The Crowded Street

From the crowded doorway to the piano at the other end of the room the surface of the floor stretched, golden, empty, alluring. Ladies in white trailing gowns, the mothers and aunts of other little girls at the party, drifted across it like swans on a lake. Their reflections floated after them, silver-white along the gold. When Muriel rubbed her foot against the floor she could feel with joy its polished slipperiness, broken only at rare intervals by velvet-brown knots in the wood.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney was talking to Mrs. Hammond, so Muriel could wait in the shelter of the doorway. Soon she too would have to cross that shining space and join the other children on the chairs near the wall. She was grateful for the interval of waiting. It was fun to stand there, peering round her mother's skirts at the straight rows of cracks running together up the floor till they met somewhere under the piano. It was fun to watch the black jackets of small boys approaching small girls in stiff muslin dresses who grew like paper flowers round the walls. It was fun to tell herself over and over again that this was the Party, the Party, the Party--and even while saying it to know that the Party lay in none of these things; neither in the palms nor the piano, the pink sashes nor the programmes, even though these had pencils dangling seductively from scarlet cords; nor in the glimpse of jellies and piled-up trifles seen through the half-open door of the supper-room as she walked along red carpets to shake the terrifying splendour of Mrs. Marshall Gurney's white-gloved hand. No, the Party lay in some illusive, indefinable essence of delight, awaiting Muriel beyond the golden threshold of the hall.

"Muriel has been looking forward so much to your party," Mrs. Hammond was saying. "She has never been to one at the Assembly Rooms before."

Mrs. Hammond was small and soft and dove-like. She cooed gently when she talked, and visitors spoke of her to Muriel as "Your Dear Mother." For the Party she wore a new lilac satin gown and amethysts round her pretty throat. Muriel knew that she was more beautiful than anyone in the world.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney replied in the deep throaty voice that belonged to her because she was Mrs. Marshall Gurney. Muriel could not hear what she said, but Mrs. Hammond answered with her gentle little laugh, "Oh, yes, she's only eleven and rather shy." So Muriel knew that they were talking about her.

Grown-ups, of course, always did talk about children as though they were not there. Muriel wished that it wouldn't make her feel hot inside as though she had been naughty, or had begun to cry in front of strangers. Connie, she thought enviously, rather liked it.

What did it matter? What did anything matter? She was at the Party. Her new dress had been made by her mother's dressmaker. It had cost her hours of breathless standing, trying to keep still while that dignified lady crept round her on her knees, with pins in her mouth, for all the world as though she were only nine and a half like Connie, and were playing at bears. There had been a lengthy ceremony of dressing before the nursery fire, with Connie dancing around irrepressibly, wanting to try on Muriel's sandals and silk mittens, and to touch the soft folds of her sash. All the way to Kingsport, dangling her legs from the box-seat of the brougham--she always rode outside with Turner, because to sit inside made her sick--Muriel had watched the thin slip of a moon ride with her above the dark rim of the wolds, and she had sung softly to herself and to the moon and to Victoria, the old carriage horse, "I'm going to the Party, the Party, the Party."

And here she was.

The ecstasy caught and held her spellbound.

Most of the chairs round the wall were full now. Mrs. Marshall Gurney had been seized upon by Mrs. Cartwright. "It's nearly time to begin dancing," said Muriel's mother. "We must get your programme filled. There are a lot of little boys here whom you know. Look, there's Freddy Mason. You remember him, dear, don't you?"

Muriel remembered Freddy. Once, when they had all gone to tea at his father's farm, Freddy had taken Connie and her to play on the stacks. They had climbed a ladder--dizzy work this at the best of times, paralysing when Freddy followed close on one's heels, recounting grisly details of recent accidents. Half-way up, Muriel had felt her hands slip under the weight of a great sack of corn, and the earth sprang up to meet her before the grinding thud of her shoulder on the ground, when she fell as those poor men had fallen. She had scrambled fearfully across the slippery barley straw, shuddering from the pain of a fall that she had felt, although she still miraculously crouched on the top of the stack, instead of lying broken in the yard. She had sat with her legs hanging over space at the top of Freddy's lovely slide, clutching at the treacherous straw with desperate fingers, watching the hens, small as flies, pecking in the yard below, while fear tickled the soles of her feet, and fear breathed on her paling cheeks. Then, as merciful release or culminating agony, she was not sure which, Freddy had pushed her over, and she had dropped limply down, down, down, with a blinding rush, till she lay half buried in straw below the stack, past hope, past fear, past speech, past agony. That had been a long time ago. But she did not now want to dance with Freddy.

