Part 3

He was a man of some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, of medium height and with a slender figure, clad somewhat negligently in a dark suit of flannel; he wore a small, soft, blue hat with an upturned brim, which left his features unshaded. They were very keenly chiselled features, not otherwise striking, but their clear cutting imparted delicacy and intimations of refined force to his pale, narrow face. He had a long, drooping brown moustache, and his hair, cut close, was of a kindred tint, but darker. His eyes were full of light and life, darkly gray, and with heavy lashes, and as they rested upon the scene, unique to his experience, for he was city bred, one might never have divined the circumstance of initiation, so ready an acceptance of it all in its best interpretations did they convey. He made apparently no effort to assume this air and mental attitude. As he looked up his glance was singularly free and unaffected.

"I'm taking it all in," he said.

Yates, his fancy titillated by a fresh interest, his blood beginning to pulse at last to the rhythm of happiness in the air, for which the old fiddle marked the time, grudged himself so much pleasure which Adelaide could not share. His heart was warm with the thought of her; a subtle pain of self-reproach thrilled through his consciousness, and presently her name was on his lips.

"My wife," he said, with unwonted communicativeness to the stranger, "she's a great hand fur sech goin's on ez this; an' sech a dancer! Ye mought ez well compare a herd o' cows ter a nimble young fawn ez compare them gals ter Adelaide."

As he roared this out with all the force of his lungs above the violin's strain and the recurrent beat of the dancing feet, his enthusiasm re-enforcing the distinctness and volume of his speech, the careless Mr. Shattuck became slightly embarrassed, and looked about from one side to the other, as if fearful that the colloquy might be overheard. But no one seemed to notice except a certain long and lank mountaineer standing hard by, grizzled and middle-aged, who bore earnest testimony to the same effect, leaning down toward Shattuck to make himself heard.

"Yes, sir; a plumb beautiful dancer; light on her feet, I tell ye! The purties' gal ennywhar round hyar. I hev knowed her sence she war no bigger'n that thar citizen over yander."

He gave a jerk of his thumb toward a year-old child on the outskirts of the crowd standing at the knee of his grandmother, who supported him in an upright posture by keeping a clutch upon his petticoats, while he bobbed up and down in time to the music, thumping first one foot and then the other upon the floor, emulating and imitating the dancers, participating in the occasion with the zest of a born worldling. His grave face, his glittering eye, his scarlet plumpness of cheek, and his evident satisfaction in his own performance combined to secure an affectionate ridicule from the by-standers; but he, and indeed all else, was unobserved by the dancers.

"Ef I hed thunk Adelaide would hev put up with sech ez you-uns, Steve, I'd hev tried myself," protested the elderly bachelor, "though I ain't much of a marryin' man in gineral."

Yates received this with less geniality. "Ye needn't hev gin yerse'f the trouble," he retorted. "Haffen the mounting tried thar luck, an' war sent away with thar finger in thar mouth."

"An' 'mongst 'em all she made ch'ice of a man ez goes a-pleasurin' whilst she be lef' ter set at home like a old 'oman," and with a nod, half reproach, half derision, he strolled away.

A mild form of pleasuring certainly, to watch the solemn capering of the young mountaineers to and fro on the shaking puncheons, the vibrations of which, communicated to the tallow dips sputtering upon every shelf and table, caused the drowsy yellow light to so fluctuate that with the confusion and the wild whirl of dancing figures the details of the scene were like some half-discriminated furnishings of a dream. Such as it was, Yates's conscience gave him a sharper pang, especially when he thought of her as he had seen her last, the quiet, pure moonlight falling fibrous and splendid through the open door upon her grieved, upturned face as she crouched on the floor beside the sleeping child, angelic in his smiling, pensive dreams. Yates felt that he had been harsh; he felt this so poignantly that he gave himself no plea of justification. All that she had said seemed now natural and devoid of intention; only his alert censoriousness could have called it in question--and he had been her choice of all the mountain.

"Adelaide ain't keerin' fur sech ez this," he said, loftily. "A nangel o' light couldn't 'tice her away from leetle Mose. She fairly dotes on all the other chil'n in the worl' jes' out'n compli_mint_ ter leetle Mose. I hed a plumb quar'l with her this evenin'," he added, turning to the archæologist with a smile, "arter I hed told her ez ye reckoned them Leetle People buried thar on the rise war nuthin' but chil'n. She jes' fired up, sir, an' 'lowed ef ye went a-foolin' round them with yer fine book l'arnin' an' diggin' up thar bones, she'd pick ye off with a rifle. Leetle Mose hev made her mighty tender to all the chil'n."

