Читать книгу The Fingerprint - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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The dance went very well. Frank met quite a lot of people he knew. He danced with Cicely Hathaway. She wore a flame-coloured dress and she was enjoying herself. She told him it was said that Mr. Vincent was looking for a wife and she didn’t envy her.

‘If Mrs. Shotterleigh had her way, it would be Mary or Deb, but either of them would rather have Johnny. Anyhow the Vincent man must be at least twenty years older than they are, and he’s the dullest man I ever met in my life. Has he told you how he lost his British Guiana stamp?’

‘He has!’

She laughed.

‘He tells everyone. Did you go to sleep, or just come over numb with boredom? And you know, it ought to be an exciting story!’

‘Yes, he’s like that. But we needn’t talk about him.’

When he had danced with his Aunt Monica, a charming inconsequent person to whom he was devoted, he approached Miss Mirrie Field, who fluttered her eyelashes at him and said, ‘Oh—’ in rather an alarmed sort of way. If that was her game, he was in the mood to play it.

‘I don’t actually go about arresting people at dances, you know.’

She let him have a good view of her eyes. They were an unusual shade of brown and very pretty.

‘But you do arrest them sometimes?’ The words were just breathed.

‘As occasion offers.’

‘That must be horrid—for you.’

He allowed himself to laugh.

‘I believe it hurts them rather more than it does me.’ He put his arm round her and they slipped into the dance.

Someone had built on a ballroom at the back of the house. Jonathan’s grandmother was an heiress, and she had six daughters. The ballroom had no doubt assisted her in her determination to supply them with eligible husbands. It stood at right angles to the block of the house, and thanks to a wealth of creeper and a charming formal garden which brought it into harmony with the terrace under the drawing-room windows, it was no longer the eyesore which it had been when it was new.

The floor was very good, the music delightful, and their steps went well together. She was a little soft, light thing and she could dance. He had a passing wonder as to how she might compare with Georgina Grey. She passed them at the moment, coping with Lord Pondesbury who had a tendency to treat every dance as if it were some kind of a jig of his own invention. In the circumstances Frank gave Georgina marks for the kindness of her smile.

Mirrie looked up at him and said,

‘How well you dance!’

‘Thank you, Miss Field.’

She gave him a dimpling smile.

‘Oh, you mustn’t call me Miss Field—I’m just Mirrie. And this is my very first dance.’

‘No one would know it. You are very good.’

She said, ‘I love it,’ in a reverential voice. ‘I wanted to go into ballet, but you have to start so young, and there wasn’t enough money for me to have lessons. Did you ever want anything dreadfully, dreadfully badly and have to give it up because there wasn’t enough money and there simply wasn’t anywhere you could possibly get it from? I don’t suppose you ever did, so you can’t possibly know what it feels like.’

Frank knew very well, but he wasn’t going to say so. He had been intended for the Bar, and he had had to give it up when his father died. He said,

‘It was a pity about that. What are you going to do instead?’

Her colour rose becomingly. The dark lashes came down and hid her eyes. She said in a murmuring voice,

‘Uncle Jonathan is being so kind.’ And then, ‘Oh, don’t you love dancing?’

They danced.

Later, when they were sitting out, she stopped suddenly in the middle of some artless prattle about this and that to lift a fold of the white frilly skirt which billowed out over the low chair and say,

‘Do you know, this is the very, very first dress of my own I’ve ever had.’

He was stirred to amusement and something else.

‘And who did the others belong to?’

She said, ‘They were cast-offs.’

‘You mean you had older sisters?’

‘Oh, no. They belonged to people I’d never heard about—people who send parcels to poor relations. You don’t know how horrid it is to get them.’

‘It might have been much more horrid if you hadn’t.’

‘It couldn’t have been.’ She had a mournful and accusing look. ‘You don’t know how horrid it was. Some of the things were so ugly, and they didn’t really fit. I expect some of them belonged to Georgina. She says no, but I expect they did. She is older than I am, you know, and a whole lot taller, so her things would always have been much too large. They used to put tucks in them all over and say I would grow into them in a year or two, but I never did. I expect they kept me from growing. Don’t you think if you hated a thing very much it might keep you from growing into it? There was a perfectly horrid dress with yellow stripes exactly like a wasp, and I had to wear it whether it fitted me or not.’ She gave a heartfelt sigh and added, ‘I did hate my relations.’

Frank leaned back lazily. It was not the first time that he had been the recipient of girlish confidences. After a long apprenticeship with female cousins they no longer embarrassed him.

‘I don’t know that I should make a practice of hating them. I have hundreds, and they all mean well.’

He was thinking that if she didn’t know which side her bread was buttered she had better make haste and find out. And then with a touch of cynicism he became aware that she knew very well. There was a soft agitation in her voice as she said,

‘Oh, you didn’t think I meant Uncle Jonathan—you couldn’t! I wouldn’t mind anything from him. He is different.’

‘Is he?’

‘Of course he is! He doesn’t give me old things, he gives me lovely new ones. He gave me a cheque to buy anything I wanted—real, real money to go into a shop with and buy anything I wanted! And a string of pearls for my birthday! Look at them—I’ve got them on! Aren’t they lovely? And he said this was to be my party as well as Georgina’s!’

It certainly looked if Uncle Jonathan was spreading himself. Frank said idly,

‘And what about Georgina—is she kind too?’

Mirrie fingered her pearls and looked down at the white frills. She said in a childish voice,

‘She is very kind.’

It wasn’t until a good deal later that he arrived at dancing with Georgina Grey. She made a charming hostess and there was a good deal of competition, but in the end he got his dance and enjoyed it. Voice, manner and step were easy, graceful and charming. He remembered Cicely Abbott’s old nurse saying of somebody that everything she did became her. He thought it might have been said of Georgina Grey.

He was prompted to turn the conversation in Mirrie’s direction.

‘Anthony tells me she has lately come to live with you.’

Georgina said, ‘To stay with us.’ And then, ‘I think she will stay on.’

‘She was telling me that she would have liked to go in for ballet.’

‘Yes, but it has been left too late.’

‘She dances very well.’

‘Oh, yes. But ballet is quite a different thing. You have to start when you are about seven, or even earlier, and it means hours of practice every day for years.’

‘I suppose it does.’

He was struck by the serious considering note in her voice. And then they were talking of something else. Mirrie Field as a topic didn’t crop up again.

One thing he did see which he was to remember afterwards. Everyone was breaking off and streaming in to supper. He had Cicely Hathaway as a partner, and just as they nicely settled she said that she had lost her handkerchief. She knew just where it would be, and he went back for it—‘The study, Frank Grant and I were in there and I was doing my face. It’s one Gran gave me, with real lace.’ He found it easily enough, and then as he stood with it in his hand he heard a small tapping sound from the direction of the window. He pushed Cicely’s handkerchief into his pocket and drew back the nearest curtain. It was the one which screened a glass door on to the terrace. The door was ajar and the sound which he had heard was the sound of it just touching the jamb and swinging out again. But as he drew the curtain back it was opened by something more tangible than the wind. Mirrie Field stood on the step in her white dress, staring up at him with her eyes quite wide with fright.

She said, ‘Oh!’ and put her hand to her throat.

Well, girls did slip out at a dance, though it was a pretty cold night for that fluffy white dress. But where was the man? You don’t go out alone into icy gardens. At least if you do, it is sheer lunacy.

He said, ‘I’m sorry I gave you a start. Come along and have hot soup. You must be frozen.’

Mirrie went on looking at him.

‘I—I was hot—I just went out.’

They went back into the dining-room together. He didn’t think of it again until quite a long time afterwards.