Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Go Back to School - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 5

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Jen’s demonstration of folk-dancing to the servants in the big back kitchen was over, and amid their delighted applause she was resting and explaining while cook refreshed her with cake and lemonade. Making the most of the occasion—‘You have to, when so little happens!’ as she said—she had put on the blue dancing frock, with its full skirt and short loose sleeves, and the white stockings and low black shoes she had worn for dance-evenings at school. She had danced ‘Mother Oxford’ and ‘Jockie’ to the music, and ‘Princess Royal’ without; had shown bits of country dances, the clapping of ‘Peascods’ and the movements of ‘Sweet Kate’; and had even laughingly danced ‘The Old Mole’ and ‘Rufty’ without a partner. Now she was sitting on the big table, rather breathless but very happy, telling eagerly of her plans for teaching the village children or the girls from ‘Tin Town’ in the big unused back kitchen.

‘We’d soon be able to show you some dances right through. I say, who’s at the door?’ and at loud knocking from outside she slid hastily down, lest a seat on the kitchen table should be thought undignified for the daughter of the house.

Alice went to the door and came back giggling. ‘It be the guisers, Miss Jen. Shall they come in?’

‘Mummers! Oh, rather! It’s years since I saw mummers!’ Jen cried eagerly. ‘Go and tell mother, Mabel! I’m afraid father can’t come down. I’ve been away from home for several Christmases, you know, and for a while they didn’t come round much. But I remember seeing them when I was quite a kid. Oh, what sport! It is Christmas, after all!’

At Alice’s invitation, a crowd of villagers hustled one another in, and were ushered into the back kitchen, the servants and Jen following and perching themselves on the big dresser to form an audience in the gallery. Mrs Robins preferred to stay upstairs, but sent a gift for the collection and an order that the performers should be entertained with tea and cake. The actual members of the mumming party were few, but they had collected a crowd as they came along, and a rabble of girls and boys had followed to see the fun.

With much half-shy laughter, when it came to the moment of performance, and rough jokes in broadest Yorkshire dialect, with chaff and encouragement from the audience, the King and Queen, with blackened faces and patchwork garments, stood forth to play their parts. The clown ran round mocking everybody and wrangling with the King, his ‘father’; the Queen, an obvious boy in girl’s clothes, quarrelled with one and then the other, and was courted by the King, receiving his advances sometimes bashfully and sometimes with scorn, to the delighted jeers of the onlookers. Several boys armed with wooden swords ran in, interrupting the proceedings, and some rough-and-tumble horseplay followed, bearing only the remotest resemblance to a dance. One of the dancers fell dead in the midst of the swords, and the King and clown accused one another, in terrified dismay, of having done the deed; then, each denying it, tried to put the blame on the dancers with the swords. The King called for a doctor, and the Queen, throwing herself on the dead man, wailed in a way that drew enthusiastic applause from the crowd. The doctor appeared, clad in a long coat and very ancient tall hat, and riding on the shoulders of a big boy, who, bending double, represented a horse; with his bottle of magic medicine he tried to bring the man to life again, after a long recitation concerning the marvellous cures he could do; the clown finally did the deed by means of mysterious signs and incantations over the corpse; the dead man sprang up alive and well, and all the party joined in a triumphal joy-dance, at sight of which Jen broke into peals of delighted laughter, for it was the veriest caricature of her beloved ring-dances. Then a black-faced sweep with a big broom came jigging out to sweep them all away, and the maids went about with refreshments while the hat was passed round.

‘They be-ant good guisers!’ said cook scornfully, as she dropped in a penny.

‘Oh, why not? What was wrong with them? I thought they were simply priceless,’ Jen laughed.

‘Should be a gra-and sword-dance to finish oop wi’,’ cook insisted. ‘Ye’ll have seen t’ swords, Miss Jen?’

‘Sword-dance?’ Jen said curiously. ‘No, I haven’t. What is it like? Among those new records there’s one with two sword-dances on it. I wondered what they were.’

