It was d.i.c.k's custom to a.s.sume command in every company where he found himself.

"What is it to be? 'Dixie'?"

"Yes! Yes!" cried the crowd. "'Dixie.' We'll give you the chorus."

After a little protest the girl struck a few chords and dashed off into that old plantation song full of mingling pathos and humour. Barney picked up his father's violin, touched the strings softly till he found her key and then followed in a subdued accompaniment of weird chords.

The girl turned herself toward him, her beautiful face lighting up as if she had caught a glimpse of a kindred spirit, and with a new richness and tenderness she poured forth the full flood of her song. The crowd were entranced with delight. Even those who had been somewhat impatient for the renewal of the dance joined in calls for another song. She turned to d.i.c.k, who had resumed his place beside her. "Who is the man you wanted so badly to kiss?" she asked quietly.

"Who?" he cried, so that everyone heard. "What! don't you know? That's Barney, the one and only Barney, my brother. Here, Barney, drop your fiddle and be introduced to Miss Iola Lane, late from Virginia, or is it Maryland? Some of those heathen places beyond the Dixie line."

Barney dropped the violin from his chin, came over the floor, and awkwardly offered his hand. With easy, lazy grace she rose from the block where she had been sitting.

"You accompany beautifully," she said in her soft Southern drawl; "it's in you, I can see. No one can ever be taught to accompany like that."

"Oh, pshaw! That's nothing," said Barney, eager to get back again to his shadow, "but if you don't mind I'll try to follow you if you sing again."

"Certainly," cried d.i.c.k, "she'll sing again. What will you give us now, white or black?"

"Plantation, of course," said Barney brusquely.

"All right. 'Kentucky home,' eh?" cried d.i.c.k.

The girl looked up at him with a saucy, defiant look. "Do they all obey you here?"

"Ask them."

"That's what," cried Alec Murray, "especially the girls."

She hesitated a few moments, evidently meditating rebellion, then turning to Barney, who was playing softly the air that had been asked for, "You, too, obey, I see," she said.

"Generally--, always when I like," he replied, continuing to play.

"Oh, well," shrugging her shoulders, "I suppose I must then." And she began:

"The sun shines bright on de old Kentucky home."

Again that hush fell upon the crowd. The face of the singer, with its dark, romantic beauty touched with the magic of the moonlight, the voice soft, mellow, vibrant with pa.s.sion, like the deeper notes of a 'cello, supported by the weird chords of Barney's violin, held them breathless.

No voice joined in the chorus. As she sang, the subtle telepathic waves came back from her audience to the girl, and with ever-deepening pa.s.sion and abandon she poured forth into the moonlit silence the full throbbing tide of song. The old air, simple and time-worn, took on a new richness of tone colour and a fulness of volume suggestive of springs of unutterable depths. Even d.i.c.k's gay air of command surrendered to the spell. As before, silence followed the song.

"But you did not do your part," she said, smiling up at him with a very pretty air of embarra.s.sment.

"No," said d.i.c.k solemnly, "we didn't dare."

"Sing again," said Barney abruptly. His voice sounded deep and hoa.r.s.e, and d.i.c.k, looking curiously at him, said apologetically, "Music, when it's good, makes him quite batty."

But Iola ignored him. "Did you ever hear this?" she said to Barney. She strummed a few chords on her guitar. "It's only a little baby song, one my old mammy used to sing."

"Sleep, ma baby, close youah lil winkahs fas', Loo-la, Loo-la, don' you gib me any sa.s.s.

Youah mammy's ol', an' want you to de berry las', So, baby, honey, let dose mean ol' angels pa.s.s.

CHORUS:

"Sleep, ma baby, mammy can't let you go.

Sleep, ma baby, de angels want you sho!

De angels want you, guess I know, But mammy hol' you, hol' you tight jes' so.

"Sleep, ma baby, close youah lil fingahs, Meah, Loo-la, Loo-la, tight about ma fingahs heah, De dawk come close, but baby don' you nebbeh feah, Youah mammy'll hol' you, hol' you till de mawn appeah.

"Sleep, ma baby, why you lie so col', so col'?

Loo-la, Loo-la, do Ma.s.sa want you for His fol'?

But, baby, honey, don' you know youah mammy's ol'

An' want you, want you, oh, she want you jes' to hol'."

A long silence followed the song. The girl laid her guitar down and sat quietly looking straight before her, while Barney played the refrain over and over. The simple pathos of the little song, its tender appeal to the mother-chords that somehow vibrate in all human hearts, reached the deep places in the honest hearts of her listeners and for some moments they stood silent about her. It was with an obvious effort that d.i.c.k released the tension by crying out, "Partners for four-hand reel."

