stolidly on the hand organ. She played well – since Clennen had taught her – but always rather mechanically, as if her mind were elsewhere. And Moril fingered away busily, his left hand sliding up and down the long, inlaid arm of his cwidder, his right thrumming on the strings until his fingertips glowed.
Every so often Clennen would pause and send a cheerfully reproachful look towards his hat. This usually caused a hand to come out from the crowd and drop a small, shamed coin in with the others. Then Clennen would beam round at everyone and go on again. When the hat was more than half full, he said: “Now I think the time has come for some of the songs out of our past. As you may know, the history of Dalemark is full of fine singers, but, to my mind, there have never been two to compare with the Adon and Osfameron. Neither has ever been equalled. But Osfameron was an ancestor of mine. I happen to be descended from him in a direct line, father to son. And it was said of Osfameron that he could charm the rocks from the mountains, the dead from their sleep and the gold from men’s purses.” Here a slight raising of Clennen’s sandy eyebrows in the direction of the hat called forth an apologetic penny and a ripple of laughter from everyone. “So, ladies and gentlemen,” said Clennen, “I shall now sing four songs by Osfameron.”
Moril sighed and leant his cwidder carefully against the side of the cart. The old songs only needed the big cwidder, so he could have a rest. In spite of this, he wished his father would not sing them. Moril much preferred the new, full-bodied music. The old required a fingering which made even the big mellow cwidder sound cracked and thin, and Clennen seemed to find it necessary to change his deep singing voice until it became thin, high and peculiar. As for the words – Moril listened to the first song and wondered what Osfameron had been on about.
“The Adon’s hall was open. Through it
Swallows darted. The soul flies through life.
Osfameron in his mind’s eye knew it.
The bird’s life is not the man’s life.”
But the crowd appreciated it. Moril heard someone say: “I do like to hear the old songs done in the right way.” And when they were over, there was a round of applause and a few more coins.
Then Dagner, with his face more tight and pinched than ever, took up his cwidder. Clennen said, “I now introduce my eldest son, Dastgandlen Handagner.” This was Dagner’s full name. Clennen loved long names. “He will sing you some of his own songs,” said Clennen, and waved Dagner forwards into the centre of the cart. Dagner, with a grimace of pure nervousness, bowed to the crowd and began to sing. Moril could never understand why this part was such a torment to Dagner. He knew his brother would have died rather than miss his part in the performance, yet he was never happy until it was over. Perhaps it was because Dagner had made the songs himself.
They were strange, moody little songs, with odd rhythms. Dagner made them even odder, by singing now loud, now soft, for no real reason, unless it was nerves. And they had a haunting something. The tunes stuck in your head and you hummed them when you thought you had long forgotten them. Moril listened and watched, and envied Dagner this gift of making songs. He would have given – well – his toes, anyway, to be able to compose anything.
“The colour in your head
The colour in your mind
Is dead
If you follow it blind,”
Dagner sang, and the crowd grew to like it. Dagner was not remarkable to look at – he was thin and sandy-haired, with a large Adam’s apple – and people expected his songs to be unremarkable too. But when he finished, there was applause and some more coins. Dagner flushed pale purple with pleasure and was almost at ease for the rest of the show.
There was not much more. The whole family sang a few more songs together and wound up with Jolly Holanders. They always finished with that in the South, and the audience always joined in. Then it was a matter of putting away the instruments and replying to the things people came up to say.
This was always rather a confused time. There were the usual number of people who seemed to know Clennen well; the usual giggly girls who wanted Dagner to tell them how he composed songs, a thing Dagner could never explain and always tried to do; the usual kind people who told Moril he was quite a musician for a youngster; and the usual gentlemen who drifted up to Lenina and Brid and tried to murmur sweet nothings to them. Clennen was always very quick to notice these gentlemen, particularly those who approached Brid. Poor Brid looked older than she was in her show clothes – she was really only just thirteen – and she did not know how to deal with murmuring gentlemen at all.
“Well, you see, my father taught me,” Moril explained.
“They come into my head like – er – ideas,” Dagner explained.
“It is Lenina, isn’t it?” murmured a gentleman at the head of the cart.
“It is,” said Lenina.
“I didn’t quite hear what you said,” Brid said rather desperately to another gentleman.
“I don’t go to Hannart. I had a little disagreement with the Earl,” said Clennen. He swung round and, with one comprehensive look, disposed of the man Brid could not hear and also the one who thought Lenina was herself. “But I’m going through Dropwater and beyond,” he continued, turning back to his friends.
Lenina had collected the money and was counting it. “Good,” she said. “We can stay at the inn here. I fancy a roof over my head.”
Moril and Brid fancied it too. It was the height of luxury. There would be feather beds, a proper bath and real food cooked indoors. Brid licked her lips and gave Moril a delighted grin. Moril smiled back in his milky, sleepy way.
“No. No time,” said Clennen, when at last he was free to be asked. “We have to press on. We’re picking up a passenger on the road.”
Lenina said nothing. It was not her way. While Brid, Moril and even Dagner protested, she simply picked up the reins and encouraged Olob to move.
“WHERE ARE WE picking up the passenger?” Brid enquired when they were three miles or so beyond Derent and her discontent had worn off somewhat. She was back in her everyday blue check and looked rather younger than she was.
“Couple of miles on. I’ll tell you where,” Clennen said to Dagner, who was driving.
“Going North, is he?” Dagner said.
“That’s right,” said Clennen.
Moril, in the ordinary rust-coloured clothes he preferred, and in which, to Brid’s mind, he looked a great deal nicer, trotted along beside the cart and hoped vaguely that the passenger would be agreeable. They had taken a woman last year who had driven him nearly crazy with boredom. She had known a hundred little boys, and they were all better than Moril in some way, and she had at least two long stories about each boy to prove it. They took someone most years, going North. Since North and South had begun their long disagreement, very little traffic went between.
