Rate, skate, and crabs.
God save the Queen!"
It was about nine o'clock when they came to Thornsdale, down on the Rother levels; the moon had risen and the marsh was smeethed in white. The air was thick with a strong-scented miasma, and beside the dykes long lines of willows faded into the mist. Here another orgy was started, in grotesque contrast with the pallid sleep of water. The gate that barred the Kent road was torn down, the bonfire prepared, the dance begun.
The mists became patched with leaping shadows, and a dull crimson wove itself into the prevailing whiteness. Flaming twigs and sparks hissed into the dykes, rolls of acrid tar-smoke spread like a pall over the river and the Highnock Sewer, under which their waters were spotted with fire. The ground was soon pulped and poached with the jigging feet, and mud and water spurted into the dancers' faces.
It was all rather ugly and ridiculous, and as before at Mockbeggar, the crowd began to straggle. This time there was no public-house to swallow up strays, but the marsh spread far and wide, a Land of Promise for lovers, who began to slink off two by two into the mists. Some who were not lovers formed themselves into noisy groups, and bumped about the lanes—waking the farmers' wives from Bosney to Marsh Quarter.
Rose felt Handshut's arm clinging more tenderly about her, and she knew that he wanted to lead her away from the noise and glare, to the coolness and loneliness of the waterside. She wanted to go—her head ached, her nostrils tingled, and her eyes were sore with the fumes of tar, her ears wearied with the din.
"Let's go home," she said faintly—"it's getting late."
"We can go back by Corkwood across the marshes. It'll be quicker, and we shan't have no crowd spanneling round."
They elbowed their way into the open, and soon the noise had died into a subdued roar, not so loud as the sigh of the reeds, while the bonfire showed only as a crimson stain on the eastward piling fogs.
In time the contrast of silence grew quite painful. It ached. Only the sough of the wind in the reeds troubled it—the feet of Rose and Handshut were noiseless on the grass, they breathed inaudibly, only the breath of the watching night was heard.