"The Gent Around the Lady
and
The Lady Round the Gent"
_An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent Marsh_
May 25.
"Come in, come in!" cried an old black-clad woman, with a white apron,
who opened the door wider into the flaring brilliance of the lamp-lit
kitchen. "I'm _real_ glad you felt to come to one of our dances. They're
old-fashioned, but _we_ like 'em." She closed the door behind them and
added cordially, "Now Mr. Welles is going to live here, he'll have to
learn to shake his feet along with the rest of us."
Mr. Welles was frankly terrified at the idea. "Why, I never dreamed of
dancing in all my life!" he cried. "I only came to look on." He
hesitated to divest himself of his overcoat, panic-struck and meditating
flight. Vincent fell upon him from one side and the lively old woman
from the other. Together they stripped the older man of his wraps.
"Never too late to learn," old Mrs. Powers assured him briskly. "You
dance with _me_ and I'll shove ye around, all right. There ain't a
quadrille ever danced that I couldn't do backwards with my eyes shut, as
soon as the music strikes up." She motioned them towards the door, "Step
right this way. The folks that have come are all in the settin'-room."
As they followed her, Vincent said, "Mrs. Powers, aren't you going to
dance with me, too?"
"Oh, of course I be," she answered smartly, "if you ask me."
"Then I ask you now," he urged, "for the first dance. Only I don't know
any more than Mr. Welles how to dance a quadrille. But I'm not afraid."
"I guess there ain't much ye _be_ afraid of," she said admiringly. They
came now into the dining-room and caught beyond that a glimpse of the
living-room. Both wore such an unusual aspect of elegance and grace that
Vincent stared, stopping to look about him. "Looks queer, don't it,"
said Mrs. Powers, "with the furniture all gone. We always move out
everything we _can_, up garret, so's to leave room for dancing."
Oh yes, that was it, Vincent thought; the shinily varnished cheap
furniture had almost disappeared, and the excellent proportions of the
old rooms could be seen. Lamps glowed from every shelf, their golden
light softened by great sprays of green branches with tender young
leaves, which were fastened everywhere over the doors, the windows,
banked in the corner The house smelled like a forest, indescribably
fresh and spicy.
"There ain't many flowers yet; too early," explained Mrs. Powers
apologetically, "so we had to git green stuff out'n the woods to kind of
dress us up. 'Gene he _would_ have some pine boughs too. He's crazy
about pine-trees. I always thought that was one reason why he took it so
hard when we was done out of our wood-land. He thinks as much of that
big pine in front of the house as he does of a person. And tonight he's
got the far room all done up with pine boughs."
They arrived in the living-room now, where the women and children
clustered on one side, and the men on the other, their lean boldly
marked faces startlingly clear-cut in the splendor of fresh shaves. The
women were mostly in light-colored waists and dark skirts, their hair
carefully dressed. Vincent noticed, as he nodded to them before taking
his place with the men, that not a single one had put powder on her
face. Their eyes looked shining with anticipation. They leaned their
heads together and chatted in low tones, laughing and glancing sideways
at the group of men on the other side of the room. Vincent wondered at
the presence of the children. When she arrived, he would ask Marise
about that. At the inward mention of the name he felt a little shock,
which was not altogether pleasurable. He narrowed his eyes and shook his
head slightly, as though to toss a lock of hair from his forehead, a
gesture which was habitual with him when he felt, with displeasure, an
unexpected emotion not summoned by his will. It passed at once.
On joining the dark-suited group of men he found himself next to young
Frank Warner, leaning, loose-jointed and powerful, against the wall, and
not joining in the talk of weather, pigs, roads, and spring plowing
which rose from the others. Vincent looked at him with approval. He felt
strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive creature, and knew perfectly
well why. He liked anybody who had pep enough to have an original
feeling, not one prescribed by the ritual and tabu of his particular
tribe.
"Hello, Frank," he said. "Have a cigarette?
"We'll have to go out if we smoke," said Frank.
"Well, why shouldn't we?" suggested Vincent, looking around him.
"There's nothing to do here, yet."
Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk, and
nodded. Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by the
guests, who all entered by the kitchen. At first it was as though they
had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was the contrast with
the yellow radiance of the room they had left. They looked back through
the unshaded windows and saw the room as though it were an illustration
in a book, or a scene in a moving-picture play, the men grouped in a
dark mass on one side, the women, smiling, bending their heads towards
each other, the lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining
eyes of all those pleasure-expectant human beings.
