forefinger. "This is what the fates have written. Next Sunday afternoon
at six o'clock you will be sitting on the second stile on the footpath that
leads from the church to the lower road. At that moment a man will
appear walking along the footpath." Mr. Scogan looked at her hand
again as though to refresh his memory of the details of the scene. "A
man," he repeated--"a small man with a sharp nose, not exactly good
looking nor precisely young, but fascinating." He lingered hissingly over
the word. "He will ask you, 'Can you tell me the way to Paradise?' and
you will answer, 'Yes, I'll show you,' and walk with him down towards the
little hazel copse. I cannot read what will happen after that." There was
a silence.
"Is it really true?" asked white muslin.
The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. "I merely tell you what I
read in your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have
change. Thank you. Good afternoon."
Denis stepped down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to
the tentpole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. "If only I could
do things like that!" he thought, as he carried the bench back to the tea-
tent.
Anne was sitting behind a long table filling thick white cups from an
urn. A neat pile of printed sheets lay before her on the table. Denis
took one of them and looked at it affectionately. It was his poem. They
had printed five hundred copies, and very nice the quarto broadsheets
looked.
"Have you sold many?" he asked in a casual tone.
Anne put her head on one side deprecatingly. "Only three so far, I'm
afraid. But I'm giving a free copy to everyone who spends more than a
shilling on his tea. So in any case it's having a circulation."
150
Denis made no reply, but walked slowly away. He looked at the
broadsheet in his hand and read the lines to himself relishingly as he
walked along:
"This day of roundabouts and swings, Struck weights, shied cocoa-
nuts, tossed rings, Switchbacks, Aunt Sallies, and all such small High
jinks--you call it ferial? A holiday? But paper noses Sniffed the artificial
roses Of round Venetian cheeks through half Each carnival year, and
masks might laugh At things the naked face for shame Would blush at-laugh
and think no blame. A holiday? But Galba showed Elephants on an
airy road; Jumbo trod the tightrope then, And in the circus armed men
Stabbed home for sport and died to break Those dull imperatives that
make A prison of every working day, Where all must drudge and all obey.
Sing Holiday! You do not know How to be free. The Russian snow
flowered with bright blood whose roses spread Petals of fading, fading red
That died into the snow again, Into the virgin snow; and men From all
ancient bonds were freed. Old law, old custom, and old creed, Old right
and wrong there bled to death; The frozen air received their breath, A little
smoke that died away; And round about them where they lay The snow
bloomed roses. Blood was there A red gay flower and only fair. Sing
Holiday! Beneath the Tree Of Innocence and Liberty, Paper Nose and
Red Cockade Dance within the magic shade That makes them drunken,
merry, and strong To laugh and sing their ferial song: 'Free, free...!' But
Echo answers Faintly to the laughing dancers, 'Free'--and faintly laughs,
and still, Within the hollows of the hill, Faintlier laughs and whispers,
'Free,' Fadingly, diminishingly: 'Free,' and laughter faints away... Sing
Holiday! Sing Holiday!"
He folded the sheet carefully and put it in his pocket. The thing had
its merits. Oh, decidedly, decidedly! But how unpleasant the crowd
smelt! He lit a cigarette. The smell of cows was preferable. He
passed through the gate in the park wall into the garden. The swimming-
pool was a centre of noise and activity.
"Second Heat in the Young Ladies' Championship." It was the polite
voice of Henry Wimbush. A crowd of sleek, seal-like figures in black
bathing-dresses surrounded him. His grey bowler hat, smooth, round,
151
and motionless in the midst of a moving sea, was an island of aristocratic
calm.
Holding his tortoise-shell-rimmed pince-nez an inch or two in front of
his eyes, he read out names from a list.
"Miss Dolly Miles, Miss Rebecca Balister, Miss Doris Gabell..."
Five young persons ranged themselves on the brink. From their seats
of honour at the other end of the pool, old Lord Moleyn and Mr. Callamay
looked on with eager interest.