Shattuck glanced up with a good-natured laugh; he recognized only fantastic hyperbole in the threat, and Yates once more experienced a qualm of self-reproach to realize how seriously he had regarded it, how heavily he had punished the extravagant, meaningless indignation.

"The only trouble I fear is getting the consent of the owner of the land," Shattuck said, easily, and his eyes reverted to the object that had before absorbed his attention. It was not the maelstrom of "Ladies to the right." Yates, following the direction of his intent gaze, experienced a trifle of surprise that it should be nothing more striking than Letitia Pettingill, the daughter of the house, standing in the doorway silently watching the dancing.

"A scrap of a gal" she was esteemed in the mountains, being a trifle under the average height, and delicately built in proportion. The light flickering out upon the porch barely showed the dark-green background of hop-vines in the black darkness without. Her dull, light-blue cotton dress, defined against this sombre hue, was swaying slightly aslant, the wind breaking the straight folds of the skirt. Her complexion was of a clear creamy tone; the hair, curling on her brow, and massed at the nape of the neck and there tied closely, the thick, short, curling ends hanging down, was a dusky brown, not black; and her eyes, well set and with long dark lashes and distinctly arched eyebrows, were of that definite blue which always seems doubly radiant and lucent when illumined by an artificial light. Her small straight features had little expression, but her lips were finely cut and delicately red. She held up one arm against the door-frame, and bent her inscrutable eyes on the quickening whirl.

"Waal, what Fee Guthrie kin see in her or what she kin see in Fee Guthrie ter fall in love with one another beats my time," said Yates, with a grin, commenting openly upon the focus of the other's attention.

Mr. Shattuck evidently perceived something of interest in her; he did not lift his eyes, but he rejoined with freshened animation:

"Guthrie? The young 'bear with the sore head' who owns the pygmy burying-ground?"

"That very actial bear," cried Yates, delighted with this characterization of his friend and neighbor. "His old cabin thar's 'bout tumbled down; 'twar lef him by his gran'dad, an' he lives up on the mounting with his step-mam; but he owns that house too; his dad's dead. Some folks 'low," he continued, rehearsing with evident gusto the gossip, "ez he don't keep comp'ny with Litt Pettingill. He jes' sot by her wunst at camp-meetin', 'kase him an' her war all the sinners present, an' that started the tale ez he war courtin' her; everybody else war either convicted o' sin, an' at the mourner's bench, or else shoutin' saints o' the Lord, prayin' an' goin' 'mongst the mourners. I never hearn tell o' nobody keepin' comp'ny with Letishy Pettingill; I'll be bound it'll take a heap better-lookin' gal 'n her ter suit Fee Guthrie."

"I should like ter know where he'd find her," observed Shattuck.

Yates turned to bend the eye of astonished and questioning criticism upon the unconscious object of their scrutiny.

"Ye 'low ez Litt Pettingill air well-favored, stranger?" he demanded at last, in amazement.

"Very pretty and very odd. I never saw a face in the least like hers."

"Waal!" exclaimed Yates. "Litt Pettingill's beauty air news ter the mountings. Some folks 'low she hev got a cur'us kind o' mind. Some even say she air teched in the head." His tone seemed to intimate that Mr. Shattuck, in the face of this fact, had reason to reform his standard of taste.

That gentleman shook his own head in contemptuous negation. "Never in this world. Never with that face."

"Waal, ye can't size her up now," insisted Yates, "leetle ez she be"--with a grin--"whilst she be a-standin' still. Ef ye war ter see her a-movin' an' a-turnin' roun', she's ez quick an' keen-lookin' ez a knife-blade in a suddint fight, an' mighty nigh ez dangerous. She looks at ye like she _warn't_ lookin' at ye, but plumb through yer skull inter yer brains, ter make sure ye war tellin' her what ye thunk. She talks cur'ous, too, sorter onexpected an' contrariwise, an' she never _could_ git religion. That's mighty cur'ous in gal folks. I ain't so mighty partic'lar 'bout men Christians, though I'm a perfesser myself, but religion 'pears ter me ter kem sorter nat'ral ter gal folks. 'Tain't 'kase she's too religious that she ain't a-dancin'. It's jes' 'kase nobody hev asked her. She ain't no sorter favo_rite_ 'mongst the boys."

Mr. Shattuck suddenly glanced up, half laughing, half triumphant, for the little figure in blue had just been led out to the centre of the floor, and the doorway was vacant save for a large brindled cur that stood upon the threshold, wagging his tail and watching the scene with a suave, indulgent, presidial gaze, as if he were the patron of the ball. To be sure, her partner was that man of facile admiration, the candidate Rhodes, but Shattuck experienced a vicarious satisfaction that it could not be said that she had not been asked to dance at all.

