Violet Jacob > Flemington

128
FLEMINGTON
the yard. The tune of the ‘East Nauk of Fife’
filled the place. A couple of maidservants came
out and stood giggling as Wattie acknowledged
their presence by a wag of the head that spoke
gallantry, patronage, ribaldry—anything that a
privileged old rogue can convey to young woman¬
hood blooming near the soil. A groom came out
of the stable and joined the group.
The feet of the girls were tapping the ground.
The beggar’s expression grew more genially
provocative, and his eyeballs rolled more reck¬
lessly as he blew and blew; his time was perfect.
The groom, who was dancing, began to compose
steps on his own account. Suddenly there was
a whirl of petticoats, and he had seized one of the
girls round the middle.
They spun and counter-spun; now loosing each
other for the more serious business of each one’s
individual steps, now enlacing again, seeming flung
together by some resistless elemental wind. The
man’s gaze, while he danced alone, was fixed on his
own feet as though he were chiding them, admiring
them, directing them through niceties which only
himself could appreciate. His partner’s hair came
down and fell in a loop of dull copper-colour over
her back. She was a finely-made girl, and each
curve of her body seemed to be surging against
the agitated sheath of her clothes. The odd-
woman-out circled round the pair like a fragment
thrown off by the spin of some travelling meteor.
The passion for dancing that is even now part of
the life of Angus had caught all three, let loose