CHILDREN DANCING IN THE DUSK
Nigel was late for supper that evening. He came in very quietly, and
slipped into his place without a word. He had very little to say about
the races.
"Lost your money on Midsummer Moon?" said Leonard. "Well, you needn't
look so glum--it was only five bob."
But Janey knew that was not the matter, though she knew nothing more.
After supper she put her arm through his, and drew him out into the
garden. They walked up and down in front of Sparrow Hall. At first she
had meant to ask him questions, but soon she realised that the questions
would not come--only a great stillness between her and Nigel, and a
fierce clutch of their hands. They walked up and down, up and down,
breathing the thick scents of the garden--touched with autumn
rottenness, sodden with rain and night. Gradually they pulled each other
closer, till she felt the throb of his heart under her hand....
The next day Nigel worked hard with Len at weed-burning. It was strange
what a lot of weed-burning there was to do, thought he--not only at
Sparrow Hall, but at Wilderwick, and Swites Farm, and Golden Compasses,
and the Two-Mile Cottages, and all those places from which little curls
of blue, dream-scented smoke were drifting up against the sky. Men were
burning the tangles of their summer gardens, they were piling into the
flame those trailing sweets, now dead. For autumn was here, and winter
was at hand, and a few dead things that must be burnt were all that
remained of June.
Nigel wondered if his June had not gone too, and if he had not better
burn at once those few sweet, dead, tangled thoughts it had left him. He
thought of the dim lane by Goatsluck Farm, with the glare of two motor
lights on the hedges. He saw the puddles gleam, and Tony erect in the
trickery of light and darkness, shapeless in his coat. Then across the
aching silence of his heart came her words--"I can't bear it!--I--I'm
so--disappointed."
That was the end of June--and he ought to have expected it. His
friendship with Tony Strife could never have lasted in a neighbourhood
where both were known and talked about. It had ended a little suddenly,
that was all. He did not reproach himself for deceiving her; he did not
even regret it, though he guessed what she must think. The doorway of
the house of light had stood open, and he had crept in like a beggar,
knowing that he must soon be turned out, but resolute meanwhile to bask
and be glad.
But he wished she had not been "disappointed," that was so pathetic.
Poor little girl! the memory of him would eat into her heart for a
while. Girls of her age were righteous, and he had cheated her into
friendship with unrighteousness. She would hate him for a bit. "I am so
disappointed"--it seemed as if all his seething desires for goodness
and peace had died into that little wail of outraged girlhood, and come
back to haunt the empty house of his heart.
During the first few days of separation he childishly hoped that he
might hear from her--surely she would write if only to upbraid. But no
letter came. His coat was returned the next morning, but he searched the
parcel in vain for a message. How cruel of Tony!--and yet all children,
even girl-children, are cruel. Their experience of sorrow is limited to
its tempestuous side--they do not know its aching calms; they quench
their thirst with great gulps, and do not know the relief of small drops
of water. This was the price he had to pay for seeking his comfort in
the gaiety of boys and girls instead of in the more stable sympathy of
his contemporaries.
The next two weeks were heartsick and lonely. All day long a piteous
consciousness of Tony was present in the background of his thoughts,
waiting till night to creep into the foreground of his dreams, and
torment him with hungry wakings. Everything that reminded him even of
her type was painful. Little ridiculous things twanged chords of
plaintive memory--a picture of the Roedean hockey-team, with their short
skirts and pig-tails, the demure flappers he sometimes met in his walks,
a correspondence on "moral training in girls' schools" which was being
waged in a daily paper--everything that reminded him of healthy,
growing, undeveloped girlhood, reminded him of Tony, and made his heart
ache and yearn and grieve after her.
He wandered about by himself a good deal in the lanes, snatching his few
free moments after dusk. He no longer tramped furiously--he roamed, with
slow steps and dreaming eyes, drinking a faint peace from the darkness
of the fields. He found comfort, too, in his fiddle, and every evening
he would play through his banal repertory, "O Caro Nome," from
_Rigoletto_, "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls," the overtures to
_Zampa_ and _La Gazza Ladra_, the Finale from _Lucia di Lammermoor_. He
became wonderfully absorbed in his fiddling, and had recovered a certain
amount of his old skill and flexibility.
