Читать книгу The Man in Gray - Jr. Thomas Dixon - Страница 3

The fireflies on the Virginia hills were blinking in the dark places beneath the trees and a katydid was singing in the rosebush beside the portico at Arlington. The stars began to twinkle in the serene sky. The lights of Washington flickered across the river. The Capitol building gleamed, argus-eyed on the hill. Congress was in session, still wrangling over the question of Slavery and its extension into the territories of the West.

The laughter of youth and beauty sifted down from open windows. Preparations were being hurried for the ball in honor of the departing cadets—Custis Lee, his classmate, Jeb Stuart, and little Phil Sheridan of Ohio whom they had invited in from Washington.

The fact that the whole family was going to West Point with the boys and Colonel Robert E. Lee, the new Superintendent, made no difference. One excuse for an old-fashioned dance in a Southern home was as good as another. The main thing was to bring friends and neighbors, sisters and cousins and aunts together for an evening of joy.

A whippo'will cried his weird call from a rendezvous in the shadows of the lawn, as Sam entered the great hall and began to light the hundreds of wax tapers in the chandeliers.

"Move dat furniture back now!" he cried to his assistants. "And mind yo' p's and q's. Doan yer break nuttin."

His sable helpers quietly removed the slender mahogany and rosewood pieces to the adjoining rooms. They laughed at Sam's new-found note of dignity and authority.

He was acting butler to-night in Uncle Ben's place. No servant was allowed to work when ill—no matter how light the tasks to which he was assigned. Sam was but twenty years old and he had been given the honor of superintending the arrangements for the dance. And, climax of all, he had been made leader of the music with the sole right to call the dances, although he played only the triangle in the orchestra. He was in high fettle.

When the first carriage entered the grounds his keen ear caught the crunch of wheels on the gravel. He hurried to call the mistress and young misses to their places at the door. He also summoned the boys from their rooms upstairs. He had seen the flash of spotless white in the carriage. It meant beauty calling to youth on the hill. Sam knew.

Phil came downstairs with Custis. The spacious sweep of the hall, its waxed floor clear of furniture, with hundreds of blinking candles flashing on its polished surface, caught his imagination. It was a fairy world—this generous Southern home. In spite of its wide spaces, and its dignity, it was friendly. It caught his boy's heart.

Mrs. Lee was just entering. Custis' eyes danced at the sight of his mother in full dress. He grasped Phil's arm and whispered:

"Isn't my mother the most beautiful woman you ever saw?"

He spoke the words half to himself. It was the instinctive worship of the true Southern boy, breathed in genuine reverence, with an awe that was the expression of a religion.

"I was just thinking the same thing, Custis," was the sober reply.

"I beg your pardon, Phil," he hastened to apologize. "I didn't mean to brag about my mother to you. It just slipped out. I couldn't help it. I was talking to myself."

"You needn't apologize. I know how you feel. She's already made me think

I'm one of you—"

He paused and watched Mary Lee enter from the lawn leaning on Stuart's arm. Stuart's boyish banter was still ringing in her ears as she smiled at him indulgently. She hurried to her mother with an easy, graceful step and took her place beside her. She was fine, exquisite, bewitching. She had never come out in Society. She had been born in it. She had her sweethearts before thirteen and not one had left a shadow on her quiet, beautiful face. She demanded, by her right of birth as a Southern girl, years of devotion. And the Southern boy of the old regime was willing to serve.

Phil stood with Stuart and watched Custis kiss a dozen pretty girls as they arrived and call each one cousin.

"Is it a joke?" he asked Stuart curiously.

"What?"

"This cousin business."

"Not much. You don't think I'd let him be such a pig if I could help him, do you?"

"Are they all kin?"

"Yes—" Stuart laughed. "Some of it gets pretty thin in the second and third cousin lines. But it's thick enough for him to get a kiss from every one—confound him!"

The hall was crowding rapidly. The rustle of silk, the flash of pearls and diamonds, the hum of soft drawling voices filled the perfumed air.

Phil's eyes were dazzled with the bevies of the younger set, from sixteen to eighteen, dressed in soft tulle and organdy; slow of speech; their voices low, musical, delicious. He was introduced to so many his head began to swim. To save his soul he couldn't pick out one more entrancing than another. The moment they spied his West Point uniform he was fair game. They made eyes at him. They languished and pretended to be smitten at first sight. Twice he caught himself about to believe one of them. They seemed so sincere, so dreadfully in earnest. And then he caught the faintest twinkle in the corner of a dark eye and blushed to think himself such a fool.

