THE TAWNY TROOP METHOD
The dance at the Willow Roads Country Club took place the night before
Terry O'Brien's trial. Watts, with some feeling of wanting the life
pulses of the Minga Bunch about him, went leisurely down the mountain
road clad in the golf tweeds against which a club dance would not
discriminate. As he looked in through the long windows that opened on
the river, the lawyer was thinking that the indiscretions and bold
franchises of the youth of the day were somehow, though coarser, a
less harmful thing than the evasions and concealments of earlier days.
One thing the man, staring in upon the throngs watching the little
cubs of the "stag line" with their important faces, noting the calm,
inexpressive faces of the girls, would have asked for--enthusiasm.
Watts reviewed the whole history of the dance, Bacchante and stately
minuet and folk dance, gigue and morrice, and wondered what good the
dance was without the laughing lips, the light of the eyes, the merry
face. He saw the young figures of the girls coming down the staircase,
faces washed of all human expression, calm, subtle, in some instances
of a Cleopatra-like Eastern subtlety, but never gay. The tall, dark
man, accustomed to reading faces, wondered if indeed gayety had gone
out of the world. "Gayety," thought Watts, "means innocence. Perhaps
in a machine-run world there can be no innocence."
Down the staircase they came, scarlet and white satin, blue tulle,
black tulle, pretty gold and silver slippers. Little necks filmy with
powder, smooth heads, coiled, puffed and banded, long white arms,
smooth white sides visible to the waist. Feet and legs devoid of grace,
thickened by athletics and crudely pushed and planted in the unlovely
strutting dances, yet not so unnatural, not so different, just young
things pushed about by the great Energy--Life.
Any ballroom, the lawyer knew, spells but one thing. In spite of its
protected, assured air, its look of flowered convention and jeweled
dames playing propriety, it is, in all truth, the scene of the play of
young blood, the attraction of young creatures. Since the days of the
excitement over Byron's "Waltz" the eternal comment of men and women,
wall-flowers and chaperons evades this evident truth and registers the
same objection to all that is not sentimental convention.
But ballrooms go on existing. Watts, with a smile, wondered how many
dances were in full blast along the Hudson River, so many fields of
flower-pollen flying that Friday night. His mind wandered back over the
fair old stately days of the great mansions of the early Americans.
He thought about Colonial dances up and down this river, visualized
homes along the great stream, the time of Cooper's "Satanstoe," of
Irving's homesteads, of belles of the Revolution and the days of
Lincoln. Shipman, with his own peculiar imagination, reviewed the youth
and beauty of those days when, we are told, youth was so pure and
innocent, beauty so lovely and soft and mild and biddable.
Yet the lawyer, staring at the purple night of river, pondered. If
old pictures and old letters told the truth there was always, even in
those crinolines, in those little cream and rouge pots and dainty curls
and fichus, Revolt. Who, dear indignant Mama, wore those exceedingly
décolleté ball gowns where half the bosom was exposed? Does not old
poetry hint at delicious skins, and curves and fragrances and coiled
enticements? Watts grinned. "Funny," the man thought, "it was all a
heap more sensuous than those skinny little muscular worldlings in
there, only it was unconscious. The Victorian tradition was somehow
able to have kisses stolen and little ankles noted and a fervid, tight
clasping waltz danced without for one moment facing what the thing
meant; so mid-Victorians got by with little censure; but it was far
away from frankness and honesty and truth."
The tall, dark man staring through the windows caught sight of Minga,
standing alone near the entrance, and he hastened toward her. The girl
in the blue gown with its orange butterflies had a curious look of
defiance and of being at bay that the lawyer instantly noticed. Watts
bent over her with real tenderness. The little bobbed head was held
very high.
"All alone?" The lawyer was no habitué of stag lines; he did not know
that this was a fatal thing to say to a girl of Minga's group. But
the music struck up, and he, a lover of music and dancing, felt the
answering striking up of his being. "Will you dance?" he asked her, a
little awkwardly.
To the man's surprise, Minga, with a curious little catch of the
breath, almost flung herself into his clasp. Considering the difference
in their height, they went well together. Watts, with a sort of boyish
pride, saw the wondering, derisive glance of the important "stag line"
as they slid by. The room rapidly filled; the babel and clash of the
regulation dance was on.
