The Brimming Cup Part 17

Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak. Vincent c.o.c.ked his ear and prepared to listen with all the prodigious sharpness of which he knew himself capable. If he could only once make this yokel speak her name, he'd know ... all he wanted to know.

Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."

Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the remark.

He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light than ever on what he wanted to know. He laughed again at his own discomfiture. There were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated person who could control his voice so that it did not give him away, and the utter rustic whose voice had such a brute inexpressiveness that his meaning was as effectively hidden. He would try again. He said casually, "She's an enough-sight better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it happen that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"

The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did happen to marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off working in a mill, down in Ma.s.sachusetts, Adams way, and they got married there. They only come back here to live after they'd had all that trouble with lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's father died about that time.

It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and his wife they come back to run the farm."

At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in the house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory clap of his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise had come, now appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed branches, the smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle smile, those dark long eyes! By G.o.d! What would he not give to know what went on behind that smile, those eyes!

She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap that those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being.

And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious, prison-like, primitive view of the matter.

Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be in any civilized setting!

She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No, heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!

Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman he could make if he put his mind on it.

"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the b.u.t.t of his cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up."

They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of their blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the first moments of greeting. In the midst of this, Vincent heard the front door open and, startled to think that anyone else had used that exit, turned his head, and saw with some dismay that 'Gene had followed them in. How near had he been to them in the black night while they talked of his wife's mismated beauty? He walked past them giving no sign, his strong long arms hanging a little in front of his body as he moved, his shoulders stooped apparently with their own weight. From the dining-room came a sound which Vincent did not recognize as the voice of any instrument he had ever heard: a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato sc.r.a.pes, playing over and over a primitively simple sequence of notes.

He stepped to the door to see what instrument was being used and saw an old man with a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair, his eyes half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting with one thick boot. Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an infinitesimal length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke, so that there was no sonority in the tones. Vincent gazed at him with astonishment. He had not known that you could make a violin, a real violin, sound like that.

Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, "The first sets are forming, Mr.

Marsh." She called across to Frank Warner, standing very straight with Nelly Powers' hand on his arm, "Frank, you call off, wun't ye?"

Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent out a long clear shout, "First sets _fo-orming!_"

Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human voice when not hushed to its usual smothered conversational dullness.

"Two sets formed in the living-room! Two in the dining-room! One in the far room!" chanted Frank. He drew a deep breath which visibly swelled his great chest and sang out, resonantly, "Promenade _to_ your places!"

He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly by his side.

"Frank, he generally calls off," explained old Mrs. Powers. "It's in his family to. His father always did before him." She looked around her, discerned something intelligible in what looked like crowding confusion to Vincent and told him hurriedly, "Look-y-here, we'll have to git a move on, if we git into a set. They're all full here." Frank appeared in the doorway, alone, and lifted a long high arm. "_One_ couple needed in the far room!" he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.

"Here we are!" shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way through the crowd, and pulling Vincent after her. He could see now that the couples about him were indeed in their places, hand in hand, facing each other, gravely elate and confident. The younger ones were swinging their bodies slightly, in time to the sharply marked beat of the fiddle, and in the older ones, the pulse throbbed almost visibly as they waited.

He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating, stimulating.

He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling, dense and green with pine-boughs, fastened to the walls. The odor was as strange an accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously whirling primitive iteration of the fiddle.

"Over here!" cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her partner. She gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and held it high. "All ready, Frank," she said.

Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up, Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand the oldest Powers child, a pretty blonde girl of twelve.

Frank's voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the fiddle.

"_Salute_ your partners!"

Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind him with his boyhood, real embarra.s.sment, fear of appearing at a disadvantage.

What in the world did their antiquated lingo _mean?_ Was he to _kiss_ that old woman?

Mrs. Powers said rea.s.suringly, "Don't you worry. Just do what the others do."

As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a courtesy. A little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow such as to his astonishment he saw the other men executing. Was he in old Versailles or Vermont?

He felt his hand seized by the old woman's. Such a hearty zest was in her every action that he looked at her amazed.

"Balance to the corners, right!" chanted Frank, sending his voice out like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the rooms.

With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the couples separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of the couple to their right, and retreated.

"Balance to corners, left!"

The same movement was executed to the other side.

"First couple forward and back!" shouted Frank.

Marise and 'Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old clergyman and the little girl. They met in the middle, poised an instant on the top wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall, every movement, their very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat of the fiddle's air which filled the room as insistently as the odor of the pines.

Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot. Marsh had not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into the next room. He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of gla.s.s in a kaleidoscope. It made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his own set.

The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out in a hoa.r.s.e chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,

"_Oh_, pa.s.s right through and never mind who And leave the girl behind you.

Now come right back on the same old track And _swing_ the girl behind you!"

In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were executing the figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward and back, dividing and reuniting. The old clergyman held out his hand to Mrs. Crittenden, laughing as he swung her briskly about. 'Gene bent his great bulk solemnly to swing his own little daughter. Then with neat exact.i.tude, on the stroke of the beat, they were all back in their places.

"_Second_ couple forward and back!" sang out Frank, prolonging the syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling from a tower.

Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs. Powers through the intricate figure.

"Now come right back on the same old track And _swing_ the girl behind you!"

The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for the beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the motor-centers and set them throbbing. Vincent found himself holding Nelly Powers at arm's length and swinging her till his head whirled. She was as light as sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes shining.

"_Grand_ right and left!" shouted Frank.

Vincent's hand was seized by the little Powers girl. She swung him competently and pa.s.sed him on to her mother, who swam past him like a G.o.ddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual seduction trailing from her as she moved.

Then it was Marise's hand in his ... how strange, how strange ... that hand which knew the secrets of Debussy's heart... . She grasped his fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly, her face as open as a child's ... the many-sided tantalizing creature! She pulled him about and was gone.

And there was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic, treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes with brilliant precision.

"_All_ promenade!" cried Frank, this time his voice exultant that the end was successfully reached.

He seized Nelly by the waist and danced with her the length of the room, followed by the other couples. The music stopped. He released her instantly, made a strange, stiff little bow, and turned away. The set was over.