But the sensation of being lionized was delightful. He was in a whirl of foolish joy when he suddenly realized that Stuart had deserted him, slipped through the crowd and found his way to Mary Lee. He threw a quick glance at the pair and one of the four beauties hovering around him began to whisper:

"Jeb Stuart's just crazy about Mary—"

"Did you ever see anything like it!"

"He couldn't stop even to say how-d'y-do."

"And she's utterly indifferent—"

Sam's voice suddenly rang out with unusual unction and deliberation. He was imitating Uncle Ben's most eloquent methods.

"Congress-man and Mrs. Rog-er A. Pry-or!"

Mrs. Lee hastened to greet the young editor who had taken high rank in

Congress from the day of his entrance.

Mrs. Pryor was evidently as proud of her young Congressman as he was of her regal beauty.

Colonel Lee joined the group and led the lawmaker into the library for a chat on politics.

The first notes of a violin swept the crowd. The hum of conversation and the ripple of laughter softened into silence. The dusky orchestra is in place on the little platform. Sam, in all his glory, rises and faces the eager youth.

He was dressed in his young master's last year's suit, immaculate blue broadcloth and brass buttons, ruffled shirt and black-braided watch guard hanging from his neck. His eyes sparkled with pride and his rich, sonorous voice rang over the crowd like the deep notes of a flute:

"Choose yo' pardners fur de fust cowtillun!"

Again the quick rustle of silk and tulle, the low hum of excited, young voices and the couples are in place.

A boy cries to the leader:

"We're all ready, Sam."

The young caller of the set knew his business better. He lifted his hand in a gesture of reverence and silence, as he glanced toward the library door.

"Jes' a minute la-dees, an' gem-mens," he softly drawled. "Marse Robert

E. Lee and Missis will lead dis set!"

The Colonel briskly entered from the library with his wife on his arm. A ripple of applause swept the room as they took their places with the gay youngsters.

Sam lifted his hand; the music began—sweet and low, vibrating with the sensuous touch of the negro slave whose soul was free in its joyous melody.

At the first note of his triangle, loud above the music rang Sam's voice:

"Honors to yo' pardners!"

With graceful courtesies and stately bows the dance began. And over all a glad negro called the numbers:

"Forward Fours!"

The caller's eyes rolled and his body swayed with the rhythm of the dance as he watched each set with growing pride. They danced a quadrille, a mazurka, another quadrille, a schottische, the lancers, another quadrille, and another and another. They paused for supper at midnight and then danced them over again.

While the fine young forms swayed to exquisite rhythm and the music floated over all, the earnest young Congressman bent close to his host in a corner of the library.

"I sincerely hope, Colonel Lee, that you can see your way clear to make a reply to this book of Mrs. Stowe which Ruffin has sent you."

"I can't see it yet, Mr. Pryor—"

"Ruffin is a terrible old fire-eater, I know," the Congressman admitted. "But Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most serious blow the South has received from the Abolitionists. And what makes it so difficult is that its appeal is not to reason. It is to sentiment. To the elemental emotions of the mob. No matter whether its picture is true or false, the result will be the same unless the minds who read it can be cured of its poison. It has become a sensation. Every Northern Congressman has read it. A half million copies have been printed and the presses can't keep up with the demands. This book is storing powder in the souls of the masses who don't know how to think, because they've never been trained to think. This explosive emotion is the preparation for fanaticism. We only wait the coming of the fanatic—the madman who may lift a torch and hurl it into this magazine. The South is asleep. And when we don't sleep, we dance. There's no use fooling ourselves. We're dancing on the crust of a volcano."

Pryor rose.

"I've a number with Mrs. Pryor. I wish you'd think it over, Colonel.

This message is my big reason for missing a night session to be here."

Lee nodded and strolled out on the lawn before the white pillars of the portico to consider the annoying request. He hated controversy.

Yet he was not the type of man to run from danger. The breed of men from which he sprang had always faced the enemy when the challenge came. In the carriage of his body there was a quiet pride—a feeling not of vanity, but of instinctive power. It was born in him through generations of men who had done the creative thinking of a nation in the building. His face might have been described as a little too regular—a little too handsome perhaps for true greatness, but for the look of deep thought in his piercing eyes. And the finely chiseled lines of character, positive, clean-cut, vigorous. He had backbone.

