Between the Dances.
I delayed my departure for nearly a fortnight in an endeavour to learn something of Bethune but could glean no tidings, so at last went down to the home of my childhood. My grandfather had purchased it in the early part of the century because the county was a hunting one and the neighbours a good set. I had spent the greater part of my youth there, and my parents still resided there at frequent intervals. Situated midway between Oundle and Deenethorpe, near Benefield village, Wadenhoe Manor was a great rambling old place, a typical English home, half hidden by ivy, with quaint gables and Elizabethan chimneys. As in the fading sunlight I drove up to it I thought I had never seen the old place looking so peaceful. Perhaps it was because my own mind was so perturbed by recent events that the solitude seemed complete. From the old mullioned windows the yellow sunset flashed back like molten gold and the birds in the chestnuts were chattering loudly before roosting. On the hill-slope farther down lay the quiet hamlet, a poem in itself. By the grey tower of its church stood two tall poplars, like guardian angels, the golden green of their young foliage all a-shimmer in the sunlight Beneath them was the sombre shade of one old yew, while a line of dark cypress trees, marshalled like a procession of mourners, stood along the grey old wall, and here and there showed the brown thatch of cottage roofs.
At home I found quite a party of visitors and the warmest welcome awaited me. My parents, who had not enjoyed good health, had remained there nearly all the winter, my father only coming to town now and then on pressing business, so I had not seen my mother for several months. The visitors, mostly friends from London, were a gay and pleasant company and dinner was bright and enjoyable, while there was plenty of brilliant chatter in the drawing-room afterwards.
Every one was full of expectancy of the meet on the morrow at Glapthorn, and the ball that was to be given by Lady Stretton at Blatherwycke in the evening, therefore all retired early, and were about again betimes.
The meet was a great success, and at night I accompanied our party to the dance, not because I felt in any mood for dancing, but because I wanted to get a chat with Dora and hear if she had received news of her lover.
Blatherwycke Hall was situated at a beautiful spot. I knew the place almost from the time I could toddle. It was a very ancient house. Its massive walls and dark oak timbers, its open hearths and spacious chimneys, its heavy doors with their antique locks and bars and hinges went back to the Armada days when the Stretton who held it was, in the words of a ballad of the time, “A hard-riding devil.” As old as the Hall, too, were the barns that clustered around it, the thatch of whose pointed gables was weathered to every shade of brown and grey, green with moss and golden with clinging lichens. Beyond was the green woodland, musical with streams, its stately pine trees springing straight and tall, its noble oaks just breaking into leaf, its larch and elm and hawthorn in all the pride of their young beauty.
From without it looked warm and cheerful with its brightly-lit windows, and within all was warm, comfortable, and brilliant. The party was a large one, for all the best people in the county came to Lady Stretton’s dances, and as I entered the great oak-panelled ballroom with its stands of armour and its quaint old chiming clock, I looked eagerly around and saw Dora in a ravishing toilette with skirt and sleeves of soft white satin, a bodice of rose-pink velvet, with the front lightly traced with jet, talking to several men, while at that moment I heard my name uttered by a well-known voice and turned to greet Mabel who, standing with her husband, the Earl, was attired in a marvellous gown of palest heliotrope.
As soon as dancing commenced, however, I managed to speak with Dora, and found she had saved me several dances. Many of the guests were my friends, and we spent altogether a most delightful night. Lady Stretton always entertained in first-rate style, and this was no exception. Outside, in the old-world garden, Chinese lanterns were hung in the arched walks, and in the smaller paths similarly arched crossing the central one at intervals those who desired air could find cool alleys, where the starlight filtered through the trees.
Along one of these I wandered with Dora after we had been waltzing, and finding a seat, we sat down to rest heedless of the chill air.
“Well,” I exclaimed at length, “have you heard from him?”