Gordon Keith Part 64

"Play that again and play it right, or I'll wring your necks!"

She began to dance again, and soon danced as she had done at first.

Applause was beginning again; but at the sound she stopped, looked over the audience disdainfully, and turning, walked coolly from the stage.

"Who is she?" "Well, did you ever see anything like that!" "Well, I never did!" "The insolent creature!" "By Jove! she can dance if she chooses!" buzzed over the room.

"Good for her," said Keith, his face full of admiration.

"Did you know her?" asked Miss Huntington.

"Well."

The girl said nothing, but she stiffened and changed color slightly.

"You know her, too," said Keith.

"I! I do not."

"Do you remember once, when you were a tot over in England, giving your doll to a little dancing-girl?--When your governess was in such a temper?"

Lois nodded.

"That is she. She used to live in New Leeds. She was almost the only woman in Gumbolt when I went there. Had a man laughed at her there then, he would never have left the room alive. Mr. Wickersham tried it once, and came near getting his neck broken for it. He is getting even with her now."

As the girl glanced up at him, his face was full of suppressed feeling.

A pang shot through her.

Just then the entertainment broke up and the guests began to leave. Mrs.

Wentworth beckoned to Lois. Wickersham was still with her.

"I will not trust myself to go within speaking distance of him now,"

said Keith; "so I will say good-by, here." He made his adieus somewhat hurriedly, and moved off as Mrs. Wentworth approached.

Wickersham, who, so long as Keith remained with Miss Huntington, had kept aloof, and was about to say good night to Mrs. Wentworth, had, on seeing Keith turn away, followed Mrs. Wentworth.

Every one was still chatting of the episode of the young virago.

"Well, what did you think of your friend's friend?" asked Wickersham of Lois.

"Of whom?"

"Of your friend Mr. Keith's young lady. She is an old flame of his," he said, turning to Mrs. Wentworth and speaking in an undertone, just loud enough for Lois to hear. "They have run her out of New Leeds, and I think he is trying to force her on the people here. He has cheek enough to do anything; but I think to-night will about settle him."

"I do not know very much about such things; but I think she dances very well," said Lois, with heightened color, moved to defend the girl under an instinct of opposition to Wickersham.

"So your friend thinks, or thought some time ago," said Wickersham. "My dear girl, she can't dance at all. She is simply a disreputable young woman, who has been run out of her own town, as she ought to be run out of this, as an impostor, if nothing else." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth: "A man who brought such a woman to a place like this ought to be kicked out of town."

"If you are speaking of Mr. Keith, I don't believe that of him," said Lois, coldly.

Wickersham looked at her for a moment. A curious light was in his eyes as he said:

"I am not referring to any one. I am simply generalizing." He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

As Mrs. Wentworth and Lois entered their carriage, a gentleman was helping some one into a hack just behind Mrs. Wentworth's carriage. The light fell on them at the moment that Lois stepped forward, and she recognized Mr. Keith and the dancer, Mile. Terpsich.o.r.e. He was handing her in with all the deference that he would have shown the highest lady in the land.

Lois Huntington drove home in a maze. Life appeared to have changed twice for her in a single evening. Out of that crowd of strangers had come one who seemed to be a part of her old life. They had taken each other up just where they had parted. The long breach in their lives had been bridged. He had seemed the old friend and champion of her childhood, who, since her aunt had revived her recollection of him, had been a sort of romantic hero in her dreams. Their meeting had been such as she had sometimes pictured to herself it would be. She believed him finer, higher, than others. Then, suddenly, she had found that the vision was but an idol of clay. All that her aunt had said of him had been dashed to pieces in a trice.

He was not worthy of her notice. He was not a gentleman. He was what Mr.

Wickersham had called him. He had boasted to her of his intimacy with a common dancing-girl. He had left her to fly to her and escort her home.

As Keith had left the house, Terpsich.o.r.e had come out of the side entrance, and they had met. Keith was just wondering how he could find her, and he considered the meeting a fortunate one. She was in a state of extreme agitation. It was the first time that she had undertaken to dance at such an entertainment. She had refused, but had been over-persuaded, and she declared it was all a plot between Wickersham and her manager to ruin her. She would be even with them both, if she had to take a pistol to right her wrongs.

Keith had little idea that the chief motive of her acceptance had been the hope that she might find him among the company. He did what he could to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon her, he bade her good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation which she who had suddenly sprung uppermost in his thoughts had, upon Wickersham's instigation, put upon his action.

Keith walked home with a feeling to which he had been long a stranger.

He was somehow happier than he had been in years. A young girl had changed the whole entertainment for him--the whole city--almost his whole outlook on life. He had not felt this way for years--not since Alice Yorke had darkened life for him. Could love be for him again?

The dial appeared to have turned back for him. He felt younger, fresher, more hopeful. He walked out into the street and tried to look up at the stars. The houses obscured them; they were hardly visible. The city streets were no place for stars and sentiment. He would go through the park and see them. So he strolled along and turned into a park. The gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to wors.h.i.+p. An arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old friend. She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.

All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington. He wanted to go and see her but he waited until the day after. He would not appear too eager.

He called at Norman's office for the pleasure of talking of her; but Norman was still absent. The following afternoon he called at Norman's house. The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.

"Miss Huntington?"

"She left this morning."

Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank. That night he started for the South. But Lois Huntington was much in his thoughts. He wondered if life would open for him again. When a man wonders about this, life has already opened.

By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his mind to write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and he wrote his father a full account of the girl he had known as a child, over which the old General beamed.

He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings. The world was better than he had been accounting it. He even considered more leniently than he had done Mrs. Wentworth's allowing Ferdy Wickersham to hang around her. It suddenly flashed on him that, perhaps, Ferdy was in love with Lois Huntington. Cras.h.!.+ went his kind feelings, his kind thoughts. The idea of Ferdy making love to that pure, sweet, innocent creature! It was horrible! Her innocence, her charming friendliness, her sweetness, all swept over him, and he thrilled with a sense of protection.

Could he have known what Wickersham had done to poison her against him, he would have been yet more enraged. As it was, Lois was at that time back at her old home; but with how different feelings from those which she had had but a few days before! Sometimes she hated Keith, or, at least, declared to herself that she hated him; and at others she defended him against her own charge. And more and more she truly hated Wickersham.

"So you met Mr. Keith?" said her aunt, abruptly, a day or two after her return. "How did you like him?"

"I did not like him," said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with a snap, as if to keep the blood out of her cheeks.

"What! you did not like him? Girls are strange creatures nowadays. In my time, a girl--a girl like you--would have thought him the very pink of a man. I suppose you liked that young Wickersham better?" she added grimly.

"No, I did not like him either. But I think Mr. Keith is perfectly horrid."

"Horrid!" The old lady's black eyes snapped. "Oh, he didn't ask you to dance! Well, I think, considering he knew you when you were a child, and knew you were my niece, he might--"

"Oh, yes, I danced with him; but he is not very nice. He--ah--Something I saw prejudiced me."

Miss Abby was so insistent that she should tell her what had happened that she yielded.