Sowing Seeds in Danny Part 20

Soon the company began to arrive. Bashful, self-conscious girls, some of them were, old before their time with the marks of toil, heavy and unremitting, upon them, hard-handed, stoop-shouldered, dull-eyed and awkward. These were the daughters of rich farmers. Good girls they were, too, conscientious, careful, unselfish, thinking it a virtue to stifle every ambition, smother every craving for pleasure.

When they felt tired, they called it laziness and felt disgraced, and thus they had spent their days, working, working from the gray dawn, until the darkness came again, and all for what? When in after years these girls, broken in health and in spirits, slipped away to premature graves, or, worse still, settled into chronic invalidism, of what avail was the memory of the cows they milked, the mats they hooked, the number of pounds of b.u.t.ter they made.

Not all the girls were like these. Maud Murray was there. Maud Murray with the milkmaid cheeks and curly black hair, the typical country girl of bounding life aid spirits, the type so often seen upon the stage and so seldom elsewhere.

Mrs. Motherwell had warned Tom against Maud Murray as well as Nellie Slater. She had once seen Maud churning, and she had had a newspaper pinned to the wall in front of her, and was reading it as she worked, and Mrs. Motherwell knew that a girl who would do that would come to no good.

Martha Perkins was the one girl of whom Mrs. Motherwell approved.

Martha's record on b.u.t.ter and quilts and mats stood high. Martha was a nice quiet girl. Mrs. Motherwell often said a "nice, quiet, unappearing girl." Martha certainly was quiet. Her conversational attainments did not run high. "Things is what they are, and what's the good of saying anything," Martha had once said in defence of her silent ways.

She was small and sallow-skinned and was dressed in an anaemic gray; her thin hay-coloured hair was combed straight back from a rather fine forehead. She stooped a little when she walked, and even when not employed her hands picked nervously at each other. Martha's shyness, the "unappearing" quality, was another of her virtues in the eyes of Tom's mother. Martha rarely left home even to go to Millford. Martha did not go to the Agricultural Fair when her mats and quilts and b.u.t.ter and darning and b.u.t.tonholes on cotton got their red tickets. Martha stayed at home and dug potatoes--a nice, quiet, unappearing girl.

When they played games at the Slaters that evening, Martha would not play. She never cared for games she said, they tired a person so. She would just watch the others, and she wished again that she had her knitting.

Then the kitchen floor was cleared; table, chairs and lounge were set outside to make room for the dancing, and when the violins rang out with the "Arkansaw Traveller," and big John Kennedy in his official voice of caller-off announced, "Select your partners," every person felt that the real business of the evening had begun.

Tom had learned to dance, though his parents would have been surprised had they known it. Out in the granary on rainy days hired men had obligingly instructed him in the mysteries of the two-step and waltz.

He sat in a corner and watched the first dance. When Jim Russell came into the hall, after receiving a warm welcome from Mr. and Mrs. Slater, who stood at the door, he was conscious of a sudden thrill of pleasure.

It was the vision of Camilla, at the farther end of the dining-room, as she helped the Slater girls to receive their guests. Camilla wore a red dress that brought out the blue-black of her eyes, and it seemed to Jim as he watched her graceful movements that he had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was piloting a bevy of bashful girls to the stairway, and as she pa.s.sed him she gave him a little nod and smile that set his heart dancing.

He heard the caller-off calling for partners for a quadrille. The fiddlers had already tuned their instruments. From where he stood he could see the figures forming, but Jim watched the stairway. At last she came, with a company of other girls, none of whom he saw, and he asked her for the first dance. Jim was not a conceited young man, but he felt that she would not refuse him. Nor did she.

Camilla danced well and so did Jim, and many an eye followed them as they wound in and out through the other dancers. When the dance was over he led her to a seat and sat beside her. They had much to talk of.

Camilla was anxious to hear of Pearl, and it seemed all at once that they had become very good friends indeed.