As they looked, Nelly Powers came in from another room, doubtless the
"far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She was carrying a
large tray full of cups. She braced herself against the weight of the
earthenware and balancing herself with a free swinging motion on her
high-heeled shoes walked with an accentuation of her usual vigorous
poise.
"By George, she's a beauty!" cried Vincent, not sorry to have an
opportunity to talk of her with his companion.
Frank made no comment. Vincent laughed to himself at the enormous
capacity for silence of these savages, routing to the imagination of a
civilized being. He went on, determined to get some expression from the
other, "She's one of the very handsomest women I ever saw anywhere."
Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak. Vincent
cocked his ear and prepared to listen with all the prodigious sharpness
of which he knew himself capable. If he could only once make this yokel
speak her name, he'd know . . . all he wanted to know.
Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."
Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the remark.
He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light than ever on
what he wanted to know. He laughed again at his own discomfiture. There
were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated person who could control
his voice so that it did not give him away, and the utter rustic whose
voice had such a brute inexpressiveness that his meaning was as
effectively hidden. He would try again. He said casually, "She's an
enough-sight better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it
happen that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of
chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"
The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did happen to
marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off working in a
mill, down in Massachusetts, Adams way, and they got married there. They
only come back here to live after they'd had all that trouble with
lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's father died about that time.
It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and his wife they come back to run the
farm."
At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in the
house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory clap of
his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise had come, now
appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed branches, the
smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle smile, those dark
long eyes! By God! What would he not give to know what went on behind
that smile, those eyes!
She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap that
those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the
globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being.
And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious,
prison-like, primitive view of the matter.
Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her
long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be in any
civilized setting!
She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing
her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as
gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No,
heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!
Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's
glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman
he could make if he put his mind on it.
"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the butt of his
cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up."
They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of their
blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the first moments
of greeting. In the midst of this, Vincent heard the front door open
and, startled to think that anyone else had used that exit, turned his
head, and saw with some dismay that 'Gene had followed them in. How
near had he been to them in the black night while they talked of his
wife's mismated beauty? He walked past them giving no sign, his strong
long arms hanging a little in front of his body as he moved, his
shoulders stooped apparently with their own weight. From the dining-room
came a sound which Vincent did not recognize as the voice of any
instrument he had ever heard: a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato
scrapes, playing over and over a primitively simple sequence of notes.
He stepped to the door to see what instrument was being used and saw an
old man with a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair,
his eyes half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting
with one thick boot. Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of
which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an infinitesimal
length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke, so that there was
no sonority in the tones. Vincent gazed at him with astonishment. He had
not known that you could make a violin, a real violin, sound like that.
Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, "The first sets are forming, Mr.
Marsh." She called across to Frank Warner, standing very straight with
Nelly Powers' hand on his arm, "Frank, you call off, wun't ye?"
Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent out a
long clear shout, "First sets _fo-orming!_"
Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human voice when
not hushed to its usual smothered conversational dullness.
"Two sets formed in the living-room! Two in the dining-room! One in the
far room!" chanted Frank. He drew a deep breath which visibly swelled
his great chest and sang out, resonantly, "Promenade _to_ your places!"
He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly by his
side.
"Frank, he generally calls off," explained old Mrs. Powers. "It's in
his family to. His father always did before him." She looked around her,
discerned something intelligible in what looked like crowding confusion
to Vincent and told him hurriedly, "Look-y-here, we'll have to git a
move on, if we git into a set. They're all full here." Frank appeared in
the doorway, alone, and lifted a long high arm. "_One_ couple needed in
the far room!" he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.
"Here we are!" shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way through the
crowd, and pulling Vincent after her. He could see now that the couples
about him were indeed in their places, hand in hand, facing each other,
gravely elate and confident. The younger ones were swinging their bodies
slightly, in time to the sharply marked beat of the fiddle, and in the
older ones, the pulse throbbed almost visibly as they waited.
He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating, stimulating.
He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling, dense and green with
pine-boughs, fastened to the walls. The odor was as strange an
accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously whirling primitive
iteration of the fiddle.
"Over here!" cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her partner. She
gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and held it high. "All
ready, Frank," she said.
Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up,
Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held
high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they
made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the
huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy
old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand the oldest Powers child, a pretty
blonde girl of twelve.
Frank's voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the fiddle.
"_Salute_ your partners!"
Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind him with
his boyhood, real embarrassment, fear of appearing at a disadvantage.
