# Sails of Gold/The Water Performance

Sails of Gold (ed. Cynthia Asquith) pg120 xx/xx/1927
The adventures Peter and Rose had were of a rather unusual kind. Peter was the leader always, and when he was pleased with his sister he called her Rose Maiden, which she liked, for it made her feel proud and happy. Rose was just an ordinary little girl, like any other, but Rose Maiden was someone wonderful. As Rose she adored her brother; as Rose Maiden she worshipped him. Peter was especially marvellous as leader of an adventure. She would have followed him to the stars.
The stars often came into these adventures, because their father went in for astronomy as well as insects. By day he collected beetles and studied wasps and spiders, being a naturalist; but at night, when the sun was gone, he spent hours with his big telescope, staring at the stars. The children were sometimes allowed a peep down the mighty tube. They had seen the silvery moon with her seas and mountains; they had gazed at Venus and Mars, and once they had stared at mighty Saturn, tremendously distant, with his enormous rings about him.
This was only a few days before the adventure Peter called the Water Performance, took place; and Saturn had seemed to them so wonderful that he was mixed up strangely with the adventure that followed. Saturn influenced the earth in some odd way, their father told them. “Besides,” he mentioned in rather a grave voice, “he is just now in conjunction with the moon, and so he is extra powerful, you see.”
They didn’t see, because, of course, they had no idea what “in conjunction” meant. But it excited their imaginations none the less. Their father said something else as well that excited their imaginations even more: “It was always at this time, when Saturn was in conjunction, and at his strongest,” he informed them, “that the old Druids had their great ceremonies, you see.”
Here, again, they didn’t “see,” because they knew nothing about Druids, and still less about old Druids. But Peter looked them up in a book, and told her that they were mighty priests, with long beards, who went in for magical ceremonies at which they used mistletoe and lighted fires on altars inside a ring of big stones. The ring of big stones, he thought, was copied from Saturn’s rings. They also made strange sacrifices on their altars, and ate queer food afterwards. They used a wonderful knife. It was called the Sacrificial Knife.
“So we’d better have an Adventure,” he then told her. “A Druid one, with Saturn and everything mixed in, you see.”
“Rather,” agreed Rose with enthusiasm. “I should jolly well think so.”
And that was all she said, because Peter, being a man of action and of few words, would make all the arrangements, as he always did. He disliked too much talk, but the Adventures he organised never failed.
They told no one about these affairs. Father was too busy to listen, and mother, of course would not understand. Mother was always thinking about wet feet and draughts, and being warmly dressed. She didn’t quite approve of stars and telescopes, because she was afraid her husband would catch cold. Insects, too she disliked. Beetles, she declared, were nasty, grubby little beasts, wasps were dangerous, and spiders were rather cruel. Had Druids been mentioned, she would probably have called them horrible old men.
The Water Performance, at any rate, whatever mother might have thought of it, was too strange and vivid ever to be forgotten. The day would come when Rose would tell it to children of her own. This, she felt, might be difficult, for, although its circumstances were clear enough, there lurked a queer sense in her that perhaps she and Peter never actually went to the pond at all, but that the whole lovely episode took place⁠—well, not in her imagination exactly, but that it was always there, and that they went back to it, much as one turns back the pages of a very wonderful book of pictures.⁠ ⁠… The old country house lay quite still in the sweet darkness, everybody asleep and motionless, stretched in soft beds on each floor: Father dreaming of stars and insects, crumpled up across the mattress, his mouth wide open probably; mother, delicate as a bit of old perfumed lace, her placid mind not even dreaming, hands folded, the big four-poster protecting her; while, far away in another wing of the building, Peter and Rose.⁠ ⁠… It took place when the moon was over the three-quarters, and in conjunction, as they knew, with mighty-ringed old Saturn, who had tilted his huge circular attendants so that their planes were visible in the telescope. Uranus and Neptune, too, were doing something or other interesting at their still vaster distances. But Saturn’s was the chief part in the Adventure, and his cooperation lent a magnificent, even a terrific, atmosphere of mysterious wonder to what happened.
Towards midnight there came a stealthy tap at Rose’s door in the west wing, and in answer to her “Who’s there?” in stole Peter. She had, of course, been waiting for him.
“I thought you were never coming,” she whispered with a quiver of suppressed excitement. “The moon’s tremendous already.” She paused. “I suppose Saturn’s at her,” she added, a touch of awe in her voice.
