HOW ELSIE DANCED FOR HER LIFE
The white and gold walls of the drawing-room of Deep Moat Grange,
though tarnished by time, and with spots of mould beginning to outline
themselves again for want of Aphra Orrin's careful hand, gave back
gaily enough the mellow glow of a hundred candles all of wax.
"Dance, Elsie woman!" cried Mad Jeremy, emptying a tumbler at a gulp.
"But first drink ye also, lassie. That will bring back your bonnie
colour! What has come to ye, bairn? Ye are pale as a bit snaw-drap
that sets its head through a wreath at a dyke-back. But red, red, red
as ony rose shall ye be, I'se warrant ye! Dance, lassie, dance!"
And with a jingle of bells he struck in the "Reel o' Bogie." Elsie did
no more than set her lips to her glass. But she obeyed, for Jeremy was
in no mood to be countered. Then, taking up her gown daintily on both
sides, as the dance ordains, she danced it alone. And every time as
she turned, her eyes caught the door of the weaving-room, and the heart
within her became as water for what she had seen through that little
black mark of exclamation which was the keyhole.
Yet somehow the situation stirred her, too. There is a vast deal of
desperate courage in a woman. A man laughs at this because he is
exempt from the fears of mice and minor creeping things. He may as
well think, as he often does, the better of himself, on the strength of
the beard on his chin. But in the desperate passes of life, woman is
apt to lead the forlorn hopes. And why should she not? Her kind have
been accustomed to them ever since, in the forlorn coppices outside
Eden, one Eve gave birth to her firstborn, and called him--being, like
a woman, deceived--"My possession."
And with the blank midnight pressing against the huge windows of the
facade, and the white lights and red candle stems reflected a thousand
times in the sullen moat, Elsie danced. The irregular wind moaned
about the house, and as the brand-new melodeon whined and crew,
flinging a weird rhythm to the tremulous candle flames, something like
the fast-running "Broom o' the Cowdenkynwes," "Logan Braes," "Green
Grows the Rushes," or "Bonnie Dundee," emerged. Elsie danced to them
all. She danced as the fluted candles burned down nearer to their
sockets.
And all the while, now with one leg on the table, and swinging his body
to the time of the music, or crouched in a corner nursing his melodeon
against him as if he were a beast ready for the spring, Jeremy beat the
measure with his foot.
Sometimes he would spring up and sing a stave which struck him, in a
high, screeching voice--sometimes drain a cup of wine or spirits out of
the nearest bottle, stopping in the midst to wave the half-filled glass
about his head, and complete his chant. Sometimes it went like this--
"His mother from the window looked,
With all the longing of a mother;
His little sister, weeping walked
The greenwood path to meet her brother.
"They sought him east, they sought him west,
They sought him a' the forest thorough;
They only saw the cloud o' nicht,
They only heard the roar of Yarrow!"
Then, as the night went past, Elsie prayed for the time to go faster.
She saw the candles blink and dwindle; she saw the windows stand out
more blankly. In her brain there grew up a fear of the dark, after the
light should be extinguished, when she should find herself alone with
that wild being who had murdered her grandfather. Her hope was in the
morning light. If she could only dance till then!
Well it was for her that, as a child, she had danced, as a gnat over a
pool, as a butterfly among the flowers of the garden. Light of foot,
and ready, she had learned all as by nature. And now, with the candles
going out one by one, and the bitterness of death rising like a tide in
her heart--barred in, the door locked, utterly forsaken--she had yet to
smile and dance--dance and dance--to the lilt and stress of Mad
Jeremy's noisy instrument.
The jangle of bells thrilled her as he struck with a clash as of steel
weapons into "Roy's Wife of Aldevaloch," or an irony of fiendish
laughter as he shouted the refrain of "Duncan Grey," lifting a hand
fleeringly from the German-silver keys, with a glance of terrible
import.
"Ha, ha, the wooin' o't!"
It was, indeed, a memorable wooing, but Elsie smiled and danced
tirelessly, her young body lithe and swift to the turn, her feet nimble
and dainty. The last tune pleased the madman. With a "Hooch" of
triumph, he sprang to his feet, marching up and down the room, playing
all the time with desperate energy.
"This beats fiddlin'!" he cried. "The Herodias quean was leaden-footed
to you, lassie! And noo Jeremy will play ye something o' his ain; and
you, wee Elsie, shall dance to the movin' o' the speerit! Wave your
airms and smile, Elsie, for I am the laird, and ye are the leddy!"
