Another buggy passed. Tilly explained who the occupants of it were after she had greeted them. They were George Whitton and Ella Bell Roberts.
Then she added, with a touch of seriousness:
"You ought to have lifted your hat just now."
"Lifted my hat? Why, I don't know her-- I've never seen her before!" he retorted, with the irritation of a great mind descending to a triviality.
"Because he lifted his to me and you are with me," Tilly persisted in her mild rebuke. "It is the custom here, but it may not be at Ridgeville."
John was chagrined, but determined to hide it. "I have never heard of a man bowing to a man or a woman he never saw before," he fumed. "I don't care what you all do; it is foolishness out and out."
"Well, when you are in Rome," Tilly quoted in quite a grave tone, "you ought to do as the Romans do."
The thing rankled within him. The blood had mounted to his brow and stayed there. Even Tilly was telling him how to deport himself. He adored her, but he was angry enough to have sworn in her gentle, uplifted eyes. She observed his moody mien and playfully shook his arm.
"Don't be mad," she urged, sweetly. "I meant no harm, but I _do_ want them all to like you, and I'm afraid they won't if you fail in little things like that just now. They won't understand--they will think you are stuck up, and I know you are not a bit vain. I am sure of that--as sure as I'm alive. If you were I'd not like you."
She had intimated that she liked him, and that ought to have been sufficient to quell the storm within him, but it did not quite. Her rebuke hurt far more than any which had ever come to him. She adroitly changed the subject. She spoke of the work on the court-house and praised his part of it, but what did that matter? He knew what his work was and he was just learning profound and relentless things about the difference between himself and her--between her puzzling environment and his, which was all too distinctly plain for his present comfort. As they neared Teasdale's and saw the lights streaming from the open doors and windows across the lush greensward and noted the considerable collection of horses and vehicles under the shade-trees and along the fences, he became conscious of an overwhelming timidity with which he felt unable to cope. Had Tilly been like himself and feared the entry into the light and easy gaiety of the chattering throng, he would not have felt so isolated. But her very unconsciousness of the thing as any sort of ordeal to be dreaded depressed him as emphasizing the fateful demarcation between her walk of life and his.
They reached the steps of the large, rather rambling one-story farm-house. There was a long veranda in front, both ends of which were filled with merrymakers. There was a wide hallway, and it, too, was filled with jolly, loud-talking couples, as well as the big parlor on the right.
"Oh, here they are!" Sally Teasdale cried, coming forward and taking Tilly into her slim, pretentious arms. "I heard of you two poking along like snails on the big road. As if you couldn't see enough of Mr. Trott at home! I am going to introduce myself to him, to pay you back. I'm Sally Teasdale"--holding out her hand to John--"and I am glad you came to my party."
John did not know what he said, if he said anything audible. It was the damnable glibness of speech of others which he had to contend with and which seemed to be as silly as unattainable.
"Now, dear, run back to my room and take off your wrap," Miss Teasdale said to Tilly. "I'll show Mr. Trott the men's room."
"He has nothing but his hat," Tilly lingered to say, "and he can leave that anywhere."
"Yes, if you like," his hostess said, leading him to a spot on the veranda where many men's hats were hanging on nails driven into the weather-boarding. He hung up his and immediately felt Sally clutch his arm.
"Tilly says you don't dance," she ran on. "What a pity! It is great fun, and a good way to get acquainted. I suppose you are a member of the church. Which one?"
"None at all," he heard himself saying, as if in a dense fog and from a great distance.
"How funny that you don't dance, then?" she went on, leaving an opening for him which he did not enter. He did not like her. She was too tall and angular, too harsh of voice and fluent of talk and irritating suggestion. He had the sense of being managed when he wanted above all to be unmolested. Besides, she had sent Tilly away, and without Tilly he felt lost.
"I must introduce you to my father," Sally said. "He is old-fashioned and wants his way about everything. He would scold me if I didn't introduce you at once. He is inside. Come on. My stepmother is busy in the kitchen fixing refreshments."
CHAPTER XIII
He wormed his way after her through the surging throng to the parlor, where a fat man in dark trousers and a white-linen coat stood vigorously cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan and talking to some middle-aged men and women.
"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Trotter--I mean Trott," he said, extending a clammy hand. "I've seen you about the court-house several times but you were always busy and I didn't want to climb up those rickety planks to you. How is it moving along?"
"All right," John said, bluntly. He was not awed by the man, for he was used to men of all types. Besides, John could not descend to empty platitudes for the sake of making conversation, and he half resented the unnecessary question about a matter that was obvious to every passer-by.
"Come in here with me." The old man took a large grasp on his arm and began to fan lazy waves of warm air into his face as he drew him into an adjoining room, which was evidently a sleeping-apartment from which the bed had been removed. There was a table against the wall, and on its snow-white cloth stood a great bowl of mint, some goblets, a pitcher of water, a dish of sugar, and a brown jug containing whisky.
"I want you to try one of my juleps," Teasdale chuckled. "That is some of the best old rye that ever slid down a thirsty throat."
"I don't drink," John said. "I won't take anything."
"What, what? You don't? Well, I won't insist--I never do--but stay with me a minute till I take one straight. My old lady says I take too much at every party Sally has, and unless some feller is in here with me she thinks I am tanking up all by myself."
