The Dance
AT THE invitation of Mrs Gray, Bony decided to attend the dance held at the Burracoppin Hall on the evening of 20th November.
Accordingly he dressed with care, in clothes sent up from Perth, and about nine o’clock left the Depot in company with Mr and Mrs Gray.
Into this hall from the town and outlying farms had come good-looking women and strong, well-set-up men, an A-1 standard of physique rarely seen in the older countries and the Australian cities. From the farm districts and from the vast bushlands beyond had emerged in 1914 that Australian Army whose physical perfection had aroused the admiration of Europe.
Within the hall they discovered almost seventy people waiting for theM. C. to announce the first dance of the evening. The electric light was softened by strings of coloured paper festooned beneath the lamps. It fell on gaily attired women and well-scrubbed men in lounge suits. At the door people separated as though governed by established convention, women occupying the long forms set against one wall and the men taking their seats against the opposite wall. Near the door stood the contingent of unattached males.
Often Bony had observed this division of the sexes in the smaller towns of the Commonwealth, coming to regard it as a facet of the white man’s psychology for which there was no adequate explanation. To him, an observer on the fringe, this sex segregation, far more marked than in the cities, was an unsolvable puzzle.
There was an undercurrent of excitement vibrant to his keen senses. Pleasurable anticipation glowed on every face. The members of the string band, minus coats and waistcoats, began to tune their instruments. From behind stage came the sound of crockery ware, and when Mick Landon jumped from floor to stage the flutter of anticipation was general.
“Ladies and gents,” he said in a clear voice, “I have been asked by the committee to express their pleasure at the large number whohave turned up so early. As you know, this dance is being run to benefit Mrs Loftus, who is financially embarrassed by the strange disappearance of Mr Loftus. The fact of the matter is that until it is known whathas become of Mr Loftus his financial affairs cannot be settled. So let us hope his disappearance may be soon cleared up. When Mrs Loftus arrives, let us give her a rousing welcome, considering how popular she is.”
“ ’Ear, ’ear!” someone applauded, whilst the gathering expressed approval with much hand clapping.
Conscious of his position, Landon raised his hands to secure attention.
“We will start the night, then, with a foxtrot,” he shouted.
The band struck up a rollicking tune. Men and women gravitated to each other on the floor, the women not waiting for an invitation or an escort. Evidently partnerships had been arranged before ever they entered the hall.
Without coat or waistcoat, with blue braces vivid against white shirt, Mick Landon looked like a clerk in a heated warehouse or a stockbroker digging up his garden. He was perfectly proportioned. The light gleaming on his fair curly hair showed his face to be really handsome. Once he had got the dance started he swept into his arms a young lady who made no effort to disguise her pleasure and conducted her round the floor, whilst his strangely fixed blue eyes looked down on her in a masterful way. Fifty pairs of feminine eyes watched his every movement; even those women dancing looked at him when he was in their line of vision, regarded him with narrowed eyes, their hearts moved by envy of his partner.
Bony decided that the women and girls could not be blamed. Sight of such a man could excusably arouse emotion in the heart of any woman. He was dominant, the master there. Mick Landon might rise high-directly the sex influence of women waned and gave place to worthy ambition.
Watching the crowd with absorbed interest, Bony caught sight of Lucy Jelly, calm-eyed, composed, and refreshingly cool in a becoming gown of white muslin. She was dancing with a young fellow about her own age whose eyes sparkled with pride and whose well-brushed hair gleamed with oil. Mr Thorn hopped around with a woman as fat as himself. She, Bony decided, must be his wife, because he studiously refrained from breathing beer into her red face. An active middle-aged man, whom Bony knew to be a Snake Charmer, was proving a worthy partner to spritely Sunflower Jelly, and the Spirit of Australia was dancing with youthful grace with a little woman about forty years old who actually appeared to be no older than nineteen.
“You working for the Rabbit Department?” asked a rugged six-foot Scotchman. It was more a statement of fact than a question. Bony admitted it. “Glad to see you here. Good crowd. Know many?”