Henry Wimbush raised his hand. There was an expectant silence.
"When I say 'Go,' go. Go!" he said. There was an almost simultaneous
splash.
Denis pushed his way through the spectators. Somebody plucked
him by the sleeve; he looked down. It was old Mrs. Budge.
"Delighted to see you again, Mr. Stone," she said in her rich, husky
voice. She panted a little as she spoke, like a short- winded lap-dog. It
was Mrs. Budge who, having read in the "Daily Mirror" that the
Government needed peach stones--what they needed them for she never
knew--had made the collection of peach stones her peculiar "bit" of war
work. She had thirty-six peach trees in her walled garden, as well as four
hot-houses in which trees could be forced, so that she was able to eat
peaches practically the whole year round. In 1916 she ate 4200 peaches,
and sent the stones to the Government. In 1917 the military authorities
called up three of her gardeners, and what with this and the fact that it was
a bad year for wall fruit, she only managed to eat 2900 peaches during that
crucial period of the national destinies. In 1918 she did rather better, for
between January 1st and the date of the Armistice she ate 3300 peaches.
Since the Armistice she had relaxed her efforts; now she did not eat more
than two or three peaches a day. Her constitution, she complained, had
suffered; but it had suffered for a good cause.
Denis answered her greeting by a vague and polite noise.
"So nice to see the young people enjoying themselves," Mrs. Budge
went on. "And the old people too, for that matter. Look at old Lord
Moleyn and dear Mr. Callamay. Isn't it delightful to see the way they
enjoy themselves?"
152
Denis looked. He wasn't sure whether it was so very delightful after
all. Why didn't they go and watch the sack races? The two old
gentlemen were engaged at the moment in congratulating the winner of
the race; it seemed an act of supererogatory graciousness; for, after all, she
had only won a heat.
"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" said Mrs. Budge huskily, and panted two
or three times.
"Yes," Denis nodded agreement. Sixteen, slender, but nubile, he said
to himself, and laid up the phrase in his memory as a happy one. Old Mr.
Callamay had put on his spectacles to congratulate the victor, and Lord
Moleyn, leaning forward over his walking- stick, showed his long ivory
teeth, hungrily smiling.
"Capital performance, capital," Mr. Callamay was saying in his deep
voice.
The victor wriggled with embarrassment. She stood with her hands
behind her back, rubbing one foot nervously on the other. Her wet
bathing-dress shone, a torso of black polished marble.
"Very good indeed," said Lord Moleyn. His voice seemed to come
from just behind his teeth, a toothy voice. It was as though a dog should
suddenly begin to speak. He smiled again, Mr. Callamay readjusted his
spectacles.
"When I say 'Go,' go. Go!"
Splash! The third heat had started.
"Do you know, I never could learn to swim," said Mrs. Budge.
"Really?"
"But I used to be able to float."
Denis imagined her floating--up and down, up and down on a great
green swell. A blown black bladder; no, that wasn't good, that wasn't
good at all. A new winner was being congratulated. She was
atrociously stubby and fat. The last one, long and harmoniously,
continuously curved from knee to breast, had been an Eve by Cranach; but
this, this one was a bad Rubens.
"...go--go--go!" Henry Wimbush's polite level voice once more
pronounced the formula. Another batch of young ladies dived in.
153
Grown a little weary of sustaining a conversation with Mrs. Budge,
Denis conveniently remembered that his duties as a steward called him
elsewhere. He pushed out through the lines of spectators and made his
way along the path left clear behind them. He was thinking again that his
soul was a pale, tenuous membrane, when he was startled by hearing a
thin, sibilant voice, speaking apparently from just above his head,
pronounce the single word "Disgusting!"
He looked up sharply. The path along which he was walking passed
under the lee of a wall of clipped yew. Behind the hedge the ground
sloped steeply up towards the foot of the terrace and the house; for one
standing on the higher ground it was easy to look over the dark barrier.
