High Tide at Noon by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page B

turned back toward the trees, forcing herself to walk when every nerve and muscle cried out to runs. He won’t dare touch me, she thought. He won’t dare . . . Behind her, Simon spoke.
    â€œI won’t forget this in a hurry,” he said clearly through the ocean’s roar. “I won’t forget this, sweetheart. And you won’t forget it, either.”

10
    T HE ACCORDION RIPPLED BACK and forth between Sigurd’s hands. He kept time with one foot, and his forehead glistened with sweat. Ha ha ha! you and me! the accordion laughed, merry and loud and unfaltering over the sound of dancing feet. Maurice Trudeau leaned against the stove with his fiddle under his chin, and its voice was elfin-sweet. Sigurd was a yellow-maned Viking, and Maurice was a French-Canadian faun, and the music they made together was lilting and intoxicating and like no other music in the world. The bright notes cascaded from one tune to another. “Soldiers Joy,” “Stack of Barley,” “The Girl with the Hole in Her Stocking,” “The Devil’s Dream,” and many a nameless polka and hornpipe they had known forever, yet couldn’t say where they had first learned it. But they always came back to “Little Brown Jug.” Charles Bennett, leading Mateel Trudeau up the hall in a Lady of the Lake, began to sing, and the others picked it up.
    â€œHa, ha, ha!” they all sang in a mammoth explosion of laughter, until the hanging lamps seemed to sway, and those who stood out­side, smoking in the soft April darkness, looked in at the windows. Everybody sang. Old Gunnar, swinging his rosy little wife with almost as much lionlike strength as he used to have, sang, and bowed to his partner with an Old Country flourish. Sigurd roared over the accordion. Jake Trudeau, whom even a white shirt and a shave couldn’t keep from looking like a buccaneer, sang it too, swinging Miss Hollis, the teacher, until her feet came off the floor and she forgot her dignity long enough to shriek. Everybody laughed, and Marcus Yetton’s youngest, tucked in its basket, woke up and howled.
    This was the first dance since last summer, called up in a hurry because of this April day that was like a breath of June. It had been a day of forget-me-not seas and tranquil skies; and now the moon rode high overhead. It was the moonlight and the lack of wind that had enticed the Brigport crowd across the sound.
    A good dance, one part of Joanna’s mind said, while another part dreamed a little; a good night to walk, it thought. A good night to walk, if you were in love. You could live in another world on a night like this, if there were someone to help you bear its beauty.
    But she wasn’t in love, and here in the hall her brother Charles was swinging her faster and faster, his dark face laughing and a little crazy; the music might have been strong wine. He let her go, still spinning, and Tim Gray caught her and swung her again. But Tim, tall and quiet-spoken and sandy, was no devil on the dance floor. He held her gently, and then they went down the hall and back, hand in hand, for the Ladies’ Chain.
    Her father swung her next. “You’re as bad as the boys!” she gasped as the rafters whirled across her vision. He laughed and released her. As she went back to Tim she had a glimpse of her Aunt Mary moving toward Stephen like a ship in full sail. Donna was at the dance, but the contre dances were too much for her.
    When Hugo slipped his arm around her waist, she smelled liquor. His dark eyes were blazing. He’d been out on the porch with the Brigport crowd.
    â€œPromenade the hall!” Sigurd shouted, and the dance was over in one final mad whirl. The women sank to the benches, handkerchiefs patting wet faces. Most of the men disappeared outside. Joanna went into the little kitchen and found Nils there. He filled a thick white mug from the water pail.
    â€œHave some Adam’s