“A few, yes. Mr Thorn, there. And that big man I have heard called the Spirit of Australia. Is it a fact that he is over eighty years of age?”
“Must be. I bin out here ten years, and hedon’t look a day older than when I come. Several of the old identities swear that he must be nearer ninety than eighty.”
When next Bony spoke he said:
“I see Miss Jelly and Miss Sunflower, but not Mr Jelly. Does he not dance?”
“No, heain’t around,” the Scotchman replied without accent. Had Bony been a fellow countryman no Englishman would have understood him. “He’s a queer card, Jelly. Every time I think of him I am reminded of Dr Jekyll in the book. His going away without ever telling folk where he goes, or why, is very strange. ’Course, it might be a woman. He’s a widower, you know. Some men are like that.”
“Yet Mr Jelly did not strike me as being that sort of man.”
“He don’t really strike me that way either. But why does he go? Sometimes he’s away for three of four weeks, and at other times he only goes for a few days, It wouldn’t be so bad if he said he was going and when he would be back. But no one ever sees him go or knows that he is going, not even his daughter, who worries herself to death about it. It’s a bit thick in a way.”
“Who does the farm work during these periods of absence?”
“Old Middleton carries on, He works for Jelly. Well, I’m in on the next dance. See you after.”
When the dance was in full swing Bony saw Mrs Gray trying to attract his attention, and after much adroit manoeuvring he gained her side. Mrs Gray was one of those women whose souls kept unblemished by the rouge of social ambition and the lipstick of snobbishness.
“Don’t you dance?” she asked when Bony sat down between her and her husband.
“Yes, madam, but it is not often I have the chance,” he told her gravely, refraining to add that the average white woman was shy of accepting him. “May I have the pleasure of your partnership?”
“I would consent if I could dance,” she said, regarding him frankly. “If you would like to meet them, I am sure there are one or two women here who would be pleased for you to ask them.”
“Thank you! That is a suggestion I will gladly accept. Yet before you so kindly make the introductions, I am going to take my courage in both hands and ask Miss Lucy Jelly to favour me. I have already been presented to her. Permit me to go to her now before my courage trickles away between my fingers.”
When he had risen, bowed, and departed towards Lucy Jelly, then sitting with Sunflower farther along the wall, Mrs Gray said to her husband:
“He’s not working for you because he has to. What is behind your putting him on?”
Inspector Gray smiled at her and winked an eye. Slowly, distinctly, and emphatically he said to her:
“Find out.”
“All right. I will find out. You never tell me anything.”
Standing before Lucy Jelly, Bony was saying:
“I do hope you remember me. Might I have the next dance-a waltz, I believe?”
He saw doubt cloud her clear brown eyes, knew she would refuse before she uttered the excuse so difficult to evolve. He even detected her displeasure about the necessity to make the excuse.
“I’m sorry, but I’m engaged for the next dance.”
Bony smiled his disappointment, saying:
“I, too, am sorry.”
He was turning away when Sunflower’s voice arrested him.
“You might at least ask me, Mr Bony. I won’t tell a fib,” she said softly.
“Dulcie, how dare you!” the elder sister exclaimed with scarlet face.
“I shall be charmed,” Bony announced, offering his arm as the band started to play “The Blue Danube”.
Sunflower’s head came to Bony’s shoulder. Permitting him to hold her in the approved style, they glided away among the crowded couples, and he, looking down on her golden hair, was thrilled by the pure glory of it. She was a born dancer. Music and poetry lived in her soul. Looking up at him with no sophistry in her dove-grey, limped eyes, she said to him, almost in a whisper:
“You dance wonderfully. Did you learn at the corroborees?”
“No. I learned to dance in Brisbane when I went to high school.”
“And did they teach you elocution, and good manners, and all that?”
“No. I took much trouble to teach myself. Who taught you to dance so nicely?”
“Sis did,” the maid said gravely before falling into a silence of very ecstasy that was in part a compliment to him. Minutes passed before she spoke again.
“You must forgive Lucy telling that fib, because she is so worried about Father,” Sunflower said softly. “You see, the other morning we found that he had gone away, and he never tells us that he is going or when he expects to come home. It is not so bad his going, but when he comes back he brings strong drink with him and he shuts himself up in his room for days.”