Peter did not answer, but the expression in his face confirmed her conjecture about Saturn. He was dressed in a school sweater, cap, and muffler, and wore gymnasium shoes on his feet. He made no noise as he tiptoed in, and softly closed the door behind him. In his hands was a lantern, not yet lit, and a bundle that betrayed signs of bursting, yet did not burst. It might have contained anything from a footstool or potatoes to the bearskin from the hall. It bulged suspiciously. Peter’s eyes shone in his dark face. He was very much in earnest, his manner intense and preoccupied.
“Ready, Rose?” he asked in a low voice.
She nodded, unable to trust herself to further words. Peter, she knew, disliked long sentences at times like this.
“Got the stuff?” He glanced swiftly about him, taking in details quickly. He looked her up and down. “You’re dressed,” he added approvingly. “Ladder’s up all right. Good. Come on, then!” And he led the way as though he stepped on glass or thinnest ice, noiseless as a cat.
They moved to the open window, where the top of a ladder showed its twin noses above the balcony’s edge. Peter glanced back into the room as his sister climbed out.
“Got the eggs?” he asked abruptly, and when she nodded he said “How many?” He meant to make sure of every detail.
“Six,” came her whisper, one leg already over the parapet “I took them myself from under the hens.” She waited for a word of praise that did not come.
“Butter?” came instead.
“Bagged it from the Dairy,” she whispered proudly, “and here’s the cake and ham and cold suet pudding⁠—four thick slices.”
“Of which?”
“All three,” she told him briefly.
His look of approval this time was a joy to her. The parcel containing the food hung round her neck with string. Her hands already clutched the top of the ladder, and both legs were now across the parapet. She paused a moment. Peter’s quick eye, she saw, had noticed something. He pointed interrogatively, saying nothing, to a package in brown paper lying beside her on the coping stone.
“Frying pan,” she informed him in her lowest whisper.
“I’d better carry it,” he decided. “Take the paper off. It crackles. Here⁠—give it to me,” and, divesting the article of its noisy paper, he stuffed the pan up inside the back of his sweater, so that the handle projected a few inches like an iron tail. “That’s safer,” he commented. “Now, come on! Rose, you’re⁠—splendid!”
The unexpected praise tended to upset her balance, but Peter’s eye was on her, while his hands held the ladder steady. It was a dizzy business, a perilous descent down rickety steps on to the lawn below, where a gulf of darkness swallowed her. She made it safely, then watched her brother slide down like a monkey on a greasy pole, his iron tail projecting.
“Magnificent, Peter!”
“Easy,” was all he said, adding a second afterwards “Basseker,” from which she understood that their friend, the Head Gardener, had raised the ladder securely for them the moment darkness fell.
Having dragged it with great effort behind the laurel shrubberies, they crept cautiously past the Lily Garden, the Rockery, and the Conservatory. Past the tennis courts and big rhododendron clumps they stealthily made their way, through the Kitchen Garden next, and then along the cinder path to the high hedge. Here an iron swinging-gate led into the open fields beyond.
They halted again, like two burglars escaping with bundles of booty, then peered about them cautiously, standing in shadow under the big hedge. Peter stared hard at several things in turn, but said no word, while Rose, panting from her exertions, waited beside him. There was a growing excitement in her, a tremendous wonder as to what was coming, but questions, she well knew, were useless. Peter never explained beforehand.
The night was very still, but she did not feel it empty. The invisible ghost of Saturn, hanging enormous beyond the world, was mysteriously about, making everything look just a little different, a little unusual. Saturn, at any rate, was in her mind. His majesty was present. Gazing about her, she was convinced the Kitchen Garden had a grander look. The silvery earth lay strange, the currant bushes stirred as though life crouched behind them, ready to rush out the instant she turned her head. No one could say exactly what Saturn might do, or not do, but the shadows beneath the pear trees lay spread and oddly thick, and no proper pear tree, she thought, looked quite like that in the daytime. The apple trees, too, friendliest in all the warden had altered. The fruit-nets bulged here and there in unaccustomed fashion. In everything she noticed something just a little different. Then a swift outline flashed suddenly at tremendous speed along the top of the high wall. A loud, clanging noise sounded in her very ears.
Rose just stifled a scream.
“Oh, I say⁠—do shut up!”
It was Peter’s voice, but the sound, after so much whispering, hardly sounded normal. With difficulty she stifled another scream.