One day he took his violin to East Grinstead, as the sounding post had
fallen down. He came back by a long road--through Hophurst and New
Chapel and Blindley Heath. He stopped at the last to have a drink--it
was a dreary collection of cottages, scattered round a flat, windswept
heath. There were ponds in the corners of the heath, and their waters
were always ruffled by a strange wind. Right in the middle of the waste
was a little house squatting in its own patch of tillage, an island, a
tumble-down oasis, in the great dreariness.
The scene, with the grey, scudding sky behind it, became stamped on
Nigel's brain, as he stood with his beer in the pothouse door. It was
one of those days when it seems as if our own hopelessness has at last
impressed the unfeeling mask of Nature, and caused it to put on the
grimace of our despair.
One or two children were playing in the road in front of the tavern, the
wind fluttering their pinafores, and blowing their clothes against their
limbs. A little boy with a mouth-organ was playing a vague and plaintive
tune, to which two little girls were dancing. Nigel stood listening for
some minutes, till both the moaning wind and the creaking tune had woven
themselves together into a symphony of wretchedness.
Then he put down his beer, and took up his violin. He unfastened the
case, unrolled the chrysalis of wrappings, and laid the instrument
against his shoulder. The next minute a shrill wail rose up and
challenged the wind.
The bar was nearly empty, but Nigel would not have cared had it been
full. He stood in the doorway, his hair blowing and ruffling madly, his
body swaying, as he forced his fiddle into a duet with the wind. He had
never before tried to extemporise, his violin had been for him a memory
of sugary tunes, each wrapped up in the tinsel of a little past--he had
never tried to wring the present out of it in a sudden, fierce
expression of the emotions that tortured him as he played. This evening
he wanted to join the wind in its wailing race, to rush with it over the
common, to tear with it through the hedges, and sweep with it over the
water. He forced out of his fiddle the cries of his own heart--they rose
up and challenged the wind. The wind hushed a little--fluttered,
throbbed--was still ... the fiddle tore through the silence and
shattered it ... then the wind rose, and drummed savagely. Nigel dashed
his bow down on the deep strings, and forced deep sounds out of them.
The wind galloped up to a shriek--and Nigel's hand tore into harmonics,
and wailed there till the wind was only puffing and sobbing. Then the
fiddle sobbed. The fiddle and the wind sobbed together ... till the wind
swung up a scale--up came the fiddle after it ... the wind rushed higher
and higher, it whistled in the dark eaves of the inn, and the fiddle
squeaked higher and higher, and Nigel's fingers strained on the
fingerboard--he would not be beaten, blind Nature should not defeat him,
two should play her game. The wind was like a maniac as it whistled its
arpeggios--the casements of the house were rattling like tin, the trees
were swishing and bending, the water in the ruts of the lane was
rippling, doors were creaking and banging, the fiddle was straining and
shrieking ... then suddenly the string broke. Nigel dropped his bow,
angry and defeated. The duet with the wind was over.
Then he noticed a strange thing. He had been staring blindly and
stupidly ahead of him, all his senses merged into sound, but now he saw
that the road was crowded with children, and they were all
dancing--little girls with their petticoats held high, little boys
jumping aimlessly in their clumsy boots. They stopped as his hand fell,
and stared at him in surprise, as if they had expected the music to go
on for ever.
"Hullo!" said Nigel--then suddenly he laughed; they all looked so
forlorn, holding out their pinafores and pointing their feet.
"Wait a bit," he said, "my string's broken, but I'll have another on in
no time."
So he did--but not to play a duet with the wind. He played the
Intermezzo from _Cavalleria_, and the dance went on as raggedly as
before. After the Intermezzo he played the Overture to _Zampa_, which
was immensely popular, then threaded a patchwork of _La Somnambula_, the
_Bohemian Girl_, _La Tosca_, and _Aida_, till mothers began to appear on
the doorsteps with cries of "Supper's waiting."
