CHAPTER XIX.
THE CLUB BALL.
Elsie sobbed all night, the sobs of outraged maidenhood. He had conquered. She knew it too well. His kisses burned on her lips, and the burning was sweet agony. She loved him. But—and here came the hideous doubt—did he love her? Had he only been amusing himself? Had he only been revenging dead Jensen? Oh, what concerns of his were this dead man's wrongs? Had he only been playing out the game at which he had challenged her skill?
If he loved her, she told herself, he would come on the morrow. He would come in proud humility, and ask her to forgive him, certain of her pardon.
She heard the steamer bells as the Ullagong, with the Waveryngs on board, steamed up the river. She got up and looked out through the blur of her tears. It was grey dawn—the dawn she thought of her day of destiny. Would he come? She determined that she would torture herself no more with speculations. She got up and dressed, and set herself savagely to her household tasks.
It was perhaps fortunate that Mrs. Valliant was too preoccupied with the thought of the Waveryngs' visit, and the effect it would have upon Ina, to notice the pale face and wild eyes of her eldest daughter. She could talk of nothing but Lady Waveryng. Would Ina meet her sister-in-law at the wharf? Would she call at Government House that afternoon? Lady Stukeley would now be obliged to take some notice of Ina's family. It was she who suggested that Elsie should walk down to Fermoy's and learn something of Ina's arrangements.
Lord Horace was in the verandah, talking excitedly to a plain, rather heavy, good-natured looking man, in a light tweed suit, and with something of the tourist air. The man's eyes rested admiringly on Elsie as she stepped along the side path, not daring to look at any of the other windows which opened on to the verandah, lest, perchance, she might encounter Blake. But Blake was at his office, as befitted a new minister, anxious to learn his duties, and there was no need for that startled flush which caught Lord Waveryng's attention.
"By Jove," she heard him say, "do they breed 'em like this out here?"
"My wife's sister, Miss Valliant," said Horace, as she opened the gate of the verandah. "Elsie, this is Waveryng. Brought 'em straight along to see Ina, in spite of the Stukeleys."
"Lady Stukeley will understand perfectly," said Lord Waveryng. "Em made it straight. Of course Em wanted to see the new sister-in-law." And thus Elsie gleaned that the Waveryngs meant to be nice.
"They're bricks, ain't they?" said Horace aside.
Ina was in the sitting-room, where a very trim, very handsome, very decided, and rather voluble lady had taken possession of her. Lady Waveryng was a beauty. She was very like her brother, Lord Horace, and had charming manners, though her once lovely complexion had got a little spoiled in the hunting field. Hunting and yachting were the two things she liked best in the world. Elsie heard her say she only wished their yacht had been big enough to go round the world in, but on the whole she wasn't sure that she did not prefer ocean steamers; and the passengers made it more amusing. They had had a perfectly lovely time in Ceylon. Singapore was so interesting, and the whole Torres Straits route delightful.
"And this is Elsie, I am sure," and she got up as Elsie entered.
"Horace sent us your photograph with Ina's, to show us how easy it was to fall in love with Australian girls."
Lady Waveryng shook Elsie's hand warmly, and then she kissed Ina.
They must fly. She did not know what the Stukeleys would say to her. And there was so much to be done. And she understood there was to be a ball that evening somewhere, and her maid had been so upset with sea-sickness that she would have to go and do her own unpacking.
They started off. Horace with them. Lady Waveryug kissed her hand as she turned the Ferry Hill, and walked along leaning on her silver-mounted stick, looking in her neat tailor-made dress and dainty hat, Elsie thought, unapproachably simple and thoroughbred.
"You see, Ina, you needn't have been frightened of them," said Elsie.
"They're coming to the Dell," said Ina. "They say that they're longing to do some Bush travelling. Lady Waveryng wants to hunt kangaroos. She says I must call her 'Em.' We are to dine at Government House this evening—a family party; and, oh! Elsie, I am so sorry, but you'll arrange to go with the Prydes or Mrs. Jem Hallett, won't you, to the club ball, and wait for me in the cloak room?"
"The Club Ball?" said Elsie. "Oh! I had forgotten." And in truth her heart and mind had been too full for the thought even of a ball to find a place there. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Yes, I'll arrange somehow."
"And your bouquet, Elsie," said Ina. "Do you think Mr. Blake will send you one this time?"
"No," exclaimed Elsie, almost fiercely—"he will not send me one. Why should he? Let us go over to the gardens, Ina, and beg some azaleas and camellias from the curator."
