Read Online The Goose Girl and Other Stories by Eric Linklater - Free Book Online Page B

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    â€˜Disney said one or two things about the birds which were true, but they did not listen to him. And by and by—the hours pass quickly on Midsummer Night—it was time to dance. They had taken a gramophone with them, and Joan had found a wide circle of turf, as round as a penny and heavenly smooth, with a square rock beside it. They put the gramophone on the rock and played a fox-trot or some dance like that. Disney and Norah Disney danced together, and Joan danced with Samways. Two or three times they danced, and old Pomfret made jokes and put new records on.
    â€˜And then Joan said, “These aren’t proper dances for Eynhallow and Midsummer Eve. I hate them.” And she stopped the gramophone. She picked up the second album of records and looked for what she wanted; it was light enough to read the names if she held them close to her eyes. She soon found those she was looking for.’
    The young man looked doubtfully at Mr Pinto and asked, ‘Do you know the music of Grieg?’
    â€˜A little of it,’ said Mr Pinto. ‘He composed some Norwegian dances. One of them goes like this.’ And he whistled a bar or two, tunefully enough.
    The young man snapped his fingers joyously and stepped lightly with adept feet on the swaying deck.
    â€˜That is it,’ he cried, and sang some strange-sounding words to the tune. ‘But Grieg did not make it. He heard it between a pine-forest and the sea and cleverly wrote it down. But it was made hundreds of years ago, when all the earth went dancing, except the trees, and their roots took hold of great rocks and twined round the rocks so that they might not join the dance as they wished. For it was forbidden them, since they had to grow straight and tall that ships might be made out of them.’
    The young man checked himself. ‘I was telling you about the Pomfrets,’ he said.
    â€˜Joan found these dances that she loved, and played first one and then the other. She made them all dance to the music, though they did not know what steps were in it, nor in what patterns they should move. But the tunes took them by the heels and they pranced and bowed and jumped, laughing all the time. Old Pomfret capered in the middle, kicking his legs, and twirling round like a top. And he laughed; how he laughed! And when he had done shaking with laughter he would start to dance again.
    â€˜â€œThis is too good for Mother to miss,” he said, “we must wake her and make her dance too.” So they woke Mrs Pomfret and there being then six of them they made some kind of a figure and started to dance in earnest. Mrs Pomfret, once she began, moved as lightly as any of them except Joan, who was like thistledown on the grass and moonlight on the edge of a cloud.
    â€˜And then, as the music went on, they found that they were dancing in the proper patterns, for they had partners who had come from nowhere, who led them first to the right and then to the left, up the middle and down the sides, bowing and knocking their heels in the air. As the tune quickened they turned themselves head over heels, even Mrs Pomfret, who held her sides and laughed to see old Pomfret twirling on one toe. And the gramophone never stopped, for a little brown man was sitting by it and now and again turning the handle, and singing loudly as he sat.
    â€˜So they danced while the sky became lighter and turned from grey to a shining colour like mackerel; and then little clouds like roses were thrown over the silver, and at last the sun himself, daffodil gold, all bright and new, shot up and sent the other colours packing.
    â€˜And everybody shouted and cheered like mad, and for a minute danced more wildly than ever, turning catherine-wheels, fast and faster in a circle, or shouting “Hey!” and “Ho!” and “Ahoi! Ahoi! A-hoi!”
    â€˜Then they sank to the ground exhausted, and the Pomfrets looked at their partners who had come from nowhere;