Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

At the turning of the corner the pace became faster. The beat of the drum, heard faintly through the noise of the crowd, was now “two, three, two, three.” “Come along, come along, it’s time to move, I’m tired of standing still!”

A delirium seemed to seize the front lines, and it passed like a flame down the ranks. Faster, faster. For heaven’s sake, faster! People were singing, a strange tune that seemed to have no words but only a crescendo of sound, a murmur that rose to a hum and then to a scream, and then sank again back into the wind and the beat of the drum.

They had left the market-place and were struggling, pressing, down the narrow street that led to the bay. Some one in front broke into a kind of dance-step. One, two, three, then forward bending almost double, your head down, then one, two, three, and your body back again, a leg in air, your head flung behind. It was the dance, the dance!

The spirit was upon them, the drum had given the word, and the whole company danced down the hill, over the cobbles. One, two, three, bend, one, two, three, back, leg in air! “Oh, but I can’t!” Maradick was panting. He could not stop, for they were pressing close behind him. The old woman had lost all sense of decorum. She waved her basket in the air, and from its depths came the scream of the hen. Tony’s arm was tight through his, and Tony was dancing. One, two, three, and everyone bent together. One, two, three, legs were in the air. Faces were flushed with excitement, hands were clenched, and the tune rose and fell. For an instant Maradick resisted. He must get out of it; he tried to draw his arm away. It was held in a vice and Tony was too excited to listen, and then propriety, years, tradition went hustling to the winds and he was dancing as the others. He shouted wildly, he waved his cap in the air; then he caught the tune and shouted it with the others.

A strange hallucination came upon him that he was some one else, that he, as Maradick, did not exist. Epsom was a lie and the office in town a delusion. The years seemed to step off his back, like Pilgrim’s pack, and so, shouting and singing, he danced down the street.

They reached the bottom of the hill and turned the corner along the path that led by the bay. The sea lay motionless at their feet, the path of the moon stretching to the horizon.

The tune was wilder and wilder; the dance had done its work, and enough marriages were in the making to fill the church for a year of Sundays. There was no surprise at the presence of Tony and Maradick. This was an occasion in which no one was responsible for their actions, and if gentlemen chose to join, well, there was nothing very much to wonder at.

To Tony it seemed the moment of his life. This was what he had been born to do, to dance madly round the town. It seemed to signify comradeship, good fellowship, the true equality. It was the old Greek spirit come to life again; that spirit of which he had spoken to Alice—something that Homer had known and something that Whitman had preached. And so up the hill! madly capering, gesticulating, shouting. Some one is down, but no one stops. He is left to pick himself up and come limping after. Mr. Trefusis the butcher had been for a twelvemonth at war with Mr. Curtis the stationer, now they are arm in arm, both absurdly stout; the collar of Mr. Curtis is burst at the neck, but they are friends once more. Mrs. Graham, laundress, had insulted Miss Penny, dressmaker, four months ago, and they had not spoken since; now, with bonnets awry and buttons bursting down the back, it is a case of “Mary” and “Agnes” once again.

Oh! the drum knew its work.

And then it was suddenly over. The top of the hill completed the circle and the market was reached again. The drum beat a frantic tattoo on the steps of the Town Hall, the crowd surged madly round the square, and then suddenly the screams died away, a last feeble beat was heard, and there was silence. People leaned breathlessly against any support that might be there and thought suddenly of the disorder of their dress. Everyone was perhaps a little sheepish, and some had the air of those who had suddenly awaked from sleep.