Shipman loved dancing almost childishly. His head, dappled dark,
was picturesque; the curious grim look of his dark face made him
conspicuous among the couples that interlaced each other in pacing,
gliding, backing measures. Miss Aurelia, seated in a row of commenting
elders, noticed Minga, her vivid face laid not too restrainedly along
the dark line of the lawyer's arm; she indicated this to Sard, who had
brought Tawny Troop up to introduce him.
"My dear!" Miss Aurelia in gray satin and lace was pontifical, "Isn't
Minga too familiar, a little conspicuous? Mr. Shipman is such a
dignified man. I'm sure he doesn't like it; but, of course, he doesn't
know what to do. What man would?"
Sard smiled. "Mr. Shipman always does know what to do. If he thinks
Minga oughtn't to do that, he'll tell her so; but I don't believe he
thinks so."
"Oh!" breathed Miss Aurelia; she spoke behind her handkerchief to the
friend on the other side. "Happy little Sard," she said sentimentally,
"so loyal; she quite spoils Minga Gerould," breathed Miss Aurelia.
It was the regular ballroom twaddle. Oceans of this stuff is talked by
watching, waiting chaperons, who believe each other's statements with
credulity and an unoriginality quite wonderful in the face of what is
actually happening before them. Miss Reely turned back to Sard. "I wish
you girls,"--she dropped her handkerchief; the exquisite Tawny restored
it--"I wish you girls understood what charm delicacy and--er--modesty
have for a man." Tawny nodded. "I'm for it myself," he remarked
sympathetically.
"But Minga doesn't want to charm a man, especially," said Sard gaily.
"She just likes to dance that way because everybody's doing it; she's
probably sorry she doesn't reach farther up Shipman's arm because that
would look more like the picture in 'Vogue.'" Sard, motioning to the
other cheek-to-cheek couples, nodded mischievously at Shipman. Her own
first dance had been instantly taken and with a lively glow of color
and enthusiasm she was somehow glad to have the lawyer see it to be
so. She cast an appreciative eye on Minga's little azure form with its
butterfly corsage, the soft arms bare and free.
"Isn't she a darling?" she turned to Tawny Troop. "You don't know how
lucky you are."
To her astonishment the youth swept her with raised eyebrows, eyes of
nonchalance. "Oh, I say, didn't you know that was off?" said Troop with
his best hotel accent.
To his suggestion that they should dance again she took her easy
position. Sard was the instinctively high-bred dancer, the kind of a
girl who without affectation can give herself and her partner instant
distinction, with a poise, an éclat of rhythmic motion that is very
rare. Now as they circled the room she looked up to the smooth face of
the elegant Tawny.
"What did you mean about yours and Minga's engagement? Surely you
haven't quarreled?"
"I've broken it," announced the youth distastefully. Tawny drew himself
up with an air. "I couldn't stand that last fandango of hers," said
young Tawny. "Don't want to marry a tough."
The music stopped with a splurge. Sard stood staring at the young
fellow. "You've broken it?" her glance went quickly to Minga, who was
leaving the ballroom with Shipman,--the dark head bent down to the
little curly bob. "Oh-h!" Sard accused him mockingly. "You're jealous!
you couldn't mean that about Minga! She's everybody's sweetheart; she
always will be. Why, even my father----"
Young Troop stiffened. "I don't mind ordinary things, the game, you
know--I----" Tawny had the grace to hesitate, then snapped, quite
finally for one of his youth--"I like any line that's decent, but when
you see your fiancée in the arms of a hired man, a tramp she's spent
the whole afternoon with, why you----"
"What do you mean?" asked Sard.
Tawny Troop, a young person of not very fine instinct, had forgotten or
did not know the mettle of the girl to whom he spoke.
"Oh, it's nothing against Minga; she can do what she likes, but," with
insufferable American swagger, "she's forfeited the Troop jewels; she
doesn't wear my brown diamonds any more, that's all." He laid a hand on
Sard's arm. "Don't eat the air," he suggested.
Sard switched away from his hand; her eyes hotly repudiated him. "Do
you care to explain?" the girl asked coldly. "Minga Gerould is my
friend, you understand, visiting me; if you have anything to say I will
hear it."
Tawny stood irresolute. He had a grudge against Dunstan Bogart; it was
well to make this girl, Dunstan's sister, feel something. The alert
young bantam figure of the unformed boy-of-the-world took an unlovely
attitude of assured insolence. Tawny smiled, his thick lower lip in
a sneer. "I've got the Gang with me," he said in a low tone. "We all
know you and Minga hunt in couples; you hang together because you're
peculiar in your tastes--what? Only, when that hired man of yours shows
his preference for one of you, the lovey-dovey business will crack! See
what I mean?"