“You really do not know where he goes to or why?” Bony asked.
Sunflower shook her head with emphasis. The strange behaviour of her father was a heavy cloud masking the sun of her life. The music stopped. They stood almost in the centre of the floor waiting for a possible encore. People began to clap their hands. Little Sunflower said at last:
“No, we don’t know about Father. If we did, it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Perhaps you could find out. You are a policeman, aren’t you?”
Astonished that his identity was known to this unsophisticated young lady, Bony was hardly aware that the band had started playing and that the dancers were swinging off in rhythmic step. Sunflower, unabashed because unconscious of the shock she had given him, caught his hand before he responded to the music.
“So you know I am a detective?” he said softly, in his eyesan expression of quizzical interest.
“Yes, we have known about you ever since you came to our farm. You are not angry, are you?”
“I could not be angry with you, Miss Sunflower; but how did you find out?”
“Eric told us when you were with Father in his room that night. He said we must keep it a secret.”
“Ah! And how did he find out?”
Sunflower laughed gaily, her mood lightened when at last she saw the gleam of laughter behind his blue eyes, from which she knew she could keep nothing back.
“Guess,” she commanded teasingly.
“Did Eric hear me talking in my sleep?”
“No; guess again.”
“I give up,” Bony announced. “Tell me, quick, before I faint with curiosity.”
“All right. Eric said he picked up a letter in the Depot yard which was written to Inspector Gray. He showed it to us the evening you came with him. Of course we were thrilled, but Lucy said it was wrong of us to read a letter that did not belong to us. She made Eric put it into the kitchen fire and made him and me promise to tell no one. We haven’t, either.”
“Not even your father?”
“No. Not even Father.”
They circled the polished floor before she spoke again, saying:
“You know, you do not look like a detective. You look much too kind. Not like two of them I saw here before I met you. They were big, stern men with fierce eyes which make you shiver. Even when you are angry you don’t look like they look at people.”
“I am not stern. And I’m not angry. I am surprised at your knowing I am adetective, that is all. I thought that only Mr Gray knew. As you and Eric promised Miss Lucy not to tell, will you promise me not to tell?”
“Of course,” Sunflower said, as though she were a past master in the art of keeping secrets. And then: “Do you think poor Mr Loftus ran away from Mrs Loftus?”
“Why should he? Why do you ask that question?”
“Well, you’re here to find out, aren’t you? And because if I was Mr Loftus I’d run away from her. I hate that woman.”
“Dear, dear! Surely you cannot hate?”
“I hate her, anyway. I couldn’t tell you why exactly. Do you think he ran away from her?”
There was no evading her question the second time. Bony was frank.
“I cannot find out,” he said.
“Will you stay until you do?”
“Very likely.”
Presently she said: “Will you come to our farm some day and tell me all about the blackfellows’ corroborees? I would like to hear tales about them, and, perhaps, you could find out about Father. Would you try?”
“Yes, if your sister would like me to do so,” Bony replied, studying the swiftly changing expression on her face. “We must defer to her, you know. She is the elder. Possibly she might not like my trying to find out.”
“Oh I think she would. Father makes her so worried.”
“Very well. I will put it to her later on.”
The music came to an end. The dancers stopped. There was much laughter whilst people thanked each other, followed by a general movement to the seats.
“Will you ask me to dance again presently, Mr Bony?” Sunflower asked, not attempting to conceal her anxiety lest he should forget.
“It will give me great pleasure to ask, not once, but several times. Let me take you back to your sister, now talking to-”
There was sudden commotion beyond the main entrance. The knot of men who appeared as though glued to that part of the hall, seemingly content merely to watch-and criticize-raised a cheer which was taken up by the dancers. They parted into a lane, and into this lane flashed a sparkle of pink which resolved into a woman’s dress. The wearer came along the lane, to pause at its innermost end while the crowd cheered and clapped.
