第51章 THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION(13)

Reels were resorted to hereabouts at this time by the more robust spirits,for the reduction of superfluous energy which the ordinary figure-dances were not powerful enough to exhaust.As everybody knows,or does not know,the five reelers stood in the form of a cross,the reel being performed by each line of three alternately,the persons who successively came to the middle place dancing in both directions.Car'line soon found herself in this place,the axis of the whole performance,and could not get out of it,the tune turning into the first part without giving her opportunity.And now she began to suspect that Mop did know her,and was doing this on purpose,though whenever she stole a glance at him his closed eyes betokened obliviousness to everything outside his own brain.She continued to wend her way through the figure of 8that was formed by her course,the fiddler introducing into his notes the wild and agonizing sweetness of a living voice in one too highly wrought;its pathos running high and running low in endless variation,projecting through her nerves excruciating spasms,a sort of blissful torture.

The room swam,the tune was endless;and in about a quarter of an hour the only other woman in the figure dropped out exhausted,and sank panting on a bench.

The reel instantly resolved itself into a four-handed one.Car'line would have given anything to leave off;but she had,or fancied she had,no power,while Mop played such tunes;and thus another ten minutes slipped by,a haze of dust now clouding the candles,the floor being of stone,sanded.Then another dancer fell out--one of the men--and went into the passage,in a frantic search for liquor.

To turn the figure into a three-handed reel was the work of a second,Mop modulating at the same time into 'The Fairy Dance,'as better suited to the contracted movement,and no less one of those foods of love which,as manufactured by his bow,had always intoxicated her.

In a reel for three there was no rest whatever,and four or five minutes were enough to make her remaining two partners,now thoroughly blown,stamp their last bar and,like their predecessors,limp off into the next room to get something to drink.Car'line,half-stifled inside her veil,was left dancing alone,the apartment now being empty of everybody save herself,Mop,and their little girl.

She flung up the veil,and cast her eyes upon him,as if imploring him to withdraw himself and his acoustic magnetism from the atmosphere.Mop opened one of his own orbs,as though for the first time,fixed it peeringly upon her,and smiling dreamily,threw into his strains the reserve of expression which he could not afford to waste on a big and noisy dance.Crowds of little chromatic subtleties,capable of drawing tears from a statue,proceeded straightway from the ancient fiddle,as if it were dying of the emotion which had been pent up within it ever since its banishment from some Italian city where it first took shape and sound.There was that in the look of Mop's one dark eye which said:'You cannot leave off,dear,whether you would or no!'and it bred in her a paroxysm of desperation that defied him to tire her down.

She thus continued to dance alone,defiantly as she thought,but in truth slavishly and abjectly,subject to every wave of the melody,and probed by the gimlet-like gaze of her fascinator's open eye;keeping up at the same time a feeble smile in his face,as a feint to signify it was still her own pleasure which led her on.A terrified embarrassment as to what she could say to him if she were to leave off,had its unrecognized share in keeping her going.The child,who was beginning to be distressed by the strange situation,came up and said:'Stop,mother,stop,and let's go home!'as she seized Car'line's hand.

Suddenly Car'line sank staggering to the floor;and rolling over on her face,prone she remained.Mop's fiddle thereupon emitted an elfin shriek of finality;stepping quickly down from the nine-gallon beer-cask which had formed his rostrum,he went to the little girl,who disconsolately bent over her mother.