With one spring, he landed featly on the tall mantelpiece, where,
mopping and mowing, swinging his instrument now high over his head, and
now lower than his knees, Mad Jeremy seemed more like the sculptured
gargoyle of some devil come alive than anything of human stock or human
mothering.
The fire was black out, but on the hearth the shape of the burned
violin lay in a black heap like a dead, dangerous beast. For the head
and neck had twisted themselves back as if in agony, the black pegs
looking as if they could sting. They seemed to watch the door of the
weaving room into which their destroyer had gone. And certainly they
had not been unavenged. For their sake, the madman's knife had bitten
deep and keen. There was little need now for the head to twist itself
as the tightening strings had pulled it, as the fire had left it. All
was wiped out. And, as if in recognition of the fact, its master
stirred the black ashes with his toe before he struck into a wild
saturnalia of sound, to which Elsie danced like a Bacchante, with the
last remnants of her girl's strength.
It was still far from the dawn, which is a laggard in February
throughout Scotland. The red candles began to go out one by one. Fear
surged tumultuous in Elsie's heart--as, indeed, well it might--to find
herself thus shut up with the murderer of her grandfather, whose dead
body she knew lay behind the nearest door, and the red candles going
out one by one.
There remained only the huge centre one, a special purchase of Aphra's.
And still the madman grimaced, crossing and uncrossing his legs on the
high mantel-piece. Still he swung his instrument--still he called on
Elsie to dance. But now the girl was utterly fatigued. Without a sign
of giving way, something seemed to crack somewhere--in her head,
perhaps, or about her heart. She sank unconscious on the floor in a
heap.
Mad Jeremy halted in the middle of a bar; bent forward to look at the
girl to see whether or no she was pretending. Then, leaping down from
the mantel-shelf with the same graceful ease as he had mounted, he
strode to the last great red candle, fit for a cathedral altar, which
Aphra had set in the central candelabra. He took it down, and, after
one keen look at the girl, he stepped over her prostrate body, on his
way to resume his beloved melodeon, which he had left behind him when
he had leaped down.
A smile of infinite cunning wreathed his lips.
"Baith the twa," he muttered, the smile widening to a grin. "She's a
bonnie lassie, ay! and if Jeremy had ony thocht o' marryin' she wad be
the lass for him. But it's safer no! Baith the twa will be best dead.
That will mak' the last of the Stennises gang tegither. She shall have
a braw burial. There shall never be sic a Baalfire as Jeremy will
licht for her--and weel she is deservin' o't. For she danced blithe
and brawly, even unto the breakin' o' the day!"
And he went on tiptoe to the door of the weaving room, unlocked it, and
looked in, holding his flambeau high above his head. The light fell on
the dead man, bent forward with his face half hidden in the web.
He held his head first to one side and then to the other, as an artist
may, with pleasure and self-complaisance, admire a completed
masterpiece.
Then he went out. Elsie still lay where she had fallen. The madman
glanced once at her.
"It will e'en be the quicker. I will let her lie. She will never
wauken. Leave the door open, Jeremy. It will mak' a graund draught.
Fare ye weel, bairn! Ye danced bonnie, and kind Jeremy is giein' ye
your wages this nicht! The best o' a'--an easy way o' goin'!"
He took the candle in his left hand, and with the melodeon still in his
right he went down to the chamber beneath. Here he filled his pockets
with bank-notes in rolls, little sacks of gold, and clinking bags from
a great safe which stood wide open--the bundle of keys which had
belonged to its dead owner still in the lock. The Golden Farmer was
plundered of his store.
Then, flinging all the inflammable stuff, furniture, and hangings in a
heap in the centre, he drenched the pile with kerosene from a can he
brought from the storehouse, throwing on shavings from his master's
workshop, kindling-wood from the kitchen, and, indeed, all combustibles
he could lay hands upon.
Bending, he struck a match on the smooth of his corduroy trousers, and
in a moment the flame mounted with a roar. Jeremy stood in the doorway
chuckling, long enough to make sure that it had taken.
"Ay, ay, a bonnie funeral pyre! That they will hae, baith the twa!" he
said. "The last o' the Stennises! A bonnie lass she was--but Jeremy
couldna be fashed wi' women folk--na, na, Aphra and her wad never
agree."
The draught drew upward through the silent house. It increased to a
wind, sucking toward the flames. He could hear the crackling. With a
return of his mad humour he began to dance.
He waved his melodeon, making the bells leap and jangle. And in the
pale gleam of the still half-smothered flames he flickered down the
stairs in the direction of the hall of Deep Moat Grange.
Mad Jeremy had made an end of the House of Stennis.