The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

McDermott, the wife of the section boss and arbiter elegantiarum for all Ellisville, the gentleman bowed and spoke some few words, though obviously to a total stranger—a very stiff and suspicious stranger, who was too startled to reply.

The ladies bowed to the wife of the section boss and to the others as they came in turn. Then the three passed on a few seats apart from and beyond the other occupants of that side of the house, thus leaving a break in the ranks which caused Mrs. McDermott a distinct sniff and made the red-headed girl draw up in pride. The newcomers sat near to the second lamp from the musicians' stand, and in such fashion that they were half hid in the deep shadows cast by that erratic luminary.

There was now much tension, and the unhappiness and suspense could have endured but little longer. Again the accordion protested and the fiddle wept. The cornet uttered a faint note of woe. Yet once more there was a pause in this time of joy.

Again the door was pushed open, not timidly, but flung boldly back. There stood two figures at the head of the hall and in the place of greatest light. Of these, one was tall and very thin, but upright as a shaft of pine. Over his shoulder hung a cloak, which he swept aside over his arm with a careless and free gesture of unconcern. He was clad in dark garments; thus much might be said. His face, clean shaven but for the long and pointed mustaches and goatee, was high and bold, his gaze confident and merry. His waistcoat sat high and close. At wrist and neck there showed a touch of white, and a bit of white appeared protruding at the bosom of his coat. His tread was supple and easy as that of a boy of twenty. "Ned, me boy," he whispered to his companion as they entered, "I'm feelin' fine the night; and as for yerself, ye're fit for the court o' St. James at a diplomats' ball."

Franklin, indeed, deserved somewhat of the compliment. He was of that rare figure of man which looks well whether clad for the gymnasium or the ball, upon which clothing does not merely hang, but which fills out and dignifies the apparel that may be worn. In height the ex-captain was just below the six-foot mark which so often means stature but not strength, and he carried every inch of his size with proportions which indicated vigour and activity. He walked now with the long, easy hip-stride of the man whose sides and back are not weak, but strong and hardened. His head, well set upon the neck, was carried with the chin unconsciously correct, easily, not stiffly. His shoulders were broad enough to hang nicely over the hips, and they kept still the setting-up of the army drill. Dressed in the full uniform of a captain, he looked the picture of the young army officer of the United States, though lacking any of the arrogance which might come from the purely military life. Simply, easily, much as had the little group that immediately preceded himself and friend, Franklin passed on up into the hall, between the batteries which lined the walls.

Any emergency brings forward its own remedy. The times produce the man, each war bringing forth its own generals, its heroes, its solvers of great problems. Thus there came now to these persons assembled, deadlocked, unguided, unhappy, who might else have sat forever rooted to this spot, the man who was to save them, to lead them forth out of their wilderness of incertitude.

None had chosen Battersleigh to the leadership. He came as mere guest, invited as were the others. There had been no election for master of ceremonies, nor had Battersleigh yet had time to fully realize how desperate was this strait in which these folk had fallen. It appeared to him merely that, himself having arrived, there was naught else to cause delay. At the centre of the room he stopped, near by the head of the stern column of womanhood which held the position on the right as one entered the hall. Here Battersleigh paused, making a deep and sweeping bow, and uttered the first open speech which had been heard that evening.

"Ladies and gintlemen," he said in tones easily distinguishable at all parts of the room, "I'm pleased to meet ye all this evenin'. Perhaps ye all know Battersleigh, and I hope ye'll all meet me friend Captain Franklin, at me side. We claim the inthroduction of this roof, me good friends, and we welcome everybody to the first dance at Ellisville. Ladies, yer very dutiful servant! It's well ye're lookin', Mrs. McDermott; and Nora, gyurl, sure ye're charmin' the night. Kittie, darlin', how do ye do? Do ye remember Captain Franklin, all of ye? Pipe up, ye naygurs—that's right. Now, thin, all hands, choose yer partners fer the gr-rand march. Mrs. McDermott, darlin', we'll lead the march, sure, with Jerry's permission—how'll he help himself, I wonder, if the lady says yis? Thank ye, Mrs. McDermott, and me arm—so."

The sheepish figures of the musicians now leaned together for a moment. The violins wailed in sad search for the accord, the assistant instrument less tentative. All at once the slack shoulders straightened up firmly, confidently, and then, their feet beating in unison upon the floor, their faces set, stern and relentless, the three musicians fell to the work and reeled off the opening bars.

A sigh went up from the assembly. There was a general shuffling of shoes, a wide rustling of calico. Feet were thrust forward, the body yet unable to follow them in the wish of the owner. Then, slowly, sadly, as though going to his doom, Curly arose from out the long line of the unhappy upon his side of the room. He crossed the intervening space, his limbs below the knees curiously affected, jerking his feet into half time with the tune. He bowed so low before the littlest waiter girl that his neck scarf fell forward from his chest and hung before him like a shield. "May I hev the honour, Miss Kitty?" he choked out; and as the littlest waiter girl rose and took his arm with a vast air of unconcern, Curly drew a long breath.

