“Wherefore these flowers?
This fete for me?
Ah, no, it is not fifty years,
Since in my eyes the light you see
First shone upon life’s joys and tears!
How fast the heedless days have flown
Too late to wail the misspent hours,
To mourn the vanished friends I’ve known,
To kneel beside love’s ruined bowers.
Ah, have I then seen fifty years,
With all their joys and hopes and fears!”
Through all the verses he ranged, his voice improving with each phrase, growing more resonant, till at last it rang out with a ragged richness which went home to the hearts of all. He was possessed. All at once he was conscious that the beginning of the end of things was come for him; and that now, at fifty, in no sphere had he absolutely “arrived,” neither in home nor fortune, nor—but yes, there was one sphere of success; there was his fatherhood. There was his daughter, his wonderful Zoe. He drew his eyes from the distance, and saw that her ardent look was not towards him, but towards one whom she had known but a few weeks.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a verse, and broke forward with his arms outstretched, laughing. He felt that he must laugh, or he would cry; and that would be a humiliating thing to do.
“Come, come, my friends, my children, enough of that!” he cried. “We’ll have no more maundering. Fifty years—what are fifty years! Think of Methuselah! It’s summer in the world still, and it’s only spring at St. Saviour’s. It’s the time of the first flowers. Let’s dance—no, no, never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I’ll settle it with him. We’ll dance the gay quadrille.”
He caught the hands of the two youngest girls present, and nodded at the fiddler, who at once began to tune his violin afresh. One of the joyous young girls, however, began to plead with him.
“Ah, no, let us dance, but at the last—not yet, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques! There is Zoe’s song, we must have that, and then we must have charades. Here is M’sieu’ Fynes—he can make splendid charades for us. Then the dance at the last—ah, yes, yes, M’sieu’ Jean Jacques! Let it be like that. We all planned it, and though it is your birthday, it’s us are making the fete.”
“As you will then, as you will, little ones,” Jean Jacques acquiesced with a half-sigh; but he did not look at his daughter. Somehow, suddenly, a strange constraint possessed him where Zoe was concerned. “Then let us have Zoe’s song; let us have ‘La Claire Fontaine’,” cried the black-eyed young madcap who held Jean Jacques’ arms.
But Zoe interrupted. “No, no,” she protested, “the singing spell is broken. We will have the song after the charades—after the charades.”
“Good, good—after the charades!” they all cried, for there would be charades like none which had ever been played before, with a real actor to help them, to carry them through as they did on the stage. To them the stage was compounded of mystery, gaiety and the forbidden.
So, for the next half-hour they were all at the disposal of the Man from Outside, who worked as though it was a real stage, and they were real players, and there were great audiences to see them. It was all quite wonderful, and it involved certain posings, attitudes, mimicry and pantomime, for they were really ingenious charades.