Instantly the company resolved itself into groups of four and stood waiting for the music.

"Strike up, Barney," cried d.i.c.k impatiently, shuffling before Iola, whom he had chosen for his partner. But Barney, handing the violin to his father, slipped back into the shadow where his mother and Margaret were standing. The boy's face was pale through its swarthy tan.

"Come away," he said to his mother in a strained, unnatural voice.

"Isn't she beautiful?" cried Margaret impulsively.

"Is she? I didn't notice. But great goodness! What a voice!"

"Um, some will be thinking so, I doubt," said Mrs. Boyle grimly, with a sharp glance at her son.

But Barney had become oblivious to her words and glances. He moved away as in a dream to make ready for the home going of his party, for soon the dancers would be at Sir Roger's. Nor did he waken from his dream mood during the drive home. He could hear d.i.c.k chattering gaily to Margaret and his mother of his College experiences, but except for an occasional word with his father he sat in silence, gazing not upon the fields and woods that lay in all their moonlit glory about them, but upon that new world, vast, unreal, yet vividly present, whose horizon lay beyond the line of vision, the world of his imagination, where he must henceforth live and where his work must lie. For the events of the afternoon had summoned a new self into being, a self unfamiliar, but real and terribly insistent, demanding recognition. He could not a.n.a.lyse the change that had come to him, nor could he account for it. He did not try to. He lived again those great moments when, having been thrust by chance into the command of these fifty mighty men, he had swung them to victory. He remembered the ease, the perfect harmony with which his faculties had wrought through those few minutes of fierce struggle.

Again he pa.s.sed through the awful ordeal of the operation, now holding the light, now a.s.sisting with forceps or cord or needle, now sponging away that ghastly red flow that could not be stemmed. He wondered now at his self-mastery. He could see again his fingers, b.l.o.o.d.y, but unshaking, handing the old doctor a needle and silk cord. He remembered his surprise and pity, almost contempt, for big Tom Magee lying on the floor unable to lift his head; remembered, too, the strange absence of anything like elation at the doctor's words, "My boy, you have the nerve and the fingers of a surgeon, and that's what your Maker intended you to be."

But he let his mind linger long and with thrilling joy through the interlude in the dance. Every detail of that scene stood clearly limned before his mind. The bare skeleton of the new harp, the crowding, eager, tense faces of the listeners, his mother's and Margaret's in the hindmost row, his brother standing in the centre foreground, the upturned face of the singer with its pale romantic loveliness, all in the mystery of the moonlight, and, soaring over all, that clear, vibrant, yet softly pa.s.sionate, glorious voice. That was the final magic touch that rolled back the screen and set before him the new world which must henceforth be his. He could not explain that touch. The songs were the old simple airs worn threadbare by long use in the countryside. It was certainly not the songs. Nor was it the singer. Curiously enough, the girl, her personality, her character, worthy or unworthy, had only a subordinate place in his thought. He was conscious of her presence there as a subtle yet powerful influence, but as something detached from the upturned face illumined in the soft moonlight and the stream of heart-shaking song. She was to him thus far simply a vision and a voice, to which all the psychic element in him made eager response. As he drove into the quiet Mill yard it came upon him with a shock of pain that with the old life he had done forever. He felt himself already detached from it. The new self looking out upon its new world had shaken off his boyhood as the bursting leaf shakes off the husks of spring.

As d.i.c.k's gay exclamation of delight at sight of the old home fell upon his ear a deeper pain struck him, for he vaguely felt that while his brother still held his place in the centre of the stage, that stage had immeasurably extended and was now peopled with other figures, shadowy, it is true, but there, and influential. His brother, who with his mother, or, indeed, perhaps more than his mother, had absorbed his boyish devotion, must henceforth share that devotion with others. Upon this thought his brother's voice broke in.

"What's the matter, old chap? Is there anything wrong?"

The kindly tone stabbed like a knife.

"No, no. Nothing, d.i.c.k."

"Yes, but there is. You're not the same." At the anxious appeal in the voice Barney stood for a moment steadily regarding his brother, for whom he could easily give his life, with a troubled sense of change that he could not a.n.a.lyse to himself, much less explain to his brother.

"I don't know, d.i.c.k--I can't tell you--I don't think I am the same." A look of startled dismay fell swiftly down upon the frank, handsome face turned toward him.

"Have I done anything, Barney?" said the younger boy, his dismay showing in his tone.