Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/242

 With Billy he started conscientiously to dance in rotation with all the girls from their hotel. His second dance was with Miss Austin. She was in black with a black lace mantilla, and pinned in her hair was one of the roses Neale had ransacked Pittsfield to buy—he forgot the others—forgot everything but the rhythm of their steps together—they danced, sat out on the verandah—danced again.

It was pointed, shameless—the chaperon, whose daughter was sitting a disconsolate wall-flower, glared at them—and they danced on. Had this red-blooded young blade, giving himself up wholly to the glamor of the moment, had he ever taken the cold, dry, heartless doctrine of Horace as a guide to life? He danced on—had he said he only danced when he was caught and had to?—-he danced on, thrilling to the rhythm, like the swinging beat of hearts in young bodies. At last, the piano, violin and cornet (the "orchestra" imported from the city of North Adams), broke into "Home, Sweet Home," and the last waltz began; slow, languorous, the climax of the wonderful evening for Neale.

Then Miss Austin staged her dramatic effect. As the party broke up, she said, putting out one hand to Neale and resting the other on her mother's arm, "Good-night, Mr. Crittenden, and …" she looked down at the roses he had given her, "and good-by. Mother and I are leaving on the morning train. I only waited to have that last dance." She waited an instant to let this have its effect, and added in a lower tone, "Thank you—thank you for—for making my stay here so pleasant."

Now there was, under Neale's skin, neither a calm Horatian philosopher nor a dashing red-blooded young blade. There was only a shy, awkward boy of nineteen, taken entirely unawares, struck dumb by the surge of emotion within him. Helpless and inarticulate, except for a muttered "good-by" he shook Miss Austin's hand and walked away with apparent steadiness.

But afterwards.…! When Billy was snoring inside the tent, Neale sat on the platform outside, and wrestled with Destiny. What a stiff, frozen lump he had been, not to have