They stood on the piazza that overhung the river. The night boat, like
a great caterpillar, set with golden jewels, forged up midstream.
The search-lights with their white eyes probed the bank, moving over
palisade and promontory. Now a white ray picked out some millionaire's
home on the east bank, now some white temple-like building on the west,
now it shot up to the sky, now it rested like the long honey-sucking
tube of a great moth on some arbored, flower-like cottage along the
rocky shore.
The music had begun again; this time it had an Indian plaint, a long
skirling cadence that might have been sung in days gone by among the
rocks and trees of these very shores by a red maiden standing wrapped
in her blanket on a moonlit crest or staring with great burning
eyes into the rising sun. Sard saw Watts and Minga go back into the
ballroom; the rose-colored light played over the little face lifted to
the man's dark tenderness, Sard looked after them uneasily. "Everyone
looks like that at Minga, but--but it would be different if Watts
Shipman----" Sard suddenly realized the power of the personality that
was shadowing Minga. Before this, the girl had seen Shipman dominate
things; did he then guess the thing she herself was just learning? Were
there protection and care in the grim face with its look of power and
divining? Sard's eyes suddenly filled with quick tears. "I could kill
Tawny," the girl told herself. "I could kill him if----" but the "if"
that dwelt in her heart Sard would not allow herself to say. She looked
out on the river and spoke gently to the boy at her side. She thought
suddenly of Colter sitting up there in the room over the garage with
his books and magnifying glass. It made her quiet. To be like Colter,
calm and patient with things, that was what she must try.
"You mustn't mistake," she said with almost womanly kindness. "Shan't
we sit here and talk instead of dancing? I'd like," Sard spoke with her
curious motherly little air of concern, "I'd like to know precisely
what you meant by that last speech. You mustn't say things like that,
you know, it's not done. If you apologize, I can explain to you about
Colter, but not unless," said Sard with girlish dignity, "not unless."
Then Troop, the product of unlimited wealth, unlimited license, turned
and showed his true blood. All his essential commonness, his cheap
values and squalid assumptions leaped to life. Sard looked with the
loathing of her true aristocracy of the spirit on the shoddy training
of this boy, who had the assurance and ease of a young prince.
"I wasn't born yesterday," Tawny insisted spitefully; the sensuous
lines from his nose down to his lip deepened. "What I saw on the
Hackensack was enough for me," said Tawny. "My faith! what a girl
will do nowadays! Of course--Cinny," he laughed viciously, "but Minga
Gerould, who could go anywhere!"
Sard almost giggled; the words gave Tawny away. Young Troop thought
still of "going to" places other people were born to. The girl,
instinctively disliking him, yet instinctively parleyed with him.
Sard, alive to her world, to the quick back-action of the Minga group,
thought she could see Gertrude's hand in this. That young person who
schemed, who desired things, who had unknown to Minga invited Tawny
to the house and to the Hackensack picnic and to this ball. Gertrude
was a young person who desired things. Gertrude knew the history of
the famous Troop engagement ring and saw no reason why she should not
add it to the golden snake collection. Also, there had undoubtedly
been aspects of the day on the Hackensack that Gertrude must turn to
other than their rightful conclusions. Sard remembered the shrill
screaming, the maudlin sounds of gayety; she had questioned Dunstan,
who had flushed and turned away growling. "Well,--we didn't find any
pearls, that's all; no, I'll say we didn't find any pearls," this with
saturnine inflection. Sard sat looking at the opposite river shore
strung with blue-gold lights, fruited like long lines of orchards.
Suddenly the girl saw the world as in the old days court ladies must
have seen it, wanting to cry and bite out their little tongues or the
little tongues of other women. The spiteful small messes of intrigue,
the contemptible inference and origins of personal slander.
"As far as I can see," came Tawny's drawling, slightly nasal tones,
"the girl was off with your hired man chasing around those swamps; why
she wanted to jump into a bog with him I don't know, or was it to get
away from him? Any old boy would have done, I dare say." Tawny laughed
his cracked, old man's laugh. "Of course, you all covered the thing up
pretty well. She's vamping that lawyer now! Well, I must say she likes
'em old."
