by Hugh Walpole
Maradick considered it.
“Oh, I say, do!” said Tony, his hand still on Maradick’s arm, and delighted to find that his proposal was being seriously considered. “After all, it’s only a stroll, and we’ll come back as soon as you wish. We can get coats from the hotel; it might be rather amusing, you know.”
He was feeling better already. It was, of course, absurd that he should go out on a mad game like that at such an hour, but — why not be absurd? He hadn’t done anything ridiculous for fifteen years, nothing at all, so it was high time he began.
“It will be a rag!” said Tony.
They went in to get their coats. Two dark conspirators, they plunged down the little crooked path that was the quickest way to the town. On every side of them pressed the smell of the flowers, stronger and sweeter than in the daylight, and their very vagueness of outline gave them mystery and charm. The high peaks of the trees, outlined against the sky, assumed strange and eerie shapes — the masts of a ship, the high pinnacle of some cathedral, scythes and swords cutting the air; and above them that wonderful night sky of the summer, something that had in its light of the palest saffron promise of an early dawn, a wonderful suggestion of myriad colours seen dimly through the curtain of dark blue.
“By night we lingered on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth, and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn:
“And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes:”
quoted Tony. “Tennyson, and jolly good at that.”
“Don’t know it,” said Maradick rather gruffly. “Bad for your business. Besides, what do those chaps know about life? Shut themselves up in their rooms and made rhymes over the fire. What could they know?”
“Oh, some of them,” said Tony, “knew a good bit. But I’m sorry I quoted. It’s a shocking habit, and generally indulged in to show superiority to your friends. But the sky is just like that to-night. Drawn lightly across as though it hid all sorts of things on the other side.”
Maradick made no answer, and they walked on in silence. They reached the end of the hotel garden, and passed through the little white gate into a narrow path that skirted the town wall and brought you abruptly out into the market-place by the church. It passed along a high bank that towered over the river Ess on its way to the sea. It was rather a proud little river as little rivers go, babbling and chattering in its early, higher reaches, with the young gaiety suited to country vicarages and the paper ships of village children; and then, solemn and tranquil, and even, perhaps, a little important, as it neared the town and gave shelter to brown-sailed herring-boats, and then, finally, agitated, excited, tumultuous as it tumbled into its guardian, the sea.
To-night it passed contentedly under the walls of the town, singing a very sleepy little song on its way, and playing games with the moonlight and the stars. Here the noise of the fair was hidden and everything was very still and peaceful. The footsteps of the two men were loud and clear. The night air had straightened Maradick’s brain and he was more at peace with the world, but there was, nevertheless, a certain feeling of uneasiness, natural and indeed inevitable in a man who, after an ordered and regulated existence of many years, does something that is unusual and a little ridiculous. He had arrived, as was, indeed, the case with so many persons of middle age, at that deliberate exclusion of three sides of life in order to grasp fully the fourth side. By persistent practice he had taught himself to believe that the other three sides did not exist. He told himself that he was not adaptable, that he had made his bed and must lie on it, that the moon was for dreamers; and now suddenly, in the space of a day, the blind was drawn from the window before which he had sat for fifteen years, and behold! there were the stars!
Then Tony began again. It had been said of him that his worst fault was his readiness to respond, that he did not know what it was to be on his guard, and he treated Maradick now with a confidence and frankness that was curiously intimate considering the length of their acquaintance. At length he spoke of Alice Du Cane. “I know my people want it, and she’s an awful good sort, really sporting, and the kind of girl you’d trust to the end of your days. A girl you’d be absolutely safe with.”
“Do you care about her?” said Maradick.
“Of course. We’ve known each other for years. We’re not very sentimental about it, but then for my part I distrust all that profoundly. It isn’t what you want nowadays; good solid esteem is the only thing to build on.”
Tony spoke with an air of deep experience. Maradick, with the thought of his own failure in his mind, wondered whether, after all, that were not the right way of looking at it. It had not been his way, fifteen years before; he had been the true impetuous lover, and now he reaped his harvest. Oh! these considering and careful young men and girls of the new generation were learning their lesson, and yet, in spite of it all, marriage turned out as many failures as ever. But this remark of the boy’s had been little in agreement with the rest of him; he had been romantic, impetuous, and very, very young, and this serious and rather cynical doctrine of “good solid esteem” was out of keeping with the rest of him.
“I wonder if you mean that,” he said, looking sharply at Tony.
“Of course. I’ve thought a great deal about marriage, in our set especially. One sees fellows marrying every day, either because they’re told to, or because they’re told not to, and both ways are bad. Of course I’ve fancied I was in love once or twice, but it’s always passed off. Supposing I’d married one of those girls, what would have come of it? Disaster, naturally. So now I’m wiser.”
