Mr. Scogan had been accommodated in a little canvas hut. Dressed in a
black skirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief
tied round his black wig, he looked--sharp-nosed, brown, and
wrinkled--like the Bohemian Hag of Frith’s Derby Day. A placard pinned
to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of
“Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana.” Seated at a table, Mr. Scogan
received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement
of the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to extend
their hands for his inspection. He then examined the palm that was
presented him, using a magnifying glass and a pair of horn spectacles.
He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking with
his tongue as he looked at the lines. Sometimes he would whisper, as
though to himself, “Terrible, terrible!” or “God preserve us!” sketching
out the sign of the cross as he uttered the words. The clients who came
in laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously.
She was a formidable-looking woman; could it be, was it possible, that
there was something in this sort of thing after all? After all, they
thought, as the hag shook her head over their hands, after all...And
they waited, with an uncomfortably beating heart, for the oracle to
speak. After a long and silent inspection, Mr. Scogan would suddenly
look up and ask, in a hoarse whisper, some horrifying question, such as,
“Have you ever been hit on the head with a hammer by a young man with
red hair?” When the answer was in the negative, which it could hardly
fail to be, Mr. Scogan would nod several times, saying, “I was afraid
so. Everything is still to come, still to come, though it can’t be
very far off now.” Sometimes, after a long examination, he would just
whisper, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise,” and refuse
to divulge any details of a future too appalling to be envisaged without
despair. Sesostris had a success of horror. People stood in a queue
outside the witch’s booth waiting for the privilege of hearing sentence
pronounced upon them.
Denis, in the course of his round, looked with curiosity at this crowd
of suppliants before the shrine of the oracle. He had a great desire
to see how Mr. Scogan played his part. The canvas booth was a rickety,
ill-made structure. Between its walls and its sagging roof were long
gaping chinks and crannies. Denis went to the tea-tent and borrowed a
wooden bench and a small Union Jack. With these he hurried back to the
booth of Sesostris. Setting down the bench at the back of the booth,
he climbed up, and with a great air of busy efficiency began to tie the
Union Jack to the top of one of the tent-poles. Through the crannies in
the canvas he could see almost the whole of the interior of the tent.
Mr. Scogan’s bandana-covered head was just below him; his terrifying
whispers came clearly up. Denis looked and listened while the witch
prophesied financial losses, death by apoplexy, destruction by air-raids
in the next war.
“Is there going to be another war?” asked the old lady to whom he had
predicted this end.
“Very soon,” said Mr. Scogan, with an air of quiet confidence.
The old lady was succeeded by a girl dressed in white muslin, garnished
with pink ribbons. She was wearing a broad hat, so that Denis could not
see her face; but from her figure and the roundness of her bare arms
he judged her young and pleasing. Mr. Scogan looked at her hand, then
whispered, “You are still virtuous.”
The young lady giggled and exclaimed, “Oh, lor’!”
“But you will not remain so for long,” added Mr. Scogan sepulchrally.
The young lady giggled again. “Destiny, which interests itself in small
things no less than in great, has announced the fact upon your hand.”
Mr. Scogan took up the magnifying-glass and began once more to examine
the white palm. “Very interesting,” he said, as though to himself--“very
interesting. It’s as clear as day.” He was silent.
“What’s clear?” asked the girl.
“I don’t think I ought to tell you.” Mr. Scogan shook his head; the
pendulous brass ear-rings which he had screwed on to his ears tinkled.
“Please, please!” she implored.
The witch seemed to ignore her remark. “Afterwards, it’s not at all
clear. The fates don’t say whether you will settle down to married life
and have four children or whether you will try to go on the cinema
and have none. They are only specific about this one rather crucial
incident.”
“What is it? What is it? Oh, do tell me!”
The white muslin figure leant eagerly forward.
Mr. Scogan sighed. “Very well,” he said, “if you must know, you
must know. But if anything untoward happens you must blame your
own curiosity. Listen. Listen.” He lifted up a sharp, claw-nailed
forefinger. “This is what the fates have written. Next Sunday afternoon
at six o’clock you will be sitting on the second stile on the footpath
that leads from the church to the lower road. At that moment a man will
appear walking along the footpath.” Mr. Scogan looked at her hand again
as though to refresh his memory of the details of the scene. “A man,” he
repeated--“a small man with a sharp nose, not exactly good looking nor
precisely young, but fascinating.” He lingered hissingly over the word.
“He will ask you, ‘Can you tell me the way to Paradise?’ and you will
answer, ‘Yes, I’ll show you,’ and walk with him down towards the little
hazel copse. I cannot read what will happen after that.” There was a
silence.
“Is it really true?” asked white muslin.
The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. “I merely tell you what I read
in your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have change.
Thank you. Good afternoon.”
Denis stepped down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to the
tentpole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. “If only I could
do things like that!” he thought, as he carried the bench back to the
tea-tent.
Anne was sitting behind a long table filling thick white cups from an
urn. A neat pile of printed sheets lay before her on the table. Denis
took one of them and looked at it affectionately. It was his poem. They
had printed five hundred copies, and very nice the quarto broadsheets
looked.
