Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/185

Crowds of little chromatic subtleties, capable of drawing tears from 4 statue, proceeded straightway from the ancient fiddle, as if it were dying of the emotion which had been pent up within it ever since its banishment from some Italian city where it first took shape and sound. There was that in the lock of Mop’s one dark eye which said: ‘You cannot leave off, dear, whether you would or no,” and it bred in her a paroxysm of desperation that defied him to tire her down.

She thus continued to dance alone, defiantly as she thought, but in truth slavishly and objeotly, subject to every wave of the melody, and probed by the gimlet- like gaze of her fascinator’s open eye; keeping up at the same time a feeble smile in his face, as a feint to signify it waa still her own pleasure which led her on. A terrified embarrassment as to what she could say to him if she were to leave off, had its unrecognized share in keeping her going. The child, who was beginning to be distressed by thé strange situation, came up and said: “Stop, mother, stop, and let’s go home!” as she seized Car’line’s hand.

Suddenly Car’line sank staggering to the floor; and rolling over on her face, prone she remained. Mop’s fiddle thereupon emitted an elfin shriek of finality; stepping quickly down from the nine-gallon beer-cask which had formed his rostrom, he went to the little girl, who disconsolately bent over her mother.

The guests who had gone into the backroom for liguor and change of air, hearing something unusual, trooped back hitherward, where they endeavored to revive poor, weak Car’line by blowing her with the bellows and opening the window. Ned, her husband, who had been detained in Casterbridge, as aforesaid, came along the road at thia juncture, and hearing excited yoices through the open window, and, to his great