He went back into the ballroom. Nobody seemed to notice him there. It pleased him to think that these ordinary people were too dull in their perceptions to guess at the wonder in his heart. It was a secret that he shared with only one other person in the world, and that secret had altered his whole outlook on life. He was no longer the timid boy, conscious of his social disadvantages and of his new dress clothes, who had entered the Willises’ house a couple of hours before, but a man, a lover, to whose passion the whole beauty of the world ministered, a creature miraculously placed beyond the reach of envy or of scorn. He was happy to wait patiently for the supreme moment when he should see her again. And so he waited, mildly tolerant of Griffin, over whom he had scored so easily, of Edward Willis, who performed with a set face his penitentiary programme of duty-dances, of Mrs. Willis, who watched the joy of her small daughter Lilian with the proud but anxious eyes of a mother hen, of Mr. Willis circulating among his guests with an expansive smile, of poor Lady Hingston, still revoking automatically in the card-room.
But Dorothy Powys never returned to the seat that she had occupied under the shadow of Mrs. Willis’s wings. She had told him that she didn’t mean to dance any more, but surely that didn’t mean that he was not to see her again. He grew uneasy. Of course she could easily escape if she wanted to do so, for she was staying in the house. He wondered if he dared ask Mrs. Willis what had become of her, but decided that this would certainly give him away.
Instead of doing this he posted himself in a corner from which he could hear everything that was said in Mrs. Willis’s circle. This was not a very profitable pursuit, for Mrs. Willis was not an interesting talker, and the only excitement that penetrated the broody calm that surrounded her was the arrival of her husband, very excited over a telephone message, that had no foundation in fact, announcing the relief of Ladysmith by General Buller. Edwin was beginning to give the business up as a bad job when he saw a tall, languid man, whom he considered to be rather shabbily dressed, approach Mrs. Willis and ask her what had happened to his niece.
“Oh, she was here half an hour ago,” said Mrs. Willis. “The poor child told me that she had a headache and was going to bed. I told Hannah to take her a hot water bottle. . . . I do hope you’re quite comfortable, Lord Alfred,” she went on. “It is nice, isn’t it? to see all these young people enjoying themselves. At least it would be, if one didn’t have to think of all the poor creatures in South Africa being fired at by these treacherous Boers.”
And the tall, shabby man mumbled, “Yes . . . yes, certainly. . . . Very,” in his beard.
It was enough for Edwin. He said good-bye to Mrs. Willis, who seemed only mildly surprised at his departure, and left the house. There was no reason now why he should stay. On the stone terrace he paused, listening for a moment to the muted music from within the house. In the upper stories only one window was lighted. He could see the glowing yellow pane beyond a bough of one of the cedars with which the lawn was shaded. He wondered if that window were hers. He would like, he thought, to stay there all night in the black shadow of the cedar, gazing at that window and feeling that he was near her. Later on, no doubt, the light would be extinguished, and then he would imagine her lying there asleep. How beautiful she must be when she lay there sleeping!
He sighed, and went on his way, under the wonderful night. He climbed the steep slope of Mawne Bank, under the smouldering pit-fires, in a dream, and found himself, surprised, beneath the walls of the cherry orchard at the back of Old Mawne Hall. Inside the walls the cherry-trees lay locked in a wintry sleep. He stopped, for the steepness of the hill had stolen his breath. He remembered a day when he walked there with his mother. “How mother would have loved her!” he thought. Yes . . . she was more wonderful than his mother. On the day that he remembered, so many years ago, it had been spring. The branches had been full of billowy bloom. Now, in the wintry night, he felt that spring was near: spring was in his blood, stirring it to new and passionate aspirations as in a few months time it would stir the dreamy sap of the cherry-trees. A strange, unseasonable miracle. Glorious, indefinite words formed themselves in his mind. Spring, with its warm, perfumed breath, triumphing beautifully over the powers of winter and death. Death at Colenso under those tawny kopjes. Love in his heart. A sublime, ecstatic muddle. . . . The Mawne furnaces leapt into a sudden flower of fire that made the sky above them tawny. Love was like fire . . . an exultant leaping flame.
He did not know where he was going until he found himself at home in his little shabby room taking off his dress-suit and staring at himself as a stranger in the dusty mirror. “Who am I?” he thought, “that this should have happened to me? I do not know myself. I am greater and more wonderful than the image that I see in the glass.”
He placed his precious talisman of muslin under his pillow, and wondered if he might be blessed with a dream of her. “She kissed me,” he thought. “She kissed my lips—”