‘T’ men dance it ivvery Christmas in my village. T’ guisers be-ant t’ real thing wi’oot t’ swords.’

‘Men! You don’t often see men dancing! Are they as funny as these?’

‘Be-ant foony at all!’ cook said indignantly. ‘Friday I be goin’ home to see t’ dance. Ask t’ mistress to let ye coom wi’ me, Miss Jen. Ah’ll tak’ good care o’ ye.’

‘I shall,’ Jen said, with conviction. ‘I’d love to see men do a sword-dance.’

‘It be champion! Our men be known for t’ dance,’ cook said proudly.

While the collection was being taken, Alice came up to Jen, who still sat on the edge of the dresser.

Jen said severely, ‘I’ve put in a shilling, Alice! Isn’t that enough? Of course it was worth pounds just to see that priceless fooling, but it’s rather soon after Christmas, you know! I’ve had no time to save up again.’

Alice said eagerly, ‘Miss Jen, would ye dance again for them? They’d be that pleased, and they’d tell the kiddies an’ make them want to coom.’

Jen laughed at the idea. ‘It would be a good advertisement, of course. Do you think they’d really like it? I wouldn’t mind a scrap, of course.’

Reassured by an enthusiastic chorus, she slipped on her bells again, while Alice brought the records and cook swept the mummers and their followers back against the walls.

Jen’s lips were twitching with amusement as she stood forth to dance; she had never expected an audience of this size! But they were from her own home village, just outside the gates; they had known her from her babyhood; and it would please them and interest the children in her invitation, when it came. So why not?

As she waited for ‘Once To Yourself,’ her eyes ranged over the crowd, and she realised that there were strangers present, however. In the interest of watching the mummers she had not noticed the audience particularly, but suddenly she knew that there were at least two faces she did not know. Then the music called her imperatively to jump and start, and she had no time to wonder.

But between the phrases, standing while the partner who was not present should have done her share, for the record was arranged for two, Jen’s eyes sought and found the strangers again; first a tall young man, watching her with intense interest; then, at his side, a girl of about sixteen, wearing a close fur hat and a big fur coat. What was it there was in the schoolgirl’s eyes? Not the interest her companion showed, that was certain! She was watching ‘Jockie’ and ‘Old Mother Oxford’ very closely, but surely there was something strange, something critical, if not scornful, in her eyes? Between the phrases of her jigs, Jen looked again and again at the stranger girl, and if she could have believed her own eyes, she would almost have thought she read amusement in her face. Did the morris appeal to her merely as funny? If so, she was not worth looking twice at; and anyway, she was a stranger whom nobody knew. Probably she and her brother—the relationship was obvious in the black hair and bright blue eyes and the features of both—had been passing through the village, and had followed the mummers to see the fun. It was cheek, of course, to have come unasked into a private house, but no doubt they had thought to be unnoticed in the crowd.

Breathing quickly, Jen faced her delighted audience, and strove to forget those critical blue eyes under the close fur hat. ‘There are other dances, but I can’t do them for you all alone. If I had a partner, I’d show you “Blue-Eyed Stranger” and “Rigs,” but they’d be silly done by one.’

From the crowd stepped the blue-eyed girl. ‘I could do those with you. If you really want to give a demonstration, you’d better let me help you.’

She threw off her big coat and cap and looked despairingly at her shoes. ‘I’ll do my best! It’s a good thing I never wear high heels. Give me your handkerchief!’ and she turned to her brother. ‘Now shall we do “Blue-Eyed”?’

With wide eyes, Jen stared at her. ‘Do you know—have you learnt——’

‘Oh, I’m a folk-dancer! Have you all the records there?’

Too much amazed to speak, Jen found and placed the new record. ‘Why didn’t you offer to do the jigs with me?’ she demanded, as they waited side by side for ‘Once To Yourself.’

The strange girl laughed. ‘Because your side-step is so bad. I couldn’t have borne it. Oh, yes, it is!’ as Jen turned on her in wrathful amazement. ‘It’s awful! Who on earth taught you?’—and then there was no more time for talk. ‘We can do it all but the hey. Cross-over next,’ said the strange girl.

