"TAR-A-TA!" OF THE TRUMPET
Fluke played, with the dense black hair tossing above his handsome
eyes, but Gurdon with a calm brow, though he too loved the music and
dancing.
"Go and have a turn with Vesty yourself," said Fluke; "we'll keep up
fiddling, change about, with the organ."
For Notely, studying every heart-throb of the Basins, had had a little
parlor organ brought in for the night and put up in place of his piano;
at it sat Mrs. Judah Kobbe, cousin and guest of the Pharo Kobbes,
playing with such lively spirit and abandon that the very lamps danced
upon the organ-brackets in untripping time with the feet of the dancers
on the floor.
I had already detected in the tone of society toward Mr. and Mrs. Judah
Kobbe that they were awesome cosmopolites from some source. I now
learned that they were from a crowded mart called Machias. Captain
Pharo also told me mysteriously, in the pauses of his pipe, "'t they
was l'arneder 'n any fish 't swims;" so I gazed at them with wonder
from a distance, but did not much dream that it would be for me to
speak with them.
All along the edges of the floor were strewn children and babies,
comfortably wrapped and laid to sleep; the habit of the Basins, who had
no servants at home wherewith to leave them.
Notely Garrison had led the dance with Vesty; now she sat rocking her
baby, near Gurdon, who turned to them with a smile and swept a softer
strain now and then, as when he played them to sleep at home.
"Introduce me to the 'mezzo-tint' study yonder, the mediaeval picture
over there, rocking her infant, back of the fiddlers."
Notely slightly turned from his fellow-reveller, flushing.
"There are pretty girls enough here for you to dance with, Sid; she
would not like it. They are such simple people they would not
understand. She is married, you see."
"You danced with her."
"Oh, I am an old friend."
"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!" went Captain Judah's trumpet, and I looked up to
see what new event its blast denoted. For, Captain Judah was a stage
driver, and having brought his horn along as a signal compliment to the
occasion, he was now conducting the first stages of the ball with those
loud flourishes and elegant social convenances which only those
sophisticated by extreme culture are supposed to understand.
"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"
I saw that Vesty and Gurdon had risen to dance together. Vesty wrapped
and laid her sleeping baby among the others, and Gurdon stepped out to
perform first that solitary jig or shuffle which is demanded of every
householder among the Basins, before he can lead his partner to the
dance.
Notely and the young man he had called "Sid" watched him shaking his
long legs, his heavy, noble face perfectly sincere and unembarrassed;
for was it not the ancient, honorable custom of the Basins?
"Stolid cart-horse, by Jove!" sneered Sid, casting a glowing glance at
Vesty, "for such a Venus!"
Notely did not like the tone. "There 's some stolid granite in my
quarry," he snarled softly; "but it 's everlasting good granite, all
the same, Sid."
"You've been knocked over, I see," said the irrepressible Sid, smiling
intelligently at him. "Well, I'm off for the jig."
"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"
The trumpet punctually announced the appearance of so much colorless
linen and broadcloth on the floor; but the Basins, who were fine, gazed
at his severe costume with tender pity.
"Sid," appreciating this, dared not laugh: he endeavored to redeem this
lack of beauty by a display of his white bediamonded hand on his
watch-guard, as he entreated a partner for the dance, but he was not
held for much; that was evident.
Now and then in the reel he touched Vesty's hand, or swung with her,
and he stared at her consistently and immoderately throughout; but
always for him the holy lids were low over her eyes.
My heart exulted something like the next blast of the trumpet; I turned
to look. Vesty was safe.
"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"
But Captain Pharo needed no stirring strain to his consciousness as he
walked, with scarcely perceptible limp, to the middle of the floor.
That flowered jacket, the arnica bloom glowing like sunrise on the
back! Those new trousers, of "middling" sacks, "Brand No. 1" proudly
distinct upon the right leg!
"Give me sea-room here, give me sea-room," said the hero; "and jest
wait till I git my spavins warmed up a little!"
A wide, clear swath was cut from the billows that surrounded Captain
Pharo.