What in the world did their antiquated lingo _mean?_ Was he to _kiss_
that old woman?
Mrs. Powers said reassuringly, "Don't you worry. Just do what the others
do."
As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a courtesy. A
little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow such as to his
astonishment he saw the other men executing. Was he in old Versailles or
Vermont?
He felt his hand seized by the old woman's. Such a hearty zest was in
her every action that he looked at her amazed.
"Balance to the corners, right!" chanted Frank, sending his voice out
like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the rooms.
With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the couples
separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of the couple to
their right, and retreated.
"Balance to corners, left!"
The same movement was executed to the other side.
"First couple forward and back!" shouted Frank.
Marise and 'Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old clergyman and
the little girl. They met in the middle, poised an instant on the top
wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall, every movement, their
very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat of the fiddle's air which
filled the room as insistently as the odor of the pines.
Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot. Marsh had
not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the
dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into
the next room. He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate
shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift
and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. It
made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his
own set.
The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out in a
hoarse chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,
"_Oh_, pass right through and never mind who
And leave the girl behind you.
Now come right back on the same old track
And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were executing the
figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward and back, dividing
and reuniting. The old clergyman held out his hand to Mrs. Crittenden,
laughing as he swung her briskly about. 'Gene bent his great bulk
solemnly to swing his own little daughter. Then with neat exactitude, on
the stroke of the beat, they were all back in their places.
"_Second_ couple forward and back!" sang out Frank, prolonging the
syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling from a tower.
Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs. Powers through the
intricate figure.
"Now come right back on the same old track
And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for the
beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the motor-centers and
set them throbbing. Vincent found himself holding Nelly Powers at arm's
length and swinging her till his head whirled. She was as light as
sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes shining.
"_Grand_ right and left!" shouted Frank.
Vincent's hand was seized by the little Powers girl. She swung him
competently and passed him on to her mother, who swam past him like a
goddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual seduction trailing
from her as she moved.
Then it was Marise's hand in his . . . how strange, how strange . . . that
hand which knew the secrets of Debussy's heart. . . . She grasped his
fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly, her face as open as
a child's . . . the many-sided tantalizing creature! She pulled him about
and was gone.
And there was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic,
treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes with brilliant
precision.
"_All_ promenade!" cried Frank, this time his voice exultant that the
end was successfully reached.
He seized Nelly by the waist and danced with her the length of the room,
followed by the other couples. The music stopped. He released her
instantly, made a strange, stiff little bow, and turned away. The set
was over.
"There!" said Mrs. Powers, breathing quickly. "'Twan't so hard as you
thought 'twas goin' to be, was it?"
"Good-evening," said Mr. Bayweather on the other side, wiping the pink
roll at the back of his neck. "What do you think of our aboriginal
folk-dancing? I'll warrant you did not think there was a place in the
United States where the eighteenth century dances had had an
uninterrupted existence, did you?"
"I assure you I had never thought about the subject at all," said
Vincent, edging away rapidly towards escape.
"Fascinating historical phenomenon, I call it," said the clergyman.
"Analogous to the persistence of certain parts of old English speech
which is to be observed in the talk of our people. For instance in the
eighteenth century English vocabulary, the phrase . . ."
His voice died away in the voices of the people Vincent had put
resolutely between them shoving his way through the crowd, recklessly.
He was struck by the aspect of the people, their blood warmed, their
lips moist, their eyes gleaming. The rooms were growing hot, and the
odor of pines was heavy in the air.
He found himself next to Nelly Powers, and asked her to dance with him,
"although I don't know at all how to do it," he explained. She smiled,
silently, indifferently, confidently, and laid her hand on his arm in
token of accepting his invitation. Vincent had a passing fancy that she
did not care at all with whom she danced, that the motion itself was
enough for her. But he reflected that it was probably that she did not
care at all whether she danced with _him_.
From the other end of the room came Frank's deep-mouthed shout, "The set
is forming! Promenade _to_ your places!"
Nelly moved swiftly in that direction and again Vincent found himself
opposite Frank, dancing this time with Marise Crittenden.
The music broke out into its shaking, quavering iteration of the pulse
of the dance.
"Salute your partners!"
This time Vincent knew what to do, and turning, bowed low to Nelly, who
made him a deep courtesy, her toe pointed, instep high, her eyes
shining, looking straight at him but evidently not seeing him. The music
seemed to float her off on a cloud.
"Chassay _to_ the corners, right!"