Sard, utterly generous, utterly untainted of mind, could hardly take
this fellow in. She leaned forward anxiously. "You mean," she said
gravely, "oh, what are you trying to say?"
Young Troop had risen; something craven in him made him aware that it
might not be best to stay and face such real emotion. Anger in Sard
might be a difficult thing to laugh off. He admired her while he
feared her. Now a breezy, heated throng spilled out of the long doors
onto the piazza; the girls perched upon the rails and let the river
breeze cool their hot faces, while the boys leaned against pillars,
hands in pockets, getting off the time-honored persiflage of the young
dancing swain. Tawny saw Gertrude, in black net, still entwined by the
golden serpents and with a green jade circlet round her dark hair. The
great dramatic eyes summoned him. "Thanks, awfully much," he drawled
in the silly parlance of the "star" dancer. "I'll say I enjoyed it;
that was some little fox trot, what?" Tawny was edging away when Sard
Bogart, with a curious gesture of command, stopped him.
"You mustn't think you--you can go on with this sort of thing," the
girl said in a low voice. "That inference of yours stops right here; no
matter what there is between you and Minga--you--you can't go on saying
things." The now rather dismayed Tawny found himself once more against
the Bogart directness, and squirmed uncomfortably.
"Oh, forget it--I've 'destroyed the papers,'" he quoted with dramatic
raillery. "Minga won't get shown up by me." Again Gertrude looking over
her partner's shoulder summoned him.
"Say, but isn't Gert a looker?" breathed Tawny. "I guess she wants to
be rushed next dance, things getting a little slow for Gert; I promised
to look up a new crowd of cut-ins for her; well, so long!" Tawny bowed
with a curious half cross-eyed look of sneaking amusement. His eyes
were smouldering with a caddish kind of excitement; he could afford to
be good humored.
"Say, I'll cut it out," he pledged. "I'll drop the story; I can't speak
for the girls, Cinny and Gert and all, they've been having a lot of fun
with Minga in the dressing-room; she took a good deal of guying, they
say. Of course," advised Tawny patronizingly, "you ought to let her
know it has made a difference in her popularity."
Just then Dunstan came up. He shoved past Troop, ignoring him while
he elbowed him. "Sard," he said clearly, "I must ask you to stop
talking to this--er--cad. He has been discussing a friend of yours, our
friend,--well, I think we don't need him in our vicinity."
"Your friend will need you both all right," muttered Tawny
vindictively; "she'll need you both for dance partners and--and
everything else!"
As the groups on the piazza filtered back to the ballroom, Sard seized
her brother's coat sleeve. "Go and get Minga quickly," she said, "and
Mr. Shipman if you can. Oh, quick, before she realizes."
Dunstan looked at her, his eyes quick with passionate fire. "So you've
heard," he said wonderingly. "Well, that chap is about the lowest
skunk; they don't have hells for that kind," said the boy bitterly,
"they just let them stew in their own juice." But his sister would not
listen; she was thinking quickly.
"Go get them, dear; tell them to come out here and then order some
ice-cream and we'll make a little party of our own."
Hastily Sard devised a way to shield Minga; instinctively she thought
of Shipman. "Get Watts, too," she urged. Dunstan saw how dark her eyes
were and wondered. He half smiled. "Old Doomsday book and Sard," he
half chuckled under his perturbation. "What a couple of old nuts, yet
not so bad, either." Then he thought of Colter and bit his lips.
But Dunstan, hurrying for the door and seizing Minga where she stood
proud, bewildered, and alone, grabbed her in true "cutting-in" fashion.
"Gee, I've been waiting for this chance," he breathed. "I say, Minga,
don't you dance with your host even once in the evening?"
She shot a swift look at him. "Dunce," in a low voice, "the Bunch
think I'm--not--nice--they've been saying things; it was Gertrude, I
think," Minga mocked with her little face. Her red lips quivered, and
Dunstan, with a curious look of man determination, steered her into
an increasing velocity and brilliancy of step. "Bing! this is good
music," breathed the boy. "All right, Minga, old sport, eyes right,
head up, what? The rest of them are caterpillars and worms, what? And
Tawny Troop is--is--is a butterlion--not even a chocolate pussy in a
Christmas stocking!"
The gay rallying brought the bright blood to the vivid little face.