“Don’t you be too sure. It’s that wisdom that’s so dangerous. The Fates, or whatever they are, always choose the cocksure moment for upsetting the certainty. I shouldn’t wonder if you change your views before you’re much older. You’re not the sort of chap, if you’ll pardon my saying so, to do those things so philosophically. And then, there’s something in the air of this place — —”
Tony didn’t reply. He was wondering whether, after all, he was quite so cocksure. He had been telling himself for the last month that it was best, from every point of view, that he should marry Miss Du Cane; his people, his future, his certainty of the safety of it, all urged him, and yet — and yet . . . His mother’s words came back to him. “Tony, don’t marry anybody unless you are quite certain that it is the only person. Don’t let anything else influence you. Marriage with the wrong person is . . .”
And then, in a moment, the fair was upon them. It had just struck eleven and the excitement seemed at its height. The market-place was very French in its neatness, and a certain gathering together of all the life, spiritual and corporate, of the town; the church, Norman, and of some historical interest, filled the right side of the square. Close at its side, and squeezed between its grey walls and the solemn dignity of the Town Hall, was a tall rectangular tower crowded with little slits of windows and curious iron bars that jutted out into the air like pointing fingers.
There was something rather pathetically dignified about it; it protested against its modern neglect and desertion. You felt that it had, in an earlier day, known brave times. Now the ground floor was used by a fruiterer; apples and plums, cherries and pears were bought and sold, and the Count’s Tower was Harding’s shop.
There were several other houses in the Square that told the same tale, houses with fantastic bow-windows and little pepper-pot doors, tiny balconies and quaintly carved figures that stared at you from hidden corners; houses that were once the height of fashion now hid themselves timidly from the real magnificence of the Town Hall. Their day was over, and perhaps their very life was threatened. The Town Hall, with its dinners and its balls and its speeches, need fear no rivalry.
But to-night the Town Hall was pushed aside and counted for nothing
at all. It was the one occasion of the year on which it was of no importance, and the old, despised tower was far more in keeping with the hour and the scene.
Down the centre of the Square were rows of booths lighted by gas-jets that flamed and flared in the night-air with the hiss of many serpents. These filled the middle line of the market. To the right was the round-about; its circle of lights wheeling madly round and round gave it the vitality of a living thing — some huge Leviathan on wheels bawling discordantly the latest triumph of the Halls, and then, excited by its voice, whirling ever swifter and swifter as though it would hurl itself into the air and go rioting gaily through the market, and then suddenly dropping, dead, exhausted, melancholy at the ceasing of its song: —
Put me amongst the — girls!
Those wi-th the curly curls!
and then a sudden vision of dark figures leaping up and down into the light and out of it again, the wild waving of an arm, and the red, green and yellow of the horses as they swirled up and down and round to the tune.
In another corner, standing on a plank laid upon two barrels, his arms raised fantastically above his head, was a preacher. Around him was gathered a small circle of persons with books, and faintly, through the noise of the merry-go-round and the cries of those that bought and sold, came the shrill, wavering scream of a hymn: —
So like little candles
We shall shine,
You in your small corner
And I in mine.
Down the central alley passed crowds of men and women, sailors and their sweethearts, for the most part; and strangely foreign looking a great many of them were — brown and swarthy, with black curling hair and dark, flashing eyes.
There were many country people wearing their Sunday clothes with an uneasiness that had also something of admitted virtue and pride about it. Their ill-fitting and absurdly self-conscious garments hung about them and confined their movements; they watched the scene around them almost furtively, and with a certain subdued terror. It was the day, the night of the year to them; it had been looked forward to and counted and solemnised with the dignity of a much-be-thumbed calendar, and through the long dreary days of winter, when snow and the blinding mist hemmed in solitary farms with desolation, it had been anticipated and foreseen with eager intensity. Now that it was here and was so soon to stand, a lonely pillar in the utterly uneventful waste-land of the year, they looked at it timorously, fearfully, and yet with eager excitement. These lights, this noise, this crowd, how wonderful to look back upon it all afterwards, and how perilous it all was! They moved carefully through the line of booths, wondering at the splendour and magnificence of them, buying a little once or twice, and then repenting of what they had done. Another hour and it would be over; already they shuddered at the blackness of to-morrow.
With the townspeople, the fishermen and sailors from Penzance, it was an old affair; something amusing and calculated to improve materially matters financial and matters amatory, but by no means a thing to wonder at. The last night of the three days fair was, however, of real importance. According to ancient superstition, a procession was formed by all the citizens of the town, and this marched, headed by flaming torches and an ancient drum, round the walls. This had been done, so went the legend, ever since the days of the Celts, when naked invaders had marched with wild cries and derisive gestures round and round the town, concluding with a general massacre and a laying low of the walls. The town had soon sprung to life again, and the ceremony had become an anniversary and the anniversary a fair. The last dying screams of those ancient peoples were turned, now, into the shrieking of a merry-go-round and the sale of toffy and the chattering of many old women; and there were but few in the place who remembered what those origins had been.
Excitement was in the air, and the Square seemed to grow more crowded at every moment. The flaring of the gas flung gigantic shadows on the walls, and the light was on the town so that its sides shone as though with fire. The noise was deafening — the screaming of the roundabout, the shouts of the riders, the cries and laughter of the crowd made a confused babel of sound, and in the distance could be heard the beating of the drum. It was the hour of the final ceremony.