"Now then," said he, pulling his pipe from his pocket, and drawing a
match in the usual informal way; "Poo! poo! hohum!--
[Illustration: Music fragment: "'My days are as the grass, Or as--']
strike up somethin' lively over there, Gurd. Give us 'The Wracker's
Darter,' by clam!"
Gurdon, who had returned to relieve Fluke at the violin, good-naturedly
struck up "The Wrecker's Daughter."
"Can't ye put a little sperrit into 'er, Gurd? Is this 'ere a fun'al?
That 's it! Now then--'Touch and go is a good pilot.'"
With these words, Captain Pharo sprang with ox-like levity from the
floor, and amid the giddy swiftness of the music I was occasionally
conscious of hearing his mailed heels flow together with a clash that
made the rafters ring. He descended at last ominously, but when the
reverberations died away I looked, and saw that he was whole.
Notely came over and shook hands with him, laid an arm proudly on his
proud shoulder, and led him away to the "mess" room, where his stewards
were busy.
"Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" cried a voice from the fondest of the
Artichokes, seizing him with an exultant pride which he affected to
hide under derogatory language; "was that you I seen in there jest now,
stompin' the frescoes off'n the ceilin'?"
"Altogether most entertaining jig that has been danced this evening,"
said one of Notely's broadcloth guests, very superciliously.
"Oh, I hain't danced none yit," said Captain Pharo, too confident to
show contempt; "only warmin' my spavins;" and he heartlessly turned the
complete flower in view for the further annihilation of the gentleman
in black.
"Ef I c'd 'a' got on my scuffs," said Captain Leezur, his sun-visage
showing against the crimson back of an easy-chair, "I don't know but
what I sh'd been 'most tempted ter jine the darnce myself. But no; I
couldn't pervail with 'em--so long sence I've wrarstled with 'em--so I
come right 'long in my felts."
"No, ye can't dance 'The Wracker's Darter,' that is, not as she orter
be danced, in felts," said Captain Pharo; "she 's a tune 't wants the
emphasis brought right down onto her; felts won't do it, nor scuffs
neither."
"That off foot o' mine kind o' b'longs to the church, anyway," said
Captain Leezur sweetly; "has for years; don't pain me much as I knows
on, but she ain't seound: if t'other one starts off kind o' skittish
she 's sartin to hold back----"
"Ye'd orter be thankful 't ye only has to contend with natch'al
diserbilities," interposed Captain Pharo, "'n' don't have any o' these
d--d ructions played on ye."
"Oh, by the way, what are 'ructions'?" inquired the guest of
supercilious temperament.
"Le' me see," said Captain Pharo; "you're the one 't Note said was from
Washin'ton, ain't ye? Washin'ton, D.C.?"
"Certainly."
"P'litical centre o' the United States of Ameriky?"
"Why, yes."
"An' you don't know what ructions be!"
Loud laughter greeted this sally; only the man who had been in
California sat moody, his basilisk eye fixed upon me.
"Then I'll tell ye what ructions be," proceeded Captain Pharo,
breathing stertorously through his pipe; "it's repealin' all our
optional acts, for one thing! We can't institoot an optional act down
here, but what you go an' repeal it!"
"Oh, stuff!" said the high and hot-headed young man, quite taken off
his level by the laughter round him; "I don't either!"
"I say ye do!" said Captain Pharo, waxing more and more wroth; "ye sets
some feller t' work there, 't never see salt water, t' make our laws
for us; 'lows us to ketch all the spawn lobsters and puts injunctions
onter the little ones: like takin' people when they gits to be sixteen
or twenty year old, 'n' choppin' their heads off--yer race is goin' to
multiply almighty fast, ain't it?"
"I hadn't observed any lack of increase in your amiable race, sir."
"Ye hadn't, hadn't yer?" said Captain Pharo, in the voice of a
smouldering volcano, laying a fresh match to his pipe.
"Moderation," liquidly pealed in the voice of Captain
Leezur--"moderation 's the rewl----"
"'N' I'll tell ye of another optional act o' ourn 't ye repeals; but ye
can tell 'em 't we git it jest the same--though it 's racktified 'tell
it 's p'ison."