“Frying pan,” he explained calmly. “Beastly handle’s got caught.”
Rose mentioned the flying shape she had seen on the wall, and the figures crouching beneath the fruit-nets.
“Bosh!” declared Peter with conviction. “Moon’s playing tricks. She always does. Thing on the wall that scared you was a cat. Here, give us a hand, will you? Sharp about it!”
She disentangled the lantern and frying-pan handle, which had caught between the bars of the swinging-gate, and the sound of clanking metal that had startled her was not repeated. It was a relief, and yet a disappointment, to know it was not great Saturn “doing something.” Squeezing herself and her precious parcels through the narrow space, she stood beside Peter and drew a deep sigh of suppressed excitement. Before them, drenched in the light of the moon, now riding in a cloudless sky, spread the emptiness of open fields. The air bit keenly at their faces.
“All right, Rose?” her brother enquired in a low voice.
“Rather, Pete.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Nothing smashed?”
“Nothing⁠—yet,” she told him proudly.
“Grand!” and he led the way across the soaking grass that rose high above their ankles. After that “grand,” she would have followed him through water to the neck. Indeed, she almost did so. For the heavy dew splashed like a river, and her stockings and short skirt, even though a track was made for her, grew soaking wet against her steps. They swished along.
The night air, cool and scented, met them in the face. Half a mile away, in a hollow below them, lay a dark-clumped shadow⁠—the Lower Farm buildings. No lights were visible, but the chimneys stood up like pointing fingers, and the stone tiles, covered with dew, glistened like jewels in the moonlight. Behind the silence everywhere was a host of tiny noises, faint, remote, trickling noises, as though the night, like an immense cistern, were slowly filling up. The adventurers went forward without speaking. They made little sound, but the heavy swish of the thick, soaked grass carried better than they knew. For sharp ears were pointed not very far away. Night always sets ears pricking, and all the world, apparently, does not go to sleep at the same time. A dog barked plaintively in the distance. It kept on barking.
“Pete!” exclaimed Rose, “we’ve been heard!”
Her brother turned his head a moment, listening intently. He formed a quick, decided judgment, as a born leader should:
“At the moon,” he announced in a final tone. “Another trick of old Silversides. Saturn’s at her, too, remember.”
The dog continued barking at intervals, trying, Rose knew, to wake the whole countryside, yet she felt comforted; Peter was right; Peter always knew. Behind the barking ran the dull rumble far away, a sound ominous and yet companionable. It showed that people were awake somewhere, doing ordinary things, reminding her of her own rare journeys to London, too. So the world was going on as usual, and it was only she and Peter who were not doing ordinary things. They were doing something that no one else on the whole planet was doing, something secret, something wonderful, a little dangerous. The familiar sounds of dog and train made their own adventure stand out more sharply by contrast. A shiver ran through her. Oh, how marvellous life was! Saturn's invisible companionship awed her more and more. There was something almost appalling about it. They were doing something gorgeous and terrible, and the universe was doing it with them. The activities of the night were on their side. Now, in the daytime, of course⁠—⁠
“Step up, Rose!” whispered Peter sharply. “You’re dawdling. We’re late already.”
“Oh, are we?” she gasped, and stepped up grandly in response, longing to ask “Late for what?” On the wind came the faint clang of distant bells striking midnight. Peter increased his pace.
The Spinney now rose before them, cloaked in mystery, and hardly recognisable as the trees she knew in daylight. Composed of larches, ash and oak, with dense undergrowth below, it contained a pond, and this pond was kept free of weeds and scum by a spring, or, rather, by several springs that bubbled up powerfully through the sandy bottom. These larches stood outlined against the sky, straight and tall, shining in the moonlight like proud, silvery soldiers. There was a purring wind in them, although the boughs seemed motionless. Beneath lay impenetrable blackness. Rose shivered again a little as she saw. “If an owl hoots,” mentioned Peter, “we’re all right.”
He turned to her with a finger on his screwed-up lips; his ears, she fancied, were a little pointed, like a faun’s; but before she could ask his meaning, she received a shock that thrilled her to the marrow, for across the silence broke the solemn hooting of that very bird of prey, and so close it seemed just above her head.
“Ah!” exclaimed Peter. “So we’re not late, after all! Better hurry, though!”