“I wonder,” said Maradick, “what the people in those houses think of it. Sleep must be a difficulty under the circumstances.”
“I should think,” said Tony, laughing, “that they are all out here. I expect that most of the town is here by this time.” And, indeed, there was an enormous crowd. The preacher was in danger of being pushed off his plank; the people surged round dancing, singing, shouting, and his little circle had been caught in the multitude and had been swallowed up. Very few of the people seemed to be listening to him; but he talked on, waving the book in his hand, standing out sharply against the shining tower at his back.
Words came to them: “To-morrow it will be too late. I tell you, my friends, that it is now and now only that . . . And the door was shut . . . We cannot choose . . .”
But the drum was in the Square. Standing on the steps of the Town Hall, clothed in his official red, the Town Clerk, a short, pompous man, saluted the fair. No words could penetrate the confusion, but people began to gather round him shouting and singing. The buying and selling entered into the last frenzied five minutes before finally ceasing altogether. Prices suddenly fell to nothing at all, and wise and cautious spirits who had been waiting for this moment throughout the day crowded round and swept up the most wonderful bargains.
The preacher saw the crowd had no ears for him now, and so, with a last little despairing shake of the arm, he closed his book and jumped off his plank. The round-about gave a last shriek of enthusiasm and then dropped exhausted, with the happy sense that it had added to the gaiety of the nations and had brought many coppers into the pockets of its master.
The crowd surged towards the little red beadle with the drum, and Maradick and Tony surged with it. It was beyond question a very lively crowd, and it threatened to be livelier with every beat of the drum. The sound was intoxicating beyond a doubt, and when you had already paid a visit to the “Red Lion” and enjoyed a merry glass with your best friend, of course you entered into the spirit of things more heartily than ever.
And then, too, this dance round the town was the moment of the year. It was the one occasion on which no questions were asked and no surprise ever shown. Decorum and propriety, both excellent things, were for once flung aside; for unless they were discarded the spirit of the dance was not enjoyed. It was deeply symbolic; a glorious quarter of an hour into which you might fling all the inaction of the year — disappointment, revenge, jealousy, hate went, like soiled and useless rags, into the seething pot, and were danced away for ever. You expressed, too, all your joy and gratitude for a delightful year and a most merry fair, and you drank in, as it were wine, encouragement and hope for the year to come. There had been bad seasons and disappointing friends, and the sad knowledge that you weren’t as strong as you had once been; but into the pot with it all! Dance it away into limbo! and, on the back of that merry drum, sits a spirit that will put new heart into you and will send your toes twinkling down the street.
And then, best of all, it was a Dance of Hearts. It was the great moment at which certainty came to you, and, as you followed that drum down the curving street, you knew that the most wonderful thing in the world had come to you, and that you would never be quite the same person again; perhaps she had danced with you down the street, perhaps she had watched you and listened to the drum and known that there was no question any more. I do not know how many marriages in Treliss that drum had been answerable for, but it knew its business.
The crowd began to form into some kind of order with a great deal of pushing and laughter and noise. There were whistles and little flags and tin horns. It was considered to bring good luck in the succeeding year, and so every kind of person was struggling for a place. If you had not danced then your prospects for the next twelve months were poor indeed, and your neigh
bours marked you down as some one doomed to misfortune. Very old women were there, their skirts gathered tightly about them, their mouths firm set and their eyes on the drum. Old men were pushed aside by younger ones and took it quietly and with submission, contenting themselves with the thought of the years when they had done their share of the fighting and had had a place with the best. Towards the front most of the young men were gathered. The crowd wound round the market, serpent-wise, coiling round and over the booths and stalls, twisting past the grey tower, and down finally into grey depths where the pepper-pot houses bent and twisted under the red flare of the lights.
Maradick and Tony were wedged tightly between flank and rear; as things were it was difficult enough to keep one’s feet. At Maradick’s side was an old woman, stout, with her bonnet whisked distractingly back from her forehead, her grey hairs waving behind her, her hands pressed tightly over a basket that she clasped to her waist.
“Eh sirs . . . eh sirs!” pantingly, breathlessly she gasped forth, and then her hand was hurriedly pressed to her forehead; with that up flew the lid of the basket and the scraggy lean neck of a hen poked miserably into the air and screeched frantically. “Down, Janet; but the likes of this . . . never did I see.” But nevertheless something triumphant in it all; at least she kept her place.
Already feet were beating to the tune of the drum; a measured stamp, stamp on the cobbles spoke of an itching to be off, a longing for the great moment. Waves of excitement surged through the crowd. For a moment it seemed as though everyone would be carried away, feet would lose their hold of the pavement and the multitude would tumble furiously down the hill; but no, the wave surged to the little red drum and then surged back again. The drum was not ready; everyone was not there. “Patience” — you could hear it speak, stolidly, resolutely, in its beats— “Patience, the time is coming if you will only be patient. You must trust me for the great moment.”