To Journey Together (18 page)

She smiled without answering—only touching the folds of Leni Mardenburg's dress with a sort of tender appreciation. It was Sir Daniel who, speaking in an amused tone behind her, remarked, "I think perhaps that's the blue the Danube is when one is in love."

"WELL, shall we go?"

Rudi, suddenly taking over the main direction of things from Ilsa, spoke rather more abruptly than usual. But as everyone was absorbed in telling everyone else what they thought about the costumes, no one noticed this.

The signal for departure was, however, immediately accepted. And, accompanied by many good wishes from the Conneltons, they all piled back into Anton's car, which proved equal to the occasion, and the addition of two more.

When they arrived at the place of Rudi's choice—an immense, brightly lit, gaily decorated place rather removed from the centre of the city—dancing had evidently been in full swing for some time, and Elinor thought she had never seen so bright and colourful a scene.

Hundreds of people, or so it seemed to her, attired in the most amazing variety of strange or beautiful eccentric costumes, mingled together, laughing, talking, dancing, sometimes wreathed with paper streamers thrown by friends, sometimes throwing balloons to each other across the room and over the heads of the dancers.

It was her first experience of uninhibited carnival spirit, and she felt the last of her shyness and self-consciousness slipping from her. When Rudi put his arm round her and swept her on to the dance floor, she never thought about the fact that it was the first time she had ever danced in anything but a sedate dancing class, and she found herself following his expert guidance without difficulty and with the utmost enjoyment.

"You dance as naturally as you skate," he told her above the cheerful hubbub of voices and music.

"It must be largely because of your guidance. This is the first dance I've ever been to."

He didn't say that he found this extraordinary or pitiable or queer or anything like that. He just said, "How wonderful! You've all the fun in the world before you, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate being the first one to take you on the dance floor."

She laughed, and said, with a frankness she would never have employed in any other circumstances, "Rudi, you are nice! You never make one feel odd or self-conscious."

"Darling, why should I want to make you feel either?" he replied, lightly and yet with a note of warm feeling in his voice. "You are sweet and unusual, but you are not in the least odd. And, if you are shy, why should I not respect that instead of making you more so?"

"It's as I said. You argue that way because you're nice," Elinor told him, with a quick, flashing smile that was probably the most self-possessed glance she had ever bestowed on any man. "I feel just now as though I'll never be shy again."

"Not with me at any rate, I hope."

"I expect it's partly the effect of the dress," she went on, following her own thoughts, rather than picking up the somewhat personal line he had offered. "I feel a little as though I'm someone else. Almost as though something of the poise and success of Leni Mardenburg goes with the dress."

He smiled down at her.

"You like Leni, don't you?"

"Yes. I think she's perfectly fascinating." "She liked you too. She told me so."

"Did she?" Elinor glanced curiously at him. She had not, somehow, thought of the two of them discussing her. "Do you talk to her a lot? I mean, are you on rather close terms with her?"

"More so than Ilsa is. My sex would always be easier of access to Leni than Ilsa's would," he admitted with a laugh. "And yet I can't tell you if Leni likes me."

"I am sure she does!"

"She doesn't approve of me."

"That's a different thing."

"Of course." He laughed again, but a trifle doubtfully. "I find that I often tell her things I wouldn't tell anyone else. I don't know why, because she is astringent, rather than sympathetic."

Elinor was silent. Suddenly she remembered old Madame Mardenburg bidding her come forward, with the words that she was curious to see anyone who could make Rudi fall in love with her. She had pushed that to the back of her mind as the mischievous conjecture of an inquisitive old lady. Now she wondered all at once if it were based on something Rudi had said.

"It's partly, of course," Rudi went on, pursuing his own argument, "that one feels she has known and seen so much. To speak to her of one's—joys and fears is to put them into their right perspective. Everything passes."

"Rudi, do you have to talk melancholy philosophy in the middle of a carnival scene?" enquired Elinor.

"Liebling, I am sorry!" He bent his head and lightly kissed her cheek with an air of contrition.

At any other time Elinor would have been slightly startled at this form of apology. Here, and in these particular circumstances, it seemed so right that she almost kissed him back again.

Not quite. That would have given too solemn a character to what must essentially remain a light occasion. But she tightened her fingers on his and they exchanged a smiling glance that was not so far short of a kiss.

"I wonder where the others are." She turned her head to see if she could find them in the whirling throng.

"I have no idea. And I really don't mind. Do you?" Rudi said.

"Not much—at the moment," Elinor laughed. Then she added more conscientiously, "I expect we shall find them by suppertime."

"It is possible," Rudi agreed indifferently.

But it was not yet suppertime when, as they paused between dances in an alcove where it was

possible to sit down in some degree of coolness and quiet, Kenneth and Rosemary made their way towards them.

"Hello," Rosemary greeted them both cheerfully. "We were wondering—at least Kenneth was—where you two had got to. I was telling him that it's impossible to keep a party together at an affair of this sort."

"We ought to make some plan about meeting for supper, though," Elinor declared. "Have you seen anything of the others?"

It seemed that a tentative arrangement had been made with them to meet in the supper-room in an hour's time, and Elinor and Rudi undertook to be there too. Then, before there was any question of their separating again, Kenneth said, "Don't I see anything of you until suppertime, Elinor? I was hoping you would have a dance with me."

"Which means that he's about to abandon you to the girl who tried to kill you," Rosemary informed Rudi.

