The fireflies on the Virginia hills were blinking in the dark placesbeneath the trees and a katydid was singing in the rosebush beside theportico at Arlington. The stars began to twinkle in the serene sky. Thelights of Washington flickered across the river. The Capitol buildinggleamed, argus-eyed on the hill. Congress was in session, stillwrangling over the question of Slavery and its extension into theterritories 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 departingcadets--Custis Lee, his classmate, Jeb Stuart, and little Phil Sheridanof Ohio whom they had invited in from Washington.
The fact that the whole family was going to West Point with the boys andColonel Robert E. Lee, the new Superintendent, made no difference. Oneexcuse for an old-fashioned dance in a Southern home was as good asanother. The main thing was to bring friends and neighbors, sisters andcousins and aunts together for an evening of joy.
A whippo\'will cried his weird call from a rendezvous in the shadows ofthe lawn, as Sam entered the great hall and began to light the hundredsof 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 rosewoodpieces to the adjoining rooms. They laughed at Sam\'s new-found note ofdignity and authority.
He was acting butler to-night in Uncle Ben\'s place. No servant wasallowed to work when ill--no matter how light the tasks to which he wasassigned. Sam was but twenty years old and he had been given the honorof superintending the arrangements for the dance. And, climax of all,he had been made leader of the music with the sole right to call thedances, although he played only the triangle in the orchestra. He was inhigh fettle.
When the first carriage entered the grounds his keen ear caught thecrunch of wheels on the gravel. He hurried to call the mistress andyoung misses to their places at the door. He also summoned the boys fromtheir rooms upstairs. He had seen the flash of spotless white in thecarriage. It meant beauty calling to youth on the hill. Sam knew.
Phil came downstairs with Custis. The spacious sweep of the hall, itswaxed floor clear of furniture, with hundreds of blinking candlesflashing on its polished surface, caught his imagination. It _was_ afairy 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 hismother 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 ofthe true Southern boy, breathed in genuine reverence, with an awe thatwas 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 tobrag about my mother to you. It just slipped out. I couldn\'t help it. Iwas talking to myself.""You needn\'t apologize. I know how you feel. She\'s already made me thinkI\'m one of you--"He paused and watched Mary Lee enter from the lawn leaning on Stuart\'sarm. Stuart\'s boyish banter was still ringing in her ears as she smiledat him indulgently. She hurried to her mother with an easy, gracefulstep 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 hersweethearts 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 toserve.
Phil stood with Stuart and watched Custis kiss a dozen pretty girls asthey 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 helphim, do you?""Are they all kin?""Yes--" Stuart laughed. "Some of it gets pretty thin in the second andthird cousin lines. But it\'s thick enough for him to get a kiss fromevery one--confound him!"The hall was crowding rapidly. The rustle of silk, the flash of pearlsand diamonds, the hum of soft drawling voices filled the perfumed air.
Phil\'s eyes were dazzled with the bevies of the younger set, fromsixteen to eighteen, dressed in soft tulle and organdy; slow of speech;their voices low, musical, delicious. He was introduced to so many hishead began to swim. To save his soul he couldn\'t pick out one moreentrancing than another. The moment they spied his West Point uniform hewas fair game. They made eyes at him. They languished and pretended tobe smitten at first sight. Twice he caught himself about to believe oneof them. They seemed so sincere, so dreadfully in earnest. And then hecaught the faintest twinkle in the corner of a dark eye and blushed tothink himself such a fool.
But the sensation of being lionized was delightful. He was in a whirlof foolish joy when he suddenly realized that Stuart had deserted him,slipped through the crowd and found his way to Mary Lee. He threw aquick glance at the pair and one of the four beauties hovering aroundhim 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. Hewas 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 inCongress from the day of his entrance.
Mrs. Pryor was evidently as proud of her young Congressman as he was ofher regal beauty.
Colonel Lee joined the group and led the lawmaker into the library for achat on politics.
The first notes of a violin swept the crowd. The hum of conversation andthe ripple of laughter softened into silence. The dusky orchestra is inplace on the little platform. Sam, in all his glory, rises and faces theeager youth.
He was dressed in his young master\'s last year\'s suit, immaculate bluebroadcloth and brass buttons, ruffled shirt and black-braided watchguard 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, youngvoices 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 handin a gesture of reverence and silence, as he glanced toward the librarydoor.
"Jes\' a minute la-dees, an\' gem-mens," he softly drawled. "Marse RobertE. Lee and Missis will lead dis set!"The Colonel briskly entered from the library with his wife on his arm. Aripple of applause swept the room as they took their places with the gayyoungsters.
Sam lifted his hand; the music began--sweet and low, vibrating with thesensuous touch of the negro slave whose soul was free in its joyousmelody.
At the first note of his triangle, loud above the music rang Sam\'svoice:
"Honors to yo\' pardners!"With graceful courtesies and stately bows the dance began. And over alla glad negro called the numbers:
"Forward Fours!"The caller\'s eyes rolled and his body swayed with the rhythm ofthe dance as he watched each set with growing pride. They danced aquadrille, a mazurka, another quadrille, a schottische, the lancers,another quadrille, and another and another. They paused for supper atmidnight and then danced them over again.
