[Illustration: 9067]
FTER the dance Frank Hillhouse took Dolly home in one of the drenched
and bespattered hacks. The Barclay residence was one of the best-made
and largest in town. It was an old-style Southern frame-house, painted
white, and had white-columned verandas on two sides. It was in the edge
of the town, and had an extensive lawn in front and almost a little farm
behind.
Dolly's mother had never forgotten that she was once a girl herself, and
she took the most active interest in everything pertaining to Dolly's
social life. On occasions like the one just described she found it
impossible to sleep till her daughter returned, and then she slipped
up-stairs, and made the girl tell all about it while she was disrobing.
To-night she was more alert and wide-awake than usual. She opened the
front door for Dolly and almost stepped on the girl's heels as she
followed her up-stairs.
“Was it nice?” she asked.
“Yes, very,” Dolly replied. Reaching her room, she turned up the
low-burning lamp, and, standing before a mirror, began to take some
flowers out of her hair. Mrs. Barclay sat down on the edge of the
high-posted mahogany bed and raised one of her bare feet and held it
in her hand. She was a thin woman with iron-gray hair, and about fifty
years of age. She looked as if she were cold; but, for reasons of her
own, she was not willing for Dolly to remark it.
“Who was there?” she asked.
“Oh, everybody.”
“Is that so? I thought a good many would stay away because it was a bad
night; but I reckon they are as anxious to go as we used to be. Then you
all did have the hacks?”
“Yes, they had the hacks.” There was a pause, during which one pair of
eyes was fixed rather vacantly on the image in the mirror; the other
pair, full of impatient inquiry, rested alternately on the image and its
maker.
“I don't believe you had a good time,” broke the silence, in a rising,
tentative tone.
“Yes, I did, mother.”
“Then what's the matter with you?” Mrs. Barclay's voice rang with
impatience. “I never saw you act like you do to-night, never in my
life.”
“I didn't know anything was wrong with me, mother.”
“You act queer; I declare you do,” asserted Mrs. Barclay. “You generally
have a lot to say. Have you and Frank had a falling out?”
Dolly gave her shoulders a sudden shrug of contempt.
“No, we got along as well as we ever did.”
“I thought maybe he was a little mad because you wouldn't dance
to-night; but surely he's got enough sense to see that you oughtn't
to insult brother Dill-beck that way when he's visiting our house and
everybody knows what he thinks about dancing.”
“No, he thought I did right about it,” said Dolly.
“Then what in the name of common-sense is the matter with you, Dolly?
You can' t pull the wool over my eyes, and you needn't try it.”
Dolly faced about suddenly.
“I reckon you 'll sit there all night unless I tell you all about it,”
she said, sharply. “Mother, Alan Bishop was there.”
“You don't say!”
“Yes, and asked me to let him take me to church to-morrow evening.”
“Oh, he did?”
“Yes, and as I didn't want father to insult him, I--”
“You told him what your pa said?”
“No, I just told him father didn't want me to receive him any more.
Heaven knows, that was enough.”
“Well, that was the best thing for you to do.” Mrs. Barclay took a deep
breath, as if she were inhaling a delicious perfume. “It's much better
than to have him plunge in here some day and have your father break out
like he does in his rough way. What did Alan say?”
“He said very little; but he looked it. You ought to have seen
him. Frank came up just about that time and invited me to have some
ice-cream, and I had to leave him. He was as white as a sheet. He had
made an engagement with me to sit out a dance, and he didn't come in the
room again till that dance was called, and then he didn't even mention
it. He acted so peculiarly, I could see it was nearly killing him, but
he wouldn't let me bring up the subject again. I came near doing it; but
he always steered round it.”
“He's a sensible young man,” declared Mrs. Barclay. “Any one can see
that by looking at him. He's not responsible for his father's foolhardy
venture, but it certainly leaves him in a bad fix as a marrying man.
He's had bad luck, and he must put up with the consequences. There are
plenty of girls who have no money or prospects who would be glad to have
him, but--”
“Mother,” broke in Dolly, as if she had been listening to her own
troubled thoughts rather than her mother's words; “he didn't act as if
he wanted to see me alone. The other couples who had engagements to talk
during that dance were sitting in windows and out-of-the-way corners,
but he kept me right where I was, and was as carefully polite as if we
had just been introduced. I was sorry for him and mad at the same time.
I could have pulled his ears.”
“He's sensible, very sensible,” said Mrs. Barclay, in a tone of warm
admiration. “A man like that ought to get along, and I reckon he will do
well some day.”
