The Power and the Glory Part 15

"What is it?" she asked graciously. "The belle of the ball? I don't know quite who that is. Oh!" with a slight drop in her tone and the temperature of her expression; "do you mean John Consadine? Really, how well she is looking to-night!"

"Isn't she!" blundered the Watauga man with ill-timed enthusiasm. "I call her a regular beauty, and such an interesting-looking creature.

What is she trying to do? Good Lord, she's going to attempt the two-step with that Eiffel tower she brought along!"

These frivolous remarks, suited well enough to the ordinary ballroom, did not please Miss Lydia for an Uplift dance.

"The girl with John is one in whom I take a very deep interest," she said with a touch of primness.

"John Consadine is young, and exceptionally strong and healthy. But Amanda Meacham has--er--disabilities and afflictions that make it difficult for her to get along. She is a very worthy case."

The young man from Watauga, who had not regarded Johnnie as a case at all, but had considered her purely as an exceptionally attractive young woman, looked a trifle bewildered. Then Gray took his arm and led him across to where the attempt at two-stepping had broken up in laughing disorder. With that absolutely natural manner which Miss Sessions could never quite achieve, good as her intentions were, he performed the introduction, and then said pleasantly:

"Mr. Baker wants to ask you to dance, Miss Johnnie. I'll carry on Miss Amanda's teaching, or we'll sit down here and talk if she'd rather."

"No more two-steppin' for me," agreed Miss Meacham, seating herself decidedly. "I'll take my steps one at a time from this on. I'd rather watch Johnnie dance, anyhow; but she would have me try for myself."

Johnnie and the young fellow from Watauga were off now. They halted once or twice, evidently for some further instructions, as Johnnie got the step and time, and then moved away smoothly. Gray took the seat beside Mandy.

"Ain't she a wonder?" inquired the big woman, staring fondly after the fluttering white skirts.

"She is indeed," agreed Gray quietly. And then, Mandy being thus launched on the congenial theme--the one theme upon which she was ever loquacious--out came the story of the purchase of the dress, the compliments of the saleswoman, the refusal of the borrowed jewellery.

"Johnnie's quare--she is that--I'll never deny it; but I cain't no more help likin' her than as if she was my own born sister."

"That's because she is fond of you, too," suggested Gray, thinking of the girl's laborious attempts to teach poor Mandy to dance.

"Do you reckon she is?" asked the tall woman, flus.h.i.+ng. "Looks like Johnnie Consadine loves every livin' thing on the top side of this earth. I ain't never seen the human yet that she ain't got a good word for. But I don't know as she cares 'specially 'bout _me_."

Stoddard could not refuse the a.s.surance for which Mandy so naively angled.

"You wouldn't be so fond of her if she wasn't fond of you," he a.s.serted confidently.

"Mebbe I wouldn't," Mandy debated; "but I don't know. Let Johnnie put them two eyes o' hern on you, and laugh in your face, and you feel just like you'd follow her to the ends of the earth--or I know I do. Why, she done up my hair this evening and"--the voice sank to a half-shamed whisper--"she said it was pretty."

Gray turned and looked into the flushed, tremulous face beside him with a sudden tightening in his throat. How cruel humanity is when it beholds only the grotesque in the Mandys of this world. Her hair was pretty--and Johnnie had the eyes of love to see it.

He stared down the long, lighted room with unseeing gaze. Old Andrew MacPherson's counsel that he let Johnnie Consadine alone appealed to him at that moment as cruel good sense. He was recalled from his musings by Mandy's voice.

"Oh, look thar!" whispered his companion excitedly. "The other town feller has asked for a knock-down to Johnnie, too. Look at him pa.s.sin'

his bows with her just like she was one of the swells!"

Stoddard looked. Charlie Conroy was relieving Baker of his partner.

Johnnie had evidently been asked if she was tired, for they saw her laughingly shake her head, and the new couple finished what was left of the two-step and seated themselves a moment at the other side of the room to wait for the next dance to begin.

"These affairs are great fun, aren't they?" inquired Conroy, fanning his late partner vigorously.

"I love to dance better than anything else in the world, I believe,"

returned Johnnie dreamily.

"Oh, a dance--I should suppose so. You move as though you enjoyed it; but I mean a performance like this. The girls are great fun, don't you think? But then you wouldn't get quite our point of view on that."

He glanced again at her dress; it was plain and simple, but good style and becoming. She wore no jewellery, but lots of girls were rather affecting that now, especially the athletic type to which this young beauty seemed to belong. Surely he was not mistaken in guessing her to be one of Miss Sessions's friends. Of course he was not. She had dressed herself in this simple fas.h.i.+on for a mill-girl's dance, that she might not embarra.s.s the working people who attended. Yes, by George! that was it, and it was a long ways-better taste than the frocks Miss Sessions and Mrs. Hexter were wearing.