Bony saw a strikingly pretty woman whom he guessed correctly to be Mrs Loftus. Her age, he knew, was twenty-nine. She was dressed in a frock of pink crepe de chine, which seemed oddly to contrast with her supposed financial difficulties, which this dance was being held partially to relieve. In height slightly above the average, her frock showed to perfection a well-moulded, supple figure. Her face was flushed, and her eyes-he thought they were dark hazel-reflected the lights. Her expression was one of strained anxiety, the whole giving a total effect of pleasure at being there and doubt of the proprietary of it when her husband was so strangely missing.
The band struck up “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, and the crowd roared the lines as Mick Landon gallantly escorted the guest of honour to the stage end of the hall, where he turned aside, leaving the woman alone to accept the welcome.
It was spontaneously given, and, Bony’s admiration of the beautiful aroused, he added his mite to the general uproar. When almost any woman would have cried with a full heart, this woman smiled with the calmness of a queen. And then Bony’s penetrating vision pierced deep behind the now smiling face, and he saw an iron-willed woman, sure of herself, selfish and sensual. His first impression was quickly revised. The loveliness of feature and form was marred in the eyes of the beauty worshipper by a will too strong, a composure too ably controlled, a mind too clever, too calculating.
The singing died down. The hand clapping ceased. Mrs Loftus said with charming simplicity:
“You are all very kind to me. I thank you from my heart.”
Again the clapping and the cheering. It surprised Bony to observe how popular Mrs Loftus really was. Mick Landon came forward, holding a sugar bag. He shouted in order to gain complete silence.
“Ladies and gents! Ladies and gents! In this bag are the entry tickets. I hope all the holders of them wrote their names on them, because the ticket Mrs Loftus will now draw from the bag here will entitle the owner to the honour of the first dance with her. If the ticket owner cannot dance, he may nominate a gent who can, and if a lady draws the honour she may name any gent she chooses. Now, Mrs Loftus, please draw.”
Watching with his never failing interest in human beings, Bony saw that when she placed her be-ringed hand into the bag she looked not at it but into the eyes of the man who held it open. When she had taken the ticket, theM. C. tossed the bag to the back of the stage and then politely took the ticket from her. There was a hushed suspense. Studiously Landon slowly looked up with the name on it in his mind, paused for precisely five seconds, and then shouted:
“Mr Garth!”
Again the cheering broke out, above which men shouted:
“Good old John! The Spirit of Australia!”
The band began to play a foxtrot. Gath’s booming voice rose above the din.
“I’m taking a ticket inTatt’s,” he roared whilst stalking through the throng now surging on the floor towards the waiting woman who hid her disappointment behind a laughing face. The Spirit of Australia was dressed in a navy-blue suit. His bearing, his face, shrieked the lie regarding his age. Towering above Mrs Loftus, his courtly bow and the manner in which he offered her his arm shrieked, too, the lie of his wild rough life on the gold fields and the farms.
Bony was about to propose another danceto little Sunflower when Mrs Gray came up and expressed a wish to introduce him to a friend. Smilingly he accompanied her, yet not before he had au-revoiredSunflower and had seen the look of regret in her big soft eyes.
He was presented to a matron belonging to that type known as “gushing”, yet was no whit abashed or discomfited. She danced moderately well, and, although his mind was occupied with Mrs Loftus, she did eventually confess to Mrs Gray that he was “a perfectly charming man, you know, in spite of his being unfortunately black, my dear”.
It was not till after supper, at which the Jelly girls were attended by two young men, both of whom obviously strove to gain the elder’s favour, that Bony found the opportunity to approach them.
“I have been hoping that you might now find an empty space on your dance card,” he said suavely to Lucy. “Am I in time to ask for this waltz?”
Without smiling the girl regarded him steadily while he bent over her with deference. Her eyes searched his face, held his eyes with a steady look of one who would like to trust him but hesitates. Her decision to do so was reached abruptly. Still she did not smile when rising to her feet to say:
“Very well, if you wish.”
There was no more opportunity to talk, because at the last minute Landon changed the waltz to a foxtrot. They do that sort of thing at country dances. And it seemed at the last moment, too, that Mrs Loftus stepped down from her place in his mind, giving way to Mr Jelly.