"Is it manners for a man to say he isn"t interested in a girl?"
"You couldn"t say it to me, because--Oh, because I really want to know."
"Mrs. Fulton," I said, "if I"ve made her think so, I deserve to be kicked."
"Then that"s all right. She knows exactly the value to put on your attentions. And I"m glad."
"Why?"
"I don"t think it would be much fun to ride with a man who couldn"t bring his mind along with him, do you? Especially now that all the flowers are popping out and it"s so lovely in the woods."
"But," I said, "you have yet to forgive me for last night."
"There"s nothing to forgive," she said. "Don"t you know that though the man always takes the blame, it"s always the girl"s fault. A man can"t get himself into trouble by just sitting still and looking pensive, but a girl can. From the moment Evelyn sat on that bench under the cedar she had only one thought. It was to see if she could make you kiss her."
"No, no, Mrs. Fulton," I exclaimed. "It wasn"t a bit like that.
Honestly it wasn"t."
"In that case," said Mrs. Fulton, and her rosy face was at its very gayest, "Evelyn is a liar."
"She told you that she tried to make me?"
"Why, what else was there for her to be ashamed about?"
"But you said she was also angry."
"I suppose," said Lucy mischievously, "she was angry because I came out on the porch."
IX
In the days of the waltz and the twostep, Aiken did not dance, but immediately upon the introduction of the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear, she made honorable amends. Wilc.o.x built an oval ballroom with a platform for musicians, the big room at the Golf Club was found to have a capital floor, and the grip of bridge whist upon society was rudely loosened.
Whatever may be said in derogation of the modern dances, they have rejuvenated the old and knocked a lot of nonsense out of the young. To my eye there is nothing more charming than a well-danced maxixe. To dance well a man must be an athlete and a musician; to be either is surely a worthy ambition. To dance well a girl must at the very least have grace and charm.
So far as I am concerned, Lucy Fulton"s dance was a great success, from the arrival of the first guest. I was the first guest.
We had a whole dance to ourselves while Evelyn was busy with the telephone and before the second guest arrived. In all her life Lucy had never looked more animated or more lovely. The musicians caught her enthusiasm and the high spirit which flowed from her like an electric current, and at once these things appeared in their music.
"I"ve only one sorrow," I said, "that I can"t dance with you and watch you dance at the same time."
"But if you had to choose one or the other?"
"I shall choose often," I said, "but I"m afraid others will begin getting chosen. If I had my way there would be no other man but me and no other girl but you, and we"d dance till breakfast time."
"Evelyn," said Lucy, her eyes full of mischief, "could chaperon us from a bench. She could send for her knitting."
"Who is this Evelyn?" I said.
And then the rhythm of the music became too much for us, and we did not speak any more, only danced; only danced and liked each other more and more.
That night it seemed there were no tired men or women in Aiken. There were no lingering groups of yarn-swapping men in the buffet, only half-melted humanity who gulped down a gla.s.s of champagne and flew back to the dance. We made so much noise that half the dogs in Aiken barked all night, and roosters waked from sleep began to crow at eleven o"clock.
I am sure that Lucy did not give many thoughts to poor John Fulton, worrying his head off in far New York. She had the greatest power upon her own thoughts of any woman or man I ever knew. And always she chose agreeable and even delightful things to think about. When I try to make castles in the air I get worrying about details, such as neighbors and plumbing. Sometimes I have felt that it would be agreeable to run away from everyone and everything, and live on some South Sea beach in an undershirt and an old pair of trousers. I can see the palms and the breadfruit, as well as the next man. I can picture the friendly brown girls with their bright, black eyes and their long necklaces of scarlet flowers and many-colored sh.e.l.ls, and I can hear the long-drawn roar of the surf on the coral beach. But always my bright, hopeful pictures go to smash on details. More insistent than the roar of the surf, I hear the humming of great angry mosquitoes, and I try to figure out what I should do if I came down with appendicitis and no surgeon within a thousand miles.
Lucy chose her thoughts as she would have selected neckties, choosing the pretty ones, tossing the ugly ones aside and never thinking of them again, or, for that matter, of the bill for the pretty neckties that would be sent to her husband. Only very great matters, such as love and death, could have occupied her mind against her will.
Toward one o"clock the dance became hilarious. One or two men had the good sense to go home, two or three others had not. One of them--the King boy--made quite a nuisance of himself, and to revenge himself for a snub (greatly exaggerated by the alcoholic mind), sought and found the hotel switchboard and in the midst of a fox trot shut off all the lights.
But the music went right on, and so did many of the dancers. There were violent collisions, shouts of laughter, and exclamations of pain.
I was facing the nearest wall of the room when the lights went out and I backed Lucy toward it, and then, groping, for I hadn"t a match in my clothes, found it and stood guard over her, one hand pressing the wall on each side of her and my back braced. I received one thundering jolt over the kidneys, and one cruel kick on the ankle bone. And then the lights went on again, and we finished our dance.
Lucy said she hated people who weren"t cool and collected in time of danger. That if she was ever in a theater when it caught fire she hoped there"d be somebody with her, like _me_, to take care of her!
"That was the neatest thing," she said, "the way you got us out of that. We might have been knocked down and trampled to death."
When that dance ended, we went out of doors for a few minutes to get cool. We took a turn the length of the narrow, sanded yard and back.
We could hear the buggy boys just beyond the tall privet hedge. Some were cracking jokes; others were heavily snoring, and there were whispered conversations that had to do, no doubt, with mischief, and petty crimes.
"It"s been a grand party," I said. "By and by I"m going to give one."
"But not for me, you know, just a spontaneous party. Oh, do please, will you?"
"Of course I will. But it will really be given----"
"I mustn"t know."
"You shall never know if you mustn"t."
"I think you ought to dance once with Evelyn."
"I have danced with her, but only half a dance. She said she was tired--and then she finished it with Dawson Cooper."
"I wish they"d get to like each other."
"So do I. They"re the right age. They"ve the right amount of money between them, and they like the same sort of things. But it rests with Evelyn. Dawson would fly to a dropped handkerchief as a pigeon flies home; but he"s very shy and doesn"t think much of himself."
It seemed a good omen when we entered the main hall and found them sitting out a dance together.
Dawson rose, but with some reluctance, it seemed to me.
"Isn"t it about my turn, Lucy?" he said. "Will you?"
"Did Evelyn tell you you had to?"
He blushed like a schoolboy, and Evelyn burst out laughing.