"Where shall we go now?" asked Danilo, as he halted.
"Toward the music," Claire replied, vaguely.
He listened a moment. "It is over on the east side of the hill somewhere," he announced.
They dipped down. The way became more ragged and full of shifting rocks. The air was warmer, screened from the sea's breath by the yellow hilltop. The sound of the music grew nearer and nearer. A tawny light sprang up just ahead; snatches of laughter reached them. Then, quite suddenly, they came to an abrupt and jagged ledge.
"See, down there!" cried Danilo.
Claire looked. Just below them in a bowl-like depression that had once been the clearing for an old-fashioned garden she saw black figures swaying rhythmically about a bonfire. Danilo, taking a newspaper out of his overcoat pocket, spread it on the ground. They sat down.
The curtain rises on villagers dancing on the village green. Claire remembered the old formula with which the printed synopsis of the Christmas pantomime inevitably began. It had been to her nothing but an empty phrase like the "once upon a time" of a folk-tale. Claire had never seen a village; she had seen only cities and country towns, peopled by individuals too self-conscious to do anything so naïve and simple as to dance open and unashamed upon the bare earth.
The bonfire blazed up suddenly and the dim figures became more tangible and alive. Claire could even see their faces. Remnants of a feast were scattered about—blue-black mussel-shells, soiled tamale-husks, brown crusts of Italian bread that had been baked in huge round loaves. The music stopped. The girls detached themselves from their partners. Jugs of wine were now lifted up. The men drank with heads thrown back, smacking their lips in greedy satisfaction. The women, standing apart, began to smooth out their dresses and straighten their hats. Somebody came forward to the women carrying a demijohn and tin cups. The women drank coquettishly, tossing the last mouthful out upon the camp-fire. Then the music began again.
Claire leaned forward, her lips parted with a spiritual hunger she could not define. She felt Danilo's hand slowly closing over hers; she made no attempt to withdraw it. As she sat there watching these women surrendering to their transient joys she felt a strange envy, mixed with profound pity. These women danced to-night; they would dance to-morrow night ... for a week, or a month, or a year, as the case might be, but finally the reckoning would come. But at least they danced! At least they would have their memories!
One brown wisp of a girl stood out from all the rest. She was not so deep-bosomed and broad of hips as the other women, and she danced airily, darting here and there like a blue-winged swallow. Her partner, too, was taller and thinner-flanked than the other men. Her head was tilted back and her man bent forward as if to imprison her very breath in the snare which his smile had set. Whenever the music stopped they drank from the same tin cup, and when the dance began again they whirled off like two leaves in the clutch of the autumn breeze.