Minga threw back her head and her gay laugh pealed out, which was
what Dunce wanted. "Where's Shipman?" he asked, lips close to the
fluttering little head. Again the face clouded and poor Dunstan, his
resources at an end, gave her Sard's message. "Say!" he tried to
challenge the girl, tried to help her keep the sweet gay insouciance,
the so-called "pep" that was Minga's greatest asset....
"Once more around the room," said Dunce, "once more past Gertrude,
the great Human Vampire-steady--once more past the gang of glarers,"
meaning the chaperons, "steady; and then out that little door to the
right. See? and then find old Sard, see? and then a nice long spin out
in the moonlight. Who wants to dance this sizzling night?"
"All--right," breathed Minga, "all right. Say, Dunce," but while she
smiled and shook her head at him for the benefit of the observing
Bunch, Minga's voice was trembling, "say, Dunce, you aren't a
good--good sort--or anything like that, are you?"
The boyish arm tightened. "I'm any old thing you want," he said
gruffly. "I'm any old thing you need, Minga."
Meanwhile Sard sat waiting for them, the soft summer night cooling the
cheeks Tawny had made feverish.
"So that's the way Minga's law works out," thought the girl slowly,
"and the law of Minga's Bunch! She never even fancied this Tawny Troop.
She took him away from another girl just for the fun of wearing his
ring, and now Gertrude plays the same game. And Gertrude, because she
works for it, has more power than Minga." Sard, leaning forward,
looking into the ballroom, watched Minga and Dunce finish the dance;
she saw them throw back their heads and laugh together.
As Dunstan and his partner joined her, Sard rose. "Did you ask Mr.
Shipman if he would join us?" she questioned her brother; "where is
he?" But Watts, it seemed, could not be found, and to Sard's surprise
Minga seemed nearly frenzied as she stood there trembling like a
frightened child.
"Sard," the girl urged breathlessly, "the music isn't very good, is it?
Do you want to stay very much? Mr. Shipman has g-gone up the mountain;
he wanted to--to turn in early on account of the case to-morrow. Sard,"
Minga gulped, "I think this is a stupid dance, don't you? Shall we
go----Come on!"
Minga's eyes had deep shadows under them; her face, under its not
too well put on color, was piteous and woebegone. Dunstan chafed
helplessly; no one had ever before seen Minga like this. It was
insufferable that any stranger should see it. The youth tucked her arm
under his and called up all his powers of gay loquacity.
"You aren't all fed up, Minga--not you. Oh, you little worn out society
dame! Music not jazzy enough, and she says 'the floor is gritty'; we'll
have to fix that. What!" Dunstan, looking over his partner's head,
raised his eyebrows at his sister. He nodded violently and said with
deaf-mute's emphasized lips, "TAKE HER HOME!"
Suddenly Sard understood. Gertrude's propaganda had had its deadly
effect. Neither she nor Minga had their usual eager partners. The
Tawny Troop stag line of "cut-ins" was being marshaled for Gertrude
and one or two cronies. Curiously enough the "Minga Bunch," the
devil-may-care, unrestrained crowd had turned and rended its gay little
leader. The usual way had been taken. It was not a very new way; the
way of gray-haired men and women for other more devoted and more highly
inspired leaders, that of unanswerable personal slander.
The girl stood there aghast. Then she smiled a little disdainfully and
turned to her brother. "Will you drive us, Dunce?" she asked, "or shall
we call a taxi?"
"I had a dance with Cinny," said Dunce, "but she's sitting under the
trees with that fellow with the spook glimmers; she's vamping him for
his new tennis racket. I'll drive you. But," Dunce shut his teeth hard,
"when I leave this bunch I leave it for good and all, you understand;
you do too, Sard? You do too, Minga?"
All the way home the three young things were silent. They saw the dark
trees slide by, half piteously, wanting to run to them and hide their
heads in their soft branches and tell them things. All the kind earth,
the hills and the river, seemed maternal, strong to their hot hearts,
burning with scorn and contempt. Dunstan knew painfully his own part in
the miserable intrigue. Tawny and Gertrude merely revenged themselves,
and they had taken it out on little, jolly, happy Minga. As the girls
got out, Dunstan stopped his car in a kind of blare of cut-out and
racing engine; it was like getting off the blast of his own feelings.
The boy groaned "good-bye" and was gone.
