Chapter Seventeen #2
Nicholas marveled at their skill as they moved about the maypole, half going one way, half the other, performing intricate dance steps as they stretched over and ducked under one another’s ribbons until to the spectator it seemed they must be impossibly tangled.
But they never were. The dancers moved onward, and the ribbons untangled themselves as one set of the overall pattern was completed and a new one began.
They were light-footed and graceful, smiling at one another and never making a false move.
Just one would have hopelessly snarled the whole thing and ruined the dance.
There was a roar of enthusiastic applause when the first dance finished. Robert tightened his grip on Nicholas’s chin and drummed his heels against Nicholas’s chest as his uncle set two fingers to his lips and whistled his appreciation.
The troupe danced again, to a faster tune this time while their audience watched with awe and bated breath. The crowd was not willing to let them go when they were finished, and they obliged with two brief encores.
When the applause died away at last, Sid held up both arms for quiet.
The usual lessons would be conducted a little differently this year, he announced, in order to accommodate all those who were courageous enough to try.
They would be arranged in age groups, the over-fifties first. Who wanted to try?
Amid enthusiastic applause, Nicholas’s mother stepped forward with Matthew Taylor and his brother. Aunt Kitty and Uncle George followed them and—great surprise—Mrs. Haviland. The other volunteers were villagers and people from the surrounding farming areas. Miss Jane Miller was among them.
Nicholas set Robert down so the child could wriggle his way forward to watch with other children.
The music was slow, the instructions simple and clear. The group did remarkably well, aided by the regular dancers who partnered each of them, having to stop only twice during the minute or so they danced so the ribbons could be unsnarled and everyone could return to their appointed stations.
The forty- to forty-nine-year-olds came next to undiminished enthusiasm from the crowd.
Then it was the turn of the thirty- to thirty-nine-year-olds.
Volunteers stepped forward to a great deal of merriment and teasing from the younger group.
Nicholas was among them, as well as Pippa and Lucas and Mrs. Cunningham.
They did not do terribly well, thanks to the presence among them of one woman who persisted in dancing to her own tune and had no concept whatsoever of team play, and of one man who pranced about with frowning concentration and no sense of rhythm or timing. One wondered why he had volunteered.
Nicholas laughed as family and friends jeered good-naturedly at him. He caught Winifred’s eye and winked. She laughed back and he knew he had not mistaken his feelings out on the island.
It was her turn then with others who were in their twenties.
She and Stephanie dashed forward to volunteer.
Owen and Bertrand and—yes, indeed—Grace followed them.
Grace had shed her bonnet and her gloves and parasol somewhere along the way.
They were far more successful as a group.
Winifred, Nicholas saw as he watched, danced with sheer joy.
Her younger brothers and sisters shrieked loudly in appreciation.
“She is my sister,” Nicholas heard young Alice tell her companions.
“Well done, you sweet young twenty-or-so,” Nicholas said to her as she left the maypole and brushed past him, flushed and happy.
She laughed at him as she walked on by. “You did not do too badly yourself, you old man,” she said cheekily.
“Ha! You walked right into that one, Nick,” Owen said from behind him with a roar of laughter.
Nicholas laughed too. And he noticed his little silver daisy pinned to the bodice of her dress as the sunlight caught it.
“I wonder if Mr. Johnson and his dancers would be willing to conduct a workshop at our home in Bath,” he heard her say as some of the ten- to nineteen-year-olds pushed forward, including Robbie, surely to the surprise of all who knew him.
A few of the neighborhood girls were eyeing him with interest, Nicholas noticed.
“It would be enormously popular, I am sure.”
Nicholas smiled. She was forever thinking of her home and her beloved arts center there and of ideas to expand their programs so they would not stagnate.
“I would wager Sid would be flattered by the offer,” Owen said. “Whether he and his group would be able to accept is another matter, though. They are all working folk.”
“Well, of course they are,” she said. “But if we all gave up on certain dreams just because they are difficult to accomplish or because we do not have time for them, then dreams would be pointless, would they not? And life would be insufferably dull.”
“Yes, Miss Cunningham, ma’am,” Owen said.
“I asked for that,” she said, laughing. “Sometimes I get very dogmatic in my opinions.”
“If I were you, Winifred,” Stephanie said, “I would talk to your parents and suggest that one of you ask Sid. The worst that could happen would be for him to say no. But I believe he and his dancers would be flattered.”
“Amen,” Nicholas said, turning toward them.
Winifred raised her eyes to his and flushed a deep crimson before looking back toward the maypole to watch the dancing lesson.
—
The morning was almost over. After weeks of preparations and eager anticipation, time was flying by.
But there was still a luncheon snack to enjoy on the grass of the green or at the tables that had been set up outside the inn.
The food, most notably the meat pasties for which Mrs. Berry was famous, had been lovingly and lavishly prepared in the kitchen of the inn.
Lemonade and ale flowed freely. The coffee and tea urns were kept filled.
It was going to be a day of feasting, with a picnic tea on the lawns and terrace of Ravenswood during the afternoon and refreshments and supper to be served at the ball.
In addition, there were the sweetmeats on sale at one of the booths, which had done a roaring trade all morning.
And there was the choir concert and organ recital to be enjoyed over the noon hour, after which most of the action would move up to the house for an afternoon packed with activities.
A largish number of people attended the concert.
Many of them had a relative or neighbor or friend in the choir.
And Sir Ifor was generally revered as a man of extraordinary talent.
When he had inherited his title and property years ago as a young man and moved from Wales, barely able to speak English, he had been hugely disappointed that there was no organ in the church at Boscombe or indeed in any church within miles.
He promptly bought a pipe organ at huge personal expense and installed both it and himself as organist in the Boscombe church.
Then he discovered to his horror that there was no church choir and no congregational singing beyond a few low growls to the music pounded out on an ancient pianoforte.
He soon set about putting that lack to rights.
The vicar at the time had been astounded to discover his congregation growing every Sunday.
He had set about paying more attention to the preparation of his sermons.
All the family and guests from Ravenswood attended. Stephanie was in the choir and had a solo part in one of their pieces. And it was the countess’s father playing the organ. Even without that connection, though, Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys were openhearted neighbors and friends.
Nicholas sat at the back of the church so he could see everyone as well as savor the music.
He felt a welling of love for all these people, most of whom were part of his roots and would always figure largely in his memories.
He had deliberately opened up his memory today.
He had thought about that last fete before he left home.
He had thought about his father, who had played such havoc with the lives of his wife and children and caused years of bitterness afterward.
But Nicholas had let it go today. Holding grudges, retaining resentment, ultimately hurt the person doing it and put a certain blight on his life.
He had come perilously close during the past week to making a loveless marriage because he had lost faith in love.
It had been blind of him. He had only to look about at his own family and circle of friends to know that love was very much alive and life-giving.
The choir was in fine form. So was Steph, who looked, as she sang her solo part, almost ethereal in the dimness of the church, lit by the multicolored rays of the sun filtering through the stained glass windows.
The bulk of the blond braids wound twice about her head looked like a halo. Her face shone with the joy of singing.
Sir Ifor filled the church with music by Bach, making it feel for the moment like a cathedral.
And all the time Nicholas was aware of Winifred, sitting in the midst of her family several pews in front of him, Emma on her lap, while Susan sat on Mrs. Cunningham’s beside her.
Andrew, sitting next to his father and unable to hear the music, gazed about at the architecture and the windows.
Robbie was being watched and whispered over by a trio of young girls in the pew behind him.
Sarah too had been attracting her share of admiration from the boys of the neighborhood.