JAKE SHAMBERLAIN’S BALL.
It grew dusk. Glimmering camp-fires marked the circle of the Mormon
caravan. The wagons seemed each one, in the gloaming, a giant white
nightcap of an ogress leaning over her coals. The world looked drowsy,
and invited the pilgrims toward the Mecca of the new Thingamy to
repose. They did not seem inclined to accept. The tramping and lowing
cattle kept up a tumult like the noise of a far city. And presently
another din!
As Brent and I approached the fort, forth issued Jake Shamberlain, with
a drummer on this side and a fifer on that. “Pop goes the Weasel,” the
fifer blew. A tuneless bang resounded from the drum. If there was one
thing these rival melodists scorned, time was that one thing. They
might have been beating and blowing with the eight thousand miles
of the globe’s diameter between them, instead of Jake Shamberlain’s
person, for any consideration they showed to each other.
Jake, seeing us, backed out from between his orchestra, who continued
on, beating and blowing in measureless content.
“We’re going to give a ball, gentlemen, and request the honor of your
company in ten minutes, precisely. Kids not allowed on account of
popular prejudice. Red-flannel shirts and boots with yaller tops is
rayther the go fur dress.”
“A ball, Jake! Where?”
“Why, in that rusty hole of old Bridger’s. Some of them John Bulls has
got their fiddles along. I allowed ’t would pay to scare up a dance.
Guess them gals wont be the wus fur a break-down or an old-fashioned
hornpiper. They hain’t seen much game along back, ef their looks tells
the story. I never seed sech a down-heel lot.”
Jake ran off after his music. We heard them, still disdaining time,
march around the camp announcing the fandango.
“This helps us,” said Brent. “Our friends, of course, will not join the
riot. When the Mormons are fairly engaged, we will make our visit.”
“It is a good night for a gallop,” said I.
He nodded, but said nothing.
Presently Jake, still supported by his pair of melodists, reappeared.
A straggling procession of Saints followed him. They trooped into the
enclosure, a motley throng indeed. Even that dry husk of music, hardly
even cadence, had put some spirits into them. Noise, _per se_, is not
without virtue; it means life. Shamberlain’s guests came together,
laughing and talking. Their laughter was not liquid. But swallowing
prairie-dust does not instruct in dulcet tones. Rather wrinkled
merriment; but still better than no merriment at all.
We entered with the throng. Within was a bizarre spectacle. A strange
night-scene for a rough-handed Flemish painter of low life to portray.
The palisades of old Bridger’s Malakoff enclosed a space of a hundred
feet square. A cattle-shed, house, and trading-shop surrounded three
sides of the square. The rest was open court, paved with clod, the
native carpet of the region. Adobes, crumbling as the most strawless
bricks ever moulded by a grumbling Hebrew with an Egyptian taskmaster,
were the principal material of Bridger’s messuage. The cattle on Mr.
Mechi’s model farm would have whisked their tails and turned away in
utter contempt from these inelegant accommodations. No high-minded pig
would have consented to wallow there. The khan of Cheronæa, abhorred of
Grecian travellers, is a sweeter place. The khan of Tiberias, terror
of pilgrims, is a cleaner refuge. Bridger’s Fort was as musty and
infragrant a caravansary as any of those dirty cloisters of the Orient,
where the disillusioned howadji sinks into the arms of that misery’s
bedfellow, the King of the Fleas,--which kangaroo-legged caliph, let me
say, was himself, or in the person of a vigorous vizier, on the spot at
the Fort, entertaining us strangers according to his royal notions of
hospitality.
Into this Court of Dirt thronged the Latter-Day Saints, in raiment also
in its latter day.
“The ragamuffin brigade,” whispered I to Brent. “Jake Shamberlain’s
red-flannel shirts and yaller-topped boots would be better than this
seediness of the furbelowed nymphs and ole clo’ swains. Evidently suits
of full dress are not to be hired at a pinch on the boulevards of
Sizzumville.”
Brent made no answer, and surveyed the throng anxiously.
“They have not come,--the father and daughter,” he said. “I cannot
think of the others now.”
“Shall we go to them?”
“Not yet. Sizzum sees us and will suspect.”
We stood by regarding, too much concerned for our new friends to feel
thoroughly the humor of the scene. But it made its impression.
For lights at the Shamberlain ball, instead of the gas and wax of
civilization, a fire blazed in one corner of the court, and sundry
dips of unmitigated tallow, with their perfume undiluted, flared from
perches against the wall. Overhead, up in the still, clear sky, the
barefaced stars stared at the spectacle, and shook their cheeks over
the laughable manœuvres of terrestrials.
The mundane lights, fire and dips, flashed and glimmered; the skylights
twinkled merrily; the guests were assembled; the ball waited to begin.
Jake Shamberlain, the master of ceremonies, cleared a space in the
middle, and “called for his fiddlers three.”
A board was laid across two barrels, and upon it Jake arrayed his
orchestra, with Brother Bottery, so called, for leader. Twang went the
fiddles. “Pardners for a kerdrille!” cried Jake.
Sizzum led off the ball with one of the Blowsalinds before mentioned.
Dancing is enjoined in the Latter-Day Church. They cite Jephthah’s
daughter and David dancing by the ark as good Scriptural authority for
the custom.