And yet he was not a bitter partisan. He used his brain. He reasoned. He looked at the world through kindly, conservative eyes. He feared God, only. He believed in his wife, his children, his blood. And he loved Virginia, counting it the highest honor to be—not seem to be—an old-fashioned Virginia gentleman.

He believed in democracy guided by true leaders. This reservation was not a compromise. It was a cardinal principle. He could conceive of no democracy worth creating or preserving which did not produce the superman to lead, shape, inspire and direct its life. The man called of God to this work was fulfilling a divine mission. He must be of the very necessity of his calling a nobleman.

Without vanity he lived daily in the consciousness of his own call to this exalted ideal. It made his face, in repose, grave. His gravity came from the sense of duty and the consciousness of problems to be met and solved as his fathers before him had met and solved great issues.

His conservatism had its roots in historic achievements and the chill that crept into his heart as he thought of this book came, not from the fear of the possible clash of forces in the future, but from the dread of changes which might mean the loss of priceless things in a nation's life. He believed in every fiber of his being that, in spite of slavery, the old South in her ideals, her love of home, her worship of God, her patriotism, her joy of living and her passion for beauty stood for things that are eternal.

And great changes were sweeping over the Republic. He felt this to-day as never before. The Washington on whose lights he stood gazing was rapidly approaching the end of the era in which the Nation had evolved a soul. His people had breathed that soul into the Republic. To this hour the mob had never ruled America. Its spirit had never dominated a crisis. The nation had been shaped from its birth through the heart and brain of its leaders.

But he recalled with a pang that the race of Supermen was passing. Calhoun had died two years ago. Henry Clay had died within the past two months. Daniel Webster lay on his death bed at Mansfield. And there were none in sight to take their places. We had begun the process of leveling. We had begun to degrade power, to scatter talent, to pull down our leaders to the level of the mob, in the name of democracy.

He faced this fact with grave misgivings. He believed that the first requirement of human society, if it shall live, is the discovery of men fit to command—to lead.

With the passing of Clay, Calhoun and Webster the Washington on which he gazed, the Washington of 1852, had ceased to be a forum of great thought, of high thinking and simple living. It had become the scene of luxury and extravagance. The two important establishments of the city were Gautier's, the restaurateur and caterer—the French genius who prepared the feasts for jeweled youth; and Gait, the jeweler who sold the precious stones to adorn the visions of beauty at these banquets.

The two political parties had fallen to the lowest depths of groveling to vote getting by nominating the smallest men ever named for Presidential honors. The Democrats had passed all their real leaders and named as standard-bearer an obscure little politician of New Hampshire, Mr. Franklin Pierce. His sole recommendation for the exalted office was that he would carry one or two doubtful Northern states and with the solid South could thus be elected. The Whig convention in Baltimore had cast but thirty-two votes for Daniel Webster and had nominated a military figurehead, General Winfield Scott.

The Nation was without a leader. And the low rumble of the crowd—the growl of the primal beast—could be heard in the distance with increasing distinctness.

The watcher turned from the White City across the Potomac and slowly walked into his rose garden. Even in September the riot of color was beyond description. In the splendor of the full Southern moon could be seen all shades from deep blood red to pale pink. All sizes from the tiniest four-leaf wild flowers to the gorgeous white and yellow masses that reared their forms like waves of the surf. He breathed the perfume and smiled again. A mocking bird, dropping from the bough of a holly, was singing the glory of a second blooming.

The scene of entrancing beauty drove the thought of strife from his heart. He turned back toward the house and its joys of youth.

Sam's sonorous voice was ringing in deliberation the grand call of the evening's festivities:

"Choose-yo-pardners-fer-de-ol-Virginy-Reel!"

And then the stir, the rush, the commotion for place in the final dance. The reel reaches the whole length of the hall with every foot of space crowded. There are thirty couples in line when the musicians pause, tune their instruments and with a sudden burst play "The Gray Eagle." The Virginia Reel stirs the blood of these Southern boys and girls. Its swift, graceful action and the inspiration of the old music seem part of the heart beat of the youth and beauty that sway to its cadences.

The master of Arlington smiled at the memory of the young Congressman's eloquence. Surely it was only a flight of rhetoric.