Part 4

“Over-checked?” said Miller. “You 'll think I have when all my checks get in. I mailed a dozen to-day. They 'll slide in on you in about a week and you 'll telegraph _Bradstreet's_ to know how I stand. This is a _fine_ banker,” Miller went on to Alan. “He twits me about over-checking occasionally. Let me tell you something. Last year I happened to have ten thousand dollars on my hands waiting for a cotton factory to begin operations down in Alabama, and as I had no idea when the money would be called for I placed it with his nibs here 'on call.'Things got in a tangle at the mill and they kept waiting, and our friend here concluded I had given it to him.”

“I thought you had forgotten you had it,” said Craig, with another of his loud, infectious laughs.

“Anyway,” went on Miller, “I got a sudden order for the amount and ran in on him on my way from the post-office. I made out my check and stuck it under his nose. Great Scott! you ought to have seen him wilt. I don't believe he had half of it in the house, but he had ten million excuses. He kept me waiting two days and hustled around to beat the band. He thought I was going to close him up.”

“That was a close shave,” admitted Craig. “Never mind about the over-checking, my boy; keep it up, if it will help you. You are doing altogether too much business with the other bank to suit me, anyway.”

VI

HE young people assembled slowly at the dance that evening. Towards dark it had begun raining, and according to custom two livery-stable carriages, called “hacks,” were engaged to convey all the couples to and from the hotel. There was no disputing over who should have the first use of the vehicles, for the young ladies who had the reputation of getting ready early on such occasions were gone after first, and those who liked to take their time in making preparations were left till later.

Everything in life is relative, and to young people who often went to even less pretentious entertainments this affair was rather impressive in its elegance. Lamps shone everywhere, and bunches of candles blazed and sputtered in nooks hung about with evergreens. The girls were becomingly attired in light evening-gowns, and many of them were good-looking, refined, and graceful. All were soft-spoken and easy in their manners, and either wore or carried flowers. The evening-suits of the young men were well in evidence, and more noticeable to the wearers themselves than they would have been to a spectator used to conventional style of dress. They could be seen in all stages of inadaptability to figures too large or too small, and even after the dance began there were several swaps, and a due amount of congratulation on the improvement from the appreciative fair sex. The young lady accompanying each young man had pinned a small bouquet on his lapel, so that it would have been impossible to tell whether a man had a natural taste for flowers or was the willing victim to a taste higher than his own.

Rayburn Miller and Alan sat smoking and talking in the room of the latter till about half-past nine o' clock, and then they went down. As a general rule, young men were expected to escort ladies to dances, when the young men went at all; but Alan was often excused from so doing on account of living in the country, and Miller had broken down every precedent in that respect and never invited a girl to go with him. He atoned for this shortcoming by contributing most liberally to every entertainment given by the young people, even when he was out of town. He used to say he liked to graze and nibble at such things and feel free to go to bed or business at will.

As the two friends entered the big parlor, Alan espied the girl about whom he had been thinking all day. She was seated in one of the deep, lace-curtained windows behind the piano. Frank Hillhouse was just presenting to her a faultlessly attired travelling salesman. At this juncture one of the floor-managers with a white rosette on his lapel called Miller away to ask his advice about some details, and Alan turned out of the parlor into the wide corridor which ran through the house. He did this in obedience to another unwritten law governing Darley's social intercourse--that it would be impolite for a resident gentleman to intrude himself upon a stranger who had just been introduced to a lady. So he went down to the ground floor and strolled into the office. It was full of tobacco smoke and a throng of men, some of whom were from the country and others from the town, drawn to the hotel by the festivities. From the office a door opened into a bar and billiard room, whence came the clicking of ivory balls and the grounding of cues. Another door led into the large dining-room, which had been cleared of its tables that it might be used for dancing. There was a sawing of fiddles, the twanging of guitars, the jingle of tambourines, and the groaning of a bass-viol. The musicians, black and yellow, occupied chairs on one of the tables, which had been placed against the wall, and one of the floor-managers was engaged in whittling paraffine-candles over the floor and rubbing it in with his feet. Seeing what he was doing, some of the young men, desirous of trying their new patent-leather pumps, came in and began to waltz singly and in couples.

When everything was in readiness the floor-managers piloted the dancers down-stairs. From the office Alan saw them filing into the big room and taking seats in the chairs arranged against the walls on all sides. He saw Frank Hillhouse and Dolly Barclay sit down near the band; the salesman had disappeared. Alan threw his cigar away and went straight to her.