Sard undressed in the moonlight. There was no other light in her room,
and so she had not pulled the shades down. The trees towered into the
white moonlit sky and she saw the orange-colored glow over the garage
where Colter sat reading. The man's curious calm life of books and
plants, the way he kept aloof yet was ready and effective, above all
his patient helplessness before the awful dark of his memory, swept
over the girl. Sard looked at her bed. "I can't sleep to-night," she
said. "I want to talk, to talk to someone--I want----" Sard went slowly
and looked up at the mountain where the organ builder's house loomed
back of the sky. She thought of Shipman and smiled a little but lightly
shook her head. "No," she said, "he's kind, kind, wonderfully kind and
strong, but----" The girl, a white crepe wrapper over her nightgown,
looked long and solemnly at Colter's light; suddenly the orange square
darkened.... The man was lying now on his narrow bed, the sweep of
hair off that forehead Sard knew so well, the long, fine hands lying
careless and relaxed, the fine sensitive face swept with its look of
suffering, perhaps already drowned in the great black waves of sleep.
Did sleep ever bring back to Colter his birthright, did he ever see in
dreams familiar faces or hear voices? Sard found herself kneeling at
the window watching the dark window, her face flushed. "I wonder, who
he is," breathed the girl, "oh, if I could only tell him who he is. If
I could bring Light to him!" Sard knelt, staring out into the dark, her
face hot, her heart pounding.
"I can't stand this," she muttered. "I--I feel desperate, queer
to-night. I might run out into the night, anywhere, to anyone. I
wonder! oh, I wonder----"
Suddenly she got up from her crouching position; with tawny hair
falling, tossing back from her forehead, she caught up a little pocket
flash and holding it before her carefully felt her way down the
tower-room stairs to Minga's room. Sard knocked softly. "May I come in?
You aren't asleep?"
There was no answer. The older girl gently turned the knob and looked
in. The room was in moonlit whiteness. There, still in her rumpled blue
and orange, the little butterfly back bare, the arms tossed frantically
out, she lay, the whole figure prey to sweeping and tearing things.
Minga was curled up on the bed. There was no doubt about the little
shivers and shakes, she was sobbing.
"Minga--precious!" Something big and devastating tore through the
older girl's senses. She felt suddenly old, like Minga's mother. This
motherliness, though Sard did not know it, was a keystone to her being;
it was the thing Shipman had half seen, it was the beautiful balance
of the Winged Victory. The girl sat quietly down on the bed; so this
was another Law for her then; she must know keenly and helplessly the
sorrow of others, she must blindly strive to learn how to help. Dora,
Colter, and now little gay Minga.
"Minga," urged the girl, pitifully, "don't cry like that--why, it's not
that silly Bunch, is it? We don't care for them, we have other friends.
Watts Shipman and--and---" Sard went a little vaguely over a possible
list of "other friends." There was no answer, and she leaned down,
trying to raise the buried face. "Honey, can't I know?" then urgently,
"Minga, don't cry like that, it's--it's self-pity, isn't it?" Sard
groped about to give expression to a thought that was hardly formed
in her. "I suppose self-pity's one thing we must never, never let
ourselves have," the girl said softly.
There was a sudden cessation of sobs, and Minga slowly raising on her
elbows turned up in the half light a broken face.
"I can't help ... pitying myself.... I've been so--so crazy; and now,"
shuddering, "I can't play any more."
"You poor little thing, poor little thing," Sard paused, her
hand passed over the tousled head. This young face and hand were
inexperienced, but Sard was like a pilot trying to pierce mists. "I
guess we've always got to play," she said, "even when we--well, that
Punchinello idea, you know. But anyway, Minga, you mustn't cry like
that because it's wrong; it does something to your nerves. I remember
they said it in the psychology class."
"But I've done an awful thing," wept Minga. She sat up suddenly. "Sard,
you don't know what I did to-night," Minga lifted her hand and passed
it swiftly over her face as if she would brush away some new look of
shame and repeated:
"I've done the awful thing; I wouldn't have cared if it had been anyone
else, but I felt wild after I had given Tawny back his ring and I
thought I'd take a chance and so, oh, Sard, while we were dancing I
told Watts Shipman I loved him, and told him in a silly way, a Cinny,
Gertrude way, and that's the awful thing; for you see, Sard, I do love
him. Oh, I do, I do," cried poor little Minga. "But I told him in that
way, and he doesn't respect me."