"A risk any man would gladly take," Rudi informed her gallantly. "May I have the pleasure of leading my assailant on to the dance floor?"

With some laughter, they changed partners, and Elinor found herself circling the room with Kenneth, dancing with the same happy confidence that her first experience with Rudi had given her.

The realization brought a smile to her lips, and immediately Kenneth asked, "Are you finding this all very amusing?"

"I am enjoying myself immensely, if that's what you mean," Elinor assured him. "But I shouldn't think it's possible to do anything else at such a gay gathering."

Kenneth greeted this with silence.

"Oh, Kenneth—aren't you enjoying yourself?"

"At the moment, naturally," he assured her. But, though Rudi could say those things and make them sound gallant and charming, when Kenneth said them one always wondered if there were a sting in the tail.

"Why did you come, if you were determined not to enjoy yourself?" Elinor asked rather crossly.

"Because you were coming," was the unexpected retort. "And, anyway, the determination is not so irrevocable as all that."

"You came because—because I was coming?" She glanced up at him doubtfully from under her lashes—a glance which Leni Mardenburg would have applauded because she would not have been able to believe that it was not calculated. "Is that a joke?"

"No, of course not. Don't you think you are sufficient reason to bring anyone to a dance?"

"No," said Elinor with great simplicity.

And at this Kenneth laughed so heartily that Elinor thought perhaps the carnival spirit was having its effect upon him after all.

"At least, I shouldn't have thought I was sufficient reason to bring you to do anything you didn't want to do. I thought you came to please Rosemary."

"Did you?" He smiled faintly. "Who gave you that idea?"

"You did, I suppose. At least, I just drew the general conclusion. After all, you terribly wanted her to come on this trip instead of me and "

"That's another idea I'd like to pin down. Where did you get that one?"

Elinor looked rather nonplussed.

"Well, the time I overheard you talking to Lady Connelton in the library, I thought..."

"You shouldn't eavesdrop," he told her, smiling. "Information obtained that way is always unreliable."

"I wasn't eavesdropping, at least, not on purpose. The maid had shown me into the other half of the room, and I was overhearing your conversation before I realized what was happening. It was then you made the insufferable remark about—about nice, quiet little girls being boring."

"Well, so they are."

"Thank you!"

"Don't be silly. As I told you in the beginning, you're not a nice, quiet little girl at all. You're a bit of a spitfire, in a concealed way. And tonight you are a beauty."

"I—oh, thank you," she said again, but in quite a different tone this time. "It's the dress, I expect."

"I have an idea it's not only the dress," Kenneth retorted rather moodily. Then he added abruptly, "Elinor, may I ask you a rather personal question?"

"No, I don't think you had better," Elinor told him gently.

"Why not?"

"Because, if it's about Rudi, I might not know the answer," Elinor said.

And then the music came to an end, and Rudi claimed her once more, relinquishing Rosemary to Kenneth again.

But, although Kenneth passed out of Elinor's sight, he remained disturbingly in her mind. She wondered with passionate interest what it was he had wanted to ask her—and, still more, why he had wanted to ask it. And she experienced a flash of quite personal resentment when Rudi remarked carelessly, "Brownlow's a dull dog, isn't he?"

"No. I shouldn't describe him as that at all!"

"But he takes life so seriously."

"Someone must take it seriously," Elinor replied a little sharply. "Life doesn't consist of being a playboy and having a good time always."

"Are you reproving me?" he enquired, smiling.

"Why—why, no! Did you think the description fitted?" Suddenly she was horribly afraid that it did.

"I think I should ask that. Did you think the description fitted?"

"I don't know, Rudi. I don't really ever know quite what to make of you. Sometimes I wonder a great deal. Then I tell myself that it isn't my business. But, since you ask me, I must say quite frankly that you are the only man I have ever known who doesn't seem to have a purpose—a plan of life—a job. Don't you even want one?"

"Something that would tie me so many hours a day and so many days a week? I can think of nothing more horrible," he told her lightly.

"But it's a means to an end."

"What end?"

"Well—all the stable, permanent, everyday things that life's made up of, I suppose. You don't suppose many people do a regular job because they like being tied, do you? They do it because it provides the essentials for a full and useful life."

"People like Kenneth, you mean?" He was smiling.

"I was thinking of my father," Elinor said simply. "I daresay he had his romantic and hopeful and adventurous impulses once. But I suppose you might say he traded them for a wife and children. And, because my parents both played fair over that, they made a home that's the most important place on earth to five other people. You can't have it all ways."

"How true, my little philosopher."

There was a short pause. Then she said, "You mean that you think it was a poor bargain?"

"No, darling, I don't mean that at all. I hope your father thought it all worth while. I expect he did. Only I am the sort of tiresome, selfish creature who does want it both ways. Perhaps Fate will be kind to me one day and let me have that."

She started to say that she thought this a rather shocking point of view. But just then the music slowed once more, and she thought that perhaps a carnival dance was not the place for so serious a discussion. In any case, Rudi announced that it was suppertime, and so they went to find the others.

Everybody appeared to have been having a wonderful time, Rosemary declaring, with truth, that Anton Mardenburg was the best dancer in the room.

It struck Elinor that, in order to make this discovery, she must have left Kenneth and Ilsa to dance together, and she could not help wondering how they had got on. But then the sorting out of

these personal complications became too difficult, and she was about to abandon them in favour of simply enjoying herself when Anton, by asking a perfectly conventional and likely question, brought them all back again.