III
It was quite an affair, this ball, with a transparency, “Welcome,” over the door, and a cold supper at two crowns a plate, with the pastor’s daughter and the curate to grace the table.
Miss Holm wore a barège gown much betrimmed, and Roman bands around her head. Her fingers were full of keepsake rings from her ballet-school friends. Between the dances she sprinkled lavender water about the floor, and threatened the “ladies” with the bottle. Miss Holm never felt so young again on any such festive occasion. The ball began with a quadrille. The parents of the pupils and other older people stood around the walls, each looking after his own young ones with secret pride. The young dancers walked through the quadrille with faces set as masks, placing their feet as carefully as if they were walking on peas. Miss Holm was all encouraging smiles and nods as she murmured her French commands. The music was furnished by Mr. Broderson and his son, the latter maltreating the piano kindly lent for the occasion by the pastor.
Then the round dances began, and the tone grew more free and easy. The elder men discovered the punch bowl in the next room, and the gentlemen pupils danced in turn with Miss Holm. She danced with her head on one side, raising herself on her toes, and smiling with her faded grace of sixteen years. After a while the other couples stopped dancing to watch Miss Holm and her partner. The men came out of the other room, stood in the doorway, and murmured admiration as Miss Holm passed, raising her feet a little higher under her skirt, and rocking gracefully in the hips. The pastor’s daughter was so amused that she pinched the curate’s arm repeatedly. After the mazurka, the schoolteacher cried out, “Bravo!” and they all clapped hands. Miss Holm bowed the elegant ballet courtesy, laying two fingers on her heart.
When supper-time came, she arranged a polonaise and made them all join in. The women giggled and nudged each other in their embarrassment, and the men said: “Well—let’s get in line—” One couple began a march song, beating time with their feet.
Miss Holm sat next the schoolteacher, in the place of honor under the bust of his Majesty the King. They all grew solemn again at the table, and Miss Holm was almost the only one who conversed. She spoke in the high-pitched tone of the actors in the modern society dramas of Scribe. After a while the company became more jovial, the men began to laugh and drink toasts, touching glasses across the table. Things were very lively at the end of the table where the young people sat, and it was not easy to obtain quiet for the schoolmaster, who rose to make a speech. He spoke at some length, mentioning Miss Holm and the nine Muses, and ending up with a toast to “The Priestess of Art, Miss Irene Holm!” All joined in the cheers, and everybody came up to touch glasses with Miss Holm.
Miss Holm had understood very little of the long speech, but she felt greatly flattered. She rose and bowed to the company, her glass held high in her curved arm. Her face-powder, put on for the festive occasion, had quite disappeared in the heat and exertion, and two deep red spots shone on her cheeks.
The fun waxed fast and furious. The young people began to sing, the old men drank a glass or two extra on the sly, and stood up from their places to hit each other on the shoulder, amid shouts of laughter. The women threw anxious glances at the sinners, fearing they might indulge too deeply. Amid all the noise Miss Holm’s laugh rang out, a girlish laugh, bright and merry as thirty years before in the ballet school.
Then the schoolmaster said that Miss Holm ought to dance. “But I have danced.” Yes, but she should dance for them—a solo—that would be fine.
Miss Holm understood at once—and a great desire grew up in her heart—she was to dance—a solo! But she pretended to laugh, and smiling up at Peter Madsen’s wife, she said: “The gentleman says I ought to dance,” as if it were the most absurd thing in the world.
Several heard it, and they all called out in answer, “Yes, yes, do dance.”
Miss Holm blushed to the roots of her hair, and said that she thought the fun was getting just a little too outspoken. “And, besides, there was no music; and one couldn’t dance in long skirts.” A man somewhere in the background called out: “You can lift them up, can’t you?” The guests all laughed at this, and began to renew their entreaties.
“Well, yes, if the young lady from the rectory will play for me?—a tarantella.” They surrounded the pastor’s daughter, and she consented to lend her services. The schoolmaster rose and beat on his glass: “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “Miss Holm will do us the honor to perform a solo dance for us.” The guests cheered, and the last diners arose from the table. The curate’s arm was black and blue where the young lady from the rectory had pinched him.
Miss Holm and the pastor’s daughter went to the piano to try the music. Miss Holm was feverish with excitement, and tripped back and forth, trying the muscles of her feet. She pointed to the humps and bumps in the floor: “I’m not quite used to dancing in a circus.” Then again: “Well, the fun can begin now;” her voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’ll come in after the first ten bars,” she said to the pianist; “I’ll give you a sign when to begin.” Then she went out into a little neighboring room and waited there. The audience filed in and stood around in a circle, whispering and very curious. The schoolmaster brought the lights from the table, and stood them up in the windows. It was quite an illumination. Then there came a light knock at the door of the little room.