She did not get back to Riverside till her verandah reception hour. She had a wild fancy that Blake might be there waiting for her. Ministers were not tied to their offices like the humble fry of civil servants and bank clerks. The bank clerks were there—and Dominic Trant was there, but no Blake.
It was Trant who brought her a bouquet; and a very beautiful one of tea roses and maidenhair fern and crimson double geranium. He had been at some pains to find out from Lady Horace what Elsie's colours were to be.
No other bouquet had come, and she said she would wear this one, and thanked him very prettily. He wondered what had happened to her, and why her manner was so strained and conscious. Man-like he attributed.it to his own influence. Was it possible that he was beginning to affect her? He had an immense faith in his power of influencing women. His dark eyes glowed passionately upon her face. To flirt with him at that moment was a distraction, and an anodyne to the fierce pain which tormented her. She felt a wicked pleasure in playing with him as a cat might have played with a mouse. Yes, she would give him some dances. She would not say how many. They would wait until they were in the ball-room. What was it that he wanted to say to her? If it was going to be anything very interesting and exciting she would listen with the greatest pleasure. She wanted to be amused, taken out of herself. Did he think he could do that for her?"
"Yes," Trant answered deliberately. He thought he could at least interest her. He would not promise not to offend her. Perhaps a little at first she might be jarred; women were always jarred by what was real in a man. He meant to be his real self.
Mr. Anderson and Minnie Pryde came in. Minnie was dying to hear all about Lady Waveryng.
They sat in the verandah till it was nearly dressing time. And no one else came. Blake never appeared.
In the evening the Prydes called for her in the jingle—Minnie and her father, who was in one of the Government offices—there was no Mrs. Pryde—and they drove round by the bridge and along the river embankment, till they got into the string of carriages waiting to pass towards the awning stretched out from the entrance to the Club House. The Club was a pretty low building, with wide verandahs and a big garden, gay with coloured lanterns. The covered way from the street was hung with flags, the ball-room looked very brilliant with its decorations of flaming poinsettia against a background of palms. Where had all the crimson flowers come from? There was nothing else— lands of red geraniums and euphorbia and vivid pomegranate, deepening into the darker tones of the red camellias and azaleas and the great flags of poinsettia. Minnie Pryde bewailed her pink dress, which was quite out of harmony with the prevailing colouring.
"Oh, Elsie, how clever of you to find out what they were going to decorate with!" she cried, looking admiringly at Elsie's cloudy white gauze with its splashes of crimson at waist and bosom. Elsie's cheeks were almost as bright as the crimson flowers, but the colour came and went, and there was a frightened look in her eyes.
Frank Hallett, who was one of the stewards, was waiting near the doorway.
"Your sister asked me to tell you not to wait in the cloak room," he said. "She may be late. We've been dining at Government House, you know, and Mr. Blake and I managed to get away before the rest, because of being stewards. Mrs. Jem will chaperon you till Ina comes."
Mrs. Jem was gorgeous in maize and black lace, which suited her brunette colouring and her affectation of matron-hood. She had taken her place among the higher magnates, and did not smile quite as sweet a welcome to poor pariah Elsie as Frank Hallett would have wished. But Mrs. Jem was wise in her generation, and she had a shrewd notion that Lord Waveryng would take to Elsie, and it was quite evident that Elsie's position in Leichardt's Town society would be somewhat changed by the Waveryngs' stay at Government House, and the admission of Lady Horace into that inner circle from which she had been in her girlhood so rigorously excluded.
"Yes, lovely," said Mrs. Jem, in answer to a remark of Lady Garfit's. "But you know I always said that Ina was so much better style, and the rouge is quite evident to-night. It is such a pity."
But even as she spoke Elsie's cheeks belied the accusation. The girl went deadly white for an instant, and then the crimson tide welled up again. Blake was coming towards them. There was not a shadow of consciousness in his manner. He stopped to salute Mrs. Jem and engage her for a set of Lancers. Yes, he had been dining at Government House. He had thought that Miss Valliant might be with Lady Horace. He bowed ceremoniously to Elsie. "How charming Lady Waveryng was, and how nice to see her so devoted already to Lady Horace; though of course she was certain to be that."
Was it Blake who was uttering these banalities? Elsie waited. He had not yet asked her to dance. Trant was hovering near, watching her with jealous eyes, and now he pushed himself forward. "Miss Valliant, this is my dance."
Elsie looked at her card. It had got pretty well filled already. Frank Hallett's name was down several times, and the Bank clerks had been given a sop apiece, and the more important dancing men—the unmarried members of the Assembly and some strangers from a neighbouring colony, had each set down their initials. But Elsie had kept some blanks, on which she had placed a hieroglyph of her own. "No, you have made a mistake. It is the next one. This is a galop. They are not keeping to the programme."
