A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
and taken refuge under Mrs. Sequin's experienced wing, she had been the
sensation of the evening. Adroitly conveyed from one group to another
she had left enthusiasm in her wake. She was evidently enjoying to the
utmost the novelty of receiving homage from one black-coated courtier
after another, and of hearing delightful things about herself. The only
apparent drawback to her pleasure was when she was compelled to say as
she did now:
“Thank you ever so much, but I'm not dancing.”
“Not dancing?” repeated Mr. Horton, not unmindful of the whiteness of
her shoulders against the dark marble of a neighboring pedestal,--'“Why
not?”
“The Doctor and I have given up dancing.”
“Oh, so he doesn't allow you to dance?”
“Allow me?” she lifted her level brows, smiling. “He simply doesn't care
for it.”
“And you don't care for it either?”
“Oh, yes, I do, I care for it too much. That's why I'm not dancing.”
“But you _are_ dancing. You've been dancing ever since you came in. I've
watched you. Mightn't you just as well be dancing with me, as dancing by
yourself?”
She laughed and shook her head, but her foot continued to pat the time,
and her eyes followed the swaying couples that swung past.
“What's the Doctor's objection?” Mr. Horton urged.
“He thinks it's undignified for married women to dance, and I guess I
do, too, only--” Miss Lady sighed,--“you see, I keep forgetting that I
_am_ a married woman!”
“You certainly make other people want to forget it,” then his eyes
dropped before the childlike candor of her gaze. “Come now, Mrs.
Queerington, aren't you taking matrimony a little seriously?”
“Perhaps I am, but I'm new, you know, and I've an awful lot to
learn.”
“Hasn't it ever occurred to you that the Doctor might have something to
learn?”
“No,” she said brightly, “he knows everything. I sometimes wish he
didn't. I'd be proud if I could teach him even _that_ much!” and she
measured off the amount on the tip of her little finger.
“Perhaps he isn't as good a pupil as you are. You should take him to see
'Harnessing a Husband,' at the Ardmore this week.”
“A play? I'd love to go to the theater just once.”
“You've never been? How extraordinary! Come with Mrs. Horton and me on
Friday night and let us share your first thrill.”
“May I?” Miss Lady began eagerly, then checking herself, “I'm afraid the
Doctor doesn't care much about the modern stage. He used to enjoy
seeing the great actors, but he says the plays they put on now bore him
fearfully. Mayn't we come to call sometime instead?”
“As you like,” said Mr. Horton, shrugging, “but I hope you realize that
you are spoiling that learned husband of yours. Instead of adapting
yourself to him, make him adapt himself to you. Come now, isn't it about
time for you to reform? Why not begin by finishing this dance with me?”
Still she laughed and shook her head. “It isn't that I don't want to!
I'd rather dance than do anything in the world--except ride horseback.”
“I might have known you were a horsewoman. Do you ride much?”
“Not now.”
“The Doctor doesn't care for it, I suppose?”
She flashed a questioning glance at him, then she looked away:
“No,” she said, “he doesn't care for it.”
Cropsie Decker, who had been hovering in her vicinity, now came up and
claimed the next number.
“There's a bully little corner in the conservatory where we can sit out
this waltz. You won't mind if I carry her off, Mr. Horton?”
“Not if she takes to heart some of the wise things I've been telling
her,” said Horton, looking at her through his narrow eyes and pulling at
his small, fair mustache. “Au revoir, Madame Beaux Yeux!”
Miss Lady did not move from the spot where he left her. Out under the
palms in the hall, the orchestra was beginning one of Strauss' most
distracting waltzes; her fingers tapped the time. Suddenly she held out
her hand to Cropsie.
“I can't stand it another minute! I've got to dance once if I never
dance again!”
Every eye in the ballroom followed the slender figure, as it circled
in and out among the throng. Miss Lady danced with the grace and
abandonment of a child. She had given herself utterly to the joy of
the moment. She was letting herself go for the first time since her
marriage, following the glad impulse of her heart, and dancing as a
Bacchante might have danced alone on a moonlight night in some forest
glade.
When at last the music stopped Cropsie drew her into the conservatory.
“Here, come around this palm, quick! They'll all be after you for the
next dance. Gerald Ivy is charging around now looking for you, and so is
Mr. Horton. Sit there in the window and cool off!”
She sank laughing and breathless on the window sill. All the
exhilaration of the dance was in her eyes, her lips were parted, her
cheeks flushed, and a strand of loosened hair fell across her shoulder.
It was at this moment that wheels sounded on the driveway below, caused
her to lean idly out to see who was coming. A wagon stopped at the side
entrance, and a man alighted. Uncle Jimpson's voice was heard asking a
question, then came the other man's voice, in quick, incisive answer.
Miss Lady, sitting motionless, looking down, turned suddenly from
the window. The color had left her face and her hand trembled visibly
against the curtain.
“What's the matter?” cried Cropsie; “are you ill? Did you dance too
long?”
“It's nothing, I'm all right. That is I will be--”
“Can't I get you some water, or an ice, or call Mrs. Sequin?”
“No, no, please! It's nothing. I'll slip off to the dressing-room until
I feel better. I can go through here up the side stairs.”
“Wait, I'll go with you. You are as white as if you'd seen a ghost!”
But before he could join her she had disappeared into mysterious regions
where he dared not follow.
