“I’ll tell you,” said Brid. “I’ll tell you all.” Then she stopped and simply stood there, upright and conspicuous in her cherry dress. Moril could see she was trying not to cry. But he could also see she was making it plain to the crowd that she was trying not to cry. He marveled at the way she could use real feelings for what was in fact a show. He knew he could not have done it.
Brid stood there silent long enough for murmurs of interest to gather and grow but not long enough for them to die away. Then she said: “I’ll tell you. Clennen—my father—was killed two days ago.” And she stood silent again, struggling with tears, listening attentively to murmurs of sympathy. “He was killed before our eyes,” she said. At the height of a loud murmur, she came in again, loudly, but in such a calm way that Moril and most of the people present thought she was speaking quietly. They hushed to hear her. “We are the children of Clennen the Singer—Brid, Moril, and Dastgandlen Handagner—and we’re doing our best to carry on without him. I hope you’ll spare time to listen to us. We know our show will not be the same without Clennen, but—but we’ll try to please you. We hope you’ll forgive any faults in—in memory of my father.”
She got a round of applause for that. “Put your hat out, then, and let’s hear you!” someone shouted. Brid, with tears running down her cheeks, picked up the hat she had ready and tossed it on the ground. Several people put money into it at once, out of pure sympathy for them. Brid could not help feeling pleased with herself. She had made a considerable effect without boasting once—in fact, she had done the opposite, which, she thought, ought to please Dagner.
Though Dagner was far too nervous to show any pleasure at all, Brid knew he was not displeased because he left her to do all the announcing. That meant that Brid could more or less choose what they sang. She did her best to put together the things they had practiced in the order she thought would be most impressive. She began them with general favorites. Moril felt terrible. Without the deep rolling voice of Clennen, they sounded to him thin and strange, and they lacked the body Lenina usually gave them on the hand organ. Moril began to feel they had nothing to offer the crowd, except perhaps some well-trained playing on cwidder and panhorn.
Brid felt much the same. To encourage them, she announced that they would now play, in trio, the “Seven Marches.” That was one thing she was sure they could do well. And they did. The most successful part was when Dagner, on the spur of the moment, signaled to Brid to play soft during the “Fourth March,” and played his treble cwidder in double time against Moril’s slow and mellow tenor. They looked at one another while they were doing it. Moril knew they were neither of them exactly enjoying it, but they were both by then desperate for some applause from the silent crowd, and they had the dour kind of satisfaction of knowing they were giving an exhibition of real skill. They were rewarded by a burst of clapping and a little shower of coins falling into the hat.
Then they did Clennen’s “Cuckoo Song,” which always made people laugh. After that Brid, feeling that the sooner Dagner got his part over, the better he would be for the rest of the show, announced that Dagner would now sing some of his own songs.
Brid was glad she had said “some.” Dagner was so nervous that he only managed three. If she had not said “some,” it was probable that he would only have sung one. Moril was disappointed and Brid exasperated, and it was altogether a pity, because the crowd liked Dagner’s songs. “The Color in Your Head” went down particularly well. Brid could tell he had the crowd’s sympathy. They thought of him as bravely following in Clennen’s footsteps and wanted to encourage him. But Dagner was mauve and shaking, and he stopped.
Crossly Brid took the center of the cart and sang herself. Moril, without being told, came to her aid on the cwidder, while Dagner gasped to himself in the background. Brid did well. An audience always helped her. She sang a number of ballads, though she was forced to avoid “The Hanging of Filli Ray,” which she did best, because of the corpse dangling on the gallows behind the crowd. Her success was undoubtedly the patter song, “Cow-Calling,” which she did instead of “Filli Ray.” Brid always enjoyed it. You started with a sort of yodeling cry, to the whole herd, then you called the cows one by one, and each verse you added a new one
.
“Red cow, red cow, my lord’s thoroughbred cow,
Brown cow, brown cow, the woman in the town’s cow,”
Brid sang, and no one looking at her could have realized that she was frantically wondering what else she could put into their unusually short show before her voice gave out. At “Old cow, old cow,” inspiration came. Brid bowed at the end of the song. Coins clattered into the hat.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, my brother Moril will sing four songs of Osfameron.”
Moril gulped and glared at Brid. He had never performed any of the old songs in public before. But Brid had gone and announced him, so he was forced to take the center of the cart, with his wet hands shaking on the cwidder. To make matters worse, he suddenly met Kialan’s eye. Kialan was standing near the fountain, looking cool, attentive, and slightly critical. From where Moril stood, the hanged man on the gallows appeared to be dangling over Kialan’s head. Moril took his eyes off both of them and began to play. He knew he was going to make wretched work of it.
For a short while he could attend to nothing but the queer fingering and the odd, old-fashioned rhythms. Then his tension abated a little, and he was surprised to discover that his performance was pleasing him. As Moril’s voice was naturally high, he did not need to sound cracked and strained, the way Clennen did. And not being yet expert and not anyway liking the noise the old fingering made, he found he had been unconsciously modifying it, into a style which was not old, nor new, but different. Osfameron’s jerky rhythms became smoother, and Moril felt that if he could have spared time to attend to them, he might almost have understood the words:
“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.
“Osfameron walked in the eye
Of his mind. The blackbird flew there.
He would not let the blackbird’s song go by.
His mind’s life can keep the bird there.”
It sounded good to Moril. And it was his own doing, he was positive, and not the cwidder’s. When he had finished, however, there was silence in the square. The crowd had never heard the old songs done that way and did not know what to think. Kialan made up their minds for them by clapping loudly. Other people clapped. Then came a burst of applause which made Moril feel ashamed of himself—he was only a learner, after all—and more coins went into the hat.
The applause seemed to worry Olob. From then on he became restive. He tossed his head, he stamped, he tried to go forward, and he threatened to back. Brid pulled him up, and he backed in earnest, throwing Moril into Dagner. Brid had to take the reins up again, which put her half out of action. Seeing this, Dagner pulled himself together and led into some songs with rousing choruses, hoping the crowd would join in. He had little luck. People were in the mood for listening. But they had come to the end of all they had practiced, so Dagner was forced to go on to “Jolly Holanders” and finish.
Olob was still behaving like a colt, so Moril got down and went to his head. The crowd shifted away from the cart. Moril heard Brid say to Dagner, “Shall I go shopping? I know what to get,” and the hat chinking.
“No, I’ll go,” said Dagner. He still seemed nervous, although the show was over. He took the hat and climbed down from the cart. Almost at once, several men that Moril recognized as friends of Clennen’s came up and crowded round Dagner.
“What’s this, Dagner? What’s this about Clennen?”
The upshot was that Dagner went off to have a drink with them, taking the hat. Moril did not see which inn they went to because he found himself being talked to by a kindly man just then. This man first gave Moril a pie, then told him—in a fatherly way—that he had sung the old songs all wrong, and things were going to the dogs if people could take those kind of liberties.
Moril took a leaf out of Dagner’s book. “Yes, but I can’t do it like my father did,” he said with his mouth full. He was extremely grateful for the pie, or he would have told the man his real opinion of the old songs.