Johnnie considered his last remark, her gaze still following the movements of the Negro fiddler at the head of the room. Understanding him to mean that, being a mill-hand herself, she could not get a detached view of the matter, and thus see the humour of this attempt to make society women of working-girls, Johnnie was yet not affronted. Her clear eyes came back from watching Uncle Zeke's manoeuvres and looked frankly into the eyes of the man beside her.

"I reckon we are right funny," she a.s.sented. "But of course, as you say, I wouldn't see that as quick as you would. Sometimes I have to laugh a little at Mandy--the girl I was dancing with first this evening --but--but she's so good-natured it never hurts her feelings. I don't mind being laughed at myself, either."

"Laughed at--you?" inquired Conroy, throwing an immense amount of expression into his glance. He was rather a lady's man, and fancied he had made pretty fair headway with this beautiful girl whom he still supposed to be of the circle of factory owners. "Oh, you mean your work among the mill girls here.

"Indeed, I should not laugh at that. I think it's n.o.ble for those more fortunate to stretch a hand to help their brothers and sisters that haven't so good a chance. That's what brought me over here to-night.

Gray Stoddard explained the plan to me. He doesn't seem to think much of it--but then, Gray's a socialist at heart, and you know those socialists never believe in organized charity. I tell him he's an anarchist."

"Mr. Stoddard is a mighty good man," agreed Johnnie with sudden pensiveness. "They've all been mighty good to me ever since I've been here; but I believe Mr. Stoddard has done more for me than any one else.

He not only lends me books, but he takes time to explain things to me."

Conroy smiled covertly at the simplicity of this young beauty. He debated in his mind whether indeed it was not an affected simplicity. Of course Gray was devoting himself to her and lending her books; of course he would be glad to a.s.sume the position of mentor to a girl who bade fair to be such a p.r.o.nounced social success, and who was herself so charming.

"How long have you been in Cottonville, Miss Consadine?" he asked. "Do tell me who you are visiting--or are you visiting here?"

"Oh, no," Johnnie corrected him. "I believe you haven't understood from the first that I'm one of the mill girls. I board at--well, everybody calls it Pap Himes's boarding-house."

There was a moment's silence; but Conroy managed not to look quite as deeply surprised as he felt.

"I--of course I knew it," he began at length, after having sorted and discarded half a dozen explanations. "There--why, there's our dance!"

And he stood up in relief, as the fiddlers began on an old-fas.h.i.+oned quadrille.

Johnnie responded with alacrity, not aware of having either risen or fallen in her companion's estimation. She danced through the set with smiling enjoyment, prompting her partner, who knew only modern dances.

On his part Conroy studied her covertly, trying to adjust his slow mind to this astonis.h.i.+ng new state of things, and to decide what a man's proper att.i.tude might be toward such a girl. In the end he found himself with no conclusion.

"They say they're going to try a plain waltz," he began as he led her back to a seat. He hesitated, glanced about him, and finally placed himself uneasily in the chair beside her. Good Lord! The situation was impossible. What should he say if anybody--Gray Stoddard, for instance--chaffed him about being smitten in this quarter?

"A waltz?" echoed Johnnie helpfully when he did not go on. "I believe I could dance that--I tried it once."

"Then you'll dance it with me?" Conroy found himself saying, baldly, awkwardly, but unable, for the life of him, to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

Upon the instant the music struck up. The two rose and made ready for the dance; Conroy placing Johnnie in waltzing position, and instructing her solicitously.

Gray Stoddard looking on, was amazed at the naf simple jealousy that swept over him at the sight. She had danced with Conroy twice already--he ought to be more considerate than to bring the girl into notice that way--a chump like Charlie Conroy, what would he understand of such a nature as Johnnie Consadine's? Before he fully realized his own intentions, he had paused in front of the two and was speaking.

"I think Miss Johnnie promised me a dance this evening. I'll have to go back to the office in twenty minutes, and--I hate to interrupt you, but I guess I'll have to claim my own."

He became suddenly aware that Conroy was signalling him across Johnnie's unconscious head with Masonic twistings of the features. Stoddard met these recklessly inconsiderate grimacings with an impa.s.sive stare, then looked away.

"I want to see you before you go," the man from Watauga remarked, as he reluctantly resigned his partner. "Don't you forget that there's a waltz coming to me, Miss Johnnie. I'm going to have it, if we make the band play special for us alone."

Lydia Sessions, pa.s.sing on the arm of young Baker, glanced at Johnnie, star-eyed, pink-cheeked and smiling, with a pair of tall cavaliers contending for her favours, and sucked her lips in to that thin, sharp line of reprobation Johnnie knew so well. Dismissing her escort graciously, she hurried to the little supper room and found another member of the committee.

"Come here, Mrs. Hexter. Just look at that, will you?" She called attention in a carefully suppressed, but fairly tragic tone, to Stoddard and Johnnie dancing together, the only couple on the floor. "None of the girls know how to waltz. I am not sure that it would be suitable if they did. When I came past, just now, there were two of the men--two--talking to John Consadine, and they were all three laughing. I can't think how it is that girls of that sort manage to stir things up so and get all the men around them."