Dance and Skylark (8 page)

The long silence was broken at last by the voice of Mr. Oxford as he resumed his history lesson. It was at this time of day—and Florrie could predict it almost to the minute— that Mr. Oxford became more and more pontifical, his voice boomed louder, and somehow he seemed to grow bigger, to swell like a great bullfrog. But conversely Timms dwindled away; his interjections became the merest echo; one felt that if the bar had remained open for another hour he would disappear altogether.

“Take”—said Mr. Oxford, as if he was reciting a recipe for some extravagant dish— “take Kings and Queens. Take Henry the Eighth—”

“Lots of wives,” said Timms almost in a whisper. “Chopped their heads off.”

“And
that
ain't a bad tradition either,” said Mr. Oxford, laughing hugely as he slapped his fat thigh. And “'Dition” repeated Timms with a sort of midget's giggle.

As he listened to them, Stephen suddenly had a mischievous impulse. For some inexplicable reason the ridiculous names of Odo and Dodo came into his head; and the longer he looked at Mr. Oxford and Timms the better those names seemed to fit them. But light-hearted mischief was a thing foreign to him, and even as he edged his way across the bar towards them he was appalled by what he did.

“Look, I've got a job for you two.”

“Want to have a little flutter?” said Mr. Oxford heartily.

“Not at the moment. You've been talking so much about history that I think you ought to take part in the Pageant.”

“What, us?”

“All you have to do is to walk on with a Holy Hermit. ‘Enter Odo and Dodo.' And then you found the Abbey.”

“Ah, the Abbey.” Mr. Oxford's finger sought the tower which loomed in the background of Robin's poster. “Now that's old, real old. Reeking of 'istory. 'Ow often, on my way down the street to do a little business at the Black Bear, 'ave I looked up at it and said to myself, ‘That's a bit of old England, that is.' ”

“'Dition,” said Timms automatically.

“Odo and Dodo, then?” said Stephen, glancing from one to the other, awe-stricken by his own folly.

Mr. Oxford heaved a long sententious sigh.

“Well, I will undertake it,” he said at last; in the very words, as it happened, of Bottom the weaver.

“Would You say it was cinegenic? ” asked Virginia, trying to keep her head still while Robin with his quick pencil made a series of jabs at the sketching-block on his knees.

“Would I say it was what?”

“Cinegenic. That means it takes well,” she added helpfully. “The photographer said it was ever so.”

“I wouldn't know,” grinned Robin. “Photographers and painters aren't interested in the same thing. Anyhow, I'm not drawing your face.”

“Then what are you doing?” asked Virginia reasonably; for she had been sitting for half an hour in a most uncomfortable attitude on a sort of nursery-rhyme tuffet at the top of the hill. Short sharp grasses prickled her behind, and all manner of poisonous insects, she was sure, were crawling up her legs.

“I'm taking notes,” Robin said. “I'm getting Inspiration. I can't design you a dress without Inspiration. At the moment I'm seeing you in white draped chiffon; or maize taffeta, just off the shoulder, I'm not quite sure which. Sit still and look at that sunset.”

It was as if the gods had lit a bonfire behind the black hills away to the westward. Out of the crimson heart of the blaze shot orange streamers, teased-out witches' brooms, curly unfolding fronds of flame, pink tendrils climbing into the duck-egg blue. High above the whole conflagration hung a huge dove-grey cloud like a mushroom of smoke.

This cloud cast a long shadow over the Bloody Meadow with its skeleton grandstand, but the town beyond lay in a pool of the softest pink light, the roofs of the houses and the tall Abbey tower were rosy-flushed above a shimmering river-mist, so that the place did not seem to belong to the English countryside at all, but to the fabulous East; it was Bokhara, Tashkent, Samarkand.

“Turner's sunsets,” said Robin, “were wishy-washy to this one.”

