“I do like music,” she said in a loud whisper. “It’s so churchy. I can’t hear much, but I feel it down my spine. Now, tableaux—well, sometimes they’re not just the thing, but music for the church, it’s—it’s safe!”
Colonel Denbigh, overhearing, pulled his mustache. His ear had caught the first notes of a piece that was not “churchy”; it was far too light and too fantastic.
“The kind of tune that makes a fellow sit up and take notice,” the colonel thought. “I wonder——”
He got no farther before he was drowned in applause. A small, graceful, shimmering figure had slipped out from behind the palms. Fanchon stood in the center of the stage, her slender arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes bent downward, the shadowy hair framing a low, white brow, her red lips slightly parted. If she heard the applause, she did not heed it. She made no response; she only waited.
Then, as the soft, seductive strains began to fill the hall with music, she began to sing—softly at first, then rising note by note until her clear soprano floated upward like the song of a bird. Then, just as the tension seemed to relax and a deep sigh of pleasure came from the most anxious of the audience, she began to dance.
Still singing, she danced wonderfully, strangely, wildly. Her skirt, clinging and shimmering and floating at the edges, clung to her. It unfolded like a flower as she stepped, and folded again about her slender ankles, above the marvel of her dancing feet. She swayed lightly from side to side, her slender body the very embodiment of grace and motion, as her dancing seemed to be the interpretation of the music, subtle, seductive, wonderful. So might the daughter of Herodias have danced before Herod Antipas!
Breathless, the good people in the front rows stared. Movement was impossible, every sense seemed suspended, everything but the sensation of amazement. Mrs. Carter looked in a frightened way at her husband and caught the twinkle in Colonel Denbigh’s eye. Then she saw her rector mop his forehead with his handkerchief, and she raised her shamed eyes to the stage. Fanchon was pirouetting on one toe! Applause had started in the back rows, among the black sheep, and was running down the side aisles like a prairie-fire when Mr. Carter abruptly rose.
“Excuse me,” he said roughly to Colonel Denbigh as he clambered over him. “I—I’ve forgotten something!”
Mrs. Carter half rose and then sank back, pulled down by Emily, but she seemed to hear, through the spluttering applause, her husband’s crashing exit.
It might be said that Mr. Carter had the effect of a stone thrown from an ancient catapult, he went with such bounds and rushes. For a stout man his performance was little short of miraculous. He covered the distance to his own door in ten minutes, got out his latch-key, found the key-hole unerringly in the dark, went in, and banged the door to with a violence that made the ornaments on the hall mantel rattle.