Vincent untangled the difference between "chassay" and "balance" and
acquitted himself. Now that his first panic of astonishment was over, he
observed that the figures of the dance were of great simplicity, all but
the central part, the climax.
When the preliminary part was over, the music changed and again the men
broke out into their accompanying chant. This time it ran,
"The gent around the lady
_and_
The lady around the gent.
_Then_
The lady around the lady
_and_
The gent around the gent."
Somewhere in the hypnotic to-and-fro of those swaying, poised, alert
human figures, he encountered Marise, coming on her suddenly, and
finding her standing stock-still.
"_Around_ me!" she commanded, imperatively, nodding and laughing. "Just
as the song says."
"The gent around the lady,"
sang the men.
Frank was circling about Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading lightly, his
tall body apparently weighing no more than thistle-down. It was as
though he were weaving a charm.
Vincent ended his circle.
The men sang, "_And_ the lady round the gent."
Marise and Nelly stepped off, overlaying the men's invisible circle with
one of their own.
The room beyond boiled with the dervish-like whirling of the dancers.
The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster. The men sang at
the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily. Under cover of this
rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to Marise, "A symbol of life!
A symbol of our life!" and did not know if she heard him.
"_Then_
The lady around the lady."
Nelly and Marise circled each other.
"_And_
The gent around the gent."
He and Frank followed them.
His head was turning, the room staggered around him. Nelly's warm,
vibrant hand was again in his. They were in their places. Frank's voice
rose, resounding, "_Pro_menade all!"
Nelly abandoned herself to his arms, in the one brief moment of close
physical contact of the dance. They raced to the end of the room.
The music stopped abruptly, but it went on in his head.
The odor of pines rose pungent in the momentary silence. Everyone was
breathing rapidly. Nelly put up a hand to touch her hair. Vincent,
reflecting that he would never acquire the native-born capacity for
abstaining from chatter, said, because he felt he must say something,
"What a pleasant smell those pine-branches give."
She turned her white neck to glance into the small room lined with the
fragrant branches, and remarked, clearly and dispassionately, "I don't
like the smell."
Vincent was interested. He continued, "Well, you must have a great deal
of it, whether you like it or not, from that great specimen by your
front door."
She looked at him calmly, her eyes as blue as precious stones. "The old
pine-tree," she said, "I wish it were cut down, darkening the house the
way it does." She spoke with a sovereign impassivity, no trace of
feeling in her tone. She turned away.
Vincent found himself saying almost audibly, "Oh _ho_!" He had the
sensation, very agreeable to him, of combining two clues to make a
certainty. He wished he could lay his hands on a clue to put with Marise
Crittenden's shrinking from the photograph of the Rocca di Papa.
He had not spoken to Marise that evening, save the first greetings, and
his impudent shout to her in the dance, and now turned to find her. On
the other side of the room she was installed, looking extraordinarily
young and girl-like, between Mr. Welles and Mr. Bayweather, fanning
first one and then the other elderly gentleman and talking to them with
animation. They were both in need of fanning, puffing and panting hard.
Mr. Welles indeed was hardly recognizable, the usual pale quiet of his
face broken into red and glistening laughter.
"I see you've been dancing," said Vincent, coming to a halt in front of
the group and wishing the two old gentlemen in the middle of next week.
"Old Mrs. Powers got me," explained Mr. Welles. "You never saw anything
so absurd in your life." He went on to the others, "You simply can't
imagine how remarkable this is, for me. I never, _never_ danced and I no
more thought I ever _would_ . . ."
Mr. Bayweather ran his handkerchief around and around his neck in an
endeavor to save his clerical collar from complete ruin, and said,
panting still, "Best thing in the world for you, Mr. Welles."
"Yes indeed," echoed Marise. "We'll have to prescribe a dance for you
every week. You look like a boy, and you've been looking rather tired
lately." She had an idea and added, accusingly, "I do believe you've
gone on tormenting yourself about the Negro problem!"
"Yes, he has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not the
only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came down to
the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on that subject
and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never been forced to think
so much about it in all my life. He made me very uncomfortable, very!
What's the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station
to which it has pleased God to place us? I believe in leaving such
insoluble problems to a Divine Providence."
Marise was evidently highly amused by this exposition of one variety of
ministerial principle, and looked up at Vincent over her fan, her eyes
sparkling with mockery. He savored with an intimate pleasure her
certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided
to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh,
if it weren't the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will
or predestination, or capital and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a
duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a
mediaeval conception of family responsibility."
