A DANCE AND A SERENADE.
THE Derfs occupied a peculiar position among their Turkey Track
neighbors. They had a considerable tincture of Cherokee Indian
blood, no discredit in the Tennessee mountains, or elsewhere for
that matter. One branch of the family had received money
compensation for their holdings from the Government. Leola's
father had at that time taken possession of an allotment of land
in the Indian Territory. The eldest daughter, Iley, married out
there, and brought back her Indian husband when Granny Derf,
pining for her native mountains, had to be carried home to Big
Turkey Track.
It was not the blood of another race that set the Derfs apart;
but it may have been traits which came with the wild strain.
There was a good deal of money going among the clan. Old man
Derf was a general trader; also he engaged in tanbark hauling in
the season, and some other contracting enterprises such as
required the use of ready cash. In the back room of the main
house there was quite a miscellaneous stock of provisions,
goods, and oddments for sale. Derf was more than suspected of
being a moonshiner or [51] of dealing with moonshiners. He gave
dances or frolics of some sort at his house very frequently, and
there was always plenty of whisky. At one time or another the
family had lived in the Settlement a good deal, and come off
rather smudged from their residence in that place. Indeed, your
true mountaineer believes that sin is of the valley, and looks
for no good thing to come out of the low ground. In a simple
society, like that of the mountains, the line is drawn with such
savage sharpness that the censors hesitate to draw it at all.
Yet a palpable cloud hung over the Derfs. While not completely
outcast, they were of so little standing that their house was
scarcely a respectable place for a young, unmarried woman to be
seen frequently. Ola, Garrett Derf's second daughter, a girl of
twenty, and a homely, high-couraged, hard muscled little
creature, was permitted in the neighborhood circle of young
girls rather on sufferance; but she did not trouble them greatly
with her presence, preferring as a rule her own enterprises.
Lance Cleaverage, a free, unfettered spirit, trammeled by no
social prejudices, came often to the frolics at Derf's. He
seldom danced himself, whisky he never touched; but he loved to
play for the others, and he got all the stimulation which his
temperament and his mood asked out of the crowd, the lights, the
music, and some indefinable element into which these fused for him. [52]
It was nearly two months after the incident at the church and
the funeral of Granny Yearwood, that Ola was redding up and
putting to rights for a dance. She had hurried through an early
supper; the house was cleared, like the deck of a ship for
action, of all furniture that could not be sat upon. What
remained--a few chairs and boxes, and the long benches on which,
between table and wall, the small fry of the family crowded at
meal time--were arranged along the sides of the room out of the
way. The girl herself was wearing a deep pink calico dress and a
string of imitation coral beads. Generally, she gave little
thought to her appearance; but everybody believed now that the
time was set for the marriage of Lance Cleaverage and Callista
Gentry; neither of the young people denied it, Callista only
laughing scornfully, and Lance lightly admitting that there was
a mighty poor chance for a fellow to get away when a girl like
Callista made up her mind to wed him. In the face of these
things, the little brown girl clad her carefully, laboring with
the conscienceless assiduity of Nature's self to do her utmost
to get her chosen man away from the other woman--to get him for
herself. She went out past the wood-pile to view the evening sky
anxiously, and seeing only a few cloud-roses blooming in the
late light over the hills, came back with satisfaction to
attempt once more putting her small brothers and sisters out of
the way. [53]
A little after dark her guests began to arrive, coming in by
ones and twos and threes, some of the boys in mud-splashed
working clothes, some in more holiday attire. About moonrise
Lance strolled down the road, and by way of defending himself
from the importunities of Ola's conversation, if one might
guess, kept his banjo twanging persistently. There was a certain
solemnity over the early comers, although Derf roared a hearty
greeting from his door of the cabin, and occasionally some of
the men adjourned to his special room and came out wiping their
mouths.
"Ain't nobody never goin' to dance?" inquired Ola impatiently.
"Here's Lance a-playin' and a-playin', and nobody makin' any
manner of use of the music."
There was nearly ten minutes of hitching and halting, proposals
and counter propositions, before a quadrille was started. It was
gone through rather perfunctorily, then they all sat down on the
boxes and benches and stared into the empty middle of the room.
"Good land!" cried Ola, coming from the other side of the house,
"play 'Greenbacks', Lance--let's dance 'Stealing partners'."
The new amusement--half dance, half play--proved, as she had
guessed, a leaven to the heaviness of the occasion. People began
to laugh a little, and speak above their breath. Two awkward
boys, trying to "shoot dominickers" [54] at the same moment, collided
under the arch and went sprawling to the floor. The mishap was
greeted with a roar of mirth in which all chill and diffidence
were drowned.
