Chapter VIII
Blake’s bar-parlour was empty, with fire-light cloaking the grease-stains on the walls, and the rings that the glasses and jugs had scored on the table. It was Lou who strolled in, unobserved, through the side-door, picked an accordeon out of the wood-box, and began to make music in the shadows. Strictly speaking, the accordeon belongs to hot evenings outside the whares, and the smoke and talk of loafing shearers, with the murmur of penned sheep to help out the halt of stiffened fingers. Or to black nights round the camp-fires, where the “honk, honk” of wild swan and the sudden slow roar of a landslip far up in the ranges are familiar as the old simple times. Or to dances in the Town Hall, with a girl to laugh back when Danny or Trefusis bang at “Daisy Ball” from the platform, and the throb of feet covers the bass. But the accordeon in Lou’s hands was a vivid restless something that roused strange unnameable desires and longings, such as no plain working man had any right to. For, everything having its compensations, evil done may teach a man the way to the heart-
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