Somehow the church failed to take official action. There was loud
criticism still, but phonographs that had hitherto been silent or at
least circumspect were heard to blare forth dance rhythms, and not
always with the soft needle on.
Mrs. Prosser's boarders were mainly past the age when they were liable
to temptation. At first the presence and activities of Prue had added a
tang of much-needed spice to this desert-island existence. They loved to
stare through the door or even to sit in at the lessons. But at the
first blast of the storm that the church had set up they scurried about
in consternation. Mrs. Prosser was informed that her boarding-house was
no longer a fit place for church-fearing ladies. She was warned to
expurgate Prue or lose the others. Mrs. Prosser regretfully banished the
girl.
And now Prue felt like the locust turned away from ant-hill after
ant-hill. She walked the streets disconsolately. Her feet from old habit
led her past her father's door. She paused to gaze at the dear front
walk and the beloved frayed steps, the darling need of paint, the
time-gnawed porch furniture, the empty hammock hooks. She sighed and
would have trudged on, but her mother saw her and called to her from the
sewing-room window, and ran out bareheaded in her old wrapper.
They embraced across the gate and Serina carried on so that Prue had to
go in with her to keep the neighbors from having too good a time. Prue
told her story, and Serina's jaw set in the kind of tetanus that mothers
are liable to. She sent Horace to fetch Prue's baggage from "old
Prosser's," and she re-established Prue in her former room.
When William came slumping up the steps, still jobless, he found the
doors locked, front and back, and the porch windows fastened. Serina
from an upper sill informed him that Prue was back, and he could either
accept her or go somewhere else to live.
William yielded, salving his conscience by refusing to speak to the
girl. Prue settled down with the meekness of returned prodigals for whom
fatted calves are killed. According to the old college song, "The
Prod.," when he got back, "sued father and brother for time while away."
That was the sort of prodigal Prue was. Prue brought her classes with
her.
Papa Pepperall gave up the battle. He dared not lock his daughter in or
out or up. He must not beat her or strangle her with a bowstring or drop
her into the Bosporus. He could not sell her down the river. A modern
father has about as much authority as a chained watch-dog. He can jump
about and bark and snap, but he only abrades his own throat.
There were Pepperall feuds all over town. One by one the most
conservative were recruited or silenced.
William Pepperall, however, still fumed at home and abroad, and Judge
Hippisley would have authorized raids if there had been any places to
raid. Thus far the orgies had been confined to private walls. There was,
indeed, no place in Carthage for public dancing except the big room in
the Westcott Block over Jake Meyer's restaurant, and that room was
rented to various secret societies on various nights.
Prue's class outgrew the parlor, spread to the dining-room, and trickled
into the kitchen. Here the growth had to stop, till it was learned that
if Mr. Maugans played very loud he could be heard in the bedrooms
up-stairs. And there a sort of University Extension was practised for
ladies only.
And still the demand for education increased. The benighted held out
hands pleading for help. Young men and old offered fabulous sums, a
dollar a lesson, two dollars! Prue decided that if her mother would stay
up-stairs as a chaperon it would be proper to let the men dance there,
too.
"But how am I going to cook the meals?" said mamma.
"We'll hire a cook," said Prue. And it was done. She even bought mamma
a new dress, and established her above-stairs as a sort of grand duenna.
Mamma watched Prue with such keenness that now and then, when Prue had
to rush down-stairs, mamma would sometimes solve a problem for one of
Prue's "scholars," as she called them.
One day papa came home to his pandemonium, jostled through the
couple-cluttered hall, stamped up-stairs, and found mamma showing Deacon
Flugal how to do the drop-step.
"You trot four short steps backward," mamma was saying, "then you make a
little dip; but don't swing your shoulders. Prue says if you want to
dance refined you mustn't swing your shoulders or your--your--the rest
of you."
Papa was ready to swing his shoulders and drop the deacon through the
window, but as he was about to protest the deacon caught mamma in his
arms and swept backward, dropping his fourth step incisively on papa's
instep, rendering papa _hors de combat_.
By the time William had rubbed witch-hazel into the deacon's heel-mark,
the deacon in a glorious "prespiration" had gone home with his own
breathless wife ditto. William dragged Serina into the bathroom, the
only room where dancing was not in progress. He warned her not to forget
that she had sworn to be a faithful wife. She pooh-poohed him and said:
"You'd better learn to dance yourself. Come on, I'll show you the Jedia
Luna. It's very easy and awful refined. Do just like I do."
She put her hands on her hips and began to sidle. She had him nearly
sidled into the bathtub before he could escape with the cry of a hunted
animal. At supper he thumped the table with another of his resolutions,
and cried:
"My house was not built for a dance-hall!"
"That's right, poppa," said Prue; "and it shakes so I'm afraid it'll
come down on us. I've been thinking that you'll have to hire me the
lodge-room in the Westcott Block. I can give classes there all day."
He refused flatly. So she persuaded Deacon Flugal and several gentlemen
who were on the waiting-list of her pupils to arrange it for her.
And now all day long she taught in the Westcott Block. The noise of her
music interfered with business--with lawyers and dentists and insurance
agents. At first they were hostile, then they were hypnotized. Lawyer
and client would drop a title discussion to quarrel over a step. The
dentist's forceps would dance along the teeth, and many an uncomplaining
bicuspid was wrenched from its happy home, many an uneasy molar assumed
a crown. The money Prue made would have been scandalous if money did not
tend to become self-sterilizing after it passes certain dimensions.
By and by the various lodge members found their meetings and their
secret rites to be so stupid, compared with the new dances, that almost
nobody came. Quorums were rare. Important members began to resign.
Everybody wanted to be Past Grand Master of the Tango.
The next step was the gradual postponement of meetings to permit of a
little informal dancing in the evening. The lodges invited their ladies
to enter the precincts and revel. Gradually the room was given over
night and day to the worship of Saint Vitus.