And now the arrivals from the far cabins were on hand. Small
children who had been allowed to sit up and look on nodded in
corners, or stretched themselves across their fathers' knees and
were tumbled just as they were upon a pallet in the loft. The
usual contingent of bad little boys collected outside the door
and began to shout at the dancers by name, calling out comments
on personal peculiarities, or throwing small chips and stones
under foot to trip up the unwary. These were finally put down by
the strong hand.
Clapping and stamping increased as the dancers moved more
rapidly; calls were shouted; the laughter was continuous. Lance
Cleaverage leaned forward in his place, striking the humming
strings with sure, tense fingers, his eyes aglow, and on his
mouth a half smile. The fun waxed furious; the figures whirled
faster and faster, gathering, disparting, interweaving, swinging
and eddying before his eyes. Coats were thrown off, the feet
thudded out the measure heavily. This was his dissipation, the
draught that the mirth of others brewed for him. Its fumes were
beginning to mount to his brain, when Ola's hard brown little
hand came down across his strings and stopped [55] the music. There
was an instant and indignant outcry and protest.
"Consarn yo' time, Ola! What did you want to do that for?"
demanded a tall young fellow who had broken down in the midst of
a pigeon wing, as though he drew his inspiration from the banjo
and could not move without its sound.
"I want to hear Buck play on his accordion--and I want Lance to
dance with me," Ola said petulantly. "What's the use of him
settin' here all the time playin' for you-all to have fun, and
him never gettin' any? Come on, Lance."
Ola Derf was not used to the consideration generally accorded
young women. When she made a request, she deemed it well to see
that her requirements were complied with. Deftly she lifted the
banjo from Lance's lap and passed it to someone behind her, who
put it on the fireboard. Then laying hold of the young man
himself, she pulled him out into the middle of the room.
"Play, Buck, play," she admonished Fuson, who had his accordion.
"You made yo' brags about what fine music you could get out of
that thar box,--now give us a sample."
Buck played. When a dance has swung so far as this one had,
nothing can check its rhythmic movement. The notes dragged
wheezily from the old accordion answered as well to the
gathering's warm, free, fluent mood as the truer harmonies of [56]
Lance's banjo. Hand clasping hand, Ola and Lance whirled among
the others, essaying a simple sort of polka. She was a tireless
dancer, and he as light footed as a panther. The two of them
began to feel that intoxication of swift movement timed to music
which nothing else in life can quite furnish, intensified in the
girl by a gripping conviction that this was her hour, and she
must make the most of it. She was aflame with it. When Buck
broke down she instantly proposed a game of Thimble. Boldly,
almost openly, she let herself forfeit a kiss to Lance.
There was a babble of tongues and laughter, a hubbub of mirth, a
crossfiring and confusion of sound and movement which wrought
upon the nerves like broken chords, subtle dissonances, in
music. Buck was trying to play again, some of the boys were
patting and stamping, others remonstrating, jeering, making
ironic suggestions, when Lance, a bit flushed and bright of eye,
dropped his arm around the brown girl's waist to take his
forfeit. As in duty bound she pulled away from him. He sprang
after, caught her by the shoulders, turned her broad little face
up to his and kissed her full on the laughing, red mouth.
Then a miracle! Kissing Ola Derf was not a serious matter; indeed
common gossip hinted that it was a thing all too easily accomplished.
But tonight the girl was wrought beyond herself--a [57] magnet. And
Lance's sleeping spirit felt the shock of that kiss. But alas for
Ola, it was for her rival's behoof the miracle was worked; it was
in her rival's cause she had labored, enlisting all her primitive
arts, all her ingenuity and resolution! The lights, the music, the
movement, the gayety of others, these had, so far, pleased and
stimulated Lance as they always did. But the unaccustomed warmth
and contact of the dance; the daring and abandon of the kissing
game afterward; finally the sudden ravisher's clasp and snatched
kiss--these set free in him an impulse which had slumbered till
now. To this bold, aggressive, wilful nature it was always the
high mountain, the long dubious road, the deep waters--never the
easy way, the thing at hand; it was ever his own trail--not the
path suggested to his feet. And so, in this sudden awakening, he
took no account of Ola Derf, and his whole soul turned toward
Callista--Callista the scornful, whose profile, or the side of whose
cheek, he was always seeing; Callista who refused to lift her lashes
to look at him, and who was ever saying coolly exasperating things
in a tone of gentle weariness. If Callista would look at him as Ola
Derf had done--if he might catch her thus in his arms--if those lips
of hers were offered to his kiss--!
