Grit Lawless Part 7

Afterwards he wondered at himself. The thing was absurd... A girl in her first season! It puzzled him to think what the attraction could be.

She was not even especially good-looking. A starving man is no epicure, he told himself; and determined--but did not keep his resolve-- to leave the thing alone.

CHAPTER SIX.

The band was playing a barn dance when Lawless and his companion re-entered the ball-room, and most of the dancers had already taken the floor. A disconsolate-looking youth, who was wandering aimlessly round the room with his gaze continually on the exits, hurried towards them when they appeared in the doorway, and eagerly claimed his partner.

"I thought you had forgotten," he said to her reproachfully, "that this was our dance."

"Oh no!" she answered as she took his arm. "Only I didn't hear the music quite at once."

She let him lead her straightway among the throng of dancers, and was surprised to find how little the excitement of the exercise moved her, to whom dancing had once seemed an all-sufficient joy. Her partner's rather commonplace, but heretofore entirely satisfying, conversation pleased her no more than the movement. That dance was altogether the dullest and most stupid affair in which she had taken part. Other dull dances were to follow. Throughout the evening she rather unfairly compared each of her partners with the man who was already enshrined in her heart and worshipped as a hero.

Lawless, having handed Miss Weeber over, retired to the stoep to smoke.

Van Bleit was there, and several other men who possessed a.s.sertive thirsts and a settled belief in a reservation of strength. There was a small bar fixed up at one end of the stoep. Lawless made his way to it, and Van Bleit joined him, but refused to drink. He chaffed Lawless good-naturedly on his partiality.

"It's most marked, old chap," he said. "Why don't you ring the changes?

I overheard quite the best-looking girl in the room declare she was dying to dance with you, and I as good as promised to introduce you.

She's keeping the supper dance open."

"Then you'd better book it yourself, Karl," the other answered indifferently.

"I'm not booking anything," Van Bleit replied with a quiet smile. "I'm reserving myself until She arrives."

Lawless emptied his gla.s.s hastily and set it down.

"You don't mean," he said, moving away from the buffet, "that Mrs Lawless is coming to-night?"

"Why wouldn't I mean that?" Van Bleit asked, looking at him curiously.

"It's close on midnight, man. And... this kind of show..."

"She isn't such a puritan as you imagine," Van Bleit rejoined.--"I ought to know something about that by now... And she promised me she would come to-night. There was something--some rotten music she was going to hear first with the Smythes. Then they were coming on here."

He pitched away his cigar and twirled the ends of his big moustache into fine points curving upward, which gave him, he imagined, a distinguished and military appearance. He was well enough to look upon without going to this excess of trouble.

"She's not keen on dancing," he added complacently; "but I've had her out on the floor once or twice. Her waltzing! ... it isn't dancing...

it's a poem. And the satisfaction of her nearness! ... Just to hold her in one's arms! ... Oh Lord! Lawless, if you only knew what it felt like! But you're too d.a.m.ned self-contained to understand. You simply sneer till I want to hit the look off your face. I wonder whether any woman ever warmed your fish-blood, and set your pulses beating a fraction of a second quicker!"

"You seem to forget my violent partiality of this evening," Lawless returned sarcastically.

"Pshaw! It's no bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss who'll set your veins on fire."

And then, the man having a kink in his nature which made him peculiarly evil, he added: "It's quite a safe game, though. There are no interfering male relations. The mother is the widow of a wool-merchant.

They're not well off; and she'd welcome a wealthy son-in-law.

Incidentally, there is no reason why a man shouldn't amuse himself."

"I will make the mother's acquaintance to-night," Lawless answered, and struck a match and lighted himself a cigarette. Van Bleit was sucking cachous for the sweetening of his breath. The smell of musk irritated Lawless' nostrils. "It takes some living up to," he observed drily.

"What does?"

"Being enamoured of a G.o.ddess."

"Oh?" Van Bleit laughed sheepishly.

"In these days, when most women smoke themselves, I should consider such precaution unnecessary."

"Women appreciate it," Van Bleit responded. "It's a tribute of masculine homage."

"One of those tributes," Lawless answered, "that cost so little either in the way of self-sacrifice or money that men don't mind offering them.

But love asks bigger things. That's where the majority of us jib.

Love is over exacting; we quarrel with it on account of its demands...

I suppose where a man's love was big enough to understand, it would be equal to removing mountains and draining the ocean... In lesser cases it contents itself with sucking sweets."

"You are trying to make out that you know something about it, I suppose?" Van Bleit said, slightly nettled.

Lawless laughed.

"I should never attempt the moving of mountains," he replied.

Mrs Lawless arrived during the extras that followed immediately upon the supper dance. The ball-room was empty, save for a few couples, mostly young enthusiasts who preferred to make the most of their opportunity when the floor was not so crowded, and to sup later when the refreshment-room too had thinned, and the faithful Van Bleit. He insisted upon taking her in to supper. She had come with the Smythes; and she turned to Mrs Smythe at the mention of supper and lifted protesting shoulders.

"One cannot keep on eating," she said.

"Karl can," Mrs Smythe responded.

"I'm famished," he said. "I've been waiting until you arrived. In fairness to me you must come and see me through."

Smythe pointed to the revolving couples.

"We shan't get seats," he said; "they're crowded out, you see."

"Oh! I'll find room. There isn't such a crush as all that."

"Well, you can take the ladies. There's a limit to human endurance... a drink will satisfy me."

"We shall have to go," Mrs Smythe said, slipping a gloved hand within Mrs Lawless' arm. "When I have determined people to deal with I never argue. It is so much less trouble to give in."

Van Bleit conducted his party to the supper-room, and found seats for three at a table near the door.

"What a pity Theo didn't come," Mrs Smythe remarked, with a glance at the vacant chair on her right.

She looked round the crowded room and nodded to several acquaintances.

There was a confusion of sound that yet was not noisy,--the hum of talk and laughter, the frequent popping of champagne corks, a soft continuous rustle of movement, and the clatter of knives and forks. She glanced smilingly across Van Bleit, who was trying to catch the attention of a waiter, to where Mrs Lawless sat, leaning forward looking away from her towards the next table.

"Zoe, the sight of all these people feeding makes me hungry," she said.

"Of course you're hungry," Van Bleit responded. "You can't sit up all night on nothing."

But Mrs Lawless apparently did not hear. She was gazing with unconscious intensity at a man at the table on the opposite side of the opening. He had his face towards her; but he had seen her entry, and, having watched her while he could do so un.o.bserved, he now gave his undivided attention to the girl beside him.