"Ye can't all'as git it, even racktified," said Shamgar: "onct when the
boat wa'n't in for a couple o' weeks, I got kind o' desp'rit over a
pain in my chist; hadn't nothin' but two bottles o' 'Lightnin' External
Rheumatiz Cure,' so I took 'em straight. They said 't for a spell
thar' I was the howlin'est case o' drunk they ever see."
"The wu'st case o' 'nebr'ancy this State 's ever known," said Captain
Dan Kirtland, "was a man up to Callis jail, 't had been 'bleedged to
take a spree on 'lemon extract;' he sot fire t' everything he could lay
his hand to."
"Look a' that, will ye?" said Captain Pharo to the haughty
Washingtonian; "yit you don't know nothin' 'bout ructions. You can
repeal every optional act 't a man makes, but you ain't got no idee o'
ructions----"
Captain Pharo's voice had now reached such a pathetic and eloquent
pitch that Captain Judah left his trumpet in the ball-room and joined
us, in time to mingle with the cheers that were still further
discomfiting the high and hot-headed young man.
"What you talkin' about?" retorted the latter through his dazzling
white teeth. "I'm not in politics."
"Why didn't ye say so, then?" said Captain Pharo calmly, "and not keep
me standin' here wastin' my breath on ye?"
"Moderation," sweetly chimed in the voice of Captain
Leezur--"moderation in all things, even as low down as passnips."
The man who had been in California had been constantly drawing near me,
but Captain Judah, anticipating him, was already at my side.
"You're a stranger," said he: "perhaps you never heard any of Angie
Fay--Angie Fay Kobbe's poetry?"
He had a rosy face: in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but
delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could
only define as classical; and it was admitted that his nosegay vest and
blue coat, as far as tender refinement went, far surpassed anything in
the room.
"That's Angie Fay Kobbe, my wife, at the organ. Ten years ago, when I
was still cruising, I found and rescued her from a southern cyclone!"
I murmured astonishment, though in truth something of a cyclonic
atmosphere still hovered about Mrs. Kobbe, not only in her method of
performance on the organ, but in her sparkling features, young and
beautiful, her wide-flowing curled hair.
"How old does she seem to you to be, sir?"
"She looks to me," I said, with honesty, "to be eighteen or
twenty--twenty-five at the most."
"Sir, she is forty!" said Captain Judah proudly. Angie Fay shot him a
bewitching glance through the open door.
"She is not only a skilled performer on the keys, as you see, but she
is a wide-idead thinker. If it would not detain you, sir, against
previous inclination to the ball-room, I should like to read you some
of her poetry."
Glances too oppressed by awe to contain envy were cast upon me by my
former companions from afar; even the man who had been in California
was retreating in baffled dismay.
"This first," said Captain Judah, drawing a roll from his pocket,
"though brief, has been called by many wide-idead thinkers a 'rounded
globe of pathos:' men, strong men, have wept over it. It has had a
yard built around it; in other words, it has been framed, and hung in
many a bereaved household; let me read:
"'Farewell, my husband dear, farewell!
Adieu! farewell to you.
And you, my children dear, adieu!
Farewell! farewell to thee!
Adieu! farewell! adieu!'
"Were you looking for your handkerchief, sir?"
"Yes," said I, accidentally swallowing whole a nervine lozenge which
Captain Leezur had given me.
"This," said Captain Judah, with an expressive smile, as he opened
another roll, "if you will excuse the egotism, refers to an experience
of my own. I was once, when master of a whaler, nearly killed in a
conflict with a whale; in fact, I am accustomed to speak of it
paradoxically--or shall I say hyperbolically--as 'The time when I was
killed!' My account of it made a great impression upon Angie; but I
will read:
"'Upon the deep and foaming brine,
My Judah's blood was spilled.
The anguished tears gush from my eyes.
O Judah, wast thou killed?
"'Had I beheld that awful scene,
I should have turned me pale,
My eyes were mercifully hence,
When Judah killed the whale.'
"It was I, so to speak, that was killed," said Captain Judah, with his
peculiar smile; "the whale escaped. But for the sake of symphony,
Angie has used that poetic license, familiar, as you know, to
wide-idead thinkers. Or let me read you this----"
Dimmer and dimmer grew the faces of my former jovial company; but I had
one friend, stout, even for this emergency.