All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.
"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
few who will come?"
"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
purged out of the land."
When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.
"O _ladies_ ramble in,
Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"
[Footnote 1: Coil.]
Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.
Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
of the rain.
Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"
So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
this side."
"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"
Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
new mirth and speed.
Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
positive passion."
"Come _a-left_, come a-right,
Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
O _ladies_ caper light--
Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
[Illustration: Musical Notation]