The hooting was not repeated, but enchantment grew more and more upon her from that moment. They stood side by side on the edge of the Spinney. Peter turned and faced her. “Rose,” he said in a confident whisper, “I’ll be back in a jiffy. Wait here till I come”⁠—and vanished into the blackness. He was gone, perhaps five minutes⁠—to Rose it seemed much longer⁠—and when a figure nearly twice his normal height emerged again at last, the start she gave was more of admiration than of nervousness. For, if marvellously changed, he was also marvellously improved. It was certainly her brother, but her brother singularly, and yet, she felt, appropriately, clothed. The towering headdress was the item that lent to his ordinary stature so gigantic an appearance. It curved upwards to a pinnacle, with two wings springing out sideways from the temples, and between these wings a point of dazzling brilliance flashed like a jewel in the moonlight, darting rays of fire at her. A robe of purple enveloped him to the feet.
He advanced towards her with a curious swinging dignity that impressed her immensely, so that for a thrilling instant she wondered if it were not colossal Saturn swaying down out of icy space into the little earthly Spinney. Saturn, at any rate, seemed nearer, although the voice she now heard was undoubtedly her brother’s:
“You now, Rose Maiden!” he announced in solemn tones. He held out a bundle. “Quick! And, remember, to the skin!”
This wonderful figure called her Rose Maiden!
So solemn were his tone and gesture, so compelling, too, the sweet name he used, that she obeyed without a murmur, without a word of enquiry, without a single impulse of refusal. Taking the bundle, she entered the thick blackness beneath the trees. It seemed as if huge Saturn, somehow, held her by the hand, the little hand that trembled.
At first she saw nothing; the creepers caught her feet, the branches tickled her face, a twig gave her cheek a little slap that stung; everything tried to stop her. Then, suddenly, she found a patch of moonlight close to some sweet-smelling alders, and ignoring the buzzing cockchafers which ordinarily stuck in her hair and made her scream, she began to undress. She opened the bundle and put on the various garments it contained. She changed, as bidden, to the skin.
“Do I look all right, Peter?” she whispered, as she came out again five minutes later, wishing in her inmost heart that she had a pocket mirror.
She certainly looked all right. Her thick hair hung down her shoulders, where the leopard skins were fastened with two bows; a golden belt from a ball-dress of her mother’s caught them at the waist, making them cling neatly over her little hips; her arms were free, and her long bare legs ended in something half sandal, half Turkish slippers, contrived evidently by her brother’s clever hands. Ivy and wild roses twined across her neck and forehead, and a knife, with a sheath of silver, swung from her belt by means of a leather thong. She was a picture for the moon, even for great Saturn, to admire.
Peter gave her a rapid examination from head to foot. “Perfect!” he exclaimed. With dignity he drew the knife out of its sheath and placed it in her hand. “Take this, Rose Maiden,” he said gravely, “and follow me. The others await us yonder!”
The reference to “others” seemed wholly credible to her then, nor did it alarm her, for the emotion of awe ate up all lesser dreads. Her brother looked so splendid and mysterious that she felt sure he was protective too. The way he addressed her as “Rose Maiden” was comforting as well as stimulating; she, too, like himself, had become another person. His own name, moreover, now that she thought about it, suggested power, though this had never occurred to her before: Peter the Great, Peter the Apostle, Peter the Hermit⁠—she knew not which to choose, but her father, she remembered, had once called him Saturnine, and the implication of that queer phrase at last was clear. He was in league with the grand divinities of interstellar space, and that was what being “in conjunction” meant. Through the moon, he had somehow linked arms with Saturn!
She followed the swaying headdress and the flowing purple robe with perfect confidence.
In the daytime the Spinney was a deserted, mournful sort of place. The pond was too densely surrounded by underbrush for the cattle to drink there, its water being led off into a lower pond beside the farm. The gardeners rarely visited it, the family never; there were no beetles to attract their father; their mother considered it unhealthy. It lived by itself, unkempt, neglected, lonely. But now, as they entered its depths beneath the moon at midnight, it was a very different place, as though invisible hands had dressed it up. Its desolation became dignity. It seemed alive. It sang and murmured round them, and the blackness strained with movement. Peter’s figure became a blur; it was marvellous how he made his way so easily. Heavy smells of leaf and mold rose up to meet them; there was a fragrant dankness; she heard frogs croaking; rustling filled the shadows. Once, a big bird, wakened out of sleep, made a violent commotion overhead as it flapped heavily away through the dense branches. It remained invisible, they only heard it. But nothing obstructed them, and at last they reached a spot where the moonlight pierced the tangle and made a little breathing space about them. There was a small clearing, obviously prepared. She caught the gleam of water.