“Have you sold many?” he asked in a casual tone.
Anne put her head on one side deprecatingly. “Only three so far, I’m
afraid. But I’m giving a free copy to everyone who spends more than a
shilling on his tea. So in any case it’s having a circulation.”
Denis made no reply, but walked slowly away. He looked at the broadsheet
in his hand and read the lines to himself relishingly as he walked
along:
“This day of roundabouts and swings,
Struck weights, shied cocoa-nuts, tossed rings,
Switchbacks, Aunt Sallies, and all such small
High jinks--you call it ferial?
A holiday? But paper noses
Sniffed the artificial roses
Of round Venetian cheeks through half
Each carnival year, and masks might laugh
At things the naked face for shame
Would blush at--laugh and think no blame.
A holiday? But Galba showed
Elephants on an airy road;
Jumbo trod the tightrope then,
And in the circus armed men
Stabbed home for sport and died to break
Those dull imperatives that make
A prison of every working day,
Where all must drudge and all obey.
Sing Holiday! You do not know
How to be free. The Russian snow
Flowered with bright blood whose roses spread
Petals of fading, fading red
That died into the snow again,
Into the virgin snow; and men
From all ancient bonds were freed.
Old law, old custom, and old creed,
Old right and wrong there bled to death;
The frozen air received their breath,
A little smoke that died away;
And round about them where they lay
The snow bloomed roses. Blood was there
A red gay flower and only fair.
Sing Holiday! Beneath the Tree
Of Innocence and Liberty,
Paper Nose and Red Cockade
Dance within the magic shade
That makes them drunken, merry, and strong
To laugh and sing their ferial song:
‘Free, free...!’
But Echo answers
Faintly to the laughing dancers,
‘Free’--and faintly laughs, and still,
Within the hollows of the hill,
Faintlier laughs and whispers, ‘Free,’
Fadingly, diminishingly:
‘Free,’ and laughter faints away...
Sing Holiday! Sing Holiday!”
He folded the sheet carefully and put it in his pocket. The thing had
its merits. Oh, decidedly, decidedly! But how unpleasant the crowd
smelt! He lit a cigarette. The smell of cows was preferable. He passed
through the gate in the park wall into the garden. The swimming-pool was
a centre of noise and activity.
“Second Heat in the Young Ladies’ Championship.” It was the polite
voice of Henry Wimbush. A crowd of sleek, seal-like figures in black
bathing-dresses surrounded him. His grey bowler hat, smooth, round, and
motionless in the midst of a moving sea, was an island of aristocratic
calm.
Holding his tortoise-shell-rimmed pince-nez an inch or two in front of
his eyes, he read out names from a list.
“Miss Dolly Miles, Miss Rebecca Balister, Miss Doris Gabell...”
Five young persons ranged themselves on the brink. From their seats of
honour at the other end of the pool, old Lord Moleyn and Mr. Callamay
looked on with eager interest.
Henry Wimbush raised his hand. There was an expectant silence. “When I
say ‘Go,’ go. Go!” he said. There was an almost simultaneous splash.
Denis pushed his way through the spectators. Somebody plucked him by the
sleeve; he looked down. It was old Mrs. Budge.
“Delighted to see you again, Mr. Stone,” she said in her rich, husky
voice. She panted a little as she spoke, like a short-winded lap-dog.
It was Mrs. Budge who, having read in the “Daily Mirror” that the
Government needed peach stones--what they needed them for she never
knew--had made the collection of peach stones her peculiar “bit” of war
work. She had thirty-six peach trees in her walled garden, as well as
four hot-houses in which trees could be forced, so that she was able
to eat peaches practically the whole year round. In 1916 she ate 4200
peaches, and sent the stones to the Government. In 1917 the military
authorities called up three of her gardeners, and what with this and the
fact that it was a bad year for wall fruit, she only managed to eat 2900
peaches during that crucial period of the national destinies. In 1918
she did rather better, for between January 1st and the date of the
Armistice she ate 3300 peaches. Since the Armistice she had relaxed her
efforts; now she did not eat more than two or three peaches a day. Her
constitution, she complained, had suffered; but it had suffered for a
good cause.
Denis answered her greeting by a vague and polite noise.
“So nice to see the young people enjoying themselves,” Mrs. Budge went
on. “And the old people too, for that matter. Look at old Lord Moleyn
and dear Mr. Callamay. Isn’t it delightful to see the way they enjoy
themselves?”
Denis looked. He wasn’t sure whether it was so very delightful after
all. Why didn’t they go and watch the sack races? The two old gentlemen
were engaged at the moment in congratulating the winner of the race; it
seemed an act of supererogatory graciousness; for, after all, she had
only won a heat.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?” said Mrs. Budge huskily, and panted
two or three times.
“Yes,” Denis nodded agreement. Sixteen, slender, but nubile, he said to
himself, and laid up the phrase in his memory as a happy one. Old Mr.
