At last, pulling himself together, the Professor bade Portunus tune up his fiddle, and requested that the young ladies should form up into two lines for the first dance.
“We’ll begin with ‘Columbine,’ ” he said.
“But that’s nothing but a country dance for farm servants,” pouted Moonlove Honeysuckle.
And Prunella Chanticleer boldly went up to Miss Primrose, and said, “Please, mayn’t we go on with the jigs and quadrilles we’ve always learned? I don’t think mother would like me learning new things. And ‘Columbine’ is so vulgar.”
“Vulgar! New!” cried Professor Wisp, shrilly. “Why, my pretty Miss, ‘Columbine’ was danced in the moonlight when Lud-in-the-Mist was nothing but a beech wood between two rivers. It is the dance that the Silent People dance along the Milky Way. It’s the dance of laughter and tears.”
“Professor Wisp is going to teach you very old and aristocratic dances, my dear,” said Miss Primrose reprovingly. “Dances such as were danced at the court of Duke Aubrey, were they not, Professor Wisp?”
But the queer old fiddler had begun to tune up, and Professor Wisp, evidently thinking that they had already wasted enough time, ordered his pupils to stand up and be in readiness to begin.
Very sulkily it was that the Crabapple Blossoms obeyed, for they were all feeling as cross as two sticks at having such a vulgar buffoon for their master, and at being forced to learn silly old-fashioned dances that would be of no use to them when they were grown-up.
But, surely, there was magic in the bow of that old fiddler! And, surely, no other tune in the world was so lonely, so light-footed, so beckoning! Do what one would one must needs up and follow it.
Without quite knowing how it came about, they were soon all tripping and bobbing and gliding and tossing, with their minds on fire, while Miss Primrose wagged her head in time to the measure, and Professor Wisp, shouting directions the while, wound himself in and out among them, as if they were so many beads, and he the string on which they were threaded.
Suddenly the music stopped, and flushed, laughing, and fanning themselves with their pocket-handkerchiefs, the Crabapple Blossoms flung themselves down on the floor, against a pile of bulging sacks in one of the corners, indifferent for probably the first time in their lives to possible damage to their frocks.
But Miss Primrose cried out sharply, “Not there, dears! Not there!”
In some surprise they were about to move, when Professor Wisp whispered something in her ear, and, with a little meaning nod to him, she said, “Very well, dears, stay where you are. It was only that I thought the floor would be dirty for you.”
“Well, it wasn’t such bad fun after all,” said Moonlove Honeysuckle.
“No,” admitted Prunella Chanticleer reluctantly. “That old man can play!”
“I wonder what’s in these sacks; it feels too soft for apples,” said Ambrosine Pyepowders, prodding in idle curiosity the one against which she was leaning.
“There’s rather a queer smell coming from them,” said Moonlove.
“Horrid!” said Prunella, wrinkling up her little nose.
And then, with a giggle, she whispered, “We’ve had the goose and the sage, so perhaps these are the onions!”
At that moment Portunus began to tune his fiddle again, and Professor Wisp called out to them to form up again in two rows.
“This time, my little misses,” he said, “it’s to be a sad solemn dance, so Miss Primrose must foot it with you—‘a very aristocratic dance, such as was danced at the court of Duke Aubrey’!” and he gave them a roguish wink.
So admirable had been his imitation of Miss Primrose’s voice that, for all he was such a vulgar buffoon, the Crabapple Blossoms could not help giggling.
“But I’ll ask you to listen to the tune before you begin to dance it,” he went on. “Now then, Portunus!”
“Why! It’s just ‘Columbine’ over again …” began Prunella scornfully.
But the words froze on her lips, and she stood spellbound and frightened.
It was “Columbine,” but with a difference. For, since they had last heard it, the tune might have died, and wandered in strange places, to come back to earth, an angry ghost.
“Now, then, dance!” cried Professor Wisp, in harsh, peremptory tones.
And it was in sheer self-defence that they obeyed—as if by dancing they somehow or other escaped from that tune, which seemed to be themselves.
“Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,
With hither and thither, as straight as a line,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweetbrier
And bonfire
And strawberry-wire
And columbine,”
sang Professor Wisp. And in and out, in and out of a labyrinth of dreams wound the Crabapple Blossoms.
But now the tune had changed its key. It was getting gay once more—gay, but strange, and very terrifying.
“Any lass for a Duke, a Duke who wears green,
In lands where the sun and the moon do not shine,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweetbrier
And bonfire
And strawberry-wire
And columbine,”
sang Professor Wisp, and in and out he wound between his pupils—or, rather, not wound, but dived, darted, flashed, while every moment his singing grew shriller, his laughter more wild.
And then—whence and how they could not say—a new person had joined the dance.
He was dressed in green and he wore a black mask. And the curious thing was that, in spite of all the crossings and recrossings and runs down the middle, and the endless shuffling in the positions of the dancers, demanded by the intricate figures of this dance, the newcomer was never beside you—it was always with somebody else that he was dancing. You never felt the touch of his hand. This was the experience of each individual Crabapple Blossom.
But Moonlove Honeysuckle caught a glimpse of his back; and on it there was a hump.
VII
Master Ambrose Chases a Wild Goose and Has a Vision
Master Ambrose Honeysuckle had finished his midday meal, and was smoking his churchwarden
