HELL AND HEAVEN
The events of the afternoon, stirring as they had been, were soon
dismissed from Sandy's mind. The approaching hop possessed right of
way over every other thought.
By the combined assistance of Mrs. Hollis and Aunt Melvy, he had been
ready at half-past seven. The dance did not begin until nine; but he
was to take Annette, and the doctor, whose habits were as fixed as the
numbers on a clock, had insisted that she should attend prayer-meeting
as usual before the dance.
In the little Hard-Shell Baptist Church the congregation had assembled
and services had begun before Mr. Meech arrived. He appeared
singularly flushed and breathless, and caused some confusion by
giving out the hymn which had just been sung. It was not until he
became stirred by the power of his theme that he gained composure.
In the front seat Dr. Fenton drowsed through the discourse. Next to
him, her party dress and slipper-bag concealed by a rain-coat, sat
Annette, hot and rebellious, and in anything but a prayerful frame of
mind. Beside her sat Sandy, rigid with elegance, his eyes riveted on
the preacher, but his thoughts on his feet. For, stationary though he
was, he was really giving himself the benefit of a final rehearsal,
and mentally performing steps of intricate and marvelous variety.
"Stop moving your feet!" whispered Annette. "You'll step on my dress."
"Is it the mazurka that's got the hiccoughs in the middle?" asked
Sandy, anxiously.
Mr. Meech paused and looked at them over his spectacles in plaintive
reproach.
Then he wandered on into sixthlies and seventhlies of increasing
length. Before the final amen had died upon the air, Annette and Sandy
had escaped to their reward.
The hop was given in the town hall, a large, dreary-looking room with
a raised platform at one end, where Johnson's band introduced
instruments and notes that had never met before.
To Sandy it was a hall of Olympus, where filmy-robed goddesses moved
to the music of the spheres.
"Isn't the floor g-grand?" cried Annette, with a little run and a
slide. "I could just d-die dancing."
"What may the chalk line be for?" asked Sandy.
"That's to keep the stags b-back."
"The stags?" His spirits fell before this new complication.
"Yes; the boys without partners, you know. They have to stay b-back of
the chalk line and b-break in from there. You'll catch on right away.
There's your d-dressing-room over there. Don't bother about my card;
it's been filled a week. Is there anyb-body you want to dance with
especially?"
Sandy's eyes answered for him. They were held by a vision in the
center of the room, and he was blinded to everything else.
Half surrounded by a little group stood Ruth Nelson, red-lipped,
bright-eyed, eager, her slender white-clad figure on tiptoe with
buoyant expectancy. The crimson rose caught in her hair kept impatient
time to the tap of her restless high-heeled slipper, and she swayed
and sang with the music in a way to set the sea-waves dancing.
It was small matter to Sandy that the lace on her dress had belonged
to her great-grandmother, or that the pearls about her round white
throat had been worn by an ancestor who was lady in waiting to a queen
of France. He only knew she meant everything beautiful in the world to
him,--music and springtime and dawn,--and that when she smiled it was
sunlight in his heart.
"I don't think you can g-get a dance there," said Annette, following
his gaze. "She is always engaged ahead. But I'll find out, if you
w-want me to."
"Would you, now?" cried Sandy, fervently pressing her hand. Then he
stopped short. "Annette," he said wistfully, "do you think she'll be
caring to dance with a boy like me?"
"Of course she will, if you k-keep off her toes and don't forget to
count the time. Hurry and g-get off your things; I want you to try it
before the crowd comes. There are only a few couples for you to bump
into now, and there will be a hundred after a while."
O the fine rapture of that first moment when Sandy found he could
dance! Annette knocked away his remaining doubts and fears and boldly
launched him into the merry whirl. The first rush was breathless,
carrying all before it; but after a moment's awful uncertainty he
settled into the step and glided away over the shining floor,
counting his knots to be sure, but sailing triumphantly forward
behind the flutter of Annette's pink ribbons.
He was introduced right and left, and he asked every girl he met to
dance. It made little difference who she happened to be, for in
imagination she was always the same. Annette had secured for him the
last dance with Ruth, and he intended to practise every moment until
that magic hour should arrive.
But youth reckons not with circumstance. Just when all sails were set
and he was nearing perfection, he met with a disaster which promptly
relegated him to the dry-dock. His partner did not dance!
When he looked at her, he found that she was tall and thin and
vivacious, and he felt that she must have been going to hops for a
very long time.
"I hate dancing, don't you?" she said. "Let's go over there, out of
the crowd, and have a nice long talk."
Sandy glanced at the place indicated. It seemed a long way from base.
"Wouldn't you like to stand here and watch them?" he floundered
helplessly.
"Oh, dear, no; it's too crowded. Besides," she added playfully, "I
have heard _so_ much about you and your awfully romantic life. I just
want to know all about it."
As a trout, one moment in mid-stream swimming and frolicking with the
best, finds himself suddenly snatched out upon the bank, gasping and
helpless, so Sandy found himself high and dry against the wall, with
the insistent voice of his captor droning in his ears.
She had evidently been wound and set, and Sandy had unwittingly
started the pendulum.
"Have you ever been to Chicago, Mr. Kilday? No? It is such a dear
place; I simply adore it. I'm on my way home from there now. All my
men friends begged me to stay; they sent me so many flowers I had to
keep them in the bath-tub. Wasn't it darling of them? I just love
men. How long have you been in Clayton, Mr. Kilday?"
