"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 a.s.sure 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.
"a.n.a.logous 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 pa.s.sing 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.
"Cha.s.say _to_ the corners, right!"
Vincent untangled the difference between "cha.s.say" 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 dispa.s.sionately, "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 impa.s.sivity, 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 G.o.d 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,"