But Virginia was not looking at the sunset; the stupendous bonfire burned for her in vain. She was thinking that perhaps she had been unwise to trust herself on the hill with Robin, and that even the scandalous studio might have been safer, and would certainly have been more comfortable, than this anthill or whatever it was with its population of creepy-crawlies. She was not sure that she liked Robin's manner, which was brusque and domineering, nor his preoccupation with birds, which bored her; she had not the slightest ambition to listen to a nightingale. On the other hand, she had to admit that his merry brown face was attractive—it was rather like a nice monkey's when he grinned, and she liked his clear blue eyes which had little crinkles at the edges of them, and the touch of his strong hands when he helped her over stiles. And although she didn't approve of fighting with fists, which she thought was not very refined, she could hardly be indifferent to the fact that Robin and Lance had come to blows on her behalf. She had read in the paper about a French film-star whose admirers had fought a duel with pistols or rapiers, she couldn't remember which; and that was romantic indeed. Robin's swollen lip was less so, but it was not so bad as Lance's black eye. Presumably Robin had won, otherwise she supposed Lance would have invited her to walk on the hill and listen to the nightingales. The only thing which puzzled her was the continued friendship of the two young men. She had seen them coming out of the pub together only this morning, arm-in-arm. It was quite
true what her best girl-friend often said to her, the one she went to the pictures with twice a week: You never knew where you were with Boys.

“And now,” said Robin, putting away his pencil, “those nightingales will be just about piping up at the edge of the birch-brake. Come along.”

“Can't I see your drawing?” she temporised.

“No, it's only a lot of squiggles. You wouldn't make head or tail of it.” He slipped the sketching-block into his big pocket and got up.

“The long grass will be all wet with dew,” she said.

“Do your feet good. Milkmaids used to bathe their faces in it, for the sake of their complexions. Come along, Virgie.”

“Ay wish you wouldn't call me Virgie,” she said in the mincing tones she always used to repel advances, “it doesn't sound nace somehow.”

She got up and brushed a lot of imaginary insects from her skirt. Robin set off at a great pace up the hill, and she nearly had to run to keep up with him. The little bracken-fronds, rough as a coarse blanket, tickled and scratched her bare legs. Tiny green caterpillars, suspended from the birch branches on invisible threads, waylaid her just at eye-level, and when she put her hand to her face she found one of them wriggling upon her nose.

Robin stopped suddenly.

“Listen!” he said.

She could hear a very faint trilling sound, uttered, it seemed, by something as breathless as herself.

“Is that the nightingale?”

“Of course not; grasshopper warbler. The first I've ever heard here. Rather exciting!”

Virginia didn't think the indistinct chirrup was in the least exciting; but Robin stood stock-still, with his head on one side, obviously fascinated by it.

“You're blowing like a grampus,” he said. “It's all that sitting in the pictures. Bad for your wind. Now come into the wood and we'll listen for nightingales.”

The brake, which had a ride running through it, looked black and forbidding. A network of green caterpillars swaying in the breeze defended the entrance to the ride.

“It's getting awfully dark,” Virginia said. “Oh, Robin, let's go home.”

But Robin had already climbed the gate and was waiting for her impatiently among the dangling caterpillars. Once more he had cocked his head on one side, and he was listening, not for the nightingale's song, but for the squeal of a rabbit. Last night he had set half a dozen traps along the edge of the wood, and he had forgotten to inspect them in the morning. This was a shameful thing, and contrary to his nature; for he was not thoughtlessly cruel, despite his preoccupation with killing beasts and birds. Robin poached indefatigably, partly for profit but mainly for pleasure, and although he would poach anything from a brace of pheasants to a salmon, or even a fallow-deer from the Park, he had no interest in lawful game, and always refused the kindly invitations of local landlords to join their shooting-parties. Such orderly sport bored him; but in the woods at night “at the season of the year,” holding his breath, straining his ears for the sound of a twig cracking
beneath the keeper's boot, every nerve deliciously a-tingle —there he found true happiness. It was better even than sunsets or girls.

He had remembered his traps remorsefully just before he called for Virginia; and he had brought her up to the birch-wood for no other reason than that he wanted to put the rabbits out of their misery. Virginia, however, hesitating at the gate, seemed to think she would be outraged if she ventured over it. At last she took the plunge—literally, for her high heel caught in the top bar and she went head first into the bracken. Robin picked her up and, taking her hand firmly in his, led her unprotesting down the sepia path which was like a tunnel between the trees.