"Oh, they won't do that until the great people come," said Blake. "And here they are, and we stewards must go and receive them."
The band struck up "God save the Queen." There was a little confusion at the entrance, and presently the Governor's fine head appeared above the blue collar of his uniform and Lady Waveryng's tiara of diamonds at his shoulder. "How handsome she is, and how like Lord Horace!" murmured Mrs. Jem. The Leichardtstonians wondered that they had not thought more of Lord Horace, and a pang shot through Lady Garfit. Oh, why hadn't she managed to marry him to Rose! Lady Waveryng's diamonds and aristocratic head seemed the visible symbol of poor little Ina Gage's unmerited social advancement. Lady Waveryng had an air and an aplomb that could only belong to an aristocrat. And she was so simple and so unaffected, and looked about with such evident interest, pointing to the poinsettia leaves, and saying something to Blake as she passed him, that produced a bow of evident acknowledgment of a compliment on the taste of the stewards. Lady Waveryng's eyes went back to Blake in a puzzled sort of way. "Do you know who he is, and if he belongs to the Castle Coola people?" she said to the Governor. "I can't get rid of the impression that I know his face. But I don't know which of the Coola people he could be. All the brothers are dead."
Sir Theophilus Stukeley did not know. He had never met any of the Castle Coola people; always avoided Ireland, and thanked Providence that he had not been born an Irish landlord.
Lady Waveryng laughed. "Oh, but the Coolas are of the landlord type—the rough Tories; at least Lord Coola is at any rate. Waveryng has some fishing near them, and that's how I came to know them. But he has all the traditions. It's so sad that all the sons are dead, and the property must go to some dreadful English lawyer, whom one of the daughters married. It seems quite out of keeping that the Castle, Banshee and all, should go into Sassenach hands. Oh! Mr. Blake, I beg your pardon." She became suddenly conscious that Blake was close to her, and that he was devouring what she said. "I am sure you are one of the Coola people, aren't you? Please tell me are you related to Lord Coola?"
"In a hundredth degree," he answered. "All the Blakes, I suppose, came originally from the Coola stock." He withdrew reflecting that he had involved himself in complications.
The Governor and Lady Waveryng went to the upper end of the room. Lord Waveryng had Lady Stukeley on his arm. Ina came in with the aide-de-camp, and Lord Horace with the private secretary's wife.
"By Jove, that sister-in-law of Horace's beats them all to fits," said Lord Waveryng. "I am going to ask her if she will dance with me." He led Elsie out for the first waltz after the state quadrille, in which imposing ceremonial she had naturally no place. He found her very charming, so he confided to his wife, and with a delightful sense of humour. She had asked him how he and Lady Waveryng bore the shock of the introduction to Horace's barbarians. She had also informed him that lords and lesser members of the aristocracy were at a discount on the diggings, and they had never been able to get up a sufficient sense of the honour to which Ina had been raised. She thought, however, that acquaintance with Lord Waveryng might now enable them to realize their advantages. She said all this with grave simplicity, looking into Lord Waveryng's face with her beautiful, shy eyes, always keeping that expression of vague pain and alarm.
All this time Blake had never asked her to dance. He had danced with. Lady Waveryng, with Ina, with Rose Garfit. He had smiled at her in an absolutely conventional manner when their eyes met, but he had never shown the least desire for any private conversation. What did it all mean? Had he been mad last night? Had she been mad or dreaming? Or was it merely that the game was played, and that he wished her to understand this, and that her claims upon his attention were at an end.
Well, he should see that she did not care. She smiled upon Trant with reckless witchery, and let him take her into the square of garden behind the Club House—a dim patch of fairyland—palms outlined against the pale moonlit sky, coloured lamps hanging on the fantastic branches of the monkey trees and gleaming in thickets of bamboos. The bamboos made a soft rustling in the night wind. The datura flowers scented the air with their heavy fragrance. There were little tents here and there, and cane lounges, with bright red cushions set in secluded corners.
To one of these Trant led her. Her shoulders were bare, and she shivered slightly as he came close to her. "It is too cold to be out in the garden," she said.
"Cold; no, not in the least. But see how thoughtful I have been."
He lifted his arm and showed her a white wrap which he had been carrying half concealed by her bouquet. He had asked permission to hold that for her while she had finished her dance with Mr. Anderson.
"It is Ina's," said Elsie. "Thank you."
He put it on her shoulders. She took her bouquet from him. "Thank you," she said again. "I don't think there's anything you can do for me except amuse me."
"I shall not amuse you," he answered, "I am too deadly serious for that."
"Deadly seriousness may be amusing sometimes. Go on, Mr. Trant. Talk—talk"
"What shall I talk about—you or myself?"
"Or both. Do you like my dress? Do you think I look nice?"
"You look beautiful," he said deliberately. "Every time I look at you I—I want to kiss you."
She shrank—"Don't please talk like that."
"I said I should jar upon you if I allowed myself to be real, didn't I? That's what I really feel though. I want all the time to take you in my arms, and cover you with kisses. I would do it too—if"
She got up. "Please take me in. I don't like you when you say wild things."
"Don't be afraid. I have too much respect for you to offend. Besides my time isn't yet. When I kiss you it shall be with your permission—unless"
"Unless what?"
"Unless I see that you will never freely give me permission. Then I shall take it. But I do things in a big way, Miss Valliant—not in a hole-and-corner fashion. It wouldn't suit me to snatch a kiss in a garden, and see you go off in a fit of indignation, thinking me an odious cad. You wouldn't think me a cad if I seized a kiss in some wild lonely place, with not a soul in earshot; a place like Baròlin Waterfall, let us say, where you would be utterly helpless, and at my mercy. There'd be something big about that. You'd be too frightened to tell yourself I was a cad. You'd be frightened enough almost to imagine me a hero. And then, perhaps, I shouldn't take the kiss. Perhaps I should act a chivalrous part, and in the end, maybe you would give it to me of your own accord."
Elsie laughed. There was something in his wooing that, rough as it was, appealed to her. Instead of moving away, she sat down again, and leaned a little towards him, huddled in her cloak.
"Well," he said, "I am beginning to interest you, am I not? I know exactly what sort of a woman you are. I think a man might have a chance with you, if he carried you off by force. Elsie, listen"
She shook her head, and made a gesture of rebuke.
"Yes, I shall call you Elsie, this once. Elsie, Elsie. It is a beautiful name. I delight in the name. Elsie. I say it to myself when I am alone. I kiss you in imagination when I am alone. Elsie, I love you."
"Mr. Trant"
"You can't prevent me from loving you; I have the right to do so, just as much as Blake; only he doesn't love any woman, he is not capable of loving anybody but himself"
Elsie gave a little inarticulate cry of pain.
"Something happened last night between you and Blake. Oh, I know it as well as if you or he had told me. I haven't been with Blake all these years for nothing. I know the signs of his face. I know what it means when he puts on that sort of mask he is wearing to-night. It means that the devil is in him, and that he will go his way come what will. Don't be his victim, Miss Valliant. It's for your own good I say it; don't believe in Blake."
Elsie turned on him, her face quivering with passionate anger.
"Be silent on this subject; say what you choose about yourself. That doesn't matter. It's only amusing, it interests me in a way. But don't insult me by mentioning Mr. Blake's name in connection with mine. I will not have it"
"Very well. But I have warned you. And I have as good a right to make love to you as Mr. Frank Hallett, and that according to Leichardt's Town gossip means a good deal, if, as they say, you were engaged to him before Blake came on the scene. There, I am offending again. We'll leave Blake out of the question."
"I was never engaged to Mr. Frank Hallett. Now you have said what you wanted to say, and there is an end. You are quite right, no one could prevent you. But when I have given you my answer, the incident will be closed, as they say."
"I haven't asked you for an answer," he said, imperturbably. "I don't want to close the incident. I intend to open it again. I love you, and I mean to marry you."
Elsie laughed nervously. "Really, Mr. Trant! Am I not to have a voice in the matter?"
"Oh, yes, later on. But you must get accustomed to the idea. I'm not a poor man, Miss Valliant. It may be as well that I should mention this, and I intend very shortly to cut this life—for good and all. I have had enough of it. I propose in a few months to leave Australia, and to take my money out of the place. I shall not have done such a bad thing out of Australia—" Trant laughed his odd laugh—"and then I shall go to Europe and I shall enjoy life."
"I am glad to hear it."
"I shall be in a position to give my wife most of the things that a woman likes—travel, amusement, society, dress, luxuries, and what ought to count a little, unbounded devotion. That does count for something with a woman, doesn't it?"
"It depends on who offers it."
"I'm not such an odiously unattractive fellow—at least I've managed to make some women care for me. I know I could make you care for me, if I set to work in the right way. Anyhow I mean to try."
"It will be no use at all, Mr. Trant. It will be only waste of time."
"We shall see. I think you will have to admit later that I am a man of determination."
"Miss Valliant, I have been looking for you everywhere. This is our dance."
The speaker was Lord Waveryng. Elsie got up and took his arm, and they went into the ball-room.