He watched the couple as the set formed anew, and noticed that Rhodes, with his sedulously rustic air, was beginning in the interim some conversation, stooping from his superior height for her reply. He rose suddenly to the perpendicular, an almost startled surprise upon his face as he stared; then he clapped his hands with a jocular air of applause, and his round laugh rang out with an elastic, unforced merriment, which suggested to his friend that he was finding the ways of policy not such thorny ways after all. Shattuck wondered vaguely if this demonstration, too, were of the affectations of propitiation, or if what she had said were clever enough to elicit it, or merely funny. His eyes followed the little blue-clad figure as she began to dance--her untutored movements all in rhythm with the music, as an azalea dances in time to the wind. Now she drifted about with short, mincing, hesitant steps, now with flying feet and skirts whirling, as if responsive to the circling impetus she could in no wise resist. She looked almost a child amongst the burlier and coarser forms. With her delicate hands, and her tiny feet, and her spirited face, and the faint blue color of her dress, she bore an odd contrast to the buxom beauty of the other mountain girls, clad in variegated plaided homespun. Her blue eyes were alight and glancing; her parted lips were red; her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor as her hands fell from one partner's grasp, and she came wafting through the party-colored maze, with outstretched arms, to another.

For the fun was waxing fast and furious with the added and unique diversion known as "Dancin' Tucker." The forlorn "Tucker" himself, partnerless in the centre of the set, capered solemnly up and down, adjusting his muscles and his pride to ridicule, which was amply attested by the guffaws that ever and anon broke from the spectators. However nonchalantly each temporary "Tucker" might deport himself in his isolated position, the earnestness of his desire to escape from his unwelcome conspicuousness by securing a partner, and his sincere objection to his plight, were manifested always upon the fiddler's command, "Gen'lemen ter the right," when he might join the others on their round, dogging the steps of the youth he wished to forestall, both balancing to each lady in succession. If, by chance, the "Tucker" succeeded first in catching a damsel's hands and swinging her around at the moment that the magic command "Promenade all!" sounded on the air, he left his pillory to the slower swain, who must needs forthwith "dance Tucker."

The traits of character elicited by the "Tucker" rôle constitute its true fascinations, and are manifold. One nimble young hunter seemed almost stricken with the palsy upon his isolation, or gradually petrifying, while he sought to dance alone in the middle of the circle, so heavily did each foot follow the other as he hopped aimlessly up and down; the expression of his eyes was so ludicrously pitiable and deprecatory, as they swept the coterie of the dowagers who lined the walls, that they screamed with laughter. The instant "Promenade all!" sounded upon the air, he made a frantic burst for liberty so precipitate that at the moment of touching the hand of the damsel of his choice he suddenly lost his equilibrium, and fell with a thunderous crash quite outside of the charmed periphery. Amidst the shouts of the company Rhodes caught the relinquished hands of the waiting lady, and triumphantly gallopaded away, thus escaping the ignominy of "dancin' Tucker."

And then Rhodes bethought himself suddenly of that future seat in the legislative halls of the State. Shattuck laughed to divine his anxiety as the meditative gravity gathered upon Rhodes's flushed and distended countenance; his white teeth, all on display, suddenly disappeared. His hand doubtfully stroked his beautiful undyed beard. There was something worse even than dancing Tucker at the infair. With every sharpened sense and every heightened emotion normal to the estate of candidacy, he was appreciating with how much less philosophy, with what scanty grace, indeed, he could endure to dance Tucker before the people at the polls in the November election. As the rueful "Tucker," with every bone shaken, gathered himself up slowly from the floor amidst the screaming and stamping elders--even the dancers and the fiddler had paused to laugh--his face scarlet, his lips compressed with pain, his eyes nervously glancing, unseeing, hither and thither, like a creature's in a trap, Rhodes stepped out from his place.

"This ain't fair," he said, taking the "Tucker" by the arm; "you were ahead of me, and I'd have been left if you hadn't tripped up. _I'm_ Tucker by rights, an' I always play fair."

The "Tucker" looked at him with a doubtful, red, frowning face; but as Rhodes jocularly took his place in the centre, and the violin began a _pizzicato_ movement, as if all the strings were dancing too, with a long sigh of relief he accepted the situation, and presently joined in the laugh at the lorn candidate-Tucker.

