“About nine,” replied his unhappy host. “But, I say, you know, I don’t want to drag you around if you’d rather not. She’s frightfully good in her line, but if dancing bores you——”
“You’re dashed considerate all at once,” remarked his guest. “If I haven’t cracked by now, I fancy I’ll live through the best dancing of the century. That’s what you called it, wasn’t it? Here, you!”
He waved an imperious hand at a forlorn hansom clattering down the silent street, and it jolted to a halt under one of the gas lamps. For it was not in this century that the Duke of Bolingham met Miss Biddy O’Rourke. No, it was in a century when hansom cabs and gas lamps were commonplaces—when ladies wore bonnets like butterflies on piled-up ringlets, and waltzed for hours in satin slippers and kid gloves two sizes too small for them—when gentlemen cursed eloquently but noiselessly because maidens whisked yards of tulle and tarlatan behind them when they danced—a century of faded flowers and fresh sentiments and enormous sleeves—of conservatories and cotillions and conventions—of long, long letters and little perfumed notes—of intrigues over tea tables, and coaching parties to the races, and Parma violets, and pretty manners, and broken hearts. A thousand years ago, you might think, but after all it was only around the corner of the last century that the Duke of Bolingham stepped into the decrepit hansom closely followed by his unwilling retainer, and in no uncertain tones bade the driver proceed to the Liberty Music Hall.
He sat cloaked in silence while they drove, his heavy shoulders hunched up, his eyes half closed, brooding like a despoiled monarch and a cheated child over the sorry trick that life had played him. He had had everything—and he had found nothing worth having. He had the greatest fortune in England—and one of the greatest names. He had Beaton House, the Georgian miracle that was all London’s pride—and Gray Courts, that dream of sombre beauty, that was all England’s pride—Gray Courts that even now held his three tall, black-browed sons who could shoot and hunt and swear as well as any in the country—yes, even fourteen-year Roddy. That held, too, a collection of Spanish and Portuguese armour second to none, and a collection of Van Dykes first of any, and the finest clipped yew hedge in a thousand miles. That held the ladies Pamela, Clarissa, Maud, and Charlotte, his good sisters, too acidulous to find a husband between them, for all their great dowers and name and accomplishments. That for six long years had held the Lady Alicia Honoria Fortescue, a poor, sad, dull little creature, married in a moment of pity and illusion when they were both young enough to know better, who had gone in mortal terror of him from the night that they crossed the threshold of the Damask Room to the day that they laid her away under the kind marble in the little chapel.
He sat huddled in the corner of the hansom, remembering with the same shock of sick amazement his despair at the discovery of her fear of him; it still haunted every tapestried corridor of Gray Courts—every panelled hall in Beaton House—he set his teeth and turned his head, and swore that he would take the next boat to France and drink himself to death in Cannes. And the hansom cab stopped.
Gaddy Banford had two seats in the first row of stalls; had ’em for every night that the lady danced, he informed the duke with chastened pride. The duke, trampling over the outraged spectators with more than royal indifference, eyed him grimly.
“Spend the rest of your valuable time hanging round the stage door, what?” he inquired audibly.
Five of the outraged spectators said “Sh-s-h,” and the duke, squaring about in his seat, favoured them with so black a glance that the admonitions died on their lips and apologies gathered in their eyes. Banford smiled nervously and ingratiatingly.
“Oh, rather not—no, no, nothing of that kind whatever. She doesn’t go in for stage-door meetings, you know. I’ve had the honour of meeting the lady twice and she’s most frightfully jolly and all that, but——”
“Sh-h-h,” enjoined one rebellious spirit, studiously avoiding the duke’s eye. That gentleman remarked “Ha!” with derisive inflection and turned a contemptuous eye on the stage. A very large and apparently intoxicated mouse was chasing a small and agitated cat with rhythmic zest, the two having concluded the more technical portion of their programme, in which they had ably defended against all comers their engaging title of the “Jolly Joralomons, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America’s Most Unique and Mirth Compelling Acrobats, Tumblers, and Jugglers.” The Jolly Joralomons scampered light-heartedly off, rolling their equipment of bright balls before them with dexterous paws, and capered back even more light-heartedly to blow grateful kisses off the tips of their whiskers to an enraptured audience, with which the Duke of Bolingham was all too obviously not in accord.