And
far behind the court, beyond a low hedge of sombre evergreen shrubs, I
see soft white lights and a host of tall gray shapes throwing long
shadows; and I know that the lights are the _white_ lanterns of the dead
(those hung in cemeteries only), and that the gray shapes are the shapes
of tombs.
Suddenly a girl rises from her seat, and taps the huge drum once. It is
the signal for the Dance of Souls.
II
Out of the shadow of the temple a professional line of dancers files
into the moonlight and as suddenly halts,--all young women or girls,
clad in their choicest attire; the tallest leads; her comrades follow in
order of stature. Little maids of ten or twelve years compose the end of
the procession. Figures lightly poised as birds,--figures that somehow
recall the dreams of shapes circling about certain antique vases; those
charming Japanese robes, close-clinging about the knees, might seem, but
for the great fantastic drooping sleeves, and the curious broad girdles
confining them, designed after the drawing of some Greek or Etruscan
artist. And, at another tap of the drum, there begins a performance
impossible to picture in words, something unimaginable, phantasmal,--a
dance, an astonishment.
All together glide the right foot forward one pace, without lifting the
sandal from the ground, and extend both hands to the right, with a
strange floating motion and a smiling, mysterious obeisance. Then the
right foot is drawn back, with a repetition of the waving of hands and
the mysterious bow.
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