And Dan, as the chorus went swaying and surging about in the discords and harmonies, was left alone, silent--as it were on a pinnacle.
Lewis Gordon, feeling responsible for his man, and noting his growing excitement, inveigled him out after a time for a quiet cigar on the verandah, and then suggested he should go to bed; whereat Dan laughed softly. Did not his best man see that the idea was palpably absurd when life itself was a dream--a dream that only came once to a fellow? When you hadn't a wish ungratified, save of course that some others he wot of might have as good luck as he.
'If you mean me,' replied Lewis stolidly, 'I'm all right. I'm going to marry Rose Tweedie whenever she can spare five minutes from your wedding to arrange mine.'
'You don't say so! By the powers, what a good matchmaker I am! And so it's settled. I say, Gordon, do you think there is any chance of her being up still?' put in Dan all in one breath.
'Couldn't say; she had a lot of favours to make and remake when I last saw her, certainly,' replied Lewis, with an inward smile at the remembrance; 'but you can't go and call on her now; it's half-past ten at least.'
'Can't I? There is nothing I couldn't do to-night, it seems to me. And you are yawning. Oh, go to bed, old man! or you will spoil the show to-morrow.'
'And you?'
'I'm off too, but not to bed! No, you needn't be afraid. I'll turn up again in time.'
The glamour of the soft Indian night was on Lewis also; even on those who one by one drifted from the laughter within to stand for five minutes, arrested by the peace without, before going on their way. And if this were so to men in the slack-water of life, what must it have been to Dan on the flood-tide of his threescore years and ten? To Dan with his vivid imagination, his soft heart, his excitable, impulsive nature. As he rode along noiselessly at a foot's pace through the sandy dust which looked hard as marble in the glare of the moon, he and his shadow were the only moving things in that world of light. No darkness anywhere! Not even in the distant arcades of trees. Only a soft grey mist of moonlight blending all things into the semblance of a mirage seen from afar. A fire-fly or two showed against the flowering shrubs in intermittent glimpses of light. Here, and then gone, as it were, upon the soft quiver of the insistent cicalas in the air.
Was not life worth living, indeed if only for such a night as this!