Sam's sonorous voice was ringing in deliberation the grand call of the evening'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 space crowded. There are thirty couples in line when the musicians pause, tune their instruments and with a sudden burst play "The Gray Eagle." The Virginia Reel stirs the blood of these Southern boys and girls. Its swift, graceful action and the inspiration of the old music seem part of the heart beat of the youth and beauty that sway to its cadences.
The master of Arlington smiled at the memory of the young Congressman's eloquence. Surely it was only a flight of rhetoric.
CHAPTER II
Phil had finally reached the boys' room after the dance, his head in a whirl of excitement. Sleep was the last thing he wished. His imagination was on fire. He had heard of Southern hospitality. He had never dreamed of such waste of good things, such joy in living, such genuine pleasure in the meeting of friends and kinfolks. Custis had insisted on every boy staying all night. A lot of them had stayed. The wide rooms bulged with them. There were cots and pallets everywhere. He had seen the housemaids and the menservants carrying them in after the dance. Their own room contained four beds and as many pallets, and they were all full.
He tried to sleep and couldn't. He dozed an hour, waked at dawn and began day-dreaming. There was no sense of weariness. His mind was too alert. The great house, in which he was made to feel as much at home as in the quiet cottage of his mother in Ohio, fascinated him with its endless menservants, housemaids, serving boys, cooks, coachmen and hostlers.
He thought of the contrast with the quiet efficiency and simplicity of his mother's house. He could see her seated at the little table in the center of the room, a snow-white cap on her head. The work of the house had been done without a servant. It had been done so simply and quietly, he had never been conscious of the fact that it was work at all. It had seemed a ministry of love for her children. Their help had been given with equal joy, unconscious of toil, her kitchen floor was always spotless, with every pot and pan and shining dish in its place as if by magic.
He wondered how Custis' mother could bear the strain of all these people. He wondered how she could manage the army of black servants who hung on her word as the deliverance of an oracle. He could hear the hum of the life of the place already awake with the rising sun. Down in the ravine behind the house he caught the ring of a hammer on an anvil and closer in the sweep of a carpenter's plane over a board. A colt was calling to his mother at the stables and he could hear the chatter and cries of the stable boys busy with the morning feed.
He rose, stepped gingerly beside the sleepers on the floor and stood by an open window. His mind was stirring with a curious desire to see the ghost that haunted this house, its spacious grounds and fields. He, too, had read Uncle Tom's Cabin, and wondered. The ghost must be here hiding in some dark corner of cabin or field—the ghost of deathless longing for freedom—the ghost of cruelty—the ghost of the bloodhound, the lash and the auction block.