CHAPTER XXVII

 

My Scogan had been accommodated in a little canvas hut.  Dressed in a black shirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief tied round his black wig, he looked - sharp-nosed, brown, and wrinkled - like the Bohemian hag of Frith's Derby Day.  A placard pinned to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of 'Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana.'  Seated at a table, Mr Scogan received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement of the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to extend their hands for his inspection.  He then examined the palm that was presented him, using a magnifying glass and a pair of horn spectacles.  He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking with his tongue as he looked at the lines.  Sometimes he would whisper, as though to himself, 'Terrible, terrible!' or 'God preserve us!' sketching out the sign of the cross as he uttered the words.  The clients who came in laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously.  She was a formidable-looking woman; could it be, was it possible, that there was something in this sort of thing, after all?  After all, the thought, as the hag shook her head over their hands, after all ... And they waited, with an uncomfortably beating heart, for the oracle to speak.  After a long and silent inspection, Mr Scogan would suddenly look up and ask, in a hoarse whisper, some horrifying question, such as, 'Have you ever been hit on the head with a hammer by a young man with red hair?'  When the answer was in the negative, which it could hardly fail to be, Mr Scogan would nod several times, saying, 'I was afraid so.  Everything is still to come, still to come, though it can't be very far off now.'  Sometimes, after a long examination, he would just whisper, 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,' and refuse to divulge any details of a future too appalling to be envisaged without despair.  Sesostris had a success of horror.  People stood in a queue outside the witch's booth, waiting for the privilege of hearing sentence pronounced upon them.

      Denis, in the course of his round, looked with curiosity at this crowd of suppliants before the shrine of the oracle.  He had a great desire to see how Mr Scogan played his part.  The canvas booth was a rickety, ill-made structure.  Between its walls and its sagging roof were long gaping chinks and crannies.  Denis went to the tea-tent and borrowed a wooden bench and a small Union Jack.  With these he hurried back tot he booth, he climbed up, and with a great air of busy efficiency began to tie the Union Jack to the top of one of the tent-poles.  Through the crannies in the canvas he could see almost the whole of the interior of the tent.  Mr Scogan's bandana-covered head was just below him; his terrifying whispers came clearly up.  Denis looked and listened while the witch prophesied financial losses, death by apoplexy, destruction by air-raids in the next war.

      'Is there going to be another war?' asked the old lady to whom he had predicted this end.

      'Very soon,' said Mr Scogan, with an air of quiet confidence.

      The old lady was succeeded by a girl dressed in white muslin, garnished with pink ribbons.  She was wearing a broad hat, so that Denis could not see her face; but from her figure and the roundness of her bare arms he judged her young and pleasing.  Mr Scogan looked at her hand, then whispered, 'You are still virtuous.'

      The young lady giggled and exclaimed, 'Oh, lor'!'

      'But you will not remain so for long,' added Mr Scogan sepulchrally.  The young lady giggled again.  'Destiny, which interests itself in small things no less than in great, has announced the fact upon your hand.'  Mr Scogan took up the magnifying-glass and began once more to examine the white palm.  'Very interesting,' he said, as though to himself - 'very interesting.  It's as clear as day.'  He was silent.

      'What's clear?' asked the girl.

      'I don't think I ought to tell you.'  Mr Scogan shook his head; the pendulous brass earrings which he had screwed on to his ears tinkled.

      'Please, please!' she implored.

      The witch seemed to ignore her remark.  'Afterwards, it's not at all clear.  The fates don't say whether you will settle down to married life and have four children or whether you will try to go on to the cinema and have none.  They are only specific about this one rather crucial incident.'

      'What is it? What is it? Oh, do tell me!'

      The white muslin figure leant eagerly forward.

      Mr Scogan sighed.  'Very well,' he said, 'if you must know, you must know.  But if anything untoward happens you must blame your own curiosity.  Listen.  Listen.'  He lifted up a sharp, claw-nailed 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 tent-pole, 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.'

      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 coconuts, 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 trightrope then,

                                                                  And in the circus armèd 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 the 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, and motionless in the midst of a moving sea, was an island of aristocratic calm.

      Holding his tortoiseshell-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 lapdog.  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 hothouses 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?'

      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.

      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 him.  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 recognized 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-go-round, 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 her, making a shrill, tiny 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.

      '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, that 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.  The tenuous membrane of his had been too rudely buffeted by the afternoon's emotions; it required a rest.