She danced; and the service-doorway showed a vista of open-mouthed
scullions. There was no sound in the room, save the concertina and the
champion clogs. Every eye was fixed on those clogs; even the little
eyes of Mr Peake quitted the button of his waistcoat and burned like
diamond points on those clogs. Florence herself chiefly gazed on those
clogs, but occasionally her nonchalant petulant gaze would wander up and
down her bare arms and across her bosom. At intervals, with her ringed
fingers she would lift the short skirt--a nothing, an imperceptibility,
half an inch, with glance downcast; and the effect was profound,
recondite, inexplicable. Her style was not that of a male clog-dancer,
but it was indubitably clog-dancing, full of marvels to the connoisseur,
and to the profane naught but a highly complicated series of wooden
noises. Florence's face began to perspire. Then the concertina ceased
playing, so that an undistracted attention might be given to the
supremely difficult final figures of the dance.
And thus was rendered back to the people in the charming form of beauty
that which the instinct of the artist had taken from the sordid ugliness
of the people. The clog, the very emblem of the servitude and the
squalor of brutalised populations, was changed, on the light feet of
this favourite, into the medium of grace. Few of these men but at some
time of their lives had worn the clog, had clattered in it through
winter's slush, and through the freezing darkness before dawn, to the
manufactory and the mill and the mine, whence after a day of labour
under discipline more than military, they had clattered back to their
little candle-lighted homes. One of the slatterns behind the doorway
actually stood in clogs to watch the dancer. The clog meant everything
that was harsh, foul, and desolating; it summoned images of misery and
disgust. Yet on those feet that had never worn it seriously, it became
the magic instrument of pleasure, waking dulled wits and forgotten
aspirations, putting upon everybody an enchantment... And then,
suddenly, the dancer threw up one foot as high as her head and brought
two clogs down together like a double mallet on the board, and stood
still. It was over.
Mrs Louisa Loggerheads turned nervously away, pushing her servants in
front of her. And when the society of mutual buriers had recovered from
the startling shameless insolence of that last high kick, it gave the
rein to its panting excitement, and roared and stamped. Edwin was
staggered. The blood swept into his face, a hot tide. He was ravished,
but he was also staggered. He did not know what to think of Florence,
the champion female clog-dancer. He felt that she was wondrous; he felt
that he could have gazed at her all night; but he felt that she had put
him under the necessity of reconsidering some of his fundamental
opinions. For example, he was obliged to admit within himself a
lessening of scorn for the attitude toward each other of Miss Ingamells
and her young man. He saw those things in a new light. And he
reflected, dazzled by the unforeseen chances of existence: "Yesterday I
was at school--and to-day I see this!" He was so preoccupied by his own
intimate sensations that the idea of applauding never occurred to him,
until he perceived his conspicuousness in not applauding, whereupon he
clapped self-consciously.
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