"Yes, I'm all right," he said.
They were all on the veranda now and Joel stood facing his rival, a look of wondering respect in his shrinking gaze.
"Oh, Joel!" a voice was heard, and Sally Teasdale approached. "We need you. Mother is going to serve the refreshments and all the men who know the ins and outs of our kitchen are helping wait on the crowd. Will you come? Father is already unable to walk steady."
CHAPTER XIV
Joel blandly and gallantly complied. His sister, now thrown with John and Tilly after the others left, looked slightly embarrassed, and, saying that she, too, would help serve the supper, she moved away. This threw John and Tilly together again. Some couples had seated themselves in chairs against the wall, and, as there were vacancies, they sat down also. The negroes, to the accompaniment of guitars, began singing old plantation melodies. The moon, higher in the heavens now, shed a glorious sheen over the still landscape. John was too full of adoration and joy to utter a word. Tilly seemed to sense his mood to its depths and to blend a mood of like nature with it.
"I love you--I love you!" John's soul seemed to whisper, but his tongue remained an inactive lump in his mouth.
"I know--I understand," Tilly's soul seemed to be saying in the same inaudible way. He smelled the perfume of the geranium leaves on his coat, and his big red fingers raised them to his nostrils. He told himself that it was a silly, womanish act, but what did he care? Tilly's fingers had pinned them there, the little fingers he longed to caress.
Joel served her first. He came past other girls and brought Tilly a plate containing cake and a glass of sillibub and hastened away after she had sweetly thanked him.
Tilly held the plate in her lap, idly toying with the spoon.
"Why don't you eat it?" John asked.
"Because the others haven't theirs yet," she answered.
"Oh, I see," he muttered, chagrined in spite of his happiness. "I'll never get on to your ways. I've been brought up different. I've worked hard since I was a boy--I-- I--" But he could not go farther. Why should he allude to his sordid home life when it was a thing which he now so utterly despised? How could he speak of his mother, who was so widely and strangely different from the women Tilly knew? No, he would let those things rest.
Various young men had served all the ladies on the veranda when Joel came out with a plate and looked about as if trying to find some lady who had been overlooked. Finding no one, he brought it to John.
"You take it, Mr. Trott," he said, suavely, and yet with a touch of irrepressible dejection in his tone.
John stared in stupid bewilderment and then jerked out, "Keep it yourself." It was just such a well-meant reply as he might have made to one of his workmen who was offering him a cigar, and yet it quite frustrated Joel, who stood awkwardly waiting, the plate still timidly extended.
"Oh no! I'm going right back," Joel said. "I can't eat now, thank you.
We are just beginning to help the men."
"Well, you can't wait on me," John blurted out. The situation was becoming tense and awkward, when Tilly half playfully reached out, took the plate, and gave it to John.
"Take it," she said, firmly. "Joel is in a hurry. The others are waiting."
John obeyed, but failed to thank Eperson. He was vaguely conscious that Tilly was smoothly performing the duty for him and that Joel was bowing himself away. Then they sat in silence. Others near by were boisterously laughing, beating time with their feet and singing with the band, but neither Tilly nor John had aught to say. It was as if the subject which was at once burning and soothing their souls was too vast and sacred to be touched upon in the neighborhood of others less profoundly stirred.
"Give me your plate. I'll take it in," John heard a young farmer saying to the girl he sat with. "You don't want to hold it all night. We'll be dancing again in a minute."
The girl obeyed, and the young man left with two plates in his hands.
John noticed that Tilly had finished, and he offered to take her plate.
She gave it to him. "Be careful," she warned him. "Sally borrowed most of them from the neighbors and wants to return them in good order."
John chafed under the admonition as he rose with his plate and Tilly's in either hand. He had, however, scarcely reached the door when, in trying quickly to step out of the way of two girls who were approaching, one of the plates and the goblet on it fell to the floor. John stood as if paralyzed. Then he softly swore. Every one on the veranda stopped talking and stared. What he would have done next John never knew, for Tilly suddenly approached.
"Never mind," she said, calmly. "Take the other one to the kitchen."
Furious at himself and all the swirling, clattering, and chattering company, John managed to make his way into the kitchen, where he delivered the plate to a buxom negro woman at a big dish-pan full of hot water. He saw Joel putting down some plates and glasses on a table near at hand. Joel smiled in a friendly way.
"I saw your little accident," he said. "I barely escaped the same thing just now. A fellow has to be a regular bareback rider or a tight-rope walker to get through this crowd with his arms full of glassware and crockery."
"No, I couldn't help it." John was conscious of a hot flow of blood to his face, and a vague sense of gratitude. "I'm no good at this sort of thing. I haven't been brought up to it."
Joel seemed to have no reply ready, and the two willingly parted. John found his chair by Tilly still unoccupied and sat down in it. Why didn't she say something about the accident, he wondered. He decided to bring it up himself, so ignorant was he of the ways of the new world to which she had introduced him.
"I'm sorry about those things I broke," he began, hurriedly. "It wasn't my fault. Those girls came out all of a sudden and faced me. I had to get out of their way, you see, or smash right into them. So I--"
"I know. I saw it," Tilly interposed. "Never mind. Let it pass."
"But I've got to fix it somehow," John blundered on. "Nobody shall lose through me. I am able to pay for any damage I do. Tell me who they belonged to and I'll send the owner a whole set of plates and goblets. I might not match the ones I broke