Sard, rocked by a surprise that bordered very nearly on hysterical
laughter, crept up closer to the little sufferer.
"My hat!" she said in awed tones. Her hair swept over her leaning face;
she pushed it back. "My hat!"
Minga fell on her friend, burying her face in this long veil of hair.
"I did--I did--I couldn't seem to help it--I was wild, you see, and
I needed a friend, a sort of fatherly person, don't you know." Minga
lifted her face and looked at her chum helplessly. "He is the only
person that ever scolded me and made me mind, and so, you see, I loved
him." There was a long silence, then, "I think he's wonderful. I
thought maybe he could make me--make me--better."
Sard, with a rush of understanding, threw her arms around the forlorn
figure.
"Poor little thing," she crooned.
"No," said Minga with a kind of shudder, "not that any more, Sard. I
guess I'm different now; I guess I've got to be a nut or high-brow or
something. I've got to grow bigger, you see," with a piteous gesture.
"I thought he might grow to care if he knew I did, and I told him.
It was out by that fountain, you know, and the--the water seemed
like tears." Minga's eyes widened over her own poetic thought. "My
goodness," she ejaculated, "I'll always think of that now when I see
that fountain." Then she went on, "But when I told him," the young
voice broke a little piteously, "he just took my two hands as if he was
going to sort of hold me from myself and himself. Oh, a terrible way
and then he said ... he just said, 'You are a very dear little thing,
you are a very dear little thing'--and it was finished," said Minga
with her childish gulp. "I couldn't screech or howl and make him come
back. I--I didn't even try. He just walked away from me. It was like a
play, only awful; he walked right straight toward the mountain--I saw
him in the moonlight and now," said Minga, "I--I have this awful ache."
There was a long silence, Sard trying to understand this change in her
friend. She began suddenly to see as if unrolled on a flaming scroll
another great law of lives like Minga's, that whoever tries to control
them will lose them, but whoever knows how to control them and does not
try has them bound fast and submissive. In the new days of the rapid
rising of women this fact contains a new challenge for men. There is no
reason why women should not rise but there also is no reason why men,
once superior, now rapidly being rated as inferior, at least by women,
should not look into this challenge. If woman grows more fine, why
should not a man also rise and create a new fineness that shall still
dominate her and make her happy in that mastery for which she will
forever ask.
The moonlight shone through the long luxurious rooms, the silver
patterns threw their strange symbols on the floor until almost morning,
and the dawn became a steadiness of gray and rose.
When at last they parted, Sard looked thoughtfully at her friend. "The
trial's on to-day," she said slowly, "and the Bunch are all mad, so
they won't go; and I don't think you ought to go, Minga."
"Just the same, I shall," whispered Minga doggedly. "I'm going with
Dunce." Then a thought struck her. "Oh, Sard, did Dunce tell you what
Judgie is going to do to Colter?"
The other girl started. "Do to Colter!" Sard paused at the door, her
face scared inquiry through the dawn-light.
"Well," Minga was sleepily yawning, "I think Dunce said that Judgie
had heard some of all this mess and so he had told Colter to get out.
He seems to think it doesn't do to have a gentleman--well, you know
what I mean, for a hired man, anyway." Minga, seeing her friend's face,
was a little nervous. "That's what Dunce said; you'd better ask him.
Imagine!" said little heavy-eyed Minga. "Imagine!"
Something slow, defined, inevitable crept around Sard's heart, with
a shiver; the girl tried to face it, tried with her ardent and alert
soul to know it for what it was. It was hate, and it was hate of her
father. She trembled slightly, for as she looked into her heart and saw
that dark shape of Hate lying at its door, she heard a soft whisper
again in her ear; little curls tickled her ears, soft whispering came
to her and her head was laid on a soft pulsating little breast.
"We aren't afraid of Foddy, little Sard; we love him; he won't put us
in prison."
Softly closing the door, softly stumbling up the steps to the
tower-room, the girl tried to put these things against that dark shape
lying across the threshold of her heart. "Oh, but he has put me in
prison," she sobbed, "he _has_ put me in prison--I--I--could never
make him understand." Sard threw herself face downward on her bed. The
birds were all singing, the sun came with bright morning over the happy
sparkle of the river. A girl lay tearless before the dark shape of hate
and the memory of love and before a slow dawning of a new feeling she
could not name, the old cry came:
"Oh, Mother!" whispered Sard. "Oh, Mother! _Mother!_"