But not more than a third of all the assembly made
any effort to masquerade, beyond the use of the simple
black mask across the upper part of the face.
The rest of the men and women contented themselves
with wearing the very finest clothes they could afford
to buy, and there was through the air a scent of the
general merchandise store which not even a liberal
use of cheap perfume and all the drifts of pale-blue
cigarette smoke could quite overcome.
As for the music, it was furnished by two very old
men, relics of the days when there were contests in
fiddling; a stout fellow of middle age, with cheeks
swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out terrific
blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two
sticks on an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum,
and a cornetist of real skill.
There were hard faces in the crowd, most of them,
of men who had set their teeth against hard weather
and hard men, and fought their way through, not to
happiness, but to existence, so that fighting had
become their pleasure.
Now they relaxed their eternal vigilance, their eternal
suspicion. Another phase of their nature weakened.
Some of them were smiling and laughing for the first
time in months, perhaps, of labor and loneliness on
the range. With the gates of good-nature opened,
a veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It glittered
in their eyes, it rose to their lips in a wild laughter.
They seemed to be dancing more furiously fast in order
to forget the life which they had left, and to which
they must return.
These were the conquerors of the bitter nature of
the mountain-desert. There was beauty here, the
beauty of strength in the men and a brown loveliness
in the girls; just as in the music, the blatancy of
the rattling dish-pan and the blaring trombone were
more than balanced by the real skill of the violinists,
who kept a high, sweet, singing tone through all the
clamor.
And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline? They stood
aghast for a moment when that crash of noise broke
around them; but they came from a life where there
was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of
the mountains and the appalling silences of the stars
that roll above the desert. Almost at once they
caught the overtone of human joyousness, and they
turned with smiles to each other, and it was “Pierre?”
“Jack?” Then a nod, and she was in his
arms, and they glided into the dance.
When a crowd gathers in the street, there rises a
babel of voices, a confused and pointless clamor,
no matter what the purpose of the gathering, until
some man who can think as well as shout begins to
speak. Then the crowd murmurs a moment, and after
a few seconds composes itself to listen.
So it was with the noise in the hall when Pierre and
Jacqueline began to dance. First there were smiles
of derision and envy around them, but after a moment
a little hush came where they moved.
