He sat on the edge of the deal table with one leg crossed over his knee, his dark face thrown into strong relief, intent, eager, with a vitality that seemed to make it almost luminous. From the crowd that watched him there came not a sound. The thought crossed Juliet's mind that the instrument he played so cunningly might have been a harp from a fairy palace. For there was magic in the air. He played with a delicacy that seemed to wind itself in threads of gold about the inner fibres of the soul. They listened to him as men bewitched.
When the music ended, a great noise went up—shouts and whistles and cat-calls. They were wild for more. But Green knew the value of a reserve. He laughed away the encores with a careless "Presently!" and called a young miner to him for a song. The lad sang and Green accompanied, and again Juliet marvelled at the amazing facility of his performance. He seemed to be able to adapt the instrument to every mood or tone. The boy's voice was rough and untrained, but it held a certain appeal and by sheer intuition—comradeship as it seemed—Green brought it home to the hearers. The man's unfailing responsiveness was a revelation to her. She believed it was the secret of his charm.
When the song was ended, a fisherman came forward and danced a hornpipe on the table, again to the thrumming of the banjo, without which nothing seemed complete. It was while this was in progress that a thick-set, somewhat bulletheaded man came up and addressed the squire by name.
"We don't often see you here, Mr. Fielding."
The squire turned. "Hullo, Ashcott. Your lambs are in force to-night. How are they behaving themselves?"
"Pretty fair," said Ashcott. "They're getting the strike rot like the rest of the world. We shan't hold 'em for ever. If any of the Farringmore lot turned up here, I wouldn't answer for 'em. Lord Wilchester talked of motoring down the other day, bringing friends if you please to see the mine, I warned him off—the damn' fool! Simply asking for trouble, as I told him. 'Well, what's the matter?' he said. 'What do they want?' 'They'd like houses instead of pigsties for one thing,' I said. And he laughed at that. 'Oh, let 'em go to the devil!' he said. 'I haven't got any money to spare for luxuries of that kind.' So far as that goes I believe he is hard up, but then look at the way they live! They'd need to be multi-millionaires to keep it up."
The man's speech was crude, even brutal, and the girl on Fielding's other side shivered a little and drew a pace away. It was very evident on which side his sympathies lay. There was more than a tinge of the street ranter in his utterance. She was glad that Fielding spared her an introduction.
She tried to turn her attention back to the entertainment, but the coarse words hung in her memory like an evil cloud. They recalled Green's brief condemnation of the previous evening. Evidently his point of view was the same. He regarded the whole social system as evil. Had not the squire told her that he wanted to reform the world?
The evening wore on, and with unfaltering resource Dick Green kept the interest of his audience from flagging. He chose his assistants with insight and skill, and every item on his program scored a success. His banjo was in almost continuous demand throughout, but finally, just at the end, he laid it aside.
He took something from his pocket; what it was Juliet could not see, but she caught the gleam of metal in the lamp-light, and in a moment a great buzz of pleasure spread through the crowd. And then it began—such music as she had never dreamed of—such music as surely was never fluted save from the pipes of Pan. A long, sweet, thrilling note like the call of a nightingale, starting far away, drawing swiftly nearer, nearer, till she felt as if it ended against her heart, and then all the joy of spring, of youth, of hope, poured forth in an amazing ecstasy of silver sound—showers of fairy notes like the dancing of tiny feet or the lightest patter of summer rain that ever fell upon opening leaves—and the gold-flecked sunshine that shimmered in the crystal dawning of a day new-born. Afterwards there came the sound of waterfalls and laughing streams and the calling of fairy voices, the tinkle of fairy laughter, and then the sea and shoaling water—shoaling water—breaking in a million sparkles over the rocks of an enchanted strand!