What can a man do, then, even under such painful circumstances, when a girl whom he loves with all his heart lets him clearly see she loves him in return quite as truly? Cyril would have been more than human if he hadn’t answered those notes in an equally ardent and equally desponding strain. The burden of both their tales was always this—even if YOU would, I couldn’t, because I love you too much to impose my own disgrace upon you.
But what Elma’s mysterious trouble could be, Cyril was still unable even to hazard a guess. He only knew she had some reason of her own which seemed to her a sufficient bar to matrimony, and made her firmly determine never, in any case, to marry any one.
About twelve months after Guy’s sudden disappearance, however, a new element entered into Elma’s life. At first sight, it seemed to have but little to do with the secret of her soul. It was merely that the new purchaser of the Dowlands estate had built herself a pretty little Queen Anne house on the ground, and come to live in it.
Nevertheless, from the very first day they met, Elma took most kindly to this new Miss Ewes, the strange and eccentric musical composer. The mistress of Dowlands was a distant cousin of Mrs. Clifford’s own; so the family naturally had to call upon her at once; and Elma somehow seemed always to get on from the outset in a remarkable way with her mother’s relations. At first, to be sure, Elma could see Mrs. Clifford was rather afraid to leave her alone with the odd new-comer, whose habits and manners were as curious and weird as the sudden twists and turns of her own wayward music. But, after a time, a change came over Mrs. Clifford in this respect; and instead of trying to keep Elma and Miss Ewes apart, it was evident to Elma—who never missed any of the small by-play of life—that her mother rather desired to throw them closely together. Thus it came to pass that one morning, about a month after Miss Ewes’s arrival in her new home, Elma had run in with a message from her mother, and found the distinguished composer, as was often the case at that time of day, sitting dreamily at her piano, trying over on the gamut strange, fanciful chords of her own peculiar witch-like character. The music waxed and waned in a familiar lilt.
“That’s beautiful,” Elma cried enthusiastically, as the composer looked up at her with an inquiring glance. “I never heard anything in my life before that went so straight through one, with its penetrating melody. Such a lovely gliding sound, you know! So soft and serpentine!” And even as she said it, a deep flush rose red in the centre of her cheek. She was sorry for the words before they were out of her mouth. They recalled all at once, in some mysterious way, that horrid, persistent nightmare of the hateful snake-dance. In a second, Miss Ewes caught the bright gleam in her eye, and the deep flush on her cheek that so hastily followed it. A meaning smile came over the elder woman’s face all at once, not unpleasantly. She was a handsome woman for her age, but very dark and gipsy-like, after the fashion of the Eweses, with keen Italian eyes and a large smooth expanse of powerful forehead. Lightly she ran her hand over the keys with a masterly touch, and fixed her glance as she did so on Elma. There was a moment’s pause. Miss Ewes eyed her closely. She was playing a tune that seemed oddly familiar to Elma’s brain somehow—to her brain, not to her ears, for Elma felt certain, even while she recognised it most, she had never before heard it. It was a tune that waxed and waned and curled up and down sinuously, and twisted in and out and—ah yes, now she knew it—raised its sleek head, and darted out its forked tongue, and vibrated with swift tremors, and tightened and slackened, and coiled resistlessly at last in great folds all around her. Elma listened, with eager eyes half starting from her head, with clenched nails dug deep into the tremulous palms, as her heart throbbed fast and her nerves quivered fiercely. Oh, it was wrong of Miss Ewes to tempt her like this! It was wrong, so wrong of her! For Elma knew what it was at once—the song she had heard running vaguely through her head the night of the dance—the night she fell in love with Cyril Waring.
With a throbbing heart, Elma sat down on the sofa, and tried with all her might and main not to listen, She clasped her hands still tighter. She refused to be wrought up. She wouldn’t give way to it. If she had followed her own impulse, to be sure, she would have risen on the spot and danced that mad dance once more with all the wild abandonment of an almeh or a Zingari. But she resisted with all her might. And she resisted successfully.
Miss Ewes, never faltering, kept her keen eye fixed hard on her with a searching glance, as she ran over the keys in ever fresh combinations.
Faster, wilder, and stranger the music rose; but Elma sat still, her breast heaving hard, and her breath panting, yet otherwise as still and motionless as a statue. She knew Miss Ewes could tell exactly how she felt. She knew she was trying her; she knew she was tempting her to get up and dance; and yet, she was not one bit afraid of this strange weird woman, as she’d been afraid that sad morning at home of her own mother.
The composer went on fiercely for some minutes more, leaning close over the keyboard, and throwing her very soul, as Elma could plainly see, into the tips of her fingers. Then, suddenly she rose, and came over, well pleased, to the sofa where Elma sat. With a motherly gesture, she took Elma’s hand; she smoothed her dark hair; she bent down with a tender look, in those strange grey eyes, and printed a kiss unexpectedly on the poor girl’s forehead.
“Elma,” she said, leaning over her, “do you know what that was? That was the Naga Snake Dance. It gave you an almost irresistible longing to rise, and hold the snake in your own hands, and coil his great folds around you. I could see how you felt. But you were strong enough to resist. That was very well done. You resisted even the force of my music, didn’t you?”