The fact of an ulterior motive is a wonderfully reconciling influence. Leonard Rhodes was dancing his way into the ballot-box, and thus it was that he thought it consistent with his dignity to seek to be an especially comical "Tucker." But the essential humor of the character of "Tucker" is his unwillingness to be funny, and his helpless absurdity and eagerness to elude his solitary dance. Human nature is so complex that even those whose profession it is to know it can predicate little even upon its most fundamental facts. As Rhodes bounded about, now and then executing a double-shuffle and cutting a pigeon-wing of an extraordinary agility, and more than once intentionally suffering an opportunity of securing a partner to escape him, remaining "Tucker" through several rounds, Shattuck heard comments among the by-standers altogether at variance with the candidate's expectations. "That's all done a purpose!" "_He_ makes a tremenjious fool of hisself!" "He don't expect ter git married in this kentry!"

Shattuck wondered by what subtle unclassified perception, appertaining to candidate-nature, these unexpected results were at last borne in to Rhodes's consciousness, since he was unable to hear the whispers by reason of the noise of the dancing, or, in the midst of his absorbing saltatory activities, to mark any change of aspect among the spectators. His jocund face grew gradually incongruously grave and troubled as he bounded about with undiminished agility. These were muscular forces now, however, at work, sustaining his continuance--mere strength--instead of the joyous elasticity and animal spirits that had at first made him so light. When, finally, it was possible to bring his penance to a close, his politic monitions had all become confused and contradictory, and he made as blind and vehement a rush for the nearest opportunity as if he had been merely one of the young mountaineers, with no further or deeper purpose in participating in the pastime than the pleasure of dancing. His eyes seemed suddenly opened to his precipitancy as he stood successful among the couples, equipped at last with a partner, and flushed and tired and panting. A wild acclamation of jeering joy had arisen among the spectators, who during Rhodes's incumbency had grown tired and lost zest, for it was seldom, indeed, that Felix Guthrie "danced Tucker." As the young mountaineer, lowering and indignant, stood looking at Rhodes, the genuine mirth of the situation was communicated once more to the dancers, to the violin, and to the spectators, and the whole infair was throbbing with a new lease on life. The tallow candles, sputtering on tables and shelves, which had occasionally bowed almost to extinction before the passing breeze--the whole party vanishing in these momentary eclipses--seemed now endowed with freshened brilliancy; the fiddler changed the tune to a merrier; the odor of apple-jack, newly drawn from the barrel, was imbued with zestful suggestions as the jug was passed among the on-lookers; only to Leonard Rhodes did the hour seem late, and the room hot, and the violin dissonant, and the company frowsily rustic and distasteful, and himself an unlucky devil to have his fate and his best and highest aspirations and his chosen walk in life at their arbitrary will. No candidate, making the crucial test of personal experience, ever felt more doubtful of the wisdom of republican institutions than did Leonard Rhodes, realizing the fatuity of his choice for displacement, on meeting the gaze of Fee Guthrie, whom he had constituted "Tucker" for the nonce, for Guthrie's aspect gave no room for speculation as to the real sentiments with which he regarded the position.

As Felix Guthrie stood in his conspicuous place, both the strangers were impressed with the large symmetry of the scale upon which he was built, its perfect proportion, its graceful ease. His boots, reaching to the knee, were of a length and weight that might have been an effective bar to any display of agility on the part of one less accustomed to such cumbrous foot-gear. His brown jeans coat was buttoned to the chin and girded about with a leather belt, in which there were a pistol and a hunting-knife--in fact, the only preparation which he had made for the dance was the removal of his spurs and his hat. His face was deeply bronzed by the sun and the wind, somewhat too square, but otherwise so regularly cut that the features were inexpressive, save for the long brown eyes, with their lowering, suspicious, antagonistic gleam. The full, dark, straight eyebrows almost met above them. His hair, of a rich yellow color, falling in long, loose, feminine ringlets on either side of this large, surly, aggressive face, had an almost grotesque effect, so far is our civilization from the days of the lovelocks. It hung down on his collar, and curled with a grace and readiness that were the envy of more than one of his partners. He was known far and wide as an "ugly customer," in reference to his surly and belligerent traits of character, which rather overshadowed his physical endowments. Rhodes, however, had no fear of him, save for his political influence, for he was a man of some hereditary consideration, and of substance--of more than moderate means, according to the standard of the cove--and in no wise had he ever been known to be placated or to forgive an affront. It was with a heavy heart that the candidate began to dance to his doom, which he now felt was inevitable, wishing that he could have the immunity of his opponent, whose age had rendered him ineligible for mingling in the festivities of the infair. His eyes ever and anon wandered to the "Tucker," who was beginning to dance too, not vehemently, but with a wonderful softness and lightness, considering his ponderous accoutrements, his curls all in commotion, delicately waving and oscillating about his fierce, intent, unsmiling face. This was a "Tucker" of unique interest and value. The windows were full of the loiterers without; the spectators about the walls laughed breathlessly, and now and again stood up to catch an unimpeded glimpse of him amidst the dancers moving to the fiddler's mandate.