“Oh, here you are,” laughed Frank Hillhouse, as Alan shook hands with her. “I told Miss Dolly coming on that the west wind would blow you this way, and when I saw Ray Miller just now I knew you'd struck the town.”

“It wasn't exactly the wind,” replied Alan. “I'm afraid you will forget me if I stay on the farm all the time.”

“We certainly are glad to have you,” smiled Miss Barclay.

“I knew she'd say that--I knew it--I knew it,” said Hillhouse. “A girl can always think of nicer things to say to a feller than his rival can. Old Squire Trabue was teasing me the other day about how hard you was to beat, Bishop, but I told him the bigger the war the more victory for somebody; and, as the feller said, I tote fair and am above board.”

Alan greeted this with an all but visible shudder. There was much in his dignified bearing and good appearance to commend him to the preference of any thinking woman, especially when contrasted to Hill-house, who was only a little taller than Dolly, and was showing himself even at a greater disadvantage in his unrefined allusions to his and Alan' s attentions to her. Indeed, Alan was sorry for the spectacle the fellow was making of himself, and tried to pass it over.

“I usually come in on Saturdays,” he explained.

“That's true,” said Dolly, with one of her rare smiles.

“Yes”--Hillhouse took another header into forbidden waters--“he's about joined your church, they tell me.”

Alan treated this with an indulgent smile. He did not dislike Hillhouse, but he did not admire him, and he had never quite liked his constant attentions to Miss Barclay. But it was an acknowledged fact among the society girls of Darley that if a girl refused to go out with any young man in good standing it was not long before she was left at home oftener than was pleasant. Dolly was easily the best-looking girl in the room; not, perhaps, the most daintily pretty, but she possessed a beauty which strength of character and intellect alone could give to a face already well featured. Even her physical beauty alone was of that texture which gives the beholder an agreeable sense of solidity. She was well formed, above medium height, had a beautiful neck and shoulders, dark-gray eyes, and abundant golden-brown hair.

“May I see your card?” asked Alan. “I came early to secure at least one.”

At this Frank Hillhouse burst out laughing and she smiled up at Alan. “He's been teasing me all evening about the predicament I'm in,” she explained. “The truth is, I'm not going to dance at all. The presiding elder happened in town to-day, on his way through, and is at our house. You know how bitter he is against church-members dancing. At first mamma said I shouldn't come a step; but Mr. Hillhouse and I succeeded in getting up a compromise. I can only look on. But my friends are having pity on me and filling my card for what they call stationary dances.”

Alan laughed as he took the card, which was already almost filled, and wrote his name in one of the blank spaces. Some one called Hillhouse away, and then an awkward silence fell upon them. For the first time Alan noticed a worried expression on her face, now that it was in repose, but it lighted up again when she spoke.

“You have no button-hole bouquet,” she said, noticing his bare lapel. “That's what you get for not bringing a girl. Let me make you one.”

“I wish you would,” he said, thoughtfully, for as she began to search among her flowers for some rosebuds and leaves he noted again the expression of countenance that had already puzzled him.

“Since you are so popular,” he went on, his eyes on her deft fingers, “I'd better try to make another engagement. I'd as well confess that I came in town solely to ask you to let me take you to church tomorrow evening.”

He saw her start; she raised her eyes to his almost imploringly, and then she looked down. He saw her breast heave suddenly as with tightened lips she leaned forward to pin the flowers on his coat. The jewels in her rings flashed under his eyes; there was a delicate perfume in the air about her glorious head. He had never seen her look so beautiful before. He wondered at her silence at just such a moment. The tightness of her lips gave way and they fell to trembling when she started to speak.

“I hardly know what to say,” she began. “I--I--you know I said the presiding elder was at our house, and--”

“Oh, I understand,” broke in Alan; “that's all right. Of course, use your own--”

“No, I must be plain with you,” she broke in, raising a pair of helpless, tortured eyes to his; “you will not think I had anything to do with it. In fact, my heart is almost broken. I'm very, very unhappy.”

He was still totally at sea as to the cause of her strange distress. “Perhaps you'd rather not tell me at all,” he said, sympathetically; his tone never had been so tender. “You need not, you know.”

“But it's a thing I could not keep from you long, anyway,” she said, tremulously. “In fact, it is due you--an explanation, I mean. Oh, Alan, papa has taken up the idea that we--that we like each other too much, and--”

The life and soul seemed to leave Alan' s face.

“I understand,” he heard himself saying; “he does not want me to visit you any more.”

She made no reply; he saw her catch a deep breath, and her eyes went down to her flowers. The music struck up. The mulatto leader stood waving his fiddle and calling for “the grand march” in loud, melodious tones. There was a scrambling for partners; the young men gave their left arms to the ladies and merrily dragged them to their places.