Without a word of excuse or explanation he dropped the girl's
hand as he stood in the ring of [58] players, caught his banjo down
from the shelf, and leaving open mouths and staring eyes behind him,
strode through the door. A moment later he was footing it out in
the moonlight road, walking straight and fast toward the church
where protracted meeting was going on, and where he guessed Callista
would be with her family. A javelin, flame-tipped, had touched
him. Something new and fiery danced in his veins. He would see her
home. They would walk together, far behind the family group, in
this wonderful white moonlight.
When he reached Brush Arbor church he avoided the young fellows
lounging about the entrance waiting to beau the girls. He moved
lightly to a window at the back of the building and looked in.
There sat Octavia Gentry on the women's side, and old Ajax, her
father-in-law, on the men's. Callista he could not find from his
coign of vantage. An itinerant exhorter was on his feet,
preaching loud, pounding the pulpit, addressing himself now and
again to the mourners who knelt about the front bench. Lance
cautiously put his head in and looked further. Somehow he knew,
all in a moment, that this was what he had expected--what he had
hoped for; Callista was at home waiting for him. Yet none the
less he carefully examined the middle seats where might be found
the courting couples. He would not put it beyond his Callista to
go to church with some [59] other swain and sit there publicly
advertising her favor to the interloper.
When he was at last satisfied that she was not in the building,
he turned as he had turned from Ola Derf, and made a straight
path for himself from Brush Arbor to the Gentry place. Scorning
the beaten highway of other men's feet, he struck directly into
the forest, and through a little grove of second-growth
chestnut, with its bunches of silver-gray stems rising slim and
white in the light of the moon. Moonshine sifting through the
leaves changed his work-a-day clothing to the garb of a
troubadour. The banjo hung within easy reach of his fingers; he
took off his old hat and tucked it under his arm, striking now
and again as he went a twanging chord.
It was an old story to him, this walking the moonlit wild with his
banjo for company. Many a time in the year's release, the cool,
fragrant, summer-deep forest had called him by its delicate silver
nocturnes, its caverns of shadow and milky pools of light, bidden
him to a wild spring-running. On such nights his heart could not
sleep for song. Sometimes, intoxicated with the rhythm, he had
swung on and on, crashing through the dew-drenched huckleberry
tangles, rocking a little, with eyes half closed, and interspersing
the barbaric jangle of his banjo with quaint jodeling and long,
falsetto-broken whoops, the heritage that the Cherokee left behind
him in this land. But [60] now it was no mere physical elation of
youth and summer and moonlight. It was the supreme urge of his
nature that sent his feet forward steadily, swiftly, as toward a
purpose that might not be let or stayed. Speed--to Callista--that
was all. He fell into silence, even the banjo's thrumming hushed
to an intense quivering call of broken chords, hardly to be
distinguished from the insect cries of love that filled the summer
wood about him.
All the fathomless gulf of the sky was poured full of the
blue-green splendors that flooded the night world of the mountains.
Drops of dew spilled from leaf to leaf; down in the spring
hollow he was spattered to the knees by the thousand soft,
reaching fronds of cinnamon fern. Wild fragrances splashed him
with great waves of sweetness. So the lords of the wild, under
pelt and antler, have ever been wont to rove to their wooing; so
restless are the wings that flutter among summer branches and
under summer moons.
Between the banjo's murmuring chords, as he neared the Gentry
clearing, once more a melody began to stray, like smoke which
smoulders fitfully and must presently burst into flame.--Thrum-dum,
thrum-dum, and then the tune's low call. It was a gypsy music, that
lured with vistas of unknown road, the glint of water, and the
sparkle of the hunter's fire; a wildly sweet note that asked, "How
many miles?"--and [61] again, out of colorless drumming, "How many
years? . . . how many miles?" . . . a song shadow-like in its
come-and-go, rising at intervals to the cry of a passion no
mortality has power to tame, and then, ere the ear had fairly
caught its message, falling again into dim harmonies as of rain
blown through the dark;--a question, and the wordless, haunting
refrain for all answer. Just above his breath Lance voiced the
words:
"How many years, how many miles,
Far from the door where my darling smiles?
How many miles, how many years.
Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"
The melody sank and trailed, drowned in a cadence of minors that
sobbed like the rush of storm. Out of this, wild, as the wind's
pleading, it rose again;
"It may be far, it may be near,
The water's wide and the forest drear,
But somewhere awaiting, surely I
Shall find my true love by and bye."