"Go ahead," John answered, and the farmer proceeded to help himself to an ample supply of the amber fluid. While he drank, the sound of tuning fiddles and the twanging of guitars came from the parlor.
"The niggers have come," Teasdale gurgled, as he smacked his lips and screwed the corn-cob stopper back into the neck of the jug. "Sally will start out with dancing, I reckon. I used to be a great hand at it, but I'm too heavy now."
He led the way back to the parlor. Four black men sat in a corner vigorously sawing and picking their instruments. One of them, the leader, called out in stentorian tones, "All hands fer de fust set!" and there was a laughing rush from the hall and the veranda of several couples to secure places. Seeing a chance to get away from his host, John drew back into the hall, where he found himself jostled and ignored by the tempestuous human mass. He edged his way along a wall to the veranda, and there saw something startlingly disagreeable. It was Joel Eperson and Tilly standing side by side, their faces averted toward the gate. Joel was regarding her with the eyes of dumb adoration and listening closely to something she was saying. John saw that the opposite end of the veranda was deserted and he went to it. He tried to keep his eyes from the pair, but it was impossible. His misery increased, seeming to ooze into him from some external reservoir of pain. All around him surged a life bewilderingly new and fatuous. He saw Joel bend down to pick up a flower Tilly dropped and saw him smile as he gave it back to her. What could she be saying, with that sweet, drawn look about her lips? What was Joel asking? He saw her nod, and Joel took her arm and the two went down the steps to the gravel walk that led from the house to the gate. Here back and forth they walked, arm in arm, now in the full light from the door and windows, again in the half-darkness near the fence. Once for fully five minutes they lingered at the gate while the silent spectator of their movements leaned tense and rigid against the balustrade. The promenade was quite in accordance with rural propriety and custom, but John could not understand why that pair in particular should be the only ones in the entire company to engage in it. It did not seem right. How could it be right?
The music, the sonorous calls to the dancers, the tripping of feet, pounded his tortured brain. The whole world in its new aspect seemed to meet him with fangs and claws exposed. He wanted to fight something physically, to express by oaths and blows the resentment packed within his primitive breast. He felt his gnarled and hardened fingers at Joel Eperson's thin neck. He saw the long hair sway back and forth as he shook the love-smitten man. His clutch tightened till Joel's eyes bulged from their sockets, and then, in gloating fancy, John dashed him to the ground, where he lay exposed to Tilly's view. But reality has little to do with the tricks of the imagination, and there stood Eperson at the fence with Tilly by his side.
Two girls were approaching. One was Sally Teasdale, the other Martha Jane Eperson.
"They've told the truth about you," the former greeted John, with a teasing laugh, as she introduced the slight, plain, dark girl whose hand she held. "You are really a woman-hater, or you would not be off here by yourself when all the girls want to know you."
Again he was scarcely conscious of what he was saying or leaving unsaid, and suddenly waked to the fact that his hostess had hurried away, and that the plain girl was in his care. After all, she was Eperson's sister, and he eyed her curiously, wondering if she, too, were his enemy.
"You've met my brother," she began. "He spoke about it the day the corner-stone was laid. There he is out there with Tilly now. I didn't want to come to-night, but he was crazy to be here so that he could see her."
"I thought that was it," John permitted his slow lips to say. "They have been going together a long time. That is, I've heard so."
"Yes, and I thought--we all thought that Tilly would end up by taking him, but it is all off now," Miss Eperson sighed, her eyes on the pair at the fence.
"All off?" John in his sober senses would have wondered at his ability to talk so freely with a girl he had just met. "Why, what do you mean?"
"As if you didn't know--as if _everybody_ doesn't know!" Martha Jane laughed half sardonically.
"But I don't know what you mean." Something new and bountiful in its promise of joy filled John and drove the words from his palpitating tongue.
"The idea!" scoffed Martha Jane. "Well, if you don't know it you are blind as a bat in daytime. Brother knows it, I know it--everybody knows it."
"Knows what?" John demanded, his breath checked, his eyes gleaming, his whole being athrob under the dawn of an ecstasy the plain girl seemed to offer.
"Well, I'm not going to tell you, if you don't know," the girl answered, with a little shrug. "But if you want to understand, watch my poor brother. He never had a look like that before. She has been his very life. People that doubt real love ought to know Joel. He would go through fire and water for Tilly. He'd steal, he'd kill, he'd do anything. He is desperate to-night. When we got to her house and found that you and she were going to walk out here, it was the last straw. But he is a gentleman, my brother is, and he will never make a row over it."
Under the sheer blaze of this information, John stood speechless. He, boldly now, gave his arm to his little companion and they started to walk back and forth on the lawn as others were doing. His face was now turned from Tilly, but subconsciously he could fairly feel her proximity. John almost loved the little woman on his arm. How could he help it? She was so kind to him.
They were turning toward the steps when Tilly and Eperson approached.
There was a wilted look of resignation on Eperson's face, a sentient animation in Tilly's eyes and about her lips, when she said to John:
"I hope you are having a good time and meeting all the girls. Sally said she would look after you."
He smiled and nodded. Something seemed to bear down on his brain and befog his sight. The lights, the lawn, the people, swirled around him.