Looking up, Denis saw two heads overtopping the hedge immediately
above him. He recognised the iron mask of Mr. Bodiham and the pale,
colourless face of his wife. They were looking over his head, over the
heads of the spectators, at the swimmers in the pond.
"Disgusting!" Mrs. Bodiham repeated, hissing softly.
The rector turned up his iron mask towards the solid cobalt of the sky.
"How long?" he said, as though to himself; "how long?" He lowered his
eyes again, and they fell on Denis's upturned curious face. There was an
abrupt movement, and Mr. and Mrs. Bodiham popped out of sight behind
the hedge.
Denis continued his promenade. He wandered past the merry-goround,
through the thronged streets of the canvas village; the membrane of
his soul flapped tumultuously in the noise and laughter. In a roped-off
space beyond, Mary was directing the children's sports. Little creatures
seethed round about her, making a shrill, tinny clamour; others clustered
about the skirts and trousers of their parents. Mary's face was shining in
the heat; with an immense output of energy she started a three-legged race.
Denis looked on in admiration.
"You're wonderful," he said, coming up behind her and touching her
on the arm. "I've never seen such energy."
She turned towards him a face, round, red, and honest as the setting
sun; the golden bell of her hair swung silently as she moved her head and
quivered to rest.
154
"Do you know, Denis," she said, in a low, serious voice, gasping a
little as she spoke--"do you know that there's a woman here who has had
three children in thirty-one months?"
"Really," said Denis, making rapid mental calculations.
"It's appalling. I've been telling her about the Malthusian League.
One really ought..."
But a sudden violent renewal of the metallic yelling announced the
fact that somebody had won the race. Mary became once more the centre
of a dangerous vortex. It was time, Denis thought, to move on; he might
be asked to do something if he stayed too long.
He turned back towards the canvas village. The thought of tea was
making itself insistent in his mind. Tea, tea, tea. But the tea-tent was
horribly thronged. Anne, with an unusual expression of grimness on her
flushed face, was furiously working the handle of the urn; the brown
liquid spurted incessantly into the proffered cups. Portentous, in the
farther corner of the tent, Priscilla, in her royal toque, was encouraging the
villagers. In a momentary lull Denis could hear her deep, jovial laughter
and her manly voice. Clearly, he told himself, this was no place for one
who wanted tea. He stood irresolute at the entrance to the tent. A
beautiful thought suddenly came to him; if he went back to the house,
went unobtrusively, without being observed, if he tiptoed into the dining-
room and noiselessly opened the little doors of the sideboard--ah, then!
In the cool recess within he would find bottles and a siphon; a bottle of
crystal gin and a quart of soda water, and then for the cups that inebriate as
well as cheer...
A minute later he was walking briskly up the shady yew-tree walk.
Within the house it was deliciously quiet and cool. Carrying his well-
filled tumbler with care, he went into the library. There, the glass on the
corner of the table beside him, he settled into a chair with a volume of
Sainte-Beuve. There was nothing, he found, like a Causerie du Lundi for
settling and soothing the troubled spirits. That tenuous membrane of his
had been too rudely buffeted by the afternoon's emotions; it required a
rest.
155
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Towards sunset the fair itself became quiescent. It was the hour for
the dancing to begin. At one side of the village of tents a space had been
roped off. Acetylene lamps, hung round it on posts, cast a piercing white
light. In one corner sat the band, and, obedient to its scraping and
blowing, two or three hundred dancers trampled across the dry ground,
wearing away the grass with their booted feet. Round this patch of all
but daylight, alive with motion and noise, the night seemed preternaturally
dark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every now and then a lonely
figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would cross the bright shaft,
flashing for a moment into visible existence, to disappear again as quickly
and surprisingly as they had come.
Denis stood by the entrance of the enclosure, watching the swaying,
shuffling crowd. The slow vortex brought the couples round and round
again before him, as though he were passing them in review. There was
Priscilla, still wearing her queenly toque, still encouraging the villagers-this
time by dancing with one of the tenant farmers. There was Lord