He tried to answer coherently, but his thoughts were in eager pursuit
of a red rose that flashed in and out among the dancers.
"And you really came over from England by yourself when you were just
a small boy? Weren't you clever! But I know the captain and all of
them made a great pet of you. Then you made a walking tour through the
States; I heard all about it. It was just too romantic for any use. I
love adventure. My two best friends are at the theological seminary.
One's going to India,--he's a blond,--and one to Africa. Just between
us, I am going with one of them, but I can't for the life of me make
up my mind which. I don't know why I am telling you all these things,
Mr. Kilday, except that you are so sweet and sympathetic. You
understand, don't you?"
He assured her that he did with more vehemence than was necessary, for
he did not want her to suspect that he had not heard what she said.
"I knew you did. I knew it the moment I shook hands with you. I felt
that we were drawn to each other. I am like you; I am just full of
magnetism."
Sandy unconsciously moved slightly away: he had a sudden uncomfortable
realization that he was the only one within the sphere of influence.
After two intermissions he suggested that they go out to the
drug-store and get some soda-water. On the steps they met Annette.
"You old f-fraud," she whispered to Sandy in passing, "I thought you
didn't like to sit out d-dances."
He smiled feebly.
"Don't you mind her teasing," pouted his partner; "if we like to talk
better than to dance, it's our own affair."
Sandy wished devoutly that it was somebody else's. When they returned,
they went back to their old corner. The chairs, evidently considering
them permanent occupants, assumed an air of familiarity which he
resented.
"Do you know, you remind me of an old sweetheart of mine," resumed the
voice of his captor, coyly. "He was the first real lover I ever had.
His eyes were big and pensive, just like yours, and there was always
that same look in his face that just made me want to stay with him all
the time to keep him from being lonely. He was awfully fond of me, but
he had to go out West to make his fortune, and he married before he
got back."
Sandy sighed, ostensibly in sympathy, but in reality at his own sad
fate. At that moment Prometheus himself would not have envied him his
state of mind. The music set his nerves tingling and the dancers
beckoned him on, yet he was bound to his chair, with no relief in
view. At the tenth intermission he suggested soda-water again, after
which they returned to their seats.
"I hope people aren't talking about us," she said, with a pleased
laugh. "I oughtn't to have given you all these dances. It's perfectly
fatal for a girl to show such preference for one man. But we are so
congenial, and you do remind me--"
"If it's embarrassing to you--" began Sandy, grasping the straw with
both hands.
"Not one bit," she asserted. "If you would rather have a good
confidential time here with me than to meet a lot of silly little
girls, then I don't care what people say. But, as I was telling you, I
met him the year I came out, and he was interested in me right off--"
On and on and on she went, and Sandy ceased to struggle. He sank in
his chair in dogged dejection. He felt that she had been talking ever
since he was born, and was going to continue until he died, and that
all he could do was to wait in anguish for the end. He watched the
flushed, happy faces whirling by. How he envied the boys their wilted
collars! After eons and eons of time the band played "Home, Sweet
Home."
"It's the last dance," said she. "Aren't you sorry? We've had a
perfectly divine time--" She got no further, for her partner, faithful
through many numbers, had deserted his post at last.
Sandy pushed eagerly through the crowd and presented himself at Ruth's
side. She was sitting with several boys on the stage steps, her cheeks
flushed from the dance, and a loosened curl falling across her bare
shoulder. He tried to claim his dance, but the words, too long
confined, rushed to his lips so madly as to form a blockade.
She looked up and saw him--saw the longing and doubt in his eyes, and
came to his rescue.
"Isn't this our dance, Mr. Kilday?" she said, half smiling, half
timidly.
In the excitement of the moment he forgot his carefully practised bow,
and the omission brought such chagrin that he started out with the
wrong foot. There was a gentle, ripping sound, and a quarter of a yard
of lace trailed from the hem of his partner's skirt.
"Did I put me foot in it?" cried Sandy, in such burning consternation
that Ruth laughed.
"It doesn't matter a bit," she said lightly, as she stooped to pin it
up. "It shows I've had a good time. Come! Don't let's miss the music."
He took her hand, and they stepped out on the polished floor. The
blissful agony of those first few moments was intolerably sweet.
She was actually dancing with him (one, two, three; one, two, three).
Her soft hair was close to his cheek (one, two, three; one, two,
three). What if he should miss a step (one, two, three)--or fall?
He stole a glance at her; she smiled reassuringly. Then he forgot all
about the steps and counting time. He felt as he had that morning on
shipboard when the _America_ passed the _Great Britain_. All the joy
of boyhood resurged through his veins, and he danced in a wild
abandonment of bliss; for the band was playing "Home, Sweet Home,"
and to Sandy it meant that, come what might, within her shining eyes
his gipsy soul had found its final home.
[Illustration: "Then he forgot all about the steps and counting time"]
When the music stopped, and they stood, breathless and laughing, at
the dressing-room door, Ruth said:
"I thought Annette told me you were just learning to dance!"
"So I am," said Sandy; "but me heart never kept time for me before!"
When Annette joined them she looked up at Sandy and smiled.
"Poor f-fellow!" she said sympathetically. "What a perfectly horrid
time you've had!"