Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘Seventy-nine, too.’

‘And how many ought there to be?’

‘Seventy-eight.’

‘That’s a rum go,’ said Manning. ‘We can’t both be mistaken. I suppose someone came in afterwards. When I get a chance I’ll talk to Jackson.’

‘It can’t be a burglar,’ said Marion, ‘a burglar wouldn’t have chosen that way of getting in.’

‘Besides, we should have seen him. No, a hundred to one it was just somebody who was feeling the heat and needed air. I don’t blame them, but they needn’t have blown us away. Anyhow, if there is a stranger among us he’ll soon have to show up, for in half an hour’s time we can take off these confounded masks. I wouldn’t say it of everyone, but I like you better without yours.’

‘Do you?’ smiled Marion.

‘Meanwhile, we must do something about these favours. The next figure’s beginning. I say, a fur rug would be more suitable, but may I give this fan to you?’

‘And will you accept this useful pocket book?’

They smiled and began to dance.

Ten minutes passed; the fires were heaped up, but the rubbing of hands and hunching of shoulders which had followed the inrush of cold air did not cease. Marion, awaiting her turn to hold the looking-glass, shivered slightly. She watched her predecessor on the chair. Armed with a handkerchief, she was gazing intently into the mirror while each in his turn the men stole up behind her, filling the glass with their successive reflections; one after another she rubbed the images out. Marion was wondering idly whether she would wait too long and find the candidates exhausted when she jumped up from her chair, handed the looking-glass to the leader of the cotillon, and danced away with the man of her choice. Marion took the mirror and sat down. A feeling of unreality oppressed her. How was she to choose between these grotesque faces? One after another they loomed up, dream-like, in the glass, their intense, almost hypnotic eyes searching hers. She could not tell whether they were smiling, they gave so little indication of expression. She remembered how the other women had paused, peered into the glass, and seemed to consider; rubbing away this one at sight, with affected horror, lingering over that one as though sorely tempted, only erasing him after a show of reluctance. She had fancied that some of the men looked piqued when they were rejected; they walked off with a toss of the head; others had seemed frankly pleased to be chosen. She was not indifferent to the mimic drama of the figure, but she couldn’t contribute to it. The chill she still felt numbed her mind, and made it drowsy; her gestures seemed automatic, outside the control of her will. Mechanically she rubbed away the reflection of the first candidate, of the second, of the third. But when the fourth presented himself, and hung over her chair till his mask was within a few inches of her hair, the onlookers saw her pause; the hand with the handkerchief lay motionless in her lap, her eyes were fixed upon the mirror. So she sat for a full minute, while the man at the back, never shifting his position, drooped over her like an earring.

‘She’s taking a good look this time,’ said a bystander at last, and the remark seemed to pierce her reverie—she turned round slowly and then gave a tremendous start; she was on her feet in a moment. ‘I’m so sorry,’ someone heard her say as she gave the man her hand, ‘I never saw you. I had no idea that anyone was there.’

A few minutes later Jane Manning, who had taken as much share in the proceedings as a hostess can, felt a touch upon her arm. It was Marion.

‘Well, my dear,’ she said. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

Marion’s voice shook a little. ‘Marvellously!’ She added in an amused tone:

‘Queer fellow I got hold of just now.’

‘Queer-looking, do you mean?’

‘Really I don’t know; he was wearing a sort of death-mask that covered him almost completely, and he was made up as well, I thought, with French chalk.’

‘What else was queer about him?’

‘He didn’t talk. I couldn’t get a word out of him.’

‘Perhaps he was deaf.’

‘That occurred to me. But he heard the music all right; he danced beautifully.’

‘Show him to me.’

Marion’s eyes hovered round the room without catching sight of her late partner.

‘He doesn’t seem to be here.’

‘Perhaps he’s our uninvited guest,’ said Jane, laughing. ‘Jack told me there was an extra person who couldn’t be accounted for. Now, darling, you mustn’t miss this figure: it’s the most amusing of them all. After that, there are some favours to be given, and then supper. I long for it.’

‘But don’t we take off our masks first?’

‘Yes, of course, I’d forgotten that.’

The figure described by Mrs. Manning as being the most amusing of all would have been much more amusing, Marion thought, if they had played it without masks. If the dancers did not recognize each other, it lost a great deal of its point. Its success depended on surprise. A space had been cleared in the middle of the room, an oblong space like a badminton court, divided into two, not by a net but by a large white sheet supported at either end by the leaders of the cotillon, and held nearly at arm’s length above their heads. On one side were grouped the men, on the other the women, theoretically invisible to each other; but Marion noticed that they moved about and took furtive peeps at each other round the sides, a form of cheating which, in the interludes, the leaders tried to forestall by rushing the sheet across to intercept the view. But most of the time these stolen glimpses went on unchecked, to the accompaniment of a good deal of laughter; for while the figure was in progress the leaders were perforce stationary. One by one the men came up from behind and clasped the top edge of the sheet, so that their gloved fingers, and nothing else, were visible the farther side. With becoming hesitation a woman would advance and take these anonymous fingers in her own; then the sheet was suddenly lowered and the dancers stood face to face, or rather mask to mask. Sometimes there were cries of recognition, sometimes silence, the masks were as impenetrable as the sheet had been.

It was Marion’s turn. As she walked forward she saw that the gloved hands were not resting on the sheet like the rest; they were clutching it so tightly that the linen was caught up in creases between the fingers and crumpled round their tips. For a moment they did not respond to her touch, then they gripped with surprising force. Down went the leader’s arms, down went the corners of the sheet. But Marion’s unknown partner did not take his cue. He forgot to release the sheet, and she remained with her arms held immovably aloft, the sheet falling in folds about her and almost covering her head. ‘An unrehearsed effect, jolly good, I call it,’ said somebody. At last, in response to playful tugs and twitches from the leaders, the man let the sheet go and discovered himself to the humiliated Marion. It was her partner of the previous figure, that uncommunicative man. His hands, that still held hers, felt cold through their kid covering.

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I can’t understand it—I feel so cold. Let’s dance.’

They danced for a little and then sat down. Marion felt chillier than ever, and she heard her neighbours on either side complaining of the temperature. Suddenly she made a decision and rose to her feet.

‘Do take me somewhere where it’s warmer,’ she said. ‘I’m perished here.’

The man led the way out of the ballroom, through the ante-room at the end where one or two couples were sitting, across the corridor into a little room where a good fire was burning, throwing every now and then a ruddy gleam on china ornaments and silver photograph frames. It was Mrs. Manning’s sitting-room.