Christian looked at his watch. “It has occurred to me”—he suggested, hesitatingly—“it is now after two—perhaps we could make a party to go this morning. The dancing will not stop earlier, will it?”
On the stage nothing seemed further from any mind than stopping. There was some complicated kind of set dance in progress, which at the moment involved the spectacle of some score of couples, hands all joined, romping madly around in a gigantic ring. The dresses whirled more wildly than ever; the men crooked their legs and hung outward from the circle as they went, stamping their feet and laughing boisterously. Christian’s eyes singled out one young man who seemed to be making most noise of all—and then he perceived that it was Dicky Westland.
“Perhaps it might be arranged,” Cora replied, after consideration, and with a sidelong eye upon her companion. “I will go behind for a moment, and find my brother, and see what he says. No, you stop here. I will come back again.”
So many people were moving about with entire individual freedom, that he offered no objection to her departure. She pushed her way confidently yet affably past the others in the row, and disappeared at the stage door. He had no clues by which to follow her in fancy after that. Once he thought he distinguished her at the back of the stage—but for the rest it was her sister rather than the friendly Cora who engaged his thoughts. The idea that he was to see her again, quite without delay, seemed to illuminate his whole mind.
In the labyrinth of shunted scenery behind the back-curtain, and along the narrow corridors of dressing-rooms, now devoted to varying hospitable uses, Cora prosecuted what was for a time a fruitless search.
“Where are the gentlemen getting their drinks?” she asked at last of a cloak-room attendant, and the answer simplified her task. Downstairs, at the door of the manager’s room, she was lucky enough to hit upon Major Pirie. “Tell Eddy that’ I want him, will you, old man,” she said, nodding with assurance toward the crowded, smoky little interior, “and if that brother of mine is in there, I want to see him for a minute, too.”
The brother came out first—a slender, overdressed youth, with a face which suggested a cheap and inferior copy of Cora’s. It had the self-complacency without the high spirits—the comeliness of line without the delicacy of texture and charm of color. He was obviously young in years, but he regarded her through the eyes of an elderly and wearied person.
“Hello,” he said, amiably enough. “Goin’ to take Eddy home? He won’t be the worse for a friendly lead. Oh, he’s all right, though, up to now. He’s got rippin’ odds against Perambulator from Hoskins, seventy to three, you know, in fivers. Try and get him to let me in on the bet, will you? I offered to take half of it, the minute the bet was made—but he didn’t answer me. You can work it, if you try, old girl.”
“What’s Frank’s address—her office, I mean?” she put in abruptly, “Got a pencil? Go and get one from somebody. Thirty-two A, you say? Thanks! Now tell Eddy to come out.”
“But what’s up? What do you want with Frank? Anything I can tell her?”