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Dancing, at seven o’clock in the morning.
Andrew comes up from below, bearing their supply of water. He stands and watches for a little, then surprises Mary by asking, would she dance?
“Who will look after the boy?” says Agnes immediately. “I am not going to get up and chase him.” She is fond of dancing, but is prevented now, not only by the nursing baby but by the soreness of the parts of her body that were so battered in the birth.
Mary is already refusing, saying she ca
“No, no,” says Mary. “I’ve no need to dance.” She believes that Andrew has taken pity on her, remembering how she used to be left on the sidelines in school games and at the dancing, though she can actually run and dance perfectly well. Andrew is the only one of her brothers capable of such consideration, but she would almost rather he behaved like the others, and left her ignored as she has always been. Pity does gall her.
Young James begins to complain loudly, having recognized the word tether.
“You be still,” says his father. “Be still or I’ll clout you.”
Then Old James surprises them all by turning his attention to his grandson.
“You. Young lad. You sit by me.”
“Oh, he will not sit,” says Mary. “He will run off and then you ca
“He will sit,” says Old James.
“Well, settle it,” says Agnes to Mary. “Go or stay.”
Young James looks from one to the other, cautiously snuffling.
“Does he not know even the simplest word?” says his grandfather. “Sit. Lad. Here.”
“He knows all kinds of words,” says Mary. “He knows the name of the gib-boom.”
Young James repeats, “Gib-boom.”
“Hold your tongue and sit down,” says Old James. Young James lowers himself, reluctantly, to the spot indicated.
“Now go,” says Old James to Mary. And all in confusion, on the verge of tears, she is led away.
“What a suckie-laddie she’s made of him,” says Agnes, not exactly to her father-in-law but into the air. She speaks almost indifferently, teasing the baby’s cheek with her nipple.
People are dancing, not just in the figure of the reel but quite outside of it, all over the deck. They are grabbing anyone at all and twirling around. They are even grabbing some of the sailors if they can get hold of them. Men dance with women, men dance with men, women dance with women, children dance with each other or all alone and without any idea of the steps, getting in the way-but everybody is in everybody’s way already and it is no matter. Some children dance in one spot, whirling around with their arms in the air till they get so dizzy they fall down. Two seconds later they are on their feet, recovered, and ready to begin the same thing all over again.
Mary has caught hands with Andrew, and is swung around by him, then passed on to others, who bend to her and fling her undersized body about. She has lost sight of Young James and ca
“Now you listen and I will tell you,” says Old James. “This old man, Will O’Phaup, my grandfather-he was my grandfather as I am yours-Will O’Phaup was sitting outside his house in the evening, resting himself, it was mild summer weather. All alone, he was.
“And there was three little lads hardly bigger than you are yourself, they came around the corner of Will’s house. They told him good evening. Good evening to you, Will O’Phaup, they says.
“Well good evening to you, lads, what can I do for you?
“ Can you give us a bed for the night or a place to lay down, they says. And Aye, he says, Aye, I’m thinking three bits of lads like yourselves should not be so hard to find the room for. And he goes into the house with them following and they says, And by the by could you give us the key, too, the big silver key that you had of us? Well, Will looks around, and he looks for the key, till he thinks to himself, what key was that? And turns around to ask them. What key was that? For he knew he never had such a thing in his life. Big key or silver key, he never had it. What key are you talking to me about? And turns himself round and they are not there. Goes out of the house, all round the house, looks to the road. No trace of them. Looks to the hills. No trace.
“Then Will knew it. They was no lads at all. Ah, no. They was no lads at all.”
Young James has not made any sound. At his back is the thick and noisy wall of dancers, to the side his mother, with the small clawing beast that bites into her body. And in front of him is the old man with his rumbling voice, insistent but remote, and his blast of bitter breath, his sense of grievance and importance absolute as the child’s own. His nature hungry, crafty, and oppressive. It is Young James’s first conscious encounter with someone as perfectly self-centered as himself.
He is barely able to focus his intelligence, to show himself not quite defeated.
“Key,” he says. “Key?”
Agnes, watching the dancing, catches sight of Andrew, red in the face and heavy on his feet, linked arm to arm with various jovial women. They are doing the “Strip the Willow” now. There is not one girl whose looks or dancing gives Agnes any worries. Andrew never gives her any worries anyway. She sees Mary tossed around, with even a flush of color in her cheeks-though she is too shy, and too short, to look anybody in the face. She sees the nearly toothless witch of a woman who birthed a child a week after her own, dancing with her hollow-cheeked man. No sore parts for her. She must have dropped the child as slick as if it was a rat, then given it over to one or the other of her weedy-looking daughters to mind.
She sees Mr. Suter, the surgeon, out of breath, pulling away from a woman who would grab him, ducking through the dance and coming to greet her.
She wishes he would not. Now he will see who her father-in-law is, he may have to listen to the old fool’s gabble. He will get a look at their drab, and now not even clean, country clothes. He will see her for what she is.
“So here you are,” he says. “Here you are with your treasure.”
That is not a word that Agnes has ever heard used to refer to a child. It seems as if he is talking to her in the way he might talk to a person of his own acquaintance, some sort of a lady, not as a doctor talks to a patient. Such behavior embarrasses her and she does not know how to answer.
“Your baby is well?” he says, taking a more down-to-earth tack. He is still catching his breath from the dancing, and his face, though not flushed, is covered with a fine sweat. Aye.
“And you yourself? You have your strength again?”
She shrugs very slightly, so as not to shake the child off the nipple.
“You have a fine color, anyway, that is a good sign.”
She thinks that he sighs as he says this, and wonders if that may be because his own color, seen in the morning light, is sickly as whey.
He asks then if she will permit him to sit and talk to her for a few moments, and once more she is confused by his formality, but says he may do as he likes.
Her father-in-law gives the surgeon-and her as well-a despising glance, but Mr. Suter does not notice it, perhaps does not even understand that the old man, and the fair-haired boy who sits straight-backed and facing this old man, have anything to do with her.
“The dancing is very lively,” he says. “And you are not given a chance to decide who you would dance with. You get pulled about by all and sundry.” And then he asks, “What will you do in Canada West?”