“Don’t worry about the past. I’m speaking as a medico now. Get on with your work and leave the thinking till you have time for it. Eternity’s pretty long, you know.”
“Well, if I take your advice I must be getting back to my work. Good night, both of you. I’ll see you next week again, perhaps, Glendyne.”
He walked on, leaving us to continue our exploration. Glendyne was silent for some minutes. When at last he spoke, it was in a graver tone than I had heard him use before.
“That’s a splendid chap,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the tall figure behind us. “I don’t envy him, though. His awakening has been a rude one in this affair. Six months ago he knew absolutely nothing of life. He was earnest and all that; but a perfect child in things of the world. The result was that when the blow came he was absolutely helpless. He fought for a time with the old platitudes—and he fought well, I can tell you, for he has a tremendous personality. But he was out of court from the first. I’ve seen things done under his very eyes without his even noticing what was happening. At last I gave him a few pointers from my own experience; and now he has some vague ideas what the temptations really are and how he can best counter them. And he works like a Trojan. A splendid chap. What a chance he has, if he had only had the knowledge; and how he regrets it now, poor beggar. You know, at the very first, he simply led his people down the slope without knowing it. Worked up their religious emotion, you see, until they were simply gunpowder for the flame. What a mess! And all with the best intentions too.”
It was an extraordinarily long speech from Glendyne; and it gave me some measure of his liking for the clergyman. I gathered that they often met in the course of their work.
By this time we had emerged into Oxford Street. Glendyne was about to cross the road, when suddenly he caught sight of a train of figures, about a hundred and fifty in all, I should say, who were advancing up the middle of the street. Each had his hands on the shoulders of the person in front of him and the procession advanced towards us slowly, whilst I heard again the air with which I had become familiar.
“The Dancers!” muttered Glendyne. “Keep a grip on yourself, now, Flint. No hysteria, if you please.”
I was angry at being treated in this way, for I am not an hysterical subject either outwardly or inwardly; but as the procession drew nearer I realised that he was right to give me a sharp warning. They advanced slowly, as I said, keeping time to the air which they sang and which I now recognised as being something like one of the old nursery lullabies I heard when I was a child. It had the knack of penetrating far into one’s subconsciousness and bringing up into the light all sorts of forgotten childish fancies which had long slipped from my waking thoughts. There was no regularity in the dancing, except that the whole procession kept time to the air: each individual danced as he chose, provided that he kept his hands upon the shoulders before him so that the line remained intact. Men and women were intermingled without any order in the company. Their faces were rapt, as though in some ecstasy; and a strange, compelling magnetism seemed to emanate from the whole scene.
“Here we go … dancing … under the … Moon,
Lifting our … feet to the … time of the … tune.
Come, brother, … Come, sister, … join in our … line;
Join with us … now in this … dancing divine.”
So they came up toward us, while that strange magnetic attraction grew ever stronger upon me. For some reason which I could not fathom, I felt a profound desire to join in the procession. A kind of hallucinatory craving came over me, though I fought it down. At last Glendyne’s voice broke the spell.
“Fine example of choreomania, isn’t it? Perfectly well-recognised type. The old Dancing Mania of the fourteenth century. Bound to arise under conditions like the present.”
The phrases fell on my ear and by their matter-of-factness seemed to come between me and the fascination which the lullaby and the rhythmical motion had begun to exercise upon my mind. Almost without any feeling whatever, I watched the Dancers approaching.
“Here we go … dancing … under the … Moon.
Join in our … chain, it will … break all too … soon.
When this verse … ends, then … scatter like … rain;
And each dance a … lone till we … form it a … gain.”
At the last word of the verse, the procession dissolved into a whirling crowd of figures, dancing, springing, spinning in their aimless evolutions. We were caught up in the mob; and only Glendyne’s grip on my arm prevented my being jostled from his side. A knot of the Dancers came about us and strove to excite us into their revels. Women with tossing hair besought us breathlessly to join them; men dragged at us, striving to bring us out among them. All the faces wore the same look of ardency, the same expression about the lips. Some were weary; but still the excitement bore them up in their convulsions. The temptation to join them became almost irresistible; and I felt myself being drawn into their ranks when suddenly the singing broke out once more.
“Here we go … dancing … under the … Moon. …”
The procession reformed in haste, gathering length as it went; and the Dancers began again to move eastward along Oxford Street. I watched them go, still feeling the attraction long after they were past; and only some minutes later I realised that Glendyne was still gripping my