Callamay had put on his spectacles to congratulate the victor, and Lord
Moleyn, leaning forward over his walking-stick, showed his long ivory
teeth, hungrily smiling.
“Capital performance, capital,” Mr. Callamay was saying in his deep
voice.
The victor wriggled with embarrassment. She stood with her hands behind
her back, rubbing one foot nervously on the other. Her wet bathing-dress
shone, a torso of black polished marble.
“Very good indeed,” said Lord Moleyn. His voice seemed to come from just
behind his teeth, a toothy voice. It was as though a dog should suddenly
begin to speak. He smiled again, Mr. Callamay readjusted his spectacles.
“When I say ‘Go,’ go. Go!”
Splash! The third heat had started.
“Do you know, I never could learn to swim,” said Mrs. Budge.
“Really?”
“But I used to be able to float.”
Denis imagined her floating--up and down, up and down on a great green
swell. A blown black bladder; no, that wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at
all. A new winner was being congratulated. She was atrociously stubby
and fat. The last one, long and harmoniously, continuously curved from
knee to breast, had been an Eve by Cranach; but this, this one was a bad
Rubens.
“...go--go--go!” Henry Wimbush’s polite level voice once more pronounced
the formula. Another batch of young ladies dived in.
Grown a little weary of sustaining a conversation with Mrs. Budge,
Denis conveniently remembered that his duties as a steward called him
elsewhere. He pushed out through the lines of spectators and made his
way along the path left clear behind them. He was thinking again that
his soul was a pale, tenuous membrane, when he was startled by hearing
a thin, sibilant voice, speaking apparently from just above his head,
pronounce the single word “Disgusting!”
He looked up sharply. The path along which he was walking passed under
the lee of a wall of clipped yew. Behind the hedge the ground sloped
steeply up towards the foot of the terrace and the house; for one
standing on the higher ground it was easy to look over the dark barrier.
Looking up, Denis saw two heads overtopping the hedge immediately above
him. He recognised the iron mask of Mr. Bodiham and the pale, colourless
face of his wife. They were looking over his head, over the heads of the
spectators, at the swimmers in the pond.
“Disgusting!” Mrs. Bodiham repeated, hissing softly.
The rector turned up his iron mask towards the solid cobalt of the sky.
“How long?” he said, as though to himself; “how long?” He lowered his
eyes again, and they fell on Denis’s upturned curious face. There was an
abrupt movement, and Mr. and Mrs. Bodiham popped out of sight behind the
hedge.
Denis continued his promenade. He wandered past the merry-go-round,
through the thronged streets of the canvas village; the membrane of
his soul flapped tumultuously in the noise and laughter. In a roped-off
space beyond, Mary was directing the children’s sports. Little creatures
seethed round about her, making a shrill, tinny clamour; others
clustered about the skirts and trousers of their parents. Mary’s face
was shining in the heat; with an immense output of energy she started a
three-legged race. Denis looked on in admiration.
“You’re wonderful,” he said, coming up behind her and touching her on
the arm. “I’ve never seen such energy.”
She turned towards him a face, round, red, and honest as the setting
sun; the golden bell of her hair swung silently as she moved her head
and quivered to rest.
“Do you know, Denis,” she said, in a low, serious voice, gasping a
little as she spoke--“do you know that there’s a woman here who has had
three children in thirty-one months?”
“Really,” said Denis, making rapid mental calculations.
“It’s appalling. I’ve been telling her about the Malthusian League. One
really ought...”
But a sudden violent renewal of the metallic yelling announced the fact
that somebody had won the race. Mary became once more the centre of a
dangerous vortex. It was time, Denis thought, to move on; he might be
asked to do something if he stayed too long.
He turned back towards the canvas village. The thought of tea was
making itself insistent in his mind. Tea, tea, tea. But the tea-tent was
horribly thronged. Anne, with an unusual expression of grimness on her
flushed face, was furiously working the handle of the urn; the brown
liquid spurted incessantly into the proffered cups. Portentous, in
the farther corner of the tent, Priscilla, in her royal toque, was
encouraging the villagers. In a momentary lull Denis could hear her
deep, jovial laughter and her manly voice. Clearly, he told himself,
this was no place for one who wanted tea. He stood irresolute at the
entrance to the tent. A beautiful thought suddenly came to him; if he
went back to the house, went unobtrusively, without being observed, if
he tiptoed into the dining-room and noiselessly opened the little doors
of the sideboard--ah, then! In the cool recess within he would find
bottles and a siphon; a bottle of crystal gin and a quart of soda water,
and then for the cups that inebriate as well as cheer...
A minute later he was walking briskly up the shady yew-tree walk. Within
the house it was deliciously quiet and cool. Carrying his well-filled
tumbler with care, he went into the library. There, the glass on the
corner of the table beside him, he settled into a chair with a volume of
Sainte-Beuve. There was nothing, he found, like a Causerie du Lundi for
settling and soothing the troubled spirits. That tenuous membrane of his
had been too rudely buffeted by the afternoon’s emotions; it required a
rest.