“I hope you do not blame me--that you don't think that I--” but the clatter and clamor ingulfed her words.

“No, not at all,” he told her; “but it's awful--simply awful I I know you are a true friend, and that's some sort of comfort.”

“And I always shall be,” she gulped. “You must try not to feel hurt. You know my father is a very peculiar man, and has an awful will, and nobody was ever so obstinate.”

Then Alan' s sense of the great injustice of the thing rose up within him and his blood began to boil. “Perhaps I ought to take my name off your card,” he said, drawing himself up slightly; “if he were to hear that I talked to you to-night he might make it unpleasant for you.”

“If you do I shall never--_never forgive you_,” she answered, in a voice that shook. There was, too, a glistening in her eyes, as if tears were springing. “Wouldn't that show that you harbored ill-will against me, when I am so helpless and troubled?”

“Yes, it would; and I shall come back,” he made answer. He rose, for Hillhouse, calling loudly over his shoulder to some one, was thrusting his bowed arm down towards her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said to Dolly. “I didn't know they had called the march. We've got some ice-cream hid out up-stairs, and some of us are going for it. Won't you take some, Bishop?”

“No, thank you,” said Alan, and they left him.

VI

LAN made his way along the wall, out of the track of the promenaders, into the office, anxious to escape being spoken to by any one. But here several jovial men from the mountains who knew him intimately gathered around him and began to make laughing remarks about his dress.

“You look fer the world like a dirt-dauber.” This comparison to a kind of black wasp came from Pole Baker, a tall, heavily built farmer with an enormous head, thick eyebrows, and long, shaggy hair. He lived on Bishop's farm, and had been brought up with Alan. “I 'll be derned ef you ain't nimble on yore feet, though. I've seed you cut the pigeon-wing over on Mossy Creek with them big, strappin' gals 'fore you had yore sights as high as these town folks.”

“It's that thar vest that gits me,” said another. “I reckon it's cut low so you won't drap saft victuals on it; but I guess you don't do much eatin' with that collar on. It don't look like yore Adam's-apple could stir a peg under it.”

With a good-natured reply and a laugh he did not feel, Alan hurried out of the office and up to his room, where he had left his lamp burning. Rayburn Miller's hat and light overcoat were on the bed. Alan sat down in one of the stiff-backed, split-bottom chairs and stared straight in front of him. Never in his life had he suffered as he was now suffering. He could see no hope ahead; the girl he loved was lost to him. Her father had heard of the foolhardiness of old man Bishop, and, like many another well-meaning parent, had determined to save his daughter from the folly of marrying a penniless man, who had doubtless inherited his father's lack of judgment and caution.

There was a rap on the closed door, and immediately afterwards Rayburn Miller turned the knob and came in. His kindly glance swept the face of his friend, and he said, with forced lightness:

“I was doing the cake-walk with that fat Howard girl from Rome when I saw you leave the room. She can' t hide the fact that she is from a city of ten thousand population. She kept calling my attention to what our girls had on and sniggering. She's been to school in Boston and looked across the ocean from there. You know I don't think we lead the world, but it makes me fighting mad to have our town sneered at. When she was making so much fun of the girls' dresses, I came in an inch of asking her if she was a dressmaker. By God, I did! You remember,” Miller went on lightly, as if he had divined Alan' s misery and was trying to cheer him up--“you remember how Percy Lee, Hamilton's shoe-clerk, hit back at that Savannah girl. She was stopping in this house for a month one summer, and he called on her and took her driving several times; but one day she let herself out. 'Everything is so different up here, Mr. Lee,' she giggled. 'Down home, girls in good society never receive young men in your business.'It was a lick between the eyes; but old North Georgia was ready for it. 'Oh,' said Percy, whose mother's blood is as blue as indigo, 'the Darley girls draw the line, too; I only get to go with hotel girls.'”

Alan looked up and smiled, but his face seemed frozen. Miller sat down, and an awkward silence fell for several minutes. It was broken by the lawyer.

“I don't want to bore you, old man,” he said, “but I just had to follow you. I saw from your looks as you left the ballroom that something was wrong, and I am afraid I know what it is.”

“You think you do?” asked Alan, flashing a glance of surprise upward.

“Yes. You see, Colonel Barclay is a rough, outspoken man, and he made a remark the other day which reached me. I wasn't sure it was true, so I didn't mention it; but I reckon my informant knew what he was talking about.”