The lithe limbs threshed through the dew-drenched, scented
undergrowth. The trees grew more openly now; clearing was at
hand.
"--My true love--by and bye,"
hummed the light, sweet baritone.
Callista had petulantly refused to go to church with her mother
and grandfather. For no reason which she could assign, she
wanted to be alone. [62] Then when they were all gone, she wished she
had accompanied them. An indefinable disquiet possessed her. She
could not stay in the house. Candle in hand she sought an
outside cabin where stood the loom. Climbing to the loft room of
this she set her light down and began to search out some quilt
pieces, which she figured to herself as the object of her
present excursion. Though she would have denied it with scorn,
the idea of Lance Cleaverage filled her completely; Lance, the
man who was preparing to marry her, yet upon whom--of all those
who had come near her, in the free, fortuitous commerce of
marriageable youth in the mountains--she had, it seemed to her,
been able to lay no charm, to exert no influence. He met her; he
exchanged cut and thrust with her, and he went his ways after
their encounters, neither more nor less than he had been before.
He came back seemingly at the dictates of time and chance only,
and never hotter nor colder, never hastening to nor avoiding
her. A bitterness tinged all her thought... She wondered if she
would have seen him had she gone to meeting . . . She reflected
jealously that he was much more likely to be at the frolic at
Derf's. . . . She wished she knew how to dance.
All at once, on the vague introspection of her mood, she became
aware of the recurrent stroke of a soft musical note--the
humming of Lance's banjo. Crouching rigidly by the little chest
that [63] held her quilt scraps, she listened. It was a trick of the
imagination--she had thought so much about him that she fancied
him near. Then, with a sudden heavy beating of the heart, she
realized that if he had been at the dance and gone home early he
might be passing now on the big road. She smiled at her own
folly; this tremulous low call could never be heard across two
fields and the door-yard.
And it was a banjo . . . it was Lance's banjo . . . he was
playing whisperingly, too, as he loved to do.
Then the strings ceased to whisper. Clearer came their voice and
louder. Without thinking to extinguish her candle, she ran to
the window and knelt hearkening. She looked down on the moonlit
yard. All was silent and homely . . . but that was Lance's
banjo. Even as she came to this decision. Lance himself broke
through the greenery at the edge of the near field, vaulted a
low fence, and emerged into the open. He came on in the soft
light, singing a little, apparently to himself.
Spellbound she listened, gripping the window ledge hard, holding
her breath, choking, wondering what this new thing was that had
come to her. Above him she was set like a saint enshrined, with
the moonlight to silver her rapt, shining face, and the glow of
the candle behind making a nimbus of her fair hair. Yet never at
all (or she [64] thought so) did Lance look up. Light footed,
careless of mien, he circled the house once, still humming under
his breath, and striking those odd, tentative chords on the
banjo. Then, abruptly, when she had realized her position and
would have hidden herself, or put out the candle which betrayed
her, he stopped under her window and with upflung head was
smiling straight into her eyes. She rallied her forces and
prepared for the duel which always ensued when she and Lance met.
She would give him as good as he sent. She would tell him that she
had stayed away from church for fear she should see him. If he
hinted that she had expected this visit, she would--she would say--
But this was a new Lance Cleaverage looking into her eyes--a man
Callista had never seen before. Subtly she knew it, yet scarcely
dared trust the knowledge. The young fellow below in the
moonlight sent up no challenge to a trial of wits; he offered
her no opportunity for sarcastic retort. Tossing aside his hat,
making ready his banjo, he lifted his head so that the lean,
dark young face with its luminous eyes was raised fully to her
in the soft radiance, and struck some chords--strange,
thrilling, importunate chords--then began to sing.
The serenade is a cherished courtship custom of primitive
societies. Lance Cleaverage, the best banjo player in the Turkey
Tracks, with a flexible, [65] vibrant, colorful baritone voice, had
often gone serenading with the other boys; but this--tonight--was
different. He felt like singing, and singing to Callista; for the
moment it was his form of expression. What he sang was his own
version of an old-world ballad, with his love's name in place of
the Scottish girl's to whom it was addressed three hundred years ago
in the highlands of another hemisphere. Unashamed, unafraid--would
anything ever make Lance either ashamed or afraid?--he stood in the
white moonlight and sent forth his passionate, masterful call of
love on the wings of song.