CHAPTER XVII
During the course of that Christmas night, there was one member of the
Sequin household who failed to thrill with the holiday spirit, and whose
depression steadily increased as the evening wore on. The great occasion
of which Uncle Jimpson had dreamed all his life, had at last arisen,
and instead of being allowed to rise with it, and prove his indisputable
right to butlerhood, he had been detailed to drive back and forth to the
station over that same humdrum Cane Run Road that he and Old John had
helped to wear away for the past quarter of a century!
To be sure, a neat depot wagon and a spirited young sorrel had replaced
the ancient buggy and the apostolic nag, but these fell far short of
Uncle Jimpson's dreams. A coach and four at that moment would not have
compensated him for the fact that a complaisant, red-headed furnaceman,
a “po' white trash” arrived but yesterday, was being allowed to pass the
tray that by all rights of precedence belonged to him.
Waiting impatiently at the station for the train that was to bring the
elusive ices which he had been pursuing all evening, he at last had the
satisfaction of seeing the small engine crawl out of the darkness, and
come to a wheezing halt.
So engrossed were the conductor and brakeman and Uncle Jimpson in safely
depositing the freezers on the platform, that no one noticed a passenger
who had alighted. In fact, it was not until Uncle Jimpson heard Mrs.
Sequin's name that he paused from his labor and looked up.
The stranger was a young, well-built man, wearing a long, shaggy
overcoat, and a cap of a foreign cut that excited the immediate envy of
the brake-man. The bag and the suit case which he carried were covered
with foreign labels, and he had the air of a person who is suddenly
dropped down in a strange place and doesn't quite know what to do with
himself.
“You say you want to git up to Mrs. Sequin's to-night?” Uncle Jimpson
eyed the bags suspiciously. “'Scuse me, sir, but you ain't sellin'
nothin', is you?”
The laugh that greeted this was so spontaneous, that Uncle Jimpson
hastened to apologize: “I nebber thought you wuz, only we wasn't lookin'
fer no railroad company, an' I 'lowed you didn't look lak you wuz comin'
to de party.”
“What party?” asked the man, his look of amusement giving place to one
of dismay.
“Our-alls party. We's havin' a ball an' a house-warmin'. You must be
comin' fum a long ways off not to be hearin' 'bout hit!”
“You mean the Sequins are having a party, tonight?”
“Yas, sir.”
“But aren't they expecting me? Didn't they get my telegram?”
“I dunno, sir. Dey nebber said nothin' to me.”
The stranger stood with feet apart, watch in hand, and a grim expression
on the only part of his face visible between his cap and his upturned
collar.
“What time is the next train back to town?”
“Dey ain't none, 'ceptin' de special, what's hired to take de party back
to town. Dat goes 'bout two o'clock.”
“I'll wait for it,” said the stranger, flinging his bag against the
waiting-room door and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the
snow-covered platform.
But this did not meet with Uncle Jimpson's ideas of hospitality.
“Dey nebber knowed you wuz comin',” he argued. “I jes know dey didn't.
But dat won't hinder 'em fum bein' powerful glad to see you. Better git
in, Boss, an' lemme dribe you up dere.”
“No, there is evidently more room for me in town!”
“Room! Why, Mister, we could take keer of all de Presidents of de
Nunited States at one time! 'Sides, hit don't look right to leave you
a stompin' round here in de cold fer three or four hours by yourself.
You'd git powerful lonesome.”
“I'm used to being lonesome. Haven't been anything else for a year.”
“But dis heah is different,” urged the old darkey, scratching his
head; “dis heah is Christmas night. Tain't natchul fer folks not to
git together an' laugh an' be happy an' fergit dere quarrels an' dere
troubles an' jollify deyselves. You know you ain't gwine be happy
stompin' round here in de dark by your loneself; you know dat ain't no
way to spend Christmas, Boss!”
The stranger continued to stare into the darkness for a moment, then
he laughed, that same sudden, infectious, boyish laugh that had greeted
Uncle Jimpson's suggestion that he was an agent.
“You're right!” he exclaimed; “this is no time to nurse a grouch.
Perhaps they didn't get the telegram. I'll risk it. Is there a side door
you could slip me in?”
“Yas, sir! We got four side doors, 'sides de back one. Ain't nuffin we
ain't got. You git right in de wagon, an' I'll hist de bags in. 'Tain't
de way I'd like to kerry you up to de mansion, straddlin' a ice-cream
freezer wid de snow in yer face, but I'll git you dere!”
Uncle Jimpson, sure of an audience for at least twenty minutes, forgot
his wrongs and laid himself out to make the most of his opportunity.
It was very cold and the horse's hoofs beat hard on the frozen ground.
Beyond the wavering circle of light from the swaying lantern all was
dark and mysterious.
“I certainly is glad dem freezers come,” said Uncle Jimpson, tucking in
the lap robe; “I shore would hate to go back widout 'em. De Cunnel
used to say dat was what niggers was born fer, to git what you sent 'em
after.”
“Who is the Colonel?” asked the stranger with a quick glance of
recognition at the old negro.
“Cunnel Bob Carsey. My old marster. He's dead now, an' Mrs. Sequin she's
done borrowed me fer a while.”
“When did he die?”
“A year ago las' May.”
The man in the foreign cap pulled it further over his eyes and resumed
his scrutiny of the road.
“Al dis heah hill used to b'long to us,” Uncle Jimpson continued;
“long before de Sequinses ever wuz born. I spec' you've heard tell of
Thornwood?”
“Yes. Who lives there now?”
“Nobody. When de Cunnel died, my young Miss didn't hab nobody to take
keer ob her, nor no money to run de place, no nothin' 'ceptin' jus' me
an' Carline. Dey wasn't nothin' left fer her to do but git married.”