The second dance was a waltz. Tom did not know that it was the music that stirred his soul with a sudden tenderness, a longing indefinite, that was full of pain and yet was all sweetness. Martha who sat near him looked at him half expectantly. But her little gray face and twitching hands repelled him. On the other side of the room, Nellie Slater, flushed and smiling was tapping her foot to the music.

He found himself on his feet. "Who cares for mats?" he muttered. He was beside Nellie in an instant.

"Nellie, will you dance with me?" he faltered, wondering at his own temerity.

"I will, Tom, with pleasure," she said, smiling.

His arm was around her now and they were off, one, two, three; one, two, three; yes, he had the step. "Over the foam we glide," in and out through the other dancers, the violins weaving that story of love never ending. "What though the world be wide"--Nellie's head was just below his face--"Love's golden star will guide." Nellie's hand was in his as they floated on the rainbow-sea. "Drifting along, glad is our song"--her hair blew against his cheek as they swept past the open door. What did he care what his mother would say. He was Egbert now.

Edythe was in his arms. "While we are side by side" the violins sang, glad, triumphant, that old story that runs like a thread of gold through all life's patterns; that old song, old yet ever new, deathless, unchangeable, which maketh the poor man rich and without which the richest becomes poor!

When the music stopped, Tom awoke from his idolatrous dream. He brought Nellie to a seat and sat awkwardly beside her. His old self-complacency had left him. Nellie was talking to him, but he did not hear what she said. He was not looking at her, but at himself. Before he knew it she had left him and was dancing with Jim Russell. Tom looked after them, miserable. She was looking into Jim's face, smiling and talking. What the mischief were they saying? He tried to tell himself that he could buy and sell Jim Russell; Jim had not anything in the world but a quarter of scrub land. They pa.s.sed him again, still smiling and talking. "Nellie Slater is making herself mighty cheap," he thought angrily. Then the thought came home to him with sudden bitterness--how handsome Jim was, so straight and tall, so well-dressed, so clever, and, bitterest of all, how different from him.

When Jim and Camilla were sitting out the second dance he told her about Arthur, the Englishman, who sat in a corner, shy and uncomfortable. Camilla became interested at once, and when he brought Arthur over and introduced him, Camilla's friendly smile set him at his ease. Then Jim generously vacated his seat and went to find Nellie Slater.

"Select your partners for a square dance!" big John, the caller-off announced, when the floor was cleared. This was the dance that Mr. and Mrs. Slater would have to dance. It was in vain that Mrs. Slater whispered that she had not danced for years, that she was a Methodist bred and born. That did not matter. Her son Peter declared that his mother could dance beautifully, jigs and hornpipes and things like that. He had often seen her at it when she was down in the milkhouse alone.

Mrs. Slater whispered dreadful threats; but her son Peter insisted, and when big John's voice rang out "Honors all," "Corners the same," Mrs.

Slater yielded to the tide of public opinion.

Puffing and blowing she got through the "First four right and left,"

"Right and left back and ladies' chain"; but when it came to "Right hand to partner" and "Grand right and left," it was good-bye to mother!

Peter dashed into the set to put his mother right, but mother was always pointing the wrong way. "Swing the feller that stole the sheep,"

big John sang to the music; "Dance to the one that drawed it home,"

"Whoop 'er up there, you Bud," "Salute the one that et the beef" and "Swing the dog, that gnawed the bone." "First couple lead to the right," and mother and father went forward again and "Balance all!"

Tonald McKenzie was opposite mother; Tonald McKenzie did steps--Highland fling steps they were. Tonald was a Crofter from the hills, and had a secret still of his own which made him a sort of uncrowned king among the Crofters. It was a tight race for popularity between mother and Tonald in that set, and when the two stars met face to face in the "Balance all!" Tonald surpa.s.sed all former efforts. He cracked his heels together, he snapped his fingers; he threaded the needle; he wrung the dishcloth--oh you should have seen Tonald!

Then big John clapped his hands together, and the first figure was over.

