"We will see to that. Also, I have been saying good-bye to dearest Dodo, and I have been saying to her that it was not I who was so rude to her, but also that it was you, Albert. And I say now that I beg her pardon for your rudeness, but that I hope she will excuse you because you were in a fonk, and when you are in a fonk, you no longer know what you do, and in a fonk you will be till you are safe back in Germany. All that I say, dearest Albert, and if you are not good I will tell it to the mob at Charing Cross. I will say, 'This is the Prince of Allenstein, and he is a Prussian soldier, and therefore he is running away from England.' Do not provoke me, heart's dearest. You will now get them to send for a cab, and we will go because you are a fonk. There will be no special train for us, there will be no one of our cousins to see us off, there will be no red carpet, and it is all your fault. And as for dearest Dodo, I kiss her on both cheeks, and I thank her for her kindness, and I pray for a happier meeting than is also our parting."
That afternoon there began to be publicly felt the beginning of that tension which grew until the breaking-point came in the first days of August, and but for Dodo's shining example and precept, her ball that night might easily have resolved itself into a mere conference. Again and again at the beginning of the evening the floor was empty long after the band had struck up, while round the room groups of people collected and talked together on one subject. But Dodo seemed to be absolutely ubiquitous, and whenever she saw earnest conversationalists at work, she plunged into the middle of them, and broke them up like a dog charging a flock of sheep. To-morrow would do for talk, to-night it was her ball. Her special prey was any group which had as its centre an excited female fount of gossip who began her sentences with "They tell me...." Whenever that fatal phrase caught Dodo's remarkably sharp ears, she instantly led the utterer of it away to be introduced to someone on the great red dais, managed to lose her in the crowd, and "went for" the next offender. The rumour that the Allensteins had left Charing Cross that afternoon for Germany was a dangerously interesting topic, and whenever Dodo came across it, she strenuously denied it, regardless of truth, and asserted that as a matter of fact they were going down again to-morrow to stay with her father at Vane Royal. Then perceiving him not far off, looking at the dais with the expression of Dante beholding the Beatific vision, she had dived into the crowd again, and told him that if he would assert beyond the possibility of contradiction that this was the case, she would presently introduce him to anyone on the red dais whom he might select. As he pondered on the embarrassment of such richness, she was off again to break up another dangerous focus of conversation.
An hour of wild activity was sufficient to set things really moving, and avert the danger of her ball becoming a mere meeting for the discussion of the European situation, and presently she found five minutes rest in the window of the music gallery from which she could survey both the ballroom and the marquee adjoining it. In all her thirty years' experience, as hostess or guest, she had never been present at a ball which seemed quite to touch the high-water mark here, and she felt that without Lord Cookham's assistance she had provided exactly the sort of evening that he had designed, in honour of Jumbo. It had happened like that; everybody was present in that riot of colour and rhythm that seethed about her, and at the moment the dais which stretched from side to side of the huge room was empty, for every one of its occupants was dancing, and she observed that even Lord Cookham (who had come in an official capacity) had deserted his place behind the row of chairs, and was majestically revolving with a princess, making little obeisances as he cannoned heavily into other exalted personages. The whole of the diplomatic corps was there, German and Austrian included, and there was the German ambassador, quite recovered from his curious indisposition, waltzing with the Italian ambassadress. The same spirit that had animated Dodo in breaking up serious conjectures and conversation seemed now to have spread broadcast; all were conspirators to make this ball, the last of the year, the most brilliant and memorable. From a utilitarian point of view there was no more to be said for it than for some gorgeously-plumaged bird that strutted and spread its jewelled wings, and yet all the time it was a symbol, expressing not itself alone but what it stood for. The glory of great names, wide-world commerce, invincible navies, all the endorsements of Empire, lay behind it. It glittered and shone like some great diamond in an illumination which at any moment might be obscured by the menace of thundercloud, but, if this was the last ray that should shine on it before the darkness that even now lapped the edge of it enveloped it entirely, that gloom would but suck the light from it, and not soften nor crush its heart of adamant....
From the moment that the ball got moving Dodo abandoned herself to enjoying it to the utmost, wanting, as was characteristic of her, to suck the last-ounce of pleasure from it. She had that indispensable quality of a good hostess, namely, the power of making herself the most fervent of her guests, and never had she appreciated a ball so much. Not until the floor was growing empty and the morning light growing vivid between the chinks of closed curtains did she realise that it was over.
"Jumbo, dear," she said, "why can't we double as one does at bridge, and then somehow it would be eleven o 'clock last night, and we should have it all over again? Are you really going? What a pity! Stop to breakfast—my dear, what pearls! I can't believe they're real—and don't let us go to bed at all. Yes, do you know, it's quite true—though I've been lying about it quite beautifully—the Allensteins left for Germany this afternoon, I mean yesterday afternoon. Oh, I don't want to begin again.... What will the next days bring, I wonder?"
She stood at the street door a moment, while he went out into that pregnant and toneless light that precedes sunrise, when all things look unreal. The pavement and road outside were pearly with dew, and the needless head-light of his motor as it purred its way up to the door gleamed with an unnatural redness. In the house the floor was quite empty now and the band silent, a crowd of men and women eager to get away besieged the cloakroom, and in ten minutes more Dodo found herself alone, but for the servants already beginning to restore the rooms to their ordinary state.
She felt suddenly tired, and going upstairs drew down the blinds over her open windows. She wanted to get to sleep at once, to shut out the dawning day and all that it might bring.