“Murder alive! what’s this at all at all?” cried Father Conn, becoming aware of the utterance of whoop after whoop by the dancers.
“It’s the jig they’re dancin’ at last, an’ more power to thim!” cried Phineas O’Flaherty, clapping his hands and giving an encouraging whoop or two.
He was right. The half dozen couples artistically dishevelled, and rapidly losing the baleful recollections of having been recently tidied up to meet the “quality”--rapidly losing every recollection of the critical gaze of the “quality”--of the power of speech possessed by the priest--of everything, clerical and lay, except the strains of the fiddle which occupied an intermediate position between things lay and clerical, being wholly demoniac--these half dozen couples were dancing the jig with a breadth and feeling that suggested the youth of the world and the reign of Bacchus.
Black hair flowing in heavy flakes over shoulders unevenly bare--shapely arms flung over heads in an attitude of supreme self-abandonment--a passionate advance, a fervent retreat, then an exchange of musical cries like wild gasps for breath, and ever, ever, ever the demoniac music of the fiddle, and ever, ever, ever the flashing and flying from the ground like the feet of the winged Hermes--flashing and flashing with the moonlight over all, and the fantastic arms of the hill-side pines stretched out like the fringed arms of a grotesque Pierrot--this was the scene to which the priest returned with Edmund Airey.
He threw up his hands and was about to rush upon the half-frenzied dancers, when Edmund grasped him by the arm, and pointed mutely to the attitude of the “quality.”
Lady Innisfail and her friends were no longer sitting frigidly on their chairs--the double eye-glasses were dropped, and those who had held them were actually joining in the whoops of the dancers. Her ladyship was actually clapping her hands in the style of encouragement adopted by Mr. O’Flaherty.
The priest stood in the attitude in which he had been arrested by the artful Edmund Airey. His eyes and his mouth were open, and his right hand was pressed against the five-pound note that he had just received. There was a good deal of slate-purchasing potentialities in a five-pound note. If her ladyship and her guests were shocked--as the priest, never having heard of the skirt dance and its popularity in the drawing-room--believed they should be, they were not displaying their indignation in a usual way. They were almost as excited as the performers.