“I say, do you hear the bells?” said Robert, poking his head into the room.
“No, dear! Do you?” replied Julia.
“Bells! Hear the bells! Bells!” exclaimed the half-tipsy and self-conscious Jim. And he rolled in his chair in an explosion of sudden, silent laughter, showing his mouthful of pointed teeth, like a dog. Then he gradually gathered himself together, found his feet, smiling fixedly.
“Pretty cool night!” he said aloud, when he felt the air on his almost bald head. The darkness smelt of sulphur.
Josephine and Robert had moved out of sight. Julia was abstracted, following them with her eyes. With almost supernatural keenness she seemed to catch their voices from the distance.
“Yes, Josephine, WOULDN'T that be AWFULLY ROMANTIC!”—she suddenly called shrilly.
The pair in the distance started.
“What—!” they heard Josephine's sharp exclamation.
“What's that?—What would be romantic?” said Jim as he lurched up and caught hold of Cyril Scott's arm.
“Josephine wants to make a great illumination of the grounds of the estate,” said Julia, magniloquent.
“No—no—I didn't say it,” remonstrated Josephine.
“What Josephine said,” explained Robert, “was simply that it would be pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a Christmas-tree indoors.”
“Oh, Josephine, how sweet of you!” cried Julia.
Cyril Scott giggled.
“Good egg! Champion idea, Josey, my lass. Eh? What—!” cried Jim. “Why not carry it out—eh? Why not? Most attractive.” He leaned forward over Josephine, and grinned.
“Oh, no!” expostulated Josephine. “It all sounds so silly now. No. Let us go indoors and go to bed.”
“NO, Josephine dear—No! It's a LOVELY IDEA!” cried Julia. “Let's get candles and lanterns and things—”
“Let's!” grinned Jim. “Let's, everybody—let's.”
“Shall we really?” asked Robert. “Shall we illuminate one of the fir-trees by the lawn?”
“Yes! How lovely!” cried Julia. “I'll fetch the candles.”
“The women must put on warm cloaks,” said Robert.
They trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns. Then, lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to twist wire round the candles for holders. They clustered round the bench.
“I say,” said Julia, “doesn't Cyril look like a pilot on a stormy night! Oh, I say—!” and she went into one of her hurried laughs.
They all looked at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. The young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic indifference.
Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the colliery.
“Shall we light them as we fix them,” asked Robert, “or save them for one grand rocket at the end?”
“Oh, as we do them,” said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and wanted to see some reward.
A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent.
“We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree,” sang Julia, in her high voice.
“Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination,” said Robert.
“Why yes. We want more than one candle,” said Josephine.
But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a pas seul before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself.
Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short, harsh, cackling laugh.
“Aren't we fools!” he cried. “What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!”
“No—why?” cried Josephine, amused but resentful.
But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian gripping his pipe.
The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees. Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. They gave a strange, perpendicular aspiration in the night. Julia waved slowly in her tree dance. Jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless figure.
The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. Pale candles became evident, the air was luminous. The illumination was becoming complete, harmonious.
Josephine suddenly looked round.
“Why-y-y!” came her long note of alarm.
A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the twilight.
“What is it?” cried Julia.
“Homo sapiens!” said Robert, the lieutenant. “Hand the light, Cyril.” He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye, the man was well-featured. He did not speak.
“Did you want anything?” asked Robert, from behind the light.
Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. To him, they were all illusory. He did not answer.
“Anything you wanted?” repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory.
Jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of laughter. Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. Whoop! Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. He was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from maddening self-consciousness. He knew what he was doing, he did it deliberately. And yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of hysterics. He could not help himself in exasperated self-consciousness.
The others all began to laugh, unavoidably. It was a contagion. They laughed helplessly and foolishly. Only Robert was anxious.
“I'm afraid he'll wake the house,” he said, looking at the doubled up figure of Jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly.
“Or not enough,” put in Cyril Scott. He twigged Jim's condition.
“No—no!” cried Josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself. “No—it's too long—I'm like to die laughing—”
Jim embraced the earth in his convulsions. Even Robert shook quite weakly with laughter. His face was red, his eyes full of dancing water. Yet he managed to articulate.
“I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down.” Then he went off again into spasms.
“Hu! Hu!” whooped Jim, subsiding. “Hu!”
He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent. The others also became weakly silent.
“What's amiss?” said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell.
They all began to laugh again,