In a whirl of surprised indignant thought, Jen realised as she danced that this girl had not spoken without knowledge. Her morris was good; she put a snap and vigour into the dance, which Jen found herself striving to match, and failing.

‘How hard you dance!’ she panted at the end.

‘Have you never seen men dance that?’ the girl was hardly out of breath.

‘Men? No, do they? I’ve not seen anybody do it but our girls.’

‘Oh!’ There was a note in the stranger’s voice which seemed to say, ‘That explains everything!’ She said aloud, ‘Would you like me to help you in any more? For I oughtn’t to be here.’

‘Oh, “Rigs,” if you would. I tried to teach one of the maids this afternoon, but she couldn’t get her hands and feet right.’

‘No, she wouldn’t, of course. You’d better do the tapping; it’s your show, though mine’s sure to be better than yours! Have you sticks? Oh, hoopsticks! Yes, those will do! Turn the record over, then!’

This dance, with its jumping and tapping and quick flashing up and down of the stick, brought a roar of applause. The stranger said grimly, ‘Put on any others you want quickly. Oh, I know them all!—all that are on records, anyway. We’ll do the Furry Dance round the room, and make stars by ourselves. Would you like me to show you side-step? If you’ve never seen morris, it’s time you did. Better come to Cheltenham next August!’

‘Why?’ Jen demanded, as they circled the room hand in hand.

‘School. You haven’t heard? Oh well, never mind! But you know a jolly lot for such a hopeless outsider! I say, what on earth has happened to your sword-dancers?’

‘My sword-dancers?’ Jen stared at her blankly.

‘In that play. Do you mean to say you don’t know? There ought to have been a sword-dance instead of all that fooling about. Don’t you know anything? And yet you’ve mummers in your own village? I say! People are funny! There’s always a sword-dance in the mumming-play; the man has to be killed by the dancers. Something must have happened to yours; those boys just played about with the swords; no movements at all! You ask some of the old people! You’ll find there used to be a dance, but the men who knew it are all dead.’

‘But how do you know so much about it?’ gasped Jen. ‘You seem to know everything!’

The girl laughed. ‘Oh, that’s only the beginning of things! Anybody knows that much; why, it’s the Sword-dance Play! It’s awful to see it messed up as those boys of yours did; I nearly died with laughing! How do I know? Oh, school! Lectures!’

‘I wish you’d tell me a little more!’ Jen said, exasperated. ‘Where are you staying? Where do you come from? Can’t I see you to-morrow? There are heaps of things I want to ask!’

‘I’m sure there are!’ the blue eyes gleamed. ‘But I’m afraid you can’t. I don’t exist, really. By to-morrow I shall be far away. To-night I’m not really here at all. I’m a changeling, and shall vanish with the dawn. I’m a guiser; a mummer! I shall fall down dead at the end of the dance, like the Haxby Tom, and no doctor or Betty will be able to bring me to life again! Now would you like to show them “Kate”?’

‘I wish you’d stay and talk to me!’ Jen urged, when the kick and clap and finger-twist of ‘Sweet Kate’ were over.

‘Can’t be done,’ her mysterious partner was hastily tucking her mane of long black hair inside her big coat and pulling on her cap. ‘I’ve got to go this minute. No, I haven’t any name. Call me’—she laughed—‘the Blue-Eyed Stranger! Good-night! Better come to school next August!’

‘If you’d only tell me’—Jen pressed after her, through the crowd of villagers pushing their way out into the passage.

But the strange girl had reached her brother and was hurrying away at his side. ‘Can we risk it again?’ Jen heard her ask. ‘It’s not the right house, you know. Dare we? I don’t want to give it up!’

‘I’ll manage it for you, kid,’ the man was saying, as they passed out of the door.

And then Jen was left alone, wondering if it had all really happened, or if she had dreamt those last few dances with the Blue-Eyed Stranger.