"I don't think----" she began in her prim little voice. She was about to add--"that I want to dance with Freddy," when Mrs. Hammond finished her sentence for her.

"Of course he'll want to dance with you, dear." Mrs. Hammond claimed that she knew what went on in Muriel's mind--her own child's mind. She often finished Muriel's hesitating sentences for her. "You mustn't be so shy, dear," she reproved gently. "Well, Freddy, how is your mother? I hope her cold is better. You know my little Muriel, don't you? Of course. You were so kind showing her round your nice farm that summer. Dear me, what a big boy you've grown since then! She did enjoy it, didn't you, dear?"

The edge of Muriel's chair had become a shelf of yielding straw, slipping, slipping beneath her. Miles away below, hens, small as flies, pecked on the polished floor.

"Where's your programme, dear?" asked Mrs. Hammond. Muriel produced it, but hope died in her heart as the scarlet pencil moved in Freddy's stubby fingers.

Polka, barn-dance, waltz. . . .

Her eye ran down the list of dances. Freddy's name alone marred the virgin whiteness of the opposite page. At the thought of the second polka she shivered. Still, he had only asked for one dance. That could not spoil the Party.

A gentleman with a red flower in his buttonhole crossed the room and sat down by the piano. From the way that he walked, Muriel knew that he was going to be one of the funny ones. She could always tell.

The gentleman ran his fingers along the piano like playing a scale, only prettier. In a minute the black coats and muslin dresses would twirl together in a solemn polka. Muriel did not want to dance. She wanted to sit and watch the moving figures weaving strange patterns of shadow across the gleaming floor. She wanted to hear the music, and to tap her foot against the side of her chair to the beat of its "_One_, two, three, four."

The rows round the wall dissolved. Already Nancy Cartwright--a forward child, Mrs. Hammond said--had lured her blushing partner towards the centre of the room. A second couple followed, and a third.

"Haven't you got a partner for this?" asked Mrs. Hammond.

"Not just for this, Mother," Muriel murmured, vaguely aware of duty unfulfilled.

"Oh, dear, well, let me see," said Mrs. Hammond.

She rose and began to search the room. Muriel wanted to run, to call, to stop her; but she dared not venture into that revolving traffic of dancers. She sat very still, while the circling skirts brushed against her knees.

If only she could be quiet, and watch and listen, somehow during her vigil the Party would come upon her.

From the ceiling swung dark festoons of gleaming laurel and holly, and vivid flags, and lanterns of orange and vermilion. A child's laugh rang out, challenging the echoes of the skipping tune. Oh, be still, be still, said Muriel's dancing heart, and somehow here shall be delight.

The drooping leaves of a palm tickled the back of the pianist's neck. His left hand stopped banging out the bass chords and swooped as though to kill a fly. It missed the leaf, and flung itself back on to the keyboard to do justice to the Fortissima of the Coda. Back swung the leaf over the edge of his collar. Up went the hand, clutching and waving. There followed a battle royal between the palm and the polka. Muriel's chuckles now rose to her throat, but, being a polite child, she sought to stifle them. This would be something to tell Connie. Connie might be trying sometimes, but her sense of humour was superb.

With a savage tug the gentleman at the piano had wrenched a leaf from the palm and flung it aside. At the expense of the polka he had striven for peace. With a sudden burst of rapture, Muriel saw that it was the wrong leaf. Her laughter broke out, delicious, uncontrollable.

Of such delights was the Party made.

Mrs. Hammond stood by Muriel's side.

"Muriel, dear, here is Godfrey Neale. He arrived late and has not got a partner for this dance."

Muriel rose politely to do her duty. Mrs. Hammond was so obviously pleased that Godfrey had not found a partner. And, after all, the thing to do at parties was to dance.

Muriel did not dance well. Madame Bartlett, whose classes she attended every Wednesday, said that she was a stick. Music was beautiful, especially the sort that made clean patterns of sound, interlacing like bare branches against a clear sky. But while Muriel's mind responded to its movement her body did not. She hopped round Godfrey with disconsolate politeness. Only her feathery slenderness made his progress endurable.

He was taller than she, and much, much older. Quite fourteen, she thought with awe. Godfrey Neale, Godfrey Neale; vaguely she was aware of him as something splendid and remote, of a lovely house behind tall iron gates on the road to Wearminster.

They bumped into another couple.

Muriel became suddenly and devastatingly aware of her own shortcomings. She tried to remedy these by moving her feet with conscientious accuracy.

"_One_, two, three, hop! One, two, three, hop!"

"I beg your pardon," murmured Godfrey.

Only then did she realize that she had been counting aloud.

The next hop brought her down with unexpected violence on to Godfrey's shining dancing pump.