! Though, what one could want more——"

The music began again, and the couples took their places for the
Lancers: there was to be a Shakespearian set, and another of
Waverley notabilities.

Under cover of the discussion and confusion which this scheme involved, Eve withdrew, leading the way into the room which they called the library, and which was full of superfluous furniture, removed from the drawing-room to make space for the dancers. Her husband followed, lifting his eyebrows, with a chivalrous but not wholly successful attempt to disguise his impatience.

When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him, interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a quick apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she had worn for her guests had given place to an expression even more ominous than her pallor and the trembling of her lips.

"Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might have asked you before them all—perhaps you would have preferred that! But I won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!"

He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her gaze, made an awkward effort to seem at ease.

"My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against the door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?"

"How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The truth about Philip Rainham, and that woman: that is what I ask!"

Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this:

"Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me beyond all limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a time——"

"Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is it my fault that you have made it possible for—for someone else to prove to me, to-night, that you have deceived me? The time is not of my making. But now, I must have the truth; it is the only reparation, the last thing I shall ask of you!"

"You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him; "you don't know—you have no right to speak to me like this. You don't understand these things; you must let me judge for you——"

"The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened another man's—your friend's—memory. Isn't that enough? Can you deny that you have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that he was innocent; I insist that you shall tell me the rest!"

"The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't submit to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I decline to say any more!"

"Then you cling to your lie?"

"Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a fifth-rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me warn you that there are limits to my patience!"

"I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his face—if you will refute his proofs."

"Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have acted for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather than me?"

"Why? You can ask why!" she interposed.

"Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be missed—people will talk!"

Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically.

"You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one other man who can tell me the truth—you make it necessary, I must go to him."

Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.

"I decline to discuss this damnable folly any longer; if you won't come with me I shall go alone; I shall say that you are ill—really, I think you must be!"

"Go by all means!" she replied indifferently, "but tell me first, where can I find Mr. Oswyn?"

He paused, gazing at her blankly.

"Oswyn?"

"Yes. The man who is not afraid to denounce you. If you won't enlighten me, if you won't clear your—your friend's memory—it may be at the expense of your own—perhaps he will."

"Oswyn!" he stammered, "Oswyn!"

"His address!" she demanded quickly. "Please understand that for the future I am independent; I will go to him at once! If you won't give me his address, if—— Would you prefer that I should ask my brother for it? That is my alternative!"

Lightmark found something very disconcerting in his wife's steadfast gaze, in the uncompromising calm, the quiet passion of her demeanour; his one desire was to put an end to this scene, which oppressed him as a nightmare, before he should entirely lose all power of self-control.

He felt himself almost incapable of thought, unable to weigh the meaning of her words, her threats; the readiness of resource which served him so deftly in little things had deserted him now, as it invariably did in the face of a real emergency.

If he could temporize, he might be able to arrive at something more like a plan of action, to concentrate his efforts in one direction.

He realized that if his wife fulfilled her threat, which was the more alarming in that it was not an angry one, but had every appearance of being backed by deliberate intention—if she appealed to her brother, whose moral principles he estimated more highly than his tact or worldly wisdom—there appeared to be every prospect of an aggravated scandal. For if Charles Sylvester (who was unfortunately among the revellers) declined to furnish his sister with Oswyn's address, was it not certain that she would apply elsewhere? And, after all, might not Oswyn adhere to the silence which he had so long maintained?

He reasoned quickly and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the surface of many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful resting-place for conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate gesture to escape him.

The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He turned the handle slowly without opening the door.

"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into the ballroom; let us forget this folly!"

"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain you—far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's address I shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles——"

Her husband interrupted her savagely.

"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I wash my hands of the whole affair."

He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding her bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly, the husband turning towards the door which led into the garden, the wife making her way into the ball-room, and thence towards the studio.