Free Dance and Skylark by John Moore

really remarkable blackeye. Robin’s swollen lips and bruised chin were only slightly less obvious.
    â€œWell, here’s to you, my dear chap,” said Robin, with a painful grin.
    â€œBless your old heart,” said Lance, raising his glass.
    Florrie winked at Stephen, as if to say: “I know all about it”—which undoubtedly she did; and Robin and Lance clinked their glasses together as if they were drinking a loving-cup. In his lazy and offensive drawl Sir Almeric addressed them both:
    â€œA little difference of opinion over a lady, perhaps?”
    Lance swung round angrily, and Stephen had the pleasant fancy that his sword-hand moved towards his hip. Once again Stephen was aware of the feeling of conflict he had had in the street, which had reminded him of Verona: “And now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.” Lance and Robin might indeed have been two tall young Elizabethans, lean, eager, quick on the draw, their days and nights gloriously compounded of poetry and brawls and Juliets and Rosalines; nor did it take much imagination to turn the arrogant Sir Almeric into Tybalt. The thought occurred to Stephen suddenly that the real Pageant was here, in this bar, in the streets, in the shops and houses, in the balloon factory; and that whatever happened six weeks hence in front of the grandstand on the Bloody Meadow would be by comparison but a rattling of dry bones.
    Robin touched Lance on the arm and they drew apart, taking their beer into the farthest corner of the room, where they soon began to chuckle together over some privatejoke. The Mayor had just come in, with Councillor Noakes as usual at his heels; and now Mr. Runcorn joined them, and the three Elder Statesmen, sipping their drinks, began to shake grizzled heads over the Outrage of the posters. Mr. Gurney put in some sharp comment which Stephen couldn’t hear, and Councillor Noakes snapped back at him; you could almost see the sparks fly. The Mayor, turning to John Handiman, said genially: “Well, John, I suppose your factory’s full of flat-footed policemen this morning, eh?” and John, looking straight at him, replied:
    â€œThat’s nothing. We’re expecting the bailiffs at any moment.”
    There was an awkward silence during which Stephen in embarrassment glanced about the bar, and then forgot his embarrassment as he became fascinated by the assortment of faces. His glance travelled from John’s fine-drawn face to the Mayor’s kindly and puzzled one; from Florrie rising majestic behind the counter to Sir Almeric lounging upon it, and Mr. Gurney contemplating his umbrella-handle and thinking his thoughts; from Councillor Noakes who collected “little books printed in Paris” to those ardent young men, Robin elegant in a flowered waistcoat, Lance wearing his black eye with an air of You-be-damned; and as Stephen looked about him he was struck not for the first time by the infinite permutations and combinations of character which even a small town could afford. “What a rich hotch-potch,” he said to himself, “is there within these four walls now, and how it sizzles and steams and boils up like a witch’s cauldron!” He felt life swirling about him; man’s proud and angry dust was bestirring itself, the air wascharged with emotions as it was charged with thunder; and in a flash he thought of his Festival as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster which perhaps would take command of those who were trying to create it.
    The long silence was broken at last by the voice of Mr. Oxford as he resumed his history lesson. It was at this time of day—and Florrie could predict it almost to the minute— that Mr. Oxford became more and more pontifical, his voice boomed louder, and somehow he seemed to grow bigger, to swell like a great bullfrog. But conversely Timms dwindled away; his interjections became the merest echo; one felt that if the bar had remained