Supper was waiting for Nigel when he appeared at Sparrow Hall. Len and
Janey asked no questions--it was pathetic how few questions they asked
him nowadays--but they both noticed he was happier. He did not speak
much--he sat in a kind of dream, with a wistful tremulousness in the
corners of his mouth. His mouth had always been the oldest part of
him--hard in repose and fierce in movement--but to-night it had taken
some of the extreme childishness of his eyes. Nigel felt very much the
same as a child that cries for the moon and is given a ball to play
with--the ball almost makes him forget that he wants the moon so badly.
Those dancing children had, for some strange reason, partly filled the
place of stalwart Tony in his heart. That night they came and danced in
his dreams--in a pale light, to a tinkling tune. He found himself
forming plans for making them dance again. He would never be on the old
footing with Tony, but those children should dance for him and help him
to forget.
So the next evening he went out again with his fiddle, and played at
Blindley Heath. Again the children danced--with clumping boots and high
petticoats they danced outside the Sweepers Inn. But this time he did
not stay long--he went on to Dormans Land, to see if they would dance
there. It was nearly dark now, and one or two misty stars shone above
the village roofs--the wind was heavy with approaching rain as it
soughed up the street towards him. He did not stand at the inn, but
where the road to Lingfield joins the road to Cowden, close to the
schools. One or two children came and looked at him curiously.
"He wants a halfpenny," said one, "I'll ask my mumma for it."
"No," said Nigel, "I want you to dance."
The children giggled, but at last the little girl who had suggested the
halfpenny picked up her skirts, and then it was not long before they
were all dancing to the waltz from _Traviata_.
Every day afterwards, when evening fell, Nigel took his violin, and went
out into the lanes and the dark-swept villages, and played for the
children to dance. They grew to expect him, and to clamour for old
tunes. "Give us the jiggy one," they would cry, and he would play "O
Caro Nome." "Give us the twirly one," and he would play "I Dreamt I
Dwelt in Marble Halls." But sometimes he would not give them what they
wanted--he would play what he chose, strange things that came into his
head and would not leave it till he had sent them wailing into the dusk.
One day he played a duet with some long grass that rustled and sighed
behind him; another day it was with a wood, brown and naked, but full of
palpitating mysteries; another time he played an accompaniment to the
stars as they crept timidly one by one into the deserts of the sky. He
knew the constellations, and gave gentle, bird-like notes to the dim
Pleiades, and low, sonorous tones to Orion, and heavy quavers to the
Wain; there was a sudden scale for Casseopeia, and harmonics for the
Ram. By the time he had finished all the children had gone, and he was
alone in the breeze and darkness, in a great, grief-stricken silence,
which, he realised painfully, greeted the stars far more fitly than any
strivings of his.
It was impossible for this new life to be hidden from the brother and
sister at Sparrow Hall. One evening Leonard burst into the kitchen where
Janey was sitting.
"What do you think Nigel's up to now?"
"What?"
"Playing the fiddle outside pubs for kids to dance to."
Janey gasped.
"Are you sure, Len?"
"Absolutely pos. Old Pilcher was telling me--the lad was fiddling away
for an hour outside the Sweepers at Blindley Heath, and all the brats
were on their hind legs, kicking up no end. Janet, do you think he's all
there?"
"I--I don't know--I've been wondering."
"There's no doubt that he's been strange ever since he came out of quod.
Poor old Nigel--life's hit him hard, and bruised him a lot."
"He was funny about kids from the first. He took a tremendous fancy to
that odious little Ivy Batt who comes for the milk."
"I expect this is part of the same game."
"I expect it is--but it hurts me to think of it."
She turned to the fire, and a sigh shook her breast--life had a habit of
hitting hard all round.
A few minutes later Nigel came in. He set down his violin, and went over
to the hearth, kneeling beside Janey. She put her arms round him, and
drew his head to her shoulder.
"Old man ... is it really true that you go about the villages fiddling
to kids?"
"Yes--I like to see 'em dance."
"Are you fond of them?"
"Only when they dance."
"What a funny old man you are."
"Ain't I, Janey!"