Sandy Part 15

Mr. Moseley, now fully launched upon a flood of eloquence, was just concluding a brilliant argument. "Look at the round dance!" he cried.

"Who can behold and not shudder?"

Mr. Meech, who had not beheld and therefore could not shudder, ventured a timid inquiry:

"Mr. Moseley, just what is a round dance?"

Mr. Moseley pushed back his chair and wheeled the table nearer the window. "Will you just step forward, Mr. Meech?"

With difficulty Mr. Meech extricated himself from the corner to which the pressure of so many guests had relegated him. He slipped apologetically to the front and took his stand beneath the shadow of Mr. Moseley's presence. Prayer-meeting being but a semi-official occasion, he wore his second-best coat, and it had followed the shrinking habit established by its predecessors.

"Now," commanded Mr. Moseley, "place your hand upon my shoulder."

Mr. Meech did so with self-conscious gravity and serious apprehensions as to the revelations to follow.

"Now," continued Mr. Moseley, "I place my arm about your waist--thus."

"Surely not," objected Mr. Meech, in embarra.s.sment.

But Mr. Moseley was relentless. "I a.s.sure you it is true. And the other hand--" He stopped in grave deliberation. The Methodist brother, who had been growing more and more overcharged with suppressed knowledge, could contain himself no longer.

"That's not right at all!" he burst forth irritably. "You don't hook your arm around like that! You hold the left arm out and saw it up and down--like this."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the bewildered Mr. Meech from Mr. Moseley's embrace, and humming a waltz, stepped briskly about the limited s.p.a.ce, to the consternation of the onlookers, who hastened to tuck their feet under their chairs.

Mr. Meech, looking as if he were being backed into eternity, stumbled on the rug and clutched violently at the table-cover. In his downfall he carried his instructor with him, and a deluge of tracts from the table above followed.

In the midst of the confusion there was a sound from the church next door. Mr. Meech sat up among the debris and listened. It was the opening hymn for prayer-meeting.

CHAPTER XV

h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sistance 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-Sh.e.l.l Baptist Church the congregation had a.s.sembled 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 G.o.ddesses 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 b.u.mp 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 circ.u.mstance. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.