Callista's heart beat wildly against her arms where she rested
on the window sill. Her lips were apart, and the breath came
through them quick and uneven. Despite herself, she leaned
forward and looked back into the eyes that gazed up at her. Was
this Lance, the indifferent, taunting, insouciant, here under
her window alone, looking up so at her--playing, singing, to
her? Oh, yes, it was Lance. He wanted her, said the swift
importunate notes of the banjo, the pleading tones of his voice,
the bold yet loverlike attitude of the man. He wanted her. Well--a
flood of tender warmth rose in her--she wanted him! For the first
time probably in her life--misshapen, twisted to the expression
of the coquette, the high and mighty, scornful miss who finds no
lover to her taste--Callista was all a woman. The fires [66] of
her nature flamed to answer the kindred fire of his. The last,
teasing note of the banjo quavered into silence. Lance pulled
the ribbon over his head, laid the instrument by--without ever
taking his eyes from her face--and said, hardly above a whisper,
"Callista, honey, come down."
No retort was ready for him.
"I--oh, I can't, Lance," was all Callista could utter.
With a "Well, I'm a-comin' up there, then," he sprang into the
muscadine vine whose rope-like trunks ran up around the doorway
below her. She only caught her breath and watched in desperate
anxiety the reckless venture. And when he reached the level of
her window, when, swinging insecurely in a loop of the vine, he
stretched his arms to her, ready arms answered him and went
round his neck. A face passion pale was raised to him, and
eager, tremulous lips met his.
They drew apart an instant, then Callista--overwhelmed,
frightened at herself--with a swift movement hid her face on his
breast. He bent over her, and laid his dark cheek against hers,
that was like a pearl. His arms drew her closer, closer; the two
young hearts beat plungingly against each other. The arms that
strained Callista so hard to Lance's breast trembled, and her
slender body trembled within them. Lance's shining eyes closed. [67]
[Illustration: "A face passion-pale was raised to him and eager
tremulous lips met his."]
"Callista--honey--darlin'," he whispered brokenly, "you do love me."
"Oh, Lance--Oh, Lance!" she breathed back.
And then his lips went seeking hers once more. She lifted
them to him, and the lovers clung long so. The world swung
meaninglessly on in space. The two clasped close in each other's
arms were so newly, so intensely, blindingly, electrically
awake to themselves and to each other, that they were utterly
insensible to all else.
Finally Lance raised his head a bit. He drew a long, sobbing
breath, and laying his face once more against the girl's
murmured with tender fierceness,
"An' we ain't going to wait for no spring, neither. You'll wed
me to-morrow--well, next week, anyway"--as he felt her start and
struggle feebly.
"Oh, Lance--honey--no," she began. But he cut her short with
vehement protestations and demands. He covered her face, her
hair, her neck with kisses, and then declared again and again,
in a voice broken with feeling, that they would be wedded the
next week--they wouldn't wait--they wouldn't wait.
Shaken, amazed by her own emotions, terrified at the rush of
his, Callista began to plead with him; and when that availed
nothing, save to inflame his ardor, her cry was,
"Yes, Lance. Yes--all right--we [68] will. We will, Lance--whenever
you say. But go now, honey, won't you--please? Oh, Lance!
They'll be coming home any minute now. If they was to find you
here. Lance--Won't you go now, please, honey? Lance, darlin',
please. I'll do just like you say--next week--any time, Lance.
Only go now."
There was no sense of denying, or drawing herself back, in
Callista's utterance. It was only the pleading of maiden terror.
When Lance acquiesced, when he crushed her to him in farewell,
her arms went round him once more, almost convulsively; with an
equal ardor, her lips met the fierce, dominating kiss of his.
He got down from the window, his head whirling. Mechanically he
found his banjo, flung the ribbon over his neck and turned the
instrument around so that it hung across his shoulders. Thus,
and with his hat again tucked under his arm, without ever
looking back toward the house, he walked swiftly and unsteadily
away, once more through the young chestnut wood, with its
dapplings of shadow and moonlight. He dipped into the hollow
where the spring branch talked to itself all night long in
the silence and the darkness under the twisted laurel and
rhododendrons; once more he stood on the little tonsured hill
above the church. The lights were out; they had all gone home.
Below him was spread his world; the practised [69] eye of this free
night rover could have located every farm and cabin, as it all
lay swimming in this wonderful, bewitched half-light. Those were
his kindred and his people; but he had always been a lonely soul
among them. The outposts of levity which he had set about the
citadel of his heart had never been passed by any. Tonight, with
an upheaval like birth or death, he had broken down the barriers
and swept another soul in beside him; close--close. He would
never be alone again--never again. There would always be
Callista. In the intoxication, the ravishment of the moment, he
made no reckoning with the Callista he had heretofore known, the
Lance that had been; they should be always as now on this night
of magic. [70]