“Right and left!” cried Jake Shamberlain. “Forrud the gent! The lady
forrud! Forrud the hull squad. Jerk pardners! Scrape away Bottery! Kick
out and no walkin’! Prance in gals! Lamm ahead, boys! Time, Time! All
hands round! Catch a gal and spin her! Well, that was jest as harnsome
a kerdrille as ever I seed.”
And so on with another quadrille, minuet, and quadrille again. But
the subsequent dances were not so orderly as the first. Filled with
noise and romping, they frequently ended in wild disorder. The figures
tangled themselves into a labyrinth, and the music, drowned by the
tumult, ceased to be a clew of escape. Nor could Jake’s voice, half
suffocated by the dust, be heard above the din, until, having hushed
his orchestra, he had called “Halt!” a dozen times.
In the intervals between the dances we observed Larrap distributing
whiskey to the better class of the emigrants. Sizzum did not disdain to
accept the hospitality of the stranger. Old Bridger’s liquid stores,
now Mormon property, and for sale at the price of Johannisberger,
diminished fast on this festal night.
“Shall we go?” whispered I to Brent, after a while.
“Not quite yet. Old Bottery announces that he is going to play a polka.
Fancy a polka here! That will engage Sizzum after his potations, so
that he will forget our friends.”
“Now, brethren and saints,” cried Jake, “attention for the polky! Pipe
up, Bottery!”
Evidently not the first time that this Strauss of some Manchester
casino had played the very rollicking polka he now rattled off from
his strings. How queerly ignoble those strident notes sounded in the
silence of night in the great wilderness. For loud as was the uproar
in the court, overhead were the stars, quiet and amazed, and, without,
the great, still prairie protested against the discordant tumult. Some
barbaric harmony, wild and thrilling, poured forth from strong-lunged
brass, or a strain like that of the horns in Der Freischutz, would have
chimed with the spirit of the desert. But Bottery’s mean twang suited
better the bastard civilization that had invaded this station of the
banished pioneer.
At the sound of the creaking polka, a youth, pale and unwholesome as
a tailor’s apprentice, led out a sister saint. Others followed. Some
danced teetotum fashion. Others bounced clumsily about. Around them all
stood an applauding circle. The fiddles scraped; the dust flew. Sizzum
and Larrap, two bad elements in combination, stood together, cheering
the dancers.
“Come,” said Brent, “let us get into purer air and among nobler
creatures. How little we thought,” he continued, “when we were
speaking of such scenes and people as we have just left as a possible
background, what figures would stand in the foreground!”
“I am glad to be out of that noisy rabble,” said I, as we passed from
the gate. “The stars seem to look disdainfully on them. I cannot
be entertained by that low comedy, with tragedy sitting beside our
friends’ wagon.”
“The stars,” said Brent, bitterly, “are cold and cruel as destiny.
There is heaven overhead, pretending to be calming and benignant, and
giving no help, while I am thinking in agony what can be done to save
from any touch of shame or deeper sorrow that noble daughter.”
“It is a fine night for a gallop,” I repeated.
“There they are. We must keep them out of the fort, Wade. If you love
me, detain the old man in talk for half an hour.”
“Certainly; half a century, if it will do any good.”
Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter were walking slowly toward the fort. He
appealed to us as we approached.
“I am urging my daughter to join in the amusements of the evening,”
said he. “You know, my dear, that many of our old Lancashire neighbors
still would be pleased to see you a lady patroness of their innocent
sports, and lending your countenance to their healthy hilarity. A
little gayety will do you good, I am sure. This ball may not be
elegant; but it will be cheerful, and of course conducted with great
propriety, since Brother Sizzum is present. I am afraid he will miss
us, and be offended. That must not be, Ellen dear. We must not offend
Brother Sizzum in any way whatever. We must consider that his wishes
are sovereign; for is he not the chosen apostle?”
Brent and I could both have wept to hear this crazy, senile stuff.
“Pray, father dear,” said Miss Clitheroe, “do not insist upon it. We
shall both be wearied out, if we are up late after our day’s march.”
It was clearly out of tenderness to him that she avoided the real
objections she must have to such a scene.
“It is quite too noisy and dusty for Miss Clitheroe in the fort,” said
I, and I took his arm. “Come, sir, let us walk about and have a chat in
the open air.”
I led him off, poor old gentleman, facile under my resolute control.
All he had long ago needed was a firm man friend to take him in hand
and be his despot; but the weaker he was, the less he could be subject
to his daughter. It is the feeble, unmasculine men who fight most
petulantly against the influence and power of women.
“Well, Mr. Wade,” said he, “perhaps you are right. We have only
to fancy this the terrace outside the chateau, and it is as much
according to rule to promenade here, as to stifle in the ballroom.
You are very kind, gentlemen, both, to prefer our society to the
entertainment inside. Certainly Brother Bottery’s violin is not like
one of our modern bands; but when I was your age I could dance to
anything and anywhere. I suppose young men see so much more of the
world now, that they outgrow those fancies sooner.”
So we walked on, away from the harsh sounds of the ball. Brent dropped
behind, talking earnestly with the lady. How sibylline she looked in
that dim starlight! How Cassandra-like,--as one dreams that heroic and
unflinching prophetess of ills unheeded or disdained!