Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

‘hair,’ not ‘heart.’ Shouldn’t we…?”

Half the front row had heard this last agitated utterance. Professor Penrose came up off the small of his back with the agility of an ageing monkey, but without any appearance of haste or concern, and demonstrated his right to be in charge. His old voice had all the power and command it needed, and he, at seventy-five, was not innocent at all.

“Well, I’ll admit I did issue a sort of challenge,” he said, scowling amiably round the half-circle of tense and quiet singers, “to our young friends here, and they certainly took it up. We’ll go into details to-morrow morning. All I’ll say now is that we’ve just had a very ingenious demonstration of one of the essentials of folk-song, and that is its ability to change and renew itself. Folk-music is organic. It adapts itself to answer the needs of expression of those whose natural music it is. Once it becomes static it has begun to die. One of its chief functions is to be the voice of the otherwise inarticulate, and don’t you forget it. As for you,” he said severely, wagging a finger at the Rossignol twins, who gazed back at him with benign smiles, “I’ll deal with you to-morrow. Toss a sophisticated little court-pastoral melody at me, would you, and hope for me to fall over my own feet telling you it isn’t a folk-song! Of course it’s a folksong! The people took what they wanted where they found it, as well as creating it for themselves, but don’t doubt it became truly theirs. From the court, was it? So was the carmognole! So was the Ca ira! Go collecting in the more rural parts of Bohemia, and you’ll find themes of Mozart sung to folk poems, and if you go back far enough you’ll find they were genuine folk-songs almost before Mozart was dead, and those who heard them carried from the distant towns and took them for their own use never knew or cared what seed they were cultivating. And don’t think you can faze an old hand like me by bouncing off into Auvergnat patois, either. I knew that lullaby before you were born.

“All right, let’s break off there for to-night, and think over what we’ve heard. To-morrow I hope you won’t be afraid to disagree with me, there’s room here for a lot of different opinions. If you think ‘My lodging is on the cold ground’ can’t be a valid folk-song because the words are by John Gay, and have the ring of the theatre rather than the village, you stand up for your views. We probably shan’t come to any firm conclusions, but we might uncover some very interesting ideas. As well as hearing some very fine singing and playing, I may say, if they live up to to- night. And now let’s all adjourn to the small drawing-room for coffee.”

And they went, swarming out of the great room and along the corridor, so bemused by his persuasive tongue that they were almost convinced nothing fiery and violent had ever passed between those two people now silently following. Just a clever bit of impromptu theatre, to show that folk-music was alive and adaptable to a human situation to-day, no less than two hundred years ago. All the same, there was something still quivering in the air, electric and disquieting; something that moved the left-handed Rossignol twin to murmur to the right-handed Rossignol twin, as they climbed the staircase:

“Do you know, mon vieux, I think perhaps this week-end is going to be not so boring, after all.”

She hadn’t reckoned fully with his ruthless ability to rid himself of unwanted company, and had supposed that if she hung back until all was quiet he would be swept into the small drawing-room and the coffee conversation by the crowd of eager fans that swarmed about him, enthusing, flattering and angling for position. But when she came to the turn of the stairs, alone, treading on the fringes of the distant clamour, he reached out from the folds of the velvet curtains and caught her by the arm, pulling her to a standstill face to face with him.

“Liri, I want to talk to you.”

His voice was taut and very low, his face flushed and dark and convulsed with pride. She tried to wrest her arm out of his grasp, and instinctively gave up the attempt, knowing she could not do it by force and he would not let her go.

“I don’t want to talk to you. Let go my arm.”

“Liri, don’t be like this, I tell you I’ve got to talk to you…”

“You did talk to me,” she said through her teeth, “just now. You talked and I answered, and I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you. Now get away from me.”

“I don’t believe it! If that’s all you’ve got to say to me, why did you come here at all?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded fiercely. “I came as a student, like anybody else…”

“That’s a lie,” he said bluntly. “You came because you knew I should be here, you must have, you couldn’t have known the course was on at all without knowing I was part of it. You followed me here. Why, if you’ve got nothing to say to me now you’re here?”

“You!” she said, suddenly rigid with quiet fury. “You think the world goes round you. You think you can play what tricks you like, and no one has the right to kick. You wouldn’t know what I have against you, would you? Oh, no! Listen just once more, and then I never want to see you or hear your voice again. I’m finished with you! I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you, you mean nothing to me, and you never will mean anything again. Now take your hands off me.”

“The devil I will, till you listen to me …”

Lucifer blazed, and the answering fires burned up in Liri’s eyes. She would have liked to swing her free palm and hit him resoundingly in the face, but in the quietness where they were, and sharp above the still ferocity of their voices, it would have brought the curious running as surely as a pistol-shot. There were other ways. She stooped her head suddenly, and closed her teeth in his wrist.

He never made a sound, but his startled muscles jerked, and in the instant of surprise when his grip relaxed she tore herself free, eluding the recovering lunge he made after her, and slipped away from him up the staircase.

By one of the coffee-tables in the small drawing-room – they were just getting used to applying the term to an apartment about as large as a tithe-barn – Dickie Meurice had gathered his court about him, and was exerting himself to be at once king and court-jester. He, at least, was having a successful evening. Things were shaping up very nicely. He didn’t miss Liri’s entry, or fail to hug himself with satisfaction at sight of her high colour and burning eyes; but he let her alone. So far from having anything against her personally, he was just beginning to find her interesting. She might be a tigress, but she had looks and style; she made most of the girls look like mass-produced dolls. There might be a bonus in it for him if he could make certain that her separation from Lucifer was permanent.

Lucien Galt came into the room with his usual long, arrogant step, his head up, his brows drawn together into a forbidding line. He crossed to the coffee-table and helped himself without a word or a look for anyone, and then stood balancing the cup in his hand and looking round until he found Liri, in a group surrounding Professor Penrose, in the far corner of the room. He watched her frowningly, attentively, without a thought for all the curious, covert glances fixed on him. It was like him not to bother to dissemble for them; the most offensive thing about him was that he made no concessions to his public. In Meurice’s catalogue of sins that was blasphemy.