At the Webb house, they found the dais where they were to play at the end of what was called the long room. The stand seemed fairly solid underfoot, covered with a flowery carpet. They came in when the ladies were still hurrying around laying out the refreshments on small tables against the walls, a cool evening outside. The whitewing doves fluttered down to the riverside with their heart-shaped cries and the bats of city hall began to stretch their wings and yawn. Simon’s mouth went dry when he saw her come in the door of the salon. She was wearing a dark green dress with a low bodice. No hat; a white flower of some kind in her hair over one ear.

“Oh, how wonderful, here’s our fiddler,” Doris said in a low voice, a smile, a quick curtsey.

“Yes, here he is!” Mrs. Webb cast about herself distractedly. “Put more of that there. Don’t be so loud. You have a loud voice, Doris.”

Simon bowed to the girl and looked into her eyes. “Good evening, Mrs. Webb, Miss Dillon.”

He heard murmurs of the same from Damon and Pruitt.

“Yes,” said the colonel’s wife. She was inspecting all the silver sugar bowls. “More here, Doris.” Then she raised her head to Simon, acknowledging him at last. “Oh,” she said. A silence. “You’re the fiddler that . . .” She seemed frozen with the silver in her hands and a napkin slid from her arm. “You . . . ,” she started and then stopped. It was too late to get anybody else and even with conflict and misery staring her in the face she recovered. “You have the list?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Damon. He handed it to her and she bent over it.

“All very good. What is this ‘Blarney Pilgrim’? This says ‘jig.’ I don’t want any jigging to go on.”

Simon turned to Damon and said, “Strike it.” Damon opened his eyes very wide, reached for the list, then wet his thumb and smeared the ink and then wiped his thumb on his pants. He smiled wide-eyed at Miss Dillon and then winked in a great laborious contraction of one side of his face. A laugh burst out of her and then she put her hand over her mouth and looked down, still laughing. Mrs. Webb took the list again, stood beside Simon resolutely going over every song, and said, “Doris, stop that wretched giggling, would you please? Now, this fellow here, this fellow with the round drum, can he keep time?” She was flustered and asking stupid questions, angry, a little desperate. An angled and unstable kind of wrongness had come over her elaborate evening, this fiddler apparently the one accused of going about with Doris, too late, too late.

“Of course,” said Damon.

Pruitt turned his long, dull gaze to Mrs. Webb. “No,” he said. “I just carry this drum around for looks.”

“He can, yes,” said Simon. He turned to Doris. “He will or I will strangle him.” Doris put a finger to her lips in a shushing motion and tried not to laugh again, and then quickly picked up a tray of miniature butter cakes, paused, and, not knowing what to do with it, placed it pointlessly on another table.

“Oh!” Mrs. Webb tossed her head. “A sense of humor! We are all overcome with laughter!”

Colonel Webb came in with the cold air of the outdoors still about him and took off his hat. He poured himself a drink from the sideboard, tipped the glass up, emptied it, and set it down on the sideboard again. He stood in the middle of the room in order to be the cynosure of all eyes and gazed around himself with a slight smile. He saw Simon and his mouth dropped open. After a second’s silence the colonel walked up to him.

“You’re the fiddler from Los Palmitos,” he said. His eyes widened a little. He was thinking, slowly but with great precision. “By God you are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I forget who you were with.”

Simon almost said, I forget too, but he didn’t. “Thirty-fourth Indiana, band. I played G whistle on march.”

“I’ll be damned if you were. You were with Giddings. We never had any whistle players. You are an outright liar.”

“Sir?” said Simon. Damon quietly stepped close to the two of them and pressed an elbow against Simon’s side. “Sir, think of what you just said.”

“I know what I just said. You came around begging for money after that dinner. You speak like a Southerner.”

Damon gestured with his whistle. “Yes, Colonel, but people in southern Indiana speak like Kentuckians. Just across the river there.”

“Who asked you?” Webb turned one way and then another as anger and suspicion grew in him. “My wife invited you to play here at this dance, but I swear there have been rumors of some irregularity involving a young person of my household and yourself going about to low whiskey houses. How did you get invited? She must have been out of her mind. Or misinformed. Or temporarily lunatic.” His voice was rising.

“Colonel, Colonel.” His wife floated up to him on the balloon of her hoop skirt. “The governor will be here before long. Watch your language please. The governor will be here. Please let us not have any ill manners and arguing, please.”

Webb’s eyes raked over his wife and past her and around the elegant decorations of the ballroom; he cleared his throat noisily, his face red. He glared at Simon, a look of both fury and indignation. Finally, with an effort, he turned away. “This is not worth my attention. Play your waltzes and stay onstage, fiddler.” He strolled across the floor and began inspecting the tall windows. “There’s specks on here. This glass is dirty. Why?”

Then he peered at the chairs against the wall and finally the silver tea sets, pretending indifference to the musicians, and came to stand beside Doris as she lifted one cube after another with silver tongs.

Simon rosined his bow slowly, watching. Webb stood too close to her. He wanted everybody to see him standing too close to her. He wanted Simon in particular to see him standing pressed up against the girl, bending over her. Carriages were pulling up outside with a pocketa pocketa sound of iron wheel rims on the gravel driveway, harnesses jangling. Doris moved away from the colonel and his hand shot out to take her elbow.

“You’ve tripped on your hem,” he said.

“Indeed I have not.” She flushed a bright pink and jerked her elbow away. Simon started to step down off the little stage, but Damon shot one arm out straight and thumped it backhanded across his stomach. Simon could almost hear his heart, it was almost a sound, a thickened bloody thudding. Mrs. Webb saw the colonel too, turned quickly with a stiff face, and said,

“Colonel, let go of the girl’s arm, we must be in the hall to greet the guests.” Then she hurried out ahead of him, pressing down her skirts at the sides as her hoops swung dangerously.

Soon the long room was filled with people circulating and greeting, swinging bells of hoops, military men in dress uniforms and businessmen in frock coats, one with the newest fashion in ties called a four-in-hand. Colonel Webb greeted Commissioner Davis, shaking his hand wildly, smiling. A man spoke urgently to Davis about being appointed county commissioner for San Antonio, another wanted a place as the postmaster, a thick man with a red face spoke of his gratitude for Davis’s help in being named as sheriff, and the sheer volume of people talking rose to intolerable levels.

From the corner of his eye Simon saw the spare blond lieutenant who used to be a sergeant standing nearby, his hat in his hands. He had a vague expression, as if wondering where to put it. Avoid that man, Simon told himself, if at all possible. He will remember you and the shirts and asking about Doris. He turned away and they began the slow airs, one after another. After “Lonesome Boatman” Damon said in a low voice,

“‘Blarney Pilgrim,’ real, real real slow.”

Simon laughed and said, “Do it”; and so they played it slow as a funeral march and could hardly keep straight faces as they did so.

The evening moved on; men went outside to confer with other men over bottles hidden in carriage footwells while Commissioner Davis, who was bright and sparkling and seemed to be possessed of, or possessed by, an unending fountain of nerves and energy, talked without pause about Republican affairs and business affairs, great futures, shining horizons, the greatness awaiting Austin if only they could get the streets paved, about limitless opportunities, the Printing Bill, Negro schools, powerful committees, fearsome enemies lurking, Freedman’s Bureau money, printing money, more cruel enemies lurking even more, days to come, pasts crushed under heels. Simon watched Doris when he could; she kept out of sight, shaking hands with guests and pouring tea. The lieutenant was bending to speak to her, smiling. In her dark green she seemed a lithe and velvety spirit balancing dire trouble in either hand. She nodded politely as he spoke, but her eyes flicked to the colonel.