virginal in effect. A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory
proceedings, and a singular want of sociability was visible in the
"sociable" part of the entertainment. People talked in whispers or with
that grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities;
conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk to
rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like water
drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the floor. The
widow became a helpless, religious centre of deacons and Sunday-school
teachers, which Brooks, untiring, yet fruitless, in his attempt to
produce gayety, tried in vain to break. To this gloom the untried
dangers of the impending dance, duly prefigured by a lonely cottage
piano and two violins in a desert of expanse, added a nervous
chill. When at last the music struck up--somewhat hesitatingly and
protestingly, from the circumstance that the player was the church
organist, and fumbled mechanically for his stops, the attempt to make
up a cotillon set was left to the heroic Brooks. Yet he barely escaped
disaster when, in posing the couples, he incautiously begged them to
look a little less as if they were waiting for the coffin to be borne
down the aisle between them, and was rewarded by a burst of tears from
Mrs. Johnson, who had lost a child two years before, and who had to
be led away, while her place in the set was taken by another. Yet the
cotillon passed off; a Spanish dance succeeded; "Moneymusk," with the
Virginia Reel, put a slight intoxicating vibration into the air, and
healthy youth at last asserted itself in a score of freckled but buxom
girls in white muslin, with romping figures and laughter, at the lower
end of the room. Still a rigid decorum reigned among the elder dancers,
and the figures were called out in grave formality, as if, to Brooks's
fancy, they were hymns given from the pulpit, until at the close of
the set, in half-real, half-mock despair, he turned desperately to Mrs.
Wade, his partner:--