The rector’s daughter began to play, and the guests looked eagerly at the closed door. At the tenth bar of the music it opened, and they all clapped loudly. Miss Holm danced out, her skirt caught up with a Roman scarf. It was to be “la grande Napolitaine.” She danced on toetips, she twisted and turned. The audience gazed, dumbfounded, in admiration at the little feet that moved up and down as rapidly as a couple of drumsticks. They cheered and clapped wildly as she stood on one leg for a moment.
She called out “Quicker,” and began to sway again. She smiled and nodded and waved her arms. There was more and more motion of the body from the waist up, more gestures with the arms; the dance became more and more mimic. She could no longer see the faces of her audience; she opened her mouth, smiling so that all her teeth, a few very bad teeth, could be seen; she began to act in pantomime; she felt and knew only that she was dancing a solo—at last a solo, the solo for which she had waited so long. It was no longer the “grande Napolitaine.” It was Fenella who knelt, Fenella who implored, Fenella who suffered, the beautiful, tragic Fenella.
She hardly knew how she had risen from the floor, or how she had come from the room. She heard only the sudden ceasing of the music, and the laughter—the terrible laughter, the laughter she heard and the laughter she saw on all these faces, to which she had suddenly become alive again.
She had risen from her knees, raised her arms mechanically, from force of habit, and bowed amid shouting. In there, in the little room, she stood, supporting herself on the edge of the table. It was all so dark around and in her—so empty. She loosened the scarf from her gown with strangely stiff hands, smoothed her skirts, and went back again to the room where the audience were now clapping politely. She bowed her thanks, standing by the piano, but she did not raise her eyes. The others began to dance again, eager to resume the fun. Miss Holm went about among them, saying farewell. Her pupils pressed the paper packages containing their money into her hands. Peter Madsen’s wife helped her into her cloak, and at the door she was met by the pastor’s daughter and the curate, ready to accompany her home.
They walked along in silence. The young lady from the rectory was very unhappy about the evening’s occurrence, and wanted to excuse it somehow, but didn’t know what to say. The little dancer walked along at her side, pale and quiet.
Finally the curate, embarrassed at the silence, remarked hesitatingly: “You see, miss—these people—they don’t understand tragic art.” Miss Holm did not answer. When they came to her door she bowed and gave them her hand in silence. The rector’s daughter caught her in her arms and kissed her. “Good night, good night,” she said, her voice trembling. Then she waited outside with the curate until they saw a light in the little dancer’s room.
Miss Holm took off her barège gown and folded it carefully. She unwrapped the money from the paper parcels, counted it, and sewed it into a little pocket in her bodice. She handled the needle awkwardly, sitting bowed over the tiny light.
The next morning her champagne basket was lifted onto a wagon of the country post. It rained, and Miss Holm huddled down under a broken umbrella. She drew her legs up under her, and sat on her basket like a Turk. When it was time to leave, the driver ran alongside. The young lady from the rectory came running up bareheaded. She had a white basket in her hands, and said she had brought “just a little food for the journey.”
She bent down under the umbrella, caught Miss Holm’s head in her hands, and kissed her twice. The old dancer broke into sobs, and grasping the young girl’s hand, she kissed it violently.
The rector’s daughter stood and looked for a long time after the old umbrella swaying on top of the little cart.
Miss Irene Holm had announced a “spring course in modern society dances” in a little town nearby. Six pupils were promised. It was thither she was going now—to continue the thing we call Life.
THE OUTLAWS
BY SELMA LAGERLÖF
Selma Lagerlöf, at one time teacher at Landskrona, has just recently been crowned the people’s favorite authoress at the national Swedish festival held in 1907. She was born in 1858, on the ancestral estate of Wärmland, where she found the material for her first stories, “Gösta Berling’s Saga,” a fantastic collection of child-reminiscences modeled after the problem-literature then in vogue, and rendered enormously popular by reason of a happy linking of the old romanticism with the new realistic truthfulness to nature.
In 1895 she traveled abroad, and soon after produced her famous Sicilian tales. Her “Memoirs of Madame Ristori,” the great Italian tragic actress, containing important pictures of Madame Ristori’s contemporaries, Tommaso Salvini, Dumas Père, and others, have lately been translated into English.
Selma Lagerlöf’s style, ideally represented in “The Outlaws,” the best of her tales, is calm, sure, broad, and poetic.
