The Dancing Druids

summit.

Laura and Mrs. Bradley were walking round to inspect each stone when over the hill came two men. Mrs. Bradley called good morning as they came near, and one of them left the path and walked over towards the stone circle.

‘Interesting,’ said Mrs. Bradley, indicating the stones as though they had sprung up like mushrooms during the night.

‘Ah, they be very interesting,’ said the man. ‘Calls ’em the Druids, we do, though I dunno for why. The Dancin‘ Druids some calls ’em, and one gentleman from London, he comes up along over ’ere once every year and he watches for to see if they dances.’

‘And has he ever been fortunate enough to see them dance?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

‘Well,’ said the man. ‘I dunno as to that, I’m sure. Last year ’e swore as ’e did see summat, and this year e’s talked of bringin’ a film company over to see if they can’t make a picture. But I dunno! They never danced during the war, I do know that, for I used to be on Observer Corps duty up ’ere, with nothing much to look at except them stones. Stood firm enough when I looked at ’em, that I’ll swear.’

‘The Dancing Druids,’ said Mrs. Bradley, when the two men had gone on. ‘Not an uncommon superstition.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Laura enquired. ‘A most uncommon one, I should have thought.’

‘It is certainly an odd one,’ Mrs. Bradley went on, ‘but, in Cornwall, legend connects such circles as this one with girls turned into stone for impious behaviour—notably for dancing on a Sunday. The “Whispering Knights” of Little Rollright on the border of Oxfordshire are likewise believed to dance.¹ It is a striking survival, I believe, of the importance attached in early times to dancing as a religious exercise. There is also, of course, the fascinating paradox that dancing, although voiceless, is a language.² The ballet proves that.’

‘I see,’ said Laura. ‘Well, I don’t much want to be present when these dance. Do you really think anybody would be idiot enough, though, to believe that they do?’

‘Place yourself here at twelve on a night of full moon and scudding cloud; when there is mist below in the valleys and the living silence of the windless dark all around you, and I am not at all sure that you yourself would not be idiot enough to believe that they danced,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

She made a lengthy survey of the circle, looking carefully at every stone in turn, and also closely examining the ground around it. She seemed satisfied at last, and pronounced that it was more than breakfast time.

Laura, glancing at her wristwatch, was surprised to find that it was past nine o’clock. They returned to the car by the way they had come, and reached home at just after half-past ten.

‘A little late to begin exploring, I think,’ said Mrs. Bradley, to Laura’s disappointment. ‘To-morrow might be better than to-day.’

‘Oh, but there’s plenty of time!’ said Laura, setting to work upon her breakfast.

‘There is more still to-morrow,’ Mrs. Bradley replied; and from this decision not to visit the villages that day she refused to be moved.

‘What shall we do, then?’ asked Laura.

‘I shall knit,’ Mrs. Bradley replied, producing, as soon as breakfast was cleared away, the shapeless and repulsive length of jetsam which it was her custom to dignify by the name of knitting. ‘You may do anything you please, but don’t be in later than midnight because we shall need to be up in good time in the morning.’

Armed with a carte blanche, Laura spent what remained of the morning in solitary confinement (as she herself expressed it) completely surrounded by maps. After lunch, looking complacent, important and secretive, she asked whether she might borrow the car.

‘Provided you will borrow George as well,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I distrust that expression on your face. You are going to get into mischief, and George will extricate you. I have implicit confidence in him.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind George,’ said Laura. ‘In fact, we can take turns at driving, and he can mind the car if I leave it in funny places.’

Mrs. Bradley asked no questions, and, at just after two, Laura and George set out.

‘You know, George,’ said Laura, settling herself in the seat beside that of the driver, ‘I think sometimes that it’s a mistake, in a way, to work with anybody as clever as Mrs. Bradley.’

‘Do you, miss?’ George enquired, negotiating the double gates with care and skill.

‘Yes. It saps one’s intellect. One finds that one ceases to use one’s own brains at all. One merely relies upon hers.’

‘One could do worse, miss.’

‘True. Yet sometimes I think I shall be glad to be married to my comparatively moronic spouse and resume my place in the aristocracy of the non-boneheaded. I used to be quite intelligent, and against a brainless husband I ought to show up pretty well.’

‘May I enquire, miss,’ said George respectfully, but with an expression of slight concern upon his broad and sensible face, ‘what this all might be leading up to?’

‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘to put all the cards on the table, I’ve got an idea.’

‘Oh, dear, miss!’ said George, who had had experience before of some of Laura’s ideas and felt that they got her into trouble.

‘Yes, I thought you’d say that,’ said Laura, with great satisfaction. ‘But this one, George, is different. Only, I shall need a bit of co-operation. Are you on?’

‘Moderately speaking, miss, certainly. But if you’ll allow me to say so— ’

‘Oh, Mrs. Bradley would be the first to admire this great thought that I’m going to place before you, only, you see, I want to surprise her with the fait accompli. Now what I want you to do is this: I want you to take me in the car to where we parked early this morning, and then I want you to meet me at that place called Slepe Rock. Can do?’

‘Meaning that you are proposing to walk from the Nine Stones to the sea, miss?’

‘Meaning just that, George.’

‘But it’s a matter of seventeen miles, miss!’

‘I don’t think it is, except by road,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, I’m going to find out. There’s no path marked on the map, but I’ve a hunch that there used to be an old trackway over the Downs. If I can locate it—or, rather, if I can find out how it used to run—I believe I can cut off about eleven of those seventeen miles. What do you say to that?’

‘And suppose you lose your way, miss, up on the Downs?—or suppose you find you’re on private land?—or in the middle of a field with a bull in it?’

‘Oh, George, don’t be so discouraging! You run me along to the Nine Stones, and I’ll meet you at Slepe Rock as sure as eggs are eggs.’

‘Addled, I wouldn’t be surprised, miss,’ said George, with great tolerance and good-humour. ‘But just as you say.’

The lovely September afternoon was almost too warm for walking, but Laura, full of her project, set off without any misgivings as soon as she had left George. She did not wait to see him turn the car, but climbed the hill at a rapid rate and came out by the stone circle to get her bearings.

It was sunny enough for the stones to cast firm, dark shadows. Laura took a bearing, decided upon the direction she ought to take, and began to pace carefully forward. Sure enough, at the end of half a mile of downhill walking over the Downland turf, she came to a little copse, and at the entrance to it was a monolith the shape of a spire, just one tall stone in a clearing; and through the clearing (and leading south-east in the direction which Laura wanted if she were to get to Slepe Rock) was a narrow path, white and greasily slippery on the chalk over which it had been trodden.

‘Got it!’ muttered Laura in triumph. ‘Attababy! Here I come!’

She was so pleased with the results of her reading, deductions and terrestrial navigation that she began to run down the path. Downhill it travelled until it was out of the clearing, and then it climbed up to three hundred and fifty feet above sea-level and ran along three miles of a narrow ridge until it crossed a highway which Laura, pausing, recognized as a secondary road which ran between Cuchester and Welsea Beaches.

The railway then had to be crossed, and Laura hesitated, longing to climb the embankment and see whether her track could again be picked up on the further side of the line.