Here, standing erect in the centre, her brother halted in a listening attitude, and looked about him with an expectant air. There was a subdued and curious sound, a sound of gurgling.
“The water rises,” he muttered, half to himself and half to her. “The springs are working strongly.” He seemed satisfied. “This,” he said impressively, turning to his companion, “this, Rose Maiden, is the Water Performance. The signs are favourable. Watch! Listen! And obey!”
“I hear,” she murmured in reply, her breath catching a little with the wonder in her, and she was on the point of adding “Great Apostle Hermit,” when he spoke again:
“You,” he ordered in the same solemn tones, “remain⁠—Dance, as you feel, but, also, wave this all the time above your head.” He handed her a spray of mistletoe. “And when I call to you across the water, then light the fire and prepare the food.” These last seven words he almost chanted, so that they sounded like a line of poetry: “Light the Fire and prepare the Food.”
The little clearing lay in full moonlight, a small heap of dry twigs was ready for the match, a kettle stood beside them, and the frying-pan, she saw, had been set down. All this she noted. But she was chiefly conscious of one thing only⁠—that he was going to leave her. She would be alone with the trees, the moonlight, and the gurgling sounds. Saturn, perhaps, would show his great ringed face. This laid an unexpected strain upon her nerves. She clenched her hands and bit her lips; her breath came with difficulty; but, whatever happened, she must not fail him in this splendid moment. Nor would she. Her spirit rose with a great effort to the occasion. She found her voice, after some slight preliminary choking, though she was aware that her choice of words was not entirely happy:
“Right ho! Great Hermit!” she uttered in a scarcely audible whisper. “I understand, I listen, I obey. Go forth!” she added, raising her voice to a louder pitch, “go forth, you vast Apostle!”
Never, in all her young life, had she felt less like dancing, but she did not say so. Yet dancing, it now suddenly came to her, was obviously the proper thing to do. She knew this in her blood. Instinctively she knew it. She longed to do the right thing and prove herself worthy in every detail. Inspiration might come a little later; meanwhile she waited. She watched him stoop and light the hurricane lantern. In her left hand she clasped the mistletoe tightly, while her right hand clutched the knife. Of this weapon she now of a sudden became dreadfully aware.
“Oh, Peter!” she exclaimed. “And⁠—this?” She thrust its gleaming outline closer to the growing candle flame, so that he could see it clearly.
His face turned graver, his voice more solemn, than before. “The Sacrificial Knife,” he told her grimly, yet with a half reverent air. “Tis for the food. Only that blade may touch the food. It is the Sacrifice of which we both partake⁠—the moment the divine hunger comes. Saturn is near.”
His words, his tone, his manner warned her. Her heart began to beat more quickly. The night, it seemed, peeled off another skin; a curtain lifted. An enormous ear lowered itself through empty space to listen. She imagined Saturn stooping above the lonely Spinney, filling the sky with his stupendous bulk. The idea of his glittering, majestic presence rolled like a tide into her very blood. At the same time⁠—a result merely of inexperience perhaps⁠—it was on her lips to say that they could not eat with a knife. The words were not appropriate, she knew; she felt them shameless even; she kept them back at the last moment. The phrase “divine hunger,” though she hardly grasped its meaning, proved them unsuitable.
“I obey,” she said instead, “I will not fail, Great Peter Hermit,” her choice of terms confused a little.
“Farewell, then!” announced Peter in his deepest tone, swinging the lantern three times round his head. “Here, remember, is your appointed place. This lantern will guide your eyes. Farewell Rose Maiden,” he chanted on. “We shall meet again ere long!”
“Farewell, brave Apostle!” she rejoined faintly, using the title that best expressed her sense of his protectiveness⁠—then watched him disappear behind the jungle of thick undergrowth.
Her belief in him just then was absolute. His voice gestures, his magnificent language, his flowing purple robe and towering headdress, the air of power he assumed above all, impressed her beyond words. His stature was worthy of a gigantic Saturn. It seemed there was nothing that he could not do. Had he walked straight across the water, it would not have surprised her. It was merely because he preferred to do so that walked round instead.