“But, mother,” said Dolly, her rich, round voice rising like a wave and
breaking in her throat, “he may never think about me any more.”
“Well, that really would be best, dear, under the circumstances.”
“Best?” Dolly blurted out. “How can you say that, when--when--”
“Dolly, you are not really foolish about him, are you?” Mrs. Barclay's
face dropped into deeper seriousness.
Dolly looked away and was silent for a moment; then she faltered: “I
don't know, mother, I--I'm afraid if I keep on feeling like I do now
I 'll never get over it.”
“Ah, but you 'll not keep on feeling like you do now,” consoled the older
woman. “Of course, right now, just after seeing how hard he took it, you
will kind o' sympathize with him and want to help him; but that will all
pass away. I remember when I was about your age I had a falling out with
Will Despree--a young man my father didn't like because his grandfather
had been an overseer. And, do you know, I thought I would actually kill
myself. I refused to eat a bite and threatened to run away with Will. To
this day I really don't know what I would have done if your grandfather
hadn't scared him away with a shot-gun. Will kept writing notes to me. I
was afraid to answer them, but my father got hold of one and went after
him on a fast horse. Will's family heard what was up and they kept him
out in the swamp for a few days, and then they sent him to Texas. The
whole Despree family took it up and talked scand'lous about us.”
“And you soon got over it, mother?” asked Dolly, almost in a tone of
dismay.
“Well,” said Mrs. Barclay, reflectively, “Will acted the fool so
terribly; he wasn't out in Texas three months before he sent back a
marked paper with an article in it about his engagement to the
daughter of a rich man who, we found out afterwards, used to keep a
livery-stable; then I reckon hardly any girl would keep caring for a boy
when his folks was telling such lies about her family.”
Dolly was staring studiously at the speaker.
“Mother,” she asked, “don't you believe in real love?”
Mrs. Barclay laughed as if highly amused. “I believe in a different sort
to the puppy love I had for that boy. Then after that there was another
young man that I thought more of, if anything, than I did of Will; but
he was as poor as Job's turkey, and my folks was all crazy for me 'n'
your pa, who I'd never seen, to get married. I held out against the
idea, just like you are doing with Frank, I reckon; but when your pa
come with his shiny broadcloth coat and spotted silk vest--no, it was
satin, I think, with red spots on it--and every girl in town was crazy
to catch him, and there was no end of reports about the niggers he owned
and his high connections--well, as I say, it wasn't a week before I was
afraid he'd see Joe Tinsley and hear about me 'n' him. My father was in
for the match from the very jump, and so was your pa's folks. He put up
at our house with his nigger servant and didn't want to go about town
much. I reckon I was pleased to have him pick me out, and so we soon
fixed it up. Lordy, he only had to mention Joe Tinsley to me after we
got married to make me do anything he wanted. To this day he throws him
up to me, for Joe never did amount to anything. He tried to borrow
money from your pa after you was born. The neighbors had to feed his
children.”
“But you loved father, didn't you?” Dolly breathed, in some relief over
what she thought was coming.
“Well, I can' t say I did,” said Mrs. Barclay. “We had a terrible time
getting used to one another's ways. You see, he'd waited a good while,
and was some older than I was. After a while, though, we settled down,
and now I'm awful glad I let my father manage for me. You see, what your
pa had and what my father settled on me made us comfortable, and if a
couple is that it's a sight more than the pore ones are.”
Dolly stood before her mother, close enough to touch her. Her face wore
an indescribable expression of dissatisfaction with what she had heard.
“Mother, tell me one thing,” she said. “Did you ever let either of those
boys--the two that you didn't marry, I mean--kiss you?”
Mrs. Barclay stared up at her daughter for an instant and then her face
broke into a broad smile of genuine amusement. She lowered her head to
her knee and laughed out.
“Dolly Barclay, you are _such_ a fool!” she said, and then she laughed
again almost immoderately, her face in her lap.
“I know what _that_ means,” said Dolly, in high disgust. “Mother, I
don't think you can do me any good. You'd better go to bed.”
Mrs. Barclay rose promptly.
“I think I'd better, too,” she said. “It makes your pa awful mad for
me to sit up this way. I don't want to hear him rail out like he always
does when he catches me at it.”
After her mother had gone, Dolly sat down on her bed. “She never was
in love,” she told herself. “Never, never, never! And it is a pity. She
never could have talked that way if she had really loved anybody as much
as--” But Dolly did not finish what lay on her tongue. However, when she
had drawn the covers up over her the cold tears rose in her eyes and
rolled down on her pillow as she thought of Alan Bishop's brave and
dignified suffering.
“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear Alan!”