Mr. Bayweather's eyes became rounder than ever at this, and Vincent went
on, much amused, "Mr. Welles has done his duty with discomfort to
himself so long that he has the habit. His life at Ashley seems too
unnaturally peaceful to him. I'd just as soon he took it out with
worrying about the Negroes. They are so safely far away. I had been on
the point of communicating to him my doubts as to the civic virtues of
the Martians, as a safety valve for him."
Marise laughed out, as round a peal as little Mark's, but she evidently
thought they had gone far enough with their fooling, for she now brought
the talk back to a safe, literal level by crying, "Well, there's one
thing sure, Mr. Welles can't worry his head about _any_ of the
always-with-us difficulties of life, as long as he is dancing art Ashley
quadrille."
Mr. Welles concurred in this with feeling. "I'd no idea I would ever
experience anything so . . . so . . . well, I tell you, I thought I'd left
_fun_ behind me, years and years ago."
"Oh, what you've had is nothing compared to what you're going to have,"
Marise told him. "Just wait till old Nate strikes up the opening bars of
'The Whirlwind' and see the roof of the house fly off. See here," she
laid her hand on his arm. "This is leap-year. I solemnly engage you to
dance 'The Whirlwind' with me." She made the gesture of the little-boy
athlete, feeling the biceps of one arm, moving her forearm up and down.
"I'm in good health, and good muscle, because I've been out stirring up
the asparagus bed with a spading-fork. I can shove you around as well as
old Mrs. Powers, if I do say it who shouldn't."
Vincent looked down at her, bubbling with light-hearted merriment, and
thought, "There is no end to the variety of her moods!"
She glanced up at him, caught his eyes on her and misinterpreted their
wondering expression. "You think I'm just silly and childish, don't
you?" she told him challengingly. "Oh, don't be such an everlasting
adult. Life's not so serious as all that!"
He stirred to try to protest, but she went on, "It's dancing that sets
me off. Nelly Powers and I are crazy about it. And so far as my
observation of life extends, our dances here are the only social
functions left in the world, that people really _enjoy_ and don't go to
merely because it's the thing to. It always goes to my head to see
people enjoy themselves. It's so sweet."
Mr. Welles gave her one of his affectionate pats on her hand. Vincent
asked her casually, "What's the idea of making a family party of it and
bringing the children too?"
She answered dashingly, "If I answer you in your own language, I'd say
that it's because their households are in such a low and lamentably
primitive condition that they haven't any slave-labor to leave the
children with, and so bring them along out of mere brute necessity. If I
answer you in another vocabulary, I'd say that there is a close feeling
of family unity, and they _like_ to have their children with them when
they are having a good time, and find it pleasant to see mothers dancing
with their little boys and fathers with their little girls."
* * * * *
Without the slightest premonition of what his next question was to bring
out, and only putting it to keep the talk going, Vincent challenged her,
"Why don't you bring your own, then?" He kept down with difficulty the
exclamation which he inwardly added, "If you only knew what a relief it
is to see you for once, without that intrusive, tiresome bunch of
children!"
"Why, sometimes I do," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "But I
just had a telegram from my husband saying that he is able to get home a
little sooner than he thought, and will be here early tomorrow morning.
And the children voted to go to bed early so they could be up bright
and early to see him."
Vincent continued looking down on her blankly for an instant, after she
had finished this reasonable explanation. He was startled by the wave of
anger which spurted up over him like flame.
He heard Mr. Welles make some suitable comment, "How nice." He himself
said, "Oh really," in a neutral tone, and turned away.
* * * * *
For a moment he saw nothing of what was before him, and then realized
that he had moved next to Frank Warner, who was standing by Nelly
Powers, and asking her to dance with him again. She was shaking her
head, and looking about the room uneasily. Vincent felt a gust of anger
again. "Oh, go _to_ it, Frank!" he said, in a low fierce tone. "Take her
out again, as often as you like. Why shouldn't you?"
Nelly gave him one of her enigmatic looks, deep and inscrutable,
shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on Frank's arm, and walked off with
him.
"They're the handsomest couple in the room," said Vincent, at random to
a farmer near him, who looked at him astonished by the heat of his
accent. And then, seeing that Nelly's husband was in possible earshot,
Vincent raised his voice recklessly. "They're the handsomest couple in
the room," he repeated resentfully. "They ought always to dance
together."
If 'Gene heard, he did not show it, the granite impassivity of his harsh
face unmoved.