She followed the flickering light, now visible, now gone again, her eyes watching eagerly for its reappearance, until at length it emerged upon the opposite shore directly facing her, and then halted. The pond was some fifty yards across. She made out his figure dimly. Then she made out⁠—other figures too!
Spellbound with wonder, motionless, she stared intently. Any touch of alarm she felt was tempered by the knowledge that, had there been no other figures, she must have experienced sharp and bitter disappointment. This disillusionment did not happen. She had expected other figures; they were right; they belonged to the Water Performance, whatever that might prove to be. Peter was leader and Peter knew, and gorgeous, awful Saturn lent his presence.
She stared hard across the pond. A faint smell of burning reached her nostrils now, and she saw pale blue smoke floating and coiling upwards. Had Peter lighted something? And was it smoke she saw? The moving light had become stationary. In front of it, alternately hiding and revealing it, there passed a shadowy throng. The tall outline of her brother scarcely moved, for she caught the gleam of its purple, now visible, now concealed again, as the figures floated round it. To and fro and round about, these forms moved slowly, yet quite distinctly, a grace, a rhythm, a sequence in their movements as though they performed some slow, stately dance. Her brother’s voice she also heard from time to time, and it seemed that the movements obeyed the rising and falling of his voice. A monotonous chanting, the words inaudible, floated across the pond, and mingled with the gurgling of the springs in the middle, where the troubled water danced.
This commotion of the waters now suddenly increased a hundredfold.
It was, perhaps, the movement of the figures obeying the voice, perhaps, also, the stirring of the water, showing a hundred moons in radiating lines of silver, or it was a combination of these two, perhaps, that now suddenly set the muscles of her bare legs twitching. At first she did not understand what was happening to her; she merely watched the lovely spectacle with burning eyes. She gazed intently. The figures, faint as wreathing smoke, she noticed, stood so near the bank that they were reflected in the moonlit pool. She caught gleams of purple that undershot the silver. It was difficult to see exactly where the water ended and the shore began. The figures thus met their own reflections, increasing their size gigantically. They seemed floating in the air, supported by their watery extensions underneath. Space was alive with them. Their upper portions rose towards the stars. Then⁠—suddenly⁠—her own twitching muscles set her going in a way she could no longer control.
She moved for the first time since Peter had left her⁠—towards the edge of the pond⁠—delicately, softly, on her toes, shooting out a white leg sideways, as in a dance. She advanced to some rhythm the troubled waters wakened in her blood. Then, remembering of a sudden her instructions, she began to wave the mistletoe with breathless energy round her head. At this side the water lay comparatively still, the ripples dying away before they reached the bank; and in the clear depths she saw her own reflection⁠—the leopard’s skins about her body, the bare white legs and arms, the shining torrent of loose hair about her shoulders. She saw the gold girdle glimmering in the moonlight. And the sight of it all entranced her. This was not Rose at all. It was someone else. It was, of course, Rose Maiden.
Rose Maiden! Delight, wonder, enchantment, surged through her whole body. Saturn⁠—oh, she hoped so⁠—saw too! She lost her awe of this magnificent Being, since she was positive he now admired her. This glittering monster from outer space looked on. Waving the mistletoe in a spirit of new wild happiness, she pirouetted on one foot; a slim leg curved, the body bent above it. The desire to dance possessed and overmastered her. Rose Maiden danced beneath the moon.⁠ ⁠…
She had been dancing thus for some minutes, entirely unconscious of herself, blissfully happy, when a call sounded sharp and clear across the pond:
“Now light the Fire and prepare the Food!”
And instantly the sylphlike body stood arrested as though turned into shining marble. It seemed poised thus for a moment while the rhythm ebbed swiftly from it. Then it relaxed a little. She stood motionless, facing the water, one hand holding the mistletoe above her head, the other pointing downwards and clasping tightly the unsheathed knife. Her hair was tossed forwards across her breast. She stared. It seemed to her at this instant that the figures on the opposite bank went down suddenly in a shining troop to the water’s edge and disappeared beneath its silvery surface. There was an odd hissing noise. They merged with the water and were gone. The air was empty of their loveliness. And the ripples ceased; the gurgling and bubbling died away, as though the great springs had resumed their normal volume. The pond lay smooth and still beneath the sky. She saw a single moon reflected.