After about a hundred yards the path became green again, and with deep thankfulness Virginia perceived at the farther end of the tunnel a shining patch of sky. They had come to the other side of the wood, where Robin had set his traps; and as they emerged into the twilight three deep bubbling notes suddenly rang out over their heads,
jug, jug, jug
, so close that Virginia started. There was a pause, while Robin whispered “Be quiet” and drew her to his side. Then the bubbling started again—it was as if a number of stones were being dropped one after another down a very deep well and the successive
plops
were echoing musically upwards—but this time it didn't die away, the melodious bubbles grew bigger and came quicker until the notes seemed to shower down in a silver spray, a fountain of notes, a cascading waterfall of sound. And the nightingale was answered or challenged by another along the edge of the wood, and two more began to sing out of the blackness
of the ride, and just within earshot a fifth joined in the chorus. It was as if the very trees were singing.

Robin stood entranced. Bird-song at dawn and dusk always moved him, and dawn and dusk were his favourite times of day. He was, indeed, a creature of the half-light, never so contented as when with his gun under his arm he lurked by a willowy pool or in the rushes by the river, waiting for the swift teal and widgeon or the wild duck with their panting wings. At such times the pastel shades of sky and water, the light on the land intensifying or fading, gave him the keenest joy; and he never discovered any inconsistency in his appreciation of beauty and his purpose to slay something beautiful.

But though he had listened to the birds so often in the exquisite moment of the longest shadow, he had never experienced anything quite so dramatic as this, nor heard the nightingales in a lovelier setting, with the delicate birch branches fretting the argent sky, meadowsweet and campion at his feet, and the silver-white trunks rising ghostly all about him. Because he was moved he imagined Virginia must be moved too, and thought himself for a moment to be in love with her as he let his hand rest lightly on her arm just above the elbow and then brought it slowly upwards underneath her sleeve.

“Little tiny throats,” he whispered, “pulsing and swelling. Windpipes no thicker than the inside of a grass stem. Lungs as big as the end of my thumb. A heart not much larger than a pea, but beating oh so quickly. How do they do it, Virginia, how do they
do
it?”

She was silent, and he thought she must be caught up
in the wonder of it too; she gave a little shudder and he thought it was acquiescence. He increased the pressure of his hand.

“Robin—” she said, in a queer tone.

“Yes.”

“There's something horrible—one of those caterpillars —crawling on the back of my neck.”

Love is a strong plant, but how tender a seedling. Let it but once take hold and it will withstand the cruel frosts and the perfidious winds: not even the long drought of a heart unresponding will wither it. Yes, but before it has rooted it is as frail as a tropic orchid in a wintry clime. The soil may be fertile, the tilth well prepared, the season favourable and all the stars propitious; yet if there blow then the merest ghost of an intempestive zephyr, the seedling will droop, the bud will canker, the young stem collapse, and in the morning there will be nothing left but a vanishing smudge on the earth which failed to quicken it.

So now Robin's seedling withered.

His hand fell away from her elbow.

“Please take it off,” she said. She bent her head forward and he plucked the little green looper from the very spot where a soft imperceptible down ran between her shoulder-blades. But that touch which a moment ago would have set his pulses dancing affected him not at all.

He squashed the caterpillar, and as if at a signal the nightingales suddenly stopped singing. In the profound silence something stirred, a scuffling, a thump, a brief flurry among the herbage at the wood's edge.

“What's that?”

“Perhaps a rabbit——” he said, remembering his traps.

Again the scuffling; and Robin's sharp eyes picked out a small circular depression in the bracken, where the fronds had been laid flat. But Virginia, astonishingly, was quicker than he was. She had run forward and was bending over the hollow place.

“Oh, Robin, Robin ! It's a cat !”

“Take care, then,” he cried. “Don't touch it!”

Virginia couldn't, at first, see the trap; for the big tabby was crouching over it, pressing itself into the earth, with only its head raised to snarl at her dark figure against the sky. The soil was kicked up all round it, and there was a hot sweet smell of bruised bracken.