Standing in the “receiving line” was no ordeal. It was Hector’s task to introduce each couple as they arrived to the Principal, who had not seen most of them since four o’clock that afternoon. The Principal then passed on these introductions to his wife, who repeated them to old Dr Moss, the principal emeritus. Miss McGuckin was on the other side of this venerable pedagogue, so that both her maddening charms and her wounding wit were spared him, for half an hour or so. But he had to join her again for the Grand Promenade which opened the “At Home”. This ceremony probably derived from some Grand Polonaise, or other European court ceremony; nothing quite like it is traceable among the customs of the British peoples. The older guests disposed themselves in knots about the broad corridors of the Normal School, and the students, in couples, arranged themselves in processional formation in the entrance hall. Then, as the band on the third floor, where the assembly room was, played a spirited march, the pupils, arm in arm, paraded through the school and up the stairs, bowing to their guests and being bowed to in return. It was rather a pretty and pleasing custom and one which the students enjoyed, but for Hector it was a humiliation. Miss McGuckin kept whispering “Left, left…you know your left foot, don’t you?..Bow; don’t just duck your head…Don’t hold my arm so tightly.” And as she badgered him, the more he was enthralled by her, and the more eagerly he wished to dominate her, win her, hear her say “Oh, Hector!” as he covered her full lips with kisses.
Nobody could say of Hector that he was not persistent. He danced with Millicent Maude McGuckin, as custom demanded, and made no reply to her criticism of his dancing save a sheepish smile. He endured it when she took him into a corridor to demonstrate a step. Under her direction he opened and closed windows, fetched chairs, and harried the band leader to play her favourite tunes. For although her conversation, baldly recorded here, may suggest that Miss McGuckin was censorious and demanding, it must be remembered that she was only eighteen, and the charm of youth clouded the sharp outlines of her essential character. The other girls—charming girls, destined to be capable schoolteachers and agreeable women—seemed to him insipid beside this paragon. A worshipper of planning and common sense himself, Hector adored these characteristics in Miss McGuckin, and never thought that a woman might possess more pleasant attributes. But she made him nervous, and when he was nervous his stomach, in his own phrase, “went back on him”.
This trouble was not too inconvenient until the supper interval. He felt secret stirrings in his bowels, but had no time to consider them. But a supper of eight sandwiches, two pieces of cake, six cookies, and a plate of ice cream, washed down with two cups of coffee, gave his revolting stomach something to work on.
He took supper with Miss McGuckin, of course, and also with old Dr Moss and Miss Ternan, the instructor in Art. Dr Moss described his trip to the Holy Land in considerable detail, while the others listened. The old gentleman carried in his pocket a New Testament, bound in wood from the Mount of Olives, which he showed for their admiration. Millicent Maude McGuckin was full of pretty curiosity, asking for information about the diet of the Holy Land, and demanding in particular to know whether Our Lord had subsisted chiefly on dates, pomegranates and figs; it appeared extremely probable to her that He was a vegetarian. It was not necessary for Hector to say anything, so he ate stolidly, and poured hot coffee down upon cold ice cream with the recklessness of youth. And then, all of a sudden, his stomach squealed.
The borborygmy, or rumbling of the stomach, has not received the attention from either art or science which it deserves. It is as characteristic of each individual as the tone of the voice. It can be vehement, plaintive, ejaculatory, conversational, humorous—its variety is boundless. But there are few who are prepared to give it an understanding ear; it is dismissed too often with embarrassment or low wit. When Hector’s stomach squealed it was as though someone had begun to blow into a bagpipe, and had thought better of it. His neighbours pretended not to notice.
A rumbling stomach may be ignored once, but if it persists it will shake the aplomb of the most accomplished. Hector’s stomach persisted, and Millicent Maude McGuckin began to raise her eyebrows and speak with special clarity, as though above the noise of a passing train. Miss Ternan flushed a little. Old Dr Moss unhooked the receiver of his hearing-aid from the front of his waistcoat and shook it and blew suspiciously into its inside, as though he feared that a scratchy biscuit crumb had lodged there. The stomach squealed loud and long, and then the squeal would drop chromatically in tone until it became a low, hollow rumble. It was as though, nearby, an avalanche of boulders was plunging down a mountainside toward a valley, in which a spring torrent raged and foamed. And then, inexplicably and in defiance of nature, the boulders would rush back up the hill, to be greeted with screams and bagpipe flourishes by the stricken mountaineers.
After an eternity of this, Hector rose. “Got to see if the orchestra are getting any supper,” said he, and left the room, his face its darkest red.
In the men’s washroom he had taken stock of himself. A fine fellow he was, to be partner to Millicent Maude McGuckin, and then carry on like that! What about the Moonlight Waltz now, and his boast that he would kiss her! Was this—the theological explanation came pat to his mind—a Judgement on him for his sinful boast that he would Take Advantage of a sweet and innocent girl, before everybody—before the Principal and his wife, before old Dr Moss, who carried a Testament bound in wood from the Mount of Olives? Like many young people, Hector was convinced that his elders were the implacable foes of Eros.
No! He had to go through with it! He had bet two dollars and fifty cents that he would do it! But the fiends in his stomach, like an offstage chorus, mocked his determination with snarling laughter. Suppose the stomach howled aloud as he danced the Moonlight Waltz? Suppose—oh, horror inconceivable!—the winds within him could not be contained as he danced! There was nothing, nothing in the world—not money, not pride, not love of Millicent Maude McGuckin—which would make him risk such shame.
So he remained where he was. Faintly he could hear the Midnight Waltz begin. For this special dance, all the lights save a few which had been covered with blue gelatine were turned off, and it was deemed to be the epitome of languorous romance, and the crowning glory of the “At Home”. With this special dance in mind, Millicent Maude McGuckin’s mother had made her a new gown of electric blue satin, wonderfully gathered so that it shimmered and crinkled as she moved, making her, as the instructor in Nature Study remarked admiringly, look just like an electric eel. Whether she danced this dance, or whether she sat it out, Hector never knew. The next day he was eyed curiously by the student body, and those with whom he had laid bets made no attempt to collect them. It was known that Mackilwraith had reached some sort of crisis at the “At Home”, but whether it was drink, or whether, as one boy suggested, he had suddenly Had the Call to the Ministry in the midst of the gaiety, no one knew, and no one liked to ask. As for Millicent Maude McGuckin, she never spoke to him again.
Nobody suspected that Hector had sat in a booth in the men’s washroom through the Midnight Waltz, weeping bitterly.
Griselda was not in the best of tempers when she arrived at the Ball. Roger had called for her without a car, and had calmly said that he had supposed that they would drive in her car. He had offered to drive it for her, but she had said that she preferred to drive herself, and had hinted that he had had too much to drink. He had taken this quietly, but there was a look on his face as she parked the car, wrestling with it in a difficult place, which suggested mockery. To punish him, she kept him waiting twenty-five minutes while she left her coat and attended to her face. When they passed the receiving line and entered the ballroom, neither was in a good temper. The first couple to dance past them were Solly and Pearl.