Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

There were many country people wearing their Sunday clothes with an uneasiness that had also something of admitted virtue and pride about it. Their ill-fitting and absurdly self-conscious garments hung about them and confined their movements; they watched the scene around them almost furtively, and with a certain subdued terror. It was the day, the night of the year to them; it had been looked forward to and counted and solemnised with the dignity of a much-be-thumbed calendar, and through the long dreary days of winter, when snow and the blinding mist hemmed in solitary farms with desolation, it had been anticipated and foreseen with eager intensity. Now that it was here and was so soon to stand, a lonely pillar in the utterly uneventful waste-land of the year, they looked at it timorously, fearfully, and yet with eager excitement. These lights, this noise, this crowd, how wonderful to look back upon it all afterwards, and how perilous it all was! They moved carefully through the line of booths, wondering at the splendour and magnificence of them, buying a little once or twice, and then repenting of what they had done. Another hour and it would be over; already they shuddered at the blackness of to-morrow.

With the townspeople, the fishermen and sailors from Penzance, it was an old affair; something amusing and calculated to improve materially matters financial and matters amatory, but by no means a thing to wonder at. The last night of the three days fair was, however, of real importance. According to ancient superstition, a procession was formed by all the citizens of the town, and this marched, headed by flaming torches and an ancient drum, round the walls. This had been done, so went the legend, ever since the days of the Celts, when naked invaders had marched with wild cries and derisive gestures round and round the town, concluding with a general massacre and a laying low of the walls. The town had soon sprung to life again, and the ceremony had become an anniversary and the anniversary a fair. The last dying screams of those ancient peoples were turned, now, into the shrieking of a merry-go-round and the sale of toffy and the chattering of many old women; and there were but few in the place who remembered what those origins had been.

Excitement was in the air, and the Square seemed to grow more crowded at every moment. The flaring of the gas flung gigantic shadows on the walls, and the light was on the town so that its sides shone as though with fire. The noise was deafening—the screaming of the roundabout, the shouts of the riders, the cries and laughter of the crowd made a confused babel of sound, and in the distance could be heard the beating of the drum. It was the hour of the final ceremony.

“I wonder,” said Maradick, “what the people in those houses think of it. Sleep must be a difficulty under the circumstances.”

“I should think,” said Tony, laughing, “that they are all out here. I expect that most of the town is here by this time.” And, indeed, there was an enormous crowd. The preacher was in danger of being pushed off his plank; the people surged round dancing, singing, shouting, and his little circle had been caught in the multitude and had been swallowed up. Very few of the people seemed to be listening to him; but he talked on, waving the book in his hand, standing out sharply against the shining tower at his back.

Words came to them: “To-morrow it will be too late. I tell you, my friends, that it is now and now only that . . . And the door was shut . . . We cannot choose . . .”

But the drum was in the Square. Standing on the steps of the Town Hall, clothed in his official red, the Town Clerk, a short, pompous man, saluted the fair. No words could penetrate the confusion, but people began to gather round him shouting and singing. The buying and selling entered into the last frenzied five minutes before finally ceasing altogether. Prices suddenly fell to nothing at all, and wise and cautious spirits who had been waiting for this moment throughout the day crowded round and swept up the most wonderful bargains.

The preacher saw the crowd had no ears for him now, and so, with a last little despairing shake of the arm, he closed his book and jumped off his plank. The round-about gave a last shriek of enthusiasm and then dropped exhausted, with the happy sense that it had added to the gaiety of the nations and had brought many coppers into the pockets of its master.

The crowd surged towards the little red beadle with the drum, and Maradick and Tony surged with it. It was beyond question a very lively crowd, and it threatened to be livelier with every beat of the drum. The sound was intoxicating beyond a doubt, and when you had already paid a visit to the “Red Lion” and enjoyed a merry glass with your best friend, of course you entered into the spirit of things more heartily than ever.

And then, too, this dance round the town was the moment of the year. It was the one occasion on which no questions were asked and no surprise ever shown. Decorum and propriety, both excellent things, were for once flung aside; for unless they were discarded the spirit of the dance was not enjoyed. It was deeply symbolic; a glorious quarter of an hour into which you might fling all the inaction of the year—disappointment, revenge, jealousy, hate went, like soiled and useless rags, into the seething pot, and were danced away for ever. You expressed, too, all your joy and gratitude for a delightful year and a most merry fair, and you drank in, as it were wine, encouragement and hope for the year to come. There had been bad seasons and disappointing friends, and the sad knowledge that you weren’t as strong as you had once been; but into the pot with it all! Dance it away into limbo! and, on the back of that merry drum, sits a spirit that will put new heart into you and will send your toes twinkling down the street.