Laura was denied the social gift, she had never been good at enjoying parties. But this, she hoped, would be a different and more exhilarating affair. She entered the field in a most propitious frame of mind, which not even Mr. Gurdon, wearing a large rosette like a steward’s and staring rudely and searchingly at each comer before he allowed them to pass through the gate, was able to check.
“Old Goat!” exclaimed Mrs. Leak in a voice of contemptuous amusement after they had passed out of Mr. Gurdon’s hearing. “He thinks he can boss us here, just as he does in the village.”
“Is Mr. Jones here?” inquired Laura.
Mrs. Leak shook her head and laughed.
“Mr. Gurdon doesn’t allow him to come.”
“I suppose he doesn’t think it suitable for a clergyman.”
Perhaps it was as well that Mr. Gurdon had such strict views. In spite of the example of Mr. Lowis, that old reading parson, it might be a little awkward if Mr. Jones were allowed to attend the Sabbath.
But that apparently was not the reason. Mrs. Leak was beginning to explain when she broke off abruptly, coughed in a respectful way, and dropped a deep curtsey. Before them stood an old lady, carrying herself like a queen, and wearing a mackintosh that would have disgraced a tinker’s drab. She acknowledged Mrs. Leak’s curtsey with an inclination of the head, and turned to Laura.
“I am Miss Larpent. And you, I think, must be Miss Willowes.”
The voice that spoke was clear as a small bell and colourless as if time had bleached it of every human feeling save pride. The hand that rested in Laura’s was light as a bird’s claw; a fine glove encased it like a membrane, and through the glove Laura felt the slender bones and the sharp-faceted rings.
“Long ago,” continued Miss Larpent, “I had the pleasure of meeting your great-uncle, Commodore Willowes.”
Good heavens, thought Laura in a momentary confusion, was great-uncle Demetrius a warlock? For Miss Larpent was so perfectly witchlike that it seemed scarcely possible that she should condescend to ordinary gentlemen.
Apparently Miss Larpent could read Laura’s thoughts.
“At Cowes,” she added, reassuringly.
Laura raised her eyes to answer, but Miss Larpent had disappeared. Where she had stood, stood Miss Carloe, mincing and bridling, as though she would usurp the other’s gentility. Over her face she wore a spotted veil. Recognising Laura she put on an air of delighted surprise and squeaked like a bat, and immediately she too edged away and was lost in the darkness.
Then a young man whom she did not know came up to Laura and put his arm respectfully round her waist. She found herself expected to dance. She could not hear any music, but she danced as best she could, keeping time to the rhythm of his breath upon her cheek. Their dance was short, she supposed she had not acquitted herself to her partner’s satisfaction, for after a few turns he released her, and left her standing by the hedge. Not a word had passed between them. Laura felt that she ought to say something, but she could not think of a suitable opening. It was scarcely possible to praise the floor.
A familiar discouragement began to settle upon her spirits. In spite of her hopes she was not going to enjoy herself. Even as a witch, it seemed, she was doomed to social failure, and her first Sabbath was not going to open livelier vistas than were opened by her first ball. She remembered her dancing days in Somerset, Hunt Balls, and County Balls in the draughty Assembly Rooms. With the best intentions she had never managed to enjoy them. The first hour was well enough, but after that came increasing listlessness and boredom; the effort, when one danced again with the same partner, not to say the same things, combined with the obligation to say something rather like them, the control of eyelids, the conversion of yawns into smiles, the humbling consciousness that there was nothing to look forward to except the drive home. That was pleasant, and so was the fillip of supper at the drive’s end, and the relief of yielding at last to an unfeigned hunger and sleepiness. But these were by-blow joys; of the delights for which balls are ordained she knew nothing.
She watched the dancers go by and wondered what the enchantment was which they felt and she could not. What made them come out in the middle of the night, loop paper garlands over the trees, light a row of candles in the ditch, and then, friends and enemies and indifferents, go bumping round on the rough grass? That fatal comparison with the Primrose League recurred to her. She was not entertained, so she blamed the entertainment. But the fault lay with her, she had never been good at parties, she had not got the proper Sabbath-keeping spirit. Miss Larpent was enjoying herself; Laura saw the bonnet whisk past. But doubtless Miss Larpent had enjoyed herself at Cowes.
These depressing thoughts were interrupted by red-haired Emily, who came spinning from her partner’s arms, seized hold of Laura and carried her back into the dance. Laura liked dancing with Emily; the pasty-faced and anaemic young slattern whom she had seen dawdling about the village danced with a fervour that annihilated every misgiving. They whirled faster and faster, fused together like two suns that whirl and blaze in a single destruction. A strand of the red hair came undone and brushed across Laura’s face. The contact made her tingle from head to foot. She shut her eyes and dived into obliviousness—with Emily for a partner she could dance until the gunpowder ran out of the heels of her boots. Alas! this happy ending was not to be, for at the height of their performance Emily was