Vincent went on towards the door, his nerves a little relieved by this
outburst. He would go out and have another cigarette, he thought, and
then take his old man-child home to bed. What were they doing in this
absurd place?
The music began to skirl again as he stepped out and closed the door
behind him.
He drew in deeply the fresh night-air, and looking upward saw that the
clouds had broken away and that the stars were out, innumerable,
thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky which, rising from
the mountains on either side, arched itself over the valley. He stood
staring before him, frowning, forgetting what he had come out to do. He
told himself that coming from that yelling confusion inside, and the
glare of those garish lamps, he was stupefied by the great silence of
the night. There was nothing clear in his mind, only a turmoil of
eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge
dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which
his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he
thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron
ball-and-chain.
He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the great
bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous,
despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From
its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a
twinkling by the vastness of the night's obscurity.
He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the tree,
folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly joke the whole
business of living!
A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from his past
life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping and grabbing
for something worth while that did not exist, save in the stultification
of the intelligence. All that you reached for, so frantically, it was
only another handful of mud, when you held it.
Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the
dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those
silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.
He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the rough bark
of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled everywhere in
human life! A woman like that to be squandered . . . an intelligence fine
and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like hers for music, a strange
personal beauty like that of no other woman, a depth one felt like
mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a child's and a vitality of
personality, a power for passion that pulsed from her so that to touch
her hand casually set one thrilling . . . ! And good God! What was destiny
doing with her? Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable
of distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put
on their shoes and wash their faces for them. Any paid Irish nurse could
do for them what their mother bent the priceless treasure of her
temperament to accomplish. The Irish nurse would do it better, for she
would not be aware of anything else better, which she might do, and
their mother knew well enough what she sacrificed . . . or if she did not
know it yet, she would, soon. She had betrayed that to him, the very
first time he had seen her, that astonishing first day, when, breathing
out her vivid charm like an aureole of gold mist, she had sat there
before him, quite simply the woman most to his taste he had even seen
. . . _here_! That day when she had spoken about the queerness of her
feeling "lost" when little Mark went off to school, because for the
first time in years she had had an hour or so free from those ruthless
little leeches who spent their lives in draining her vitality. He had
known, if she had not, the significance of that feeling of hers, the
first time she had had a moment to raise her eyes from her trivial task
and see that she had been tricked into a prison. That very day he had
wanted to cry out to her, as impersonally as one feels towards a
beautiful bird caught in a net, "Now, _now_, burst through, and spread
your wings where you belong."
It was like wiping up the floor with cloth of gold. In order that those
three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the
world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being
slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being
sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he
would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an
imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her
mother existed, save as cook and care-taker. And Mark, the passionate,
gross, greedy baby. There were the three walls of the prison where she
was shut away from any life worthy of her.
And the fourth wall . . .
* * * * *
The blackness dropped deeper about him, and within him. There they were
dancing, those idiots, dancing on a volcano if ever human beings did, in
the little sultry respite from the tornado which was called the
world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working, at least. How
soon before it would break again, the final destructive hurricane, born
of nothing but the malignant folly of human hearts, and sweep away all
that they now agonized and sweated to keep? What silly weakness to spend
the respite in anything but getting as much of what you wanted as you
could, before it was all gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow
or black man were on top.
* * * * *
With a bitter relish he felt sunk deep in one of his rank reactions
against life and human beings. Now at least he was on bed-rock. There
was a certain hard, quiet restfulness in scorning it all so
whole-heartedly as either stupid or base.
* * * * *
At this a woman's face hung suddenly there in the blackness. Her long
eyes seemed to look directly into his, a full revealing look such as
they had never given him in reality. His hard quiet was broken by an
agitation he could not control. No, no, there was something there that
was not mud. He had thought he would live and die without meeting it.
And there it was, giving to paltry life a meaning, after all, a
troubling and immortal meaning.
A frosty breath blew down upon him from the mountains. A long shudder
ran through him.
The sensation moved him to a sweeping change of mood, to a furious
resentment as at an indignity. God! What was he doing? Who was this
moping in the dark like a boy?
* * * * *
The great night stood huge and breathless above him as before, but now
he saw only the lamp-lit house, tiny as an insect, but vibrant with
eager and joyous life. With a strong, resolute step he went rapidly back
to the door, opened it wide, stepped in, and walked across the floor to
Marise Crittenden. "You're going to dance the next dance with _me_, you
know," he told her.