In his seat Sam writhed, but could not rise. Nora looked straight in front. It was Hank Peterson, who led her forth, and who, after the occasion was over, wished he had not done so, for his wife sat till the last upon the row. Seeing this awful thing happen, seeing the hand of Nora laid upon another's arm, Sam sat up as one deeply smitten with a hurt. Then, silently, unobserved in the confusion, he stole away from the fateful scene and betook himself to his stable, where he fell violently to currying one of the horses.

"Oh, kick!" he exclaimed, getting speech in these surroundings. "Kick!
I deserve it. Of all the low-down, d——n cowards that ever was borned
I sure am the worst! But the gall of that feller Peterson! An' him a
merried man!"

When Sam left the ballroom there remained no person who was able to claim acquaintance with the little group who now sat under the shadow of the swinging lamp at the lower end of the hall, and farthest from the door. Sam himself might have been more courteous had not his mental perturbation been so great. As it was, the "grand march" was over, and Battersleigh was again walking along the lines in company with his friend Franklin, before either could have been said to have noticed fully these strangers, whom no one seemed to know, and who sat quite apart and unengaged. Battersleigh, master of ceremonies by natural right, and comfortable gentleman at heart, spied out these three, and needed but a glance to satisfy himself of their identity. Folk were few in that country, and Sam had often been very explicit in his descriptions.

"Sir," said Battersleigh, approaching and bowing as he addressed the stranger, "I shall make bold to introjuce meself—Battersleigh of Ellisville, sir, at your service. If I am not mistaken, you will be from below, toward the next town. I bid ye a very good welcome, and we shall all hope to see ye often, sir. We're none too many here yet, and a gintleman and his family are always welcome among gintlemen. Allow me, sir, to presint me friend Captain Franklin, Captain Ned Franklin of the—th' Illinois in the late unplisantness.—Ned, me boy, Colonel—ye'll pardon me not knowin' the name?"

"My name is Buford, sir," said the other as he rose. "I am very glad to see you gentlemen. Colonel Battersleigh, Captain Franklin. I was so unlucky as to be of the Kentucky troops, sir, in the same unpleasantness. I want to introduce my wife, gentlemen, and my niece, Miss Beauchamp."

Franklin really lost a part of what the speaker was saying. He was gazing at this form half hidden in the shadows, a figure with hands drooping, with face upturned, and just caught barely by one vagrant ray of light which left the massed shades piled strongly about the heavy hair. There came upon him at that moment, as with a flood-tide of memory, all the vague longing, the restlessness, the incertitude of life which had harried him before he had come to this far land, whose swift activity had helped him to forget. Yet even here he had been unsettled, unhappy. He had missed, he had lacked—he knew not what. Sometimes there had come vague dreams, recurrent, often of one figure, which he could not hold in his consciousness long enough to trace to any definite experience or association—a lady of dreams, against whom he strove and whom he sought to banish. Whom he had banished! Whom he had forgotten! Whom he had never known! Who had ever been in his life a vague, delicious mystery!

The young woman rose, and stood out a pace or two from the shadows. Her hand rested upon the arm of the elder lady. She turned her face toward Franklin. He felt her gaze take in the uniform of blue, felt the stroke of mental dislike for the uniform—a dislike which he knew existed, but which he could not fathom. He saw the girl turn more fully toward him, saw upon her face a querying wonder, like that which he had known in his own dreams! With a strange, half-shivering gesture the girl advanced half a step and laid her head almost upon the shoulder of the elder woman, standing thus for one moment, the arms of the two unconsciously entwined, as is sometimes the way with women. Franklin approached rudeness as he looked at this attitude of the two, still puzzling, still seeking to solve this troubling problem of the past.

There came a shift in the music. The air swept from the merry tune into the minor from which the negro is never musically free. Then in a flash Franklin saw it all. He saw the picture. His heart stopped!

This music, it was the wail of trumpets! These steps, ordered, measured, were those of marching men. These sounds, high, commingling, they were the voices of a day gone swiftly by. These two, this one—this picture—it was not here, but upon the field of wheat and flowers that he saw it now again—that picture of grief so infinitely sad.

Franklin saw, and as he gazed, eager, half advancing, indecision and irresolution dropped from him forever. Resolved from out the shadows, wherein it had never in his most intimate self-searching taken any actual form, he saw the image of that unformulated dream which had haunted his sub-consciousness so long, and which was now to haunt him openly and forever.

CHAPTER XV ANOTHER DAY

The morning after the first official ball in Ellisville dawned upon another world.

The occupants of the wagons which trailed off across the prairies, the horsemen who followed them, the citizens who adjourned and went as usual to the Cottage—all these departed with the more or less recognised feeling that there had happened a vague something which had given Ellisville a new dignity, which had attached to her a new significance. Really this was Magna Charta. All those who, tired and sleepy,