All happened so swiftly that the sound of her brother’s voice still echoed through the trees, no other sound now audible. She answered, though unable to find the words she knew instinctively were right. They struggled to get out, these other words, but failed halfway up her throat. She took what came:
“All right, Peter,” she called out⁠—and stooped to find the matches.⁠ ⁠… Five minutes later, when he emerged with an extinguished lantern from the undergrowth behind her, a fire was already blazing at their feet, a kettle of water stood waiting for the eggs, and a frying-pan, with blobs of melting butter in it, was prepared to receive the slices of cold suet pudding.
“The hunger has come,” announced Peter, quietly. “We may eat. It was a success. You, too. I saw you dancing. All saw you dancing.”
He put his headdress straight and seated himself on a stump beside the crackling fire. The flames lit up his face. She saw his brilliant eyes. “I’m hungry too,” she mentioned, though this was not the chief matter in her mind. A deep delight still pulsed and glowed all through her. She held the frying-pan cleverly above the flames. Peter took the knife and speared the slices, turning them over and over. The kettle sang. What little wind there was had died away, and the night was very still about them.
“Put in the eggs,” he said presently. “We’ll eat them hard. You were splendid, Rose.” His voice was almost normal now; it was Peter, no longer Hermit, or Apostle, who addressed her. Rose Maiden, too, was fading. It was Rose Maiden who had danced. It was Rose who now saw that the suet did not burn.
They made a hearty meal. No further reference to the Performance passed their lips, for Peter said no word, and Rose followed his example. Questions or remarks, she felt instinctively, might spoil a mysterious and very wonderful experience. Peter alone could say something if he wished. He evidently did not wish. It had been a success; he had praised her; and that was sufficient. She left the matter where it was.
“I was hungry,” was all he offered, with his mouth full; “divinely hungry,” he added, as the last morsel of buttery suet disappeared. “Hope you’ve had enough too?” He looked at her carefully, even tenderly, a strange soft light in his bright eyes. “Oh, heaps,” she told him. “It was delicious.” still chewing and gulping. There was nothing left.
“Good,” he replied, and proceeded to collect the various articles in his bundle. He wiped the frying-pan with leaves and sand, then rinsed it. He was quick, efficient, practical. He made sure the fire was safely out, pouring water on its last embers. It made a hissing noise.
“Ready, Rose?” he asked at length.
“Quite ready, Peter dear.”
“You’re really admirable,” he remarked, and led the way out of the Spinney on the homeward journey.
They wore their regalia, tramping through the soaking grass in silence. The moon, now much lower in the sky, threw immense shadows before them as they went. Creeping past the Lily Garden and Conservatory, they reached the ladder in due course. The house on this side lay in darkness. They straightened the ladder with enormous efforts.
It was just before she began to climb that Peter seized her arm, making her turn abruptly. He was gazing down into her face. The jewel gleamed. The headdress rose like a turret against the sky.
“Rose Maiden,” he whispered in his apostolic voice, “well done! Saturn saw you. He saw you dance. It made him happy.”
Whether it was the close proximity of his shining face, the sound of his mysterious voice, or the implication of the strange words he used, Rose did not know. Something cleared in her, as though a wind blew layers of thick dust away. She understood her previous inability to speak the right words, she understood her dumbness. She now realised that the things she ought to have said, she had danced instead. Something she knew, something she could not express in words, her dancing had expressed and uttered for her. She felt happy and satisfied.
“Thank you, Peter,” she whispered, gazing back into his eyes There were faint rings of light, she fancied, about his head. The same instant he withdrew his face, the rings faded away; he smiled and held his hand out.
“These are your things,” he whispered, giving her an untidy bundle. “Climb up. I’ll hold the ladder steady for you. Farewell Rose Maiden. We shall meet again ere long!”—
He kissed her, and she climbed up safely without another word, carrying her clothes and the frying-pan in front of her. The iron handle banged noisily once against the stone parapet at the top, but no one came, no door or window opened. Parents, servants, governess, all lay heavily asleep.
She waved her hand. Reaching her room, she undressed quickly, and long before she was ready for bed a scraping sound against the balcony told her that the ladder was being taken away. She turned to see its top dip out of sight. Her last view of Peter was in his robes beneath the slanting ray of moonlight that fell between two chimneys. The jewel in his headdress flashed as he laboriously dragged the ladder across the lawn, where their friend, the Head Gardener, would find it later and do the rest.
She laid the mistletoe upon her pillow, and fell into a dreamless sleep just as dawn was breaking.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1951, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 72 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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