"Saint!" said the other; "I should think devil the more appropriate name.
That chap looks up to anything."
"Ah, well; when a saint turns sinner—," answered the first speaker, with a laugh.
Valentine heard the words and burst into a roar of laughter. He drew Cuckoo to the left and Julian followed. They passed under an archway into the bar, which was crowded with men, drinking and talking at the tops of their voices. Valentine called for drinks in a voice so loud and authoritative that the barmaid hurried to serve him, deserting other customers, who protested vainly. He forced Cuckoo to drink, and Julian needed no urging. Clinking glasses noisily with them, he gave as a toast:
"To the dance of the hours!"
These words, uttered with almost strident force, attracted attention even amid the violent hubbub that was raging, and several young men pressed round Valentine as he stood with his back against the counter of the bar. They raised their glasses, too, half in ridicule, and shouting in chorus, "To the dance of the hours!" drained them to this toast, which they could not comprehend. Valentine dashed his glass down. It broke and was trodden under foot. The barmaid protested. He threw her a sovereign. The young men gathered round, broke theirs in imitation, and Julian, snatching Cuckoo's from her, flung it away. As he did so, Valentine thrust another, filled with champagne, into her hand, and again cried out the toast.
"What the deuce does he mean by it?" one youth called out. "The dance of the hours; what's that?"
"The dance of the hours! The dance of the hours!" echoed other voices, and glasses were drained wildly. There was something exciting in the mere sound of the words that seemed to set brains jigging, and feet moving, and the world spinning and bowing. For if Time itself danced, what could the most Puritan human being do but dance with it? Seeing the crowd round Valentine, men who were drinking at the other end of the bar joined it, and the toast passed quickly from mouth to mouth. Uttered by every variety of voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a trumpet-blast to shame. Glasses were emptied and filled again in its honour. Yet nobody knew what it meant, and apparently nobody cared, except the Oxford boy who had already expressed his desire to be better informed on the subject. He had gradually edged his way through the throng until he was close to Valentine, at whom he gazed with a sort of tipsy reverence.
"I say, you chap," he cried. "What are we drinking to—eh? What the devil's the dance of the hours?"
Valentine brought his glass down on the counter.
"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Why, the greatest dance in the world, the dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women live for, and old men die with longing for. We set the hours dancing in the night, we—all who are gay and careless, who love life in the greatest way, and who laugh at death, and who aren't afraid of the devil. The devil's only a bogey to frighten old women and children. What do the hours care for him? Not a snap. It's only cowards who fear him. Brave men do what they will, and when the hours dance they dance with them, and drink with them all the night through. Who says there'll be another morning? I don't believe it. Curse the sunshine. Give me the night and the dancing hours!"