While the fine young forms swayed to exquisite rhythm and the musicfloated over all, the earnest young Congressman bent close to his hostin a corner of the library.
"I sincerely hope, Colonel Lee, that you can see your way clear to makea 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 receivedfrom the Abolitionists. And what makes it so difficult is that itsappeal is not to reason. It is to sentiment. To the elemental emotionsof the mob. No matter whether its picture is true or false, the resultwill be the same unless the minds who read it can be cured of itspoison. It has become a sensation. Every Northern Congressman has readit. A half million copies have been printed and the presses can\'t keepup with the demands. This book is storing powder in the souls of themasses who don\'t know how to think, because they\'ve never been trainedto think. This explosive emotion is the preparation for fanaticism. Weonly wait the coming of the fanatic--the madman who may lift a torchand hurl it into this magazine. The South is asleep. And when we don\'tsleep, we dance. There\'s no use fooling ourselves. We\'re dancing on thecrust 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 theportico to consider the annoying request. He hated controversy.
Yet he was not the type of man to run from danger. The breed of men fromwhich 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 ofvanity, but of instinctive power. It was born in him through generationsof 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 toohandsome perhaps for true greatness, but for the look of deep thought inhis 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. Helooked at the world through kindly, conservative eyes. He feared God,only. He believed in his wife, his children, his blood. And he lovedVirginia, counting it the highest honor to be--not seem to be--anold-fashioned Virginia gentleman.
He believed in democracy guided by true leaders. This reservation wasnot a compromise. It was a cardinal principle. He could conceive ofno democracy worth creating or preserving which did not produce thesuperman to lead, shape, inspire and direct its life. The man called ofGod to this work was fulfilling a divine mission. He must be of the verynecessity of his calling a nobleman.
Without vanity he lived daily in the consciousness of his own call tothis exalted ideal. It made his face, in repose, grave. His gravity camefrom the sense of duty and the consciousness of problems to be met andsolved as his fathers before him had met and solved great issues.
His conservatism had its roots in historic achievements and the chillthat crept into his heart as he thought of this book came, not from thefear of the possible clash of forces in the future, but from the dreadof changes which might mean the loss of priceless things in a nation\'slife. 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, herpatriotism, her joy of living and her passion for beauty stood forthings that are eternal.
And great changes _were_ sweeping over the Republic. He felt this to-dayas never before. The Washington on whose lights he stood gazing wasrapidly approaching the end of the era in which the Nation had evolved asoul. His people had breathed that soul into the Republic. To thishour the mob had never ruled America. Its spirit had never dominated acrisis. The nation had been shaped from its birth through the heart andbrain 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 twomonths. Daniel Webster lay on his death bed at Mansfield. And therewere none in sight to take their places. We had begun the process ofleveling. We had begun to degrade power, to scatter talent, to pull downour leaders to the level of the mob, in the name of democracy.
He faced this fact with grave misgivings. He believed that the firstrequirement of human society, if it shall live, is the discovery of menfit to command--to lead.
With the passing of Clay, Calhoun and Webster the Washington on whichhe gazed, the Washington of 1852, had ceased to be a forum of greatthought, of high thinking and simple living. It had become the scene ofluxury and extravagance. The two important establishments of the citywere Gautier\'s, the restaurateur and caterer--the French genius whoprepared the feasts for jeweled youth; and Gait, the jeweler who soldthe precious stones to adorn the visions of beauty at these banquets.
The two political parties had fallen to the lowest depths of grovelingto vote getting by nominating the smallest men ever named forPresidential honors. The Democrats had passed all their real leaders andnamed as standard-bearer an obscure little politician of New Hampshire,Mr. Franklin Pierce. His sole recommendation for the exalted office wasthat he would carry one or two doubtful Northern states and with thesolid South could thus be elected. The Whig convention in Baltimorehad cast but thirty-two votes for Daniel Webster and had nominated amilitary figurehead, General Winfield Scott.
The Nation was without a leader. And the low rumble of the crowd--thegrowl of the primal beast--could be heard in the distance withincreasing distinctness.
The watcher turned from the White City across the Potomac and slowlywalked into his rose garden. Even in September the riot of color wasbeyond description. In the splendor of the full Southern moon could beseen all shades from deep blood red to pale pink. All sizes from thetiniest four-leaf wild flowers to the gorgeous white and yellow massesthat reared their forms like waves of the surf. He breathed the perfumeand 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 hisheart. He turned back toward the house and its joys of youth.
Sam\'s sonorous voice was ringing in deliberation the grand call of theevening\'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 spacecrowded. There are thirty couples in line when the musicians pause, tunetheir instruments and with a sudden burst play "The Gray Eagle." TheVirginia Reel stirs the blood of these Southern boys and girls. Itsswift, graceful action and the inspiration of the old music seem part ofthe heart beat of the youth and beauty that sway to its cadences.
The master of Arlington smiled at the memory of the young Congressman\'seloquence. Surely it was only a flight of rhetoric.