In the second figure for which the violins played "My Love Is but a La.s.sie Yet," Mrs. Slater's memory began to revive, and the dust of twenty years fell from her dancing experience. She went down the centre and back again, right and left on the side, ladies' chain on the head, right hand to partner and grand right and left, as neat as you please, and best of all, when all the ladies circled to the left, and all the gentlemen circled to the right, no one was quicker to see what was the upshot of it all; and before big John told them to "Form the basket,"

mother whispered to father that she knew what was coming, and father told mother she was a wonderful woman for a Methodist. "Turn the basket inside out," "Circle to the left--to the centre and back, circle to the right," "Swing the girl with the hole in her sock," "Promenade once and a half around on the head, once and a half around on the side," "Turn 'em around to place again and balance all!" "Clap! Clap! Clap!"

Mother wanted to quit then, but dear me no! no one would let her, they would dance the "Break-down" now, and leave out the third figure, and as a special inducement, they would dance "Dan Tucker." She would stay for "Dan Tucker." Peter came in for "Tucker," an extra man being necessary, and then off they went into

Clear the way for old Dan Tucker, He's too late to come to supper.

Two by two they circled around, Peter in the centre singing--

Old Dan Tucker Was a fine old man--

Then back to the right--

He washed his face In the frying-pan.

Then around in a circle hand in hand--

He combed his hair On a wagon-wheel, And died with the tooth-ache In his heel!

As they let go of their partners' hands and went right and left, Peter made his grand dash into the circle, and when the turn of the tune came he was swinging his mother, his father had Tonald's partner, and Tonald was in the centre in the t.i.tle roll of Tucker, executing some of the most intricate steps that had ever been seen outside of the Isle of Skye.

Then the tune changed into the skirling bag-pipe lilt all Highlanders love--and which we who know not the Gaelic profanely call "Weel may the keel row"--and Tonald got down to his finest work.

He was in the byre now at home beyond the sea, and it is not strange faces he will be seein', but the lads and la.s.sies of the Glen, and it is John McNeash who holds the drone under his arm and the chanter in his hands, and the salty tang of the sea comes up to him and the peat-smoke is in his nostrils, and the pipes skirl higher and higher as Tonald McKenzie dances the dance of his forbears in a strange land.

They had seen Tonald dance before, but this was different, for it was not Tonald McKenzie alone who danced before them, but the incarnate spirit of the Highlands, the unconquerable, dauntless, lawless Highlands, with its purple hills and treacherous caverns that fling defiance at the world and fear not man nor devil.

Tonald finished with a leap as nimble as that with which a cat springs on its victim while the company watched spellbound. He slipped away into a corner and would dance no more that night.

When twelve o'clock came, the dancing was over, and with the smell of coffee and the rattle of dishes in the kitchen it was not hard to persuade big John Kennedy to sing.

Big John lived alone in a little shanty in the hills, and the prospect of a good square meal was a pleasant one to the lonely fellow who had been his own cook so long. Big John lived among the Crofters, whose methods of cooking were simple in the extreme, and from them he had picked up strange ways of housekeeping. He ate out of the frying pan; he milked the cow in the porridge pot, and only took what he needed for each meal, reasoning that she had a better way of keeping it than he had. Big John had departed almost entirely from "white man's ways," and lived a wild life free from the demands of society. His ability to "call off" at dances was the one tie that bound him to the Canadian people on the plain.

"Oh, I can't sing," John said sheepishly, when they urged him.

"Tell us how it happened any way John," Bud Perkins said. "Give us the story of it."

"Go on John. Sing about the cowboy," Peter Slater coaxed.

"It iss a teffle of a good song, that," chuckled Tonald.

"Well," John began, clearing his throat, "here it's for you. I've ruined me voice drivin' oxen though, but here's the song."

It was a song of the plains, weird and wistful, with an uncouth plaintiveness that fascinated these lonely hill-dwellers.

As I was a-walkin' one beautiful morning, As I was a-walkin' one morning in May, I saw a poor cowboy rolled up in his blanket, Rolled up in his blanket as cold as the clay!