Alan nodded despondently. “I asked her to go to church with me to-morrow night. She was awfully embarrassed, and finally told me of her father's objections.”

“I think I know what fired the old devil up,” said Miller.

“You do?”

“Yes, it was that mistake of your father's. As I told you, the Colonel is as mad as a wet hen about the whole thing. He's got a rope tied to every nickel he's got, and he intends to leave Dolly a good deal of money. He thinks Frank Hillhouse is just the thing; he shows that as plain as day. He noticed how frequently you came to see Dolly and scented danger ahead, and simply put his foot down on it, just as fathers have been doing ever since the Flood. My dear boy, you've got a bitter pill to take, but you've got to swallow it like a man. You've reached a point where two roads fork. It is for you to decide which one you 'll take.”

Alan made no reply. Rayburn Miller lighted a cigar and began to smoke steadily. There was a sound of boisterous laughter in a room across the corridor. It had been set aside as the dressing-room for the male revellers, and some of them were there, ordering drinks up from the bar. Now and then from below came muffled strains of music and the monotonous shuffling of feet.

“It's none of my business,” Miller burst out, suddenly; “but I'm friend enough of yours to feel this thing like the devil. However, I don't know what to say. I only wish I knew how far you've gone into it.”

Alan smiled mechanically.

“If you can' t look at me and see how far I've gone you are blind,” he said.

“I don't mean that,” replied Miller. “I was wondering how far you had committed yourself--oh, damn it!--made love, and all that sort of thing.”

“I've never spoken to her on the subject,” Alan informed him, gloomily.

“Good, good! Splendid!”

Alan stared in surprise.

“I don't understand,” he said. “She knows--that is, I think she knows how I feel, and I have hoped that--”

“Never mind about that,” interrupted Miller, laconically. “There is a chance for both of you if you 'll turn square around like sensible human beings and look the facts in the face.”

“You mean--”

“That it will be stupid, childish idiocy for either or both of you to let this thing spoil your lives.”

“I don't understand you.”

“Well, you will before I'm through with you, and I 'll do you up brown. There are simply two courses open to you, my boy. One is to treat Colonel Barclay's wishes with dignified respect, and bow and retire just as any European gentleman would do when told that his pile was too small to be considered.”

“And the other?” asked Alan, sharply.

“The other is to follow in the footsteps of nearly every sentimental fool that ever was born, and go around looking like a last year's bird's-nest, looking good for nothing, and being good for nothing; or, worse yet, persuading the girl to elope, and thus angering her father so that he will cut her out of what's coming to her and what is her right, my boy. She may be willing to live on a bread-and-water diet for a while, but she 'll lose flesh and temper in the long run. If you don't make as much money for her as you cause her to lose she 'll tell you of it some day, or at least let you see it, an' that's as long as it's wide. You are now giving yourself a treatment in self-hypnotism, telling yourself that life has not and cannot produce a thing for you beyond that particular pink frock and yellow head. I know how you feel. I've been there six different times, beginning with a terrible long first attack and dwindling down, as I became inoculated with experience, till now the complaint amounts to hardly more than a momentary throe when I see a fresh one in a train for an hour's ride. I can do you a lot of good if you 'll listen to me. I 'll give you the benefit of my experience.”

“What good would your devilish experience do me?” said Alan, impatiently.

“It would fit any man's case if he'd only believe it. I've made a study of love. I've observed hundreds of typical cases, and watched marriage from inception through protracted illness or boredom down to dumb resignation or sudden death. I don't mean that no lovers of the ideal, sentimental brand are ever happy after marriage, but I do believe that open-eyed courtship will beat the blind sort all hollow, and that, in nine cases out of ten, if people were mated by law according to the judgment of a sensible, open-eyed jury, they would be happier than they now are. Nothing ever spoken is truer than the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other God but me.'Let a man put anything above the principle of living right and he will be miserable. The man who holds gold as the chief thing in life will starve to death in its cold glitter, while a pauper in rags will have a laugh that rings with the music of immortal joy. In the same way the man who declares that only one woman is suited to him is making a god of her--raising her to a seat that won't support her dead, material weight. I frankly believe that the glamour of love is simply a sort of insanity that has never been correctly named and treated because so many people have been the victims of it.”

“Do you know,” Alan burst in, almost angrily, “when you talk that way I think you are off. I know what's the matter with you; you have simply frittered away your heart, your ability to love and appreciate a good woman. Thank Heaven! your experience has not been mine. I don't see how you could ever be happy with a woman. I couldn't look a pure wife in the face and remember all the flirtations you've indulged in--that is, if they were mine.”