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"Goodness! I'd no idea that my face was such a tell-tale. I
believe I was. That funny old room, with ridges in the floor, and the
ceiling nearly on your head--how DID we manage to dance in it?"
"Well, we did manage somehow, didn't we?"
They gazed at the figures wheeling past them, blankly unresponsive to
casual stares and smiles. They seemed to hear the rotten flood-gates,
shut so long ago, creak on their rusty hinges.
"Heard anything of the Urquharts lately?"
"Yes. Alice was married the other day--to a widower with fourteen
children. She has not been very happy at home, I fear, with Harold's
wife. Harold has the place now, you know. Jim gave it up to him when he
married."
"When who married?"
"Harold."
"What's Jim doing?"
"He is my manager at Redford."
Mr Dalzell smiled darkly. "He likes that, I suppose?"
"I don't know whether he likes it or not, I'm sure, but I do. I know
that everything's right when he is there."
"Married?" "Lawks, no! The most confirmed old bachelor on the face of
the earth."
They fell silent again, still gazing into the room. Deb lay back and
fanned herself; Claud leaned forward and nursed his knee. He ought now
to have asked news of her sisters, but he avoided mentioning any of
them.
"Been back lately, Deb?"
"Not for years, I am ashamed to say."
"Anybody living at Redford?"
"Miss Keene and a few servants only. Too bad, isn't it? Oh, I
must go soon and see the old place. But this European life--somehow,
the longer you live it the less you feel you can live any other."
"I used to feel that. But now--one gets awfully tired of things--"
"Oh, I don't!"
"But then you keep so horribly young, don't you know."
He turned and looked at her. She flushed up like a girl.
"Thank you. That's a very pleasing compliment, although I know you
cannot mean it."
"I'd like not to mean it. I'd like to have found you as old as I am
myself."
"How cruel of you! Not that you are such a Methuselah as you would try
to make out--"
"There are not five years between us," he broke in sharply.
"I know."
Back went memory in a flash to a succession of childish birthdays,
their love-tokens and festive celebrations. His was in November, and
his "party" was usually a picnic. Hers was in May, and was "kept" in
the house, with big fires and a tea-table crowned with a three-tiered
iced cake, and blind-man's-buff and turn-the-trencher in the evening.
She recalled wild contests with an imperious little boy, who could
never conquer her except by stooping to it; and the self-conscious
silliness of their behaviour to each other when they grew from children
into boy and girl.
"Not much fun in birthdays now, Deb." He seemed to comment on her
thoughts.
"Oh, well!" she sighed vaguely.
And at that instant the music stopped. Someone gave the signal to
retire from the ball-room, bedwards. They were parted by the crowd that
gathered about them when the dancing ceased, and he did not find her
again even to say good-night.
CHAPTER XXV.
The shooting men were up first, to their early breakfast. It seemed to
Deb a matter of course that Claud would be of this virile company; it
was his saving grace as a man, when he was young, that he was a keen
and accomplished sportsman. After an indifferent night, she rose lazily
and late; found, as she expected, only a few more women in the
breakfast-room, and ate her own meal alone at one of the little tables.
The hostess drifted in amongst the last, and stopped a moment to shake
hands and exchange a word.
"It seems a beautiful day," she said, "and we shall be making up a
party by-and-by to go out and lunch with the guns. You will join us, of
course?"
But Deb thought of Claud amongst the guns, and of the horrible risk of
appearing to run after him; and she replied sweetly that, although she
would have loved the outing, she was afraid she must stay at home,
owing to important letters that had to be written for the afternoon
post.
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Cambridge, Ada, 1844-1926 - Sisters