Martha was still laughing. The clash of the broken crockery was like cymbals to her. Stooping she swept the pieces together with her wet hands, flung them with a clatter in the coal-scuttle and ran to her own room.
She was still laughing. She wished that she could stop. It was folly to laugh like this because one had got wet. Her clothes were clammy now and she was shivering from her exposure. Her teeth chattered and suddenly her weariness came back upon her. She sank to the floor, one arm upon the bed. The walls and roof seemed to recede to an interminable distance. The whole house was flying away; and through an unobstructed clearness, but very far off, she could see Luke. There was nothing between him and her and she knew that she could reach him. She knew that she had reached him. Her spirit flowed out upon him, encompassing and permeating his. She could give herself to him forever by the mere outpouring of herself. She put herself at his disposal, and rising from the floor very quietly, changed her clothes and returned to the kitchen.
The weather cleared. The night of the Torchlight Procession was dry and cold, and very dark; but cold only heightened the ardour of the students and the dark threw up the torches ‘glare. They poured out of the quadrangle on to the crowded October streets − devils and pirates, wivies with mutches and wivies with creels, knights and grinning deaths’-heads, Japs and Maoris, tattie-boodies and emperors − lit fantastically by the gleam of the torches they carried. Spectators lined the streets, and the bairns of the poorer quarters, yelling and capering, pressed in upon the revellers; some marvelled, some in a fine scorn criticized, some tumbled to the tail of the procession and followed on with shouts and mimicry. In the remoter streets, away from the glare of the shop-lights, the procession trailed its length like a splendid smouldering caterpillar, with fire and smoke erect like living hairs along its back.
Dussie had pranked Luke out in a sailor suit, from which his inordinate length of neck and limb protruded grotesquely. Though no longer a student, he was too much a boy to hold back from the fun of a Torcher.
‘Wish I could go too,’ Dussie had pouted as she stitched at the sailor collar. ‘Luke − couldn’t I? Dressed up − no one would know.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Luke. ‘The size of you − it would give you away at once.’
Miss Warrender was in the flat that evening. She laughed and said, ‘The men’s monopoly, you see, Mrs. Cromar.’ Miss Warrender was noted for an ardent feminist. Luke laughed also, and said, ‘Oh, you want to share Torchers as well as Westminster, do you, Miss Warrender?’
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘I’d do it,’ cried Dussie. ‘I’d do it in a twink, if I were tall enough.’
‘Oh, no need to wait for your growth, Mrs. Cromar. One should do such things openly, or not at all.’
‘Would you?’ challenged Dussie.
Miss Warrender shrugged her fine supple shoulders and flung her arms above her head in a careless gesture.
‘Why not?’ she said again.
‘You’d make rather a jolly gipsy,’ said Luke watching the play of her arms.
Miss Warrender laughed again.
‘For a freak,’ she said, ‘I believe I’ll do it. You’d better come too, Mrs. Cromar − show yourself off. We’ll let them see we are not afraid of them.’
She spoke mockingly. Luke took her in jest but Dussie in earnest; seeing which ‘Rubbish!’ cried Luke again, sharply decisive. ‘You can hang around in the Quad, Duss, and welcome the warriors home.’
By the evening of the procession he had forgotten the jest; nor did it recur to him at all, when, marching through the streets, he found himself puzzled by a Spanish gypsy lad who walked in front of him. Something in the figure was familiar. It teased him for a little, then was forgotten.
When the roysterers had made their round of the city and gathered in the quadrangle again to fling their torches on the blazing bonfire, Dussie slipped from the crowd of waiting girls. Flushed and excited she sidled among the torch-bearers seeking Luke. Some of the men, recognizing her, shouted a welcome. ‘Come on, Mrs. Cromar − into the ring!’ Luke, excited himself, grabbed at her arm. At the same moment he felt his other arm seized. Turning, he saw the Spanish gypsy whose identity had puzzled him in the street; and with something of astonishment recognized him for Lucy Warrender. In the hilarious confusion that arose as the torch-bearers thronged to dance around the bonfire, she had manoeuvred herself close to Luke and thrust her arm firmly into his. He glanced aside at her. She was wearing heavy gold ear-rings that glittered with a barbaric inconstancy as she swayed; and he was startled by something lascivious in her eyes and posture, as though the Spanish costume, like Martha’s lustre frock, was a mirror that reflected sharply an unfamiliar aspect of the woman. He did not like the sharp reflection. Revolted, he flung her off brusquely and drew forward Dussie, who had been pushed back in the scrimmage, putting his arm around her possessively. For the first time Miss Warrender perceived that Dussie too was in the ring of dancers, and with a savage energy she threw her torch on the bonfire and slipped back into the shadows. A tongue of light pursued her for a moment but shifted rapidly, and her gorgeous finery was flattened out against the blackness and melted in it. Her torch, flying high and falling short of the central fury of the bonfire, spat back a shower of sparks and smuts that lit on Dussie.
The incident made Luke thoughtful. He was still thinking of it next morning, as he walked briskly down Union Street through a frosty haze. In his preoccupation he whistled as he went. Luke had a passion for making the world comfortable. He liked setting people at their ease, humouring them into a satisfaction with themselves that made them the best of company; and if he had humoured his living-mine-of-information-and-perfect-pit-of-knowledge into a belief that she meant more to him than she did, well, he must disabuse her, that was all! But he hated the necessity. He had taken all she offered him so long as it was to his mind, and now that she was offering that for which he had no manner of desire … Luke turned into Broad Street, making for the University, and continued to whistle.
As it happened, Miss Warrender was already sufficiently disabused. Her pride was fiercely hurt by the manner of her throwing off, and she made public the opinion she had always held of Dussie − a poor thing to be mated with a man like Luke, illiterate. She could give him so much that Dussie could not give.
‘A poor thing but mine own,’ Luke said to his wife with the voice that had the smile in it. He had told Dussie plainly of Miss Warrender’s outburst. There were always birds of the air to carry the matter.
‘I prefer to be the dicky-bird myself,’ he told her.
Dussie meditated, saying nothing. Then, flinging her head back and laughing merrily:
‘Do you know, Luko,’ she said, ‘I once tried to make myself literate. I read and read at your books − oh, for hours − when you weren’t in. I thought you’d hate me for being ignorant, but I gave it up ‘cos you didn’t seem to like me any better when I knew things out of books, and just as well when I didn’t. But I was dreadfully unhappy about it for awhile.’
‘I didn’t think you were ever unhappy.’
‘Oh! − lots of times.’
‘Over what, for example?’
She looked at him with her mouth askew.
‘Not over that Warrrender creature, anyhow!’ she said at last.
They agreed that the Warrender creature was not worth unhappiness.
‘You know, Luke,’ said Dussie by and by, ‘Marty never liked that Lucy Warrender. I used to try to argue her out of it, and you see she was right.’
‘Marty has a way of being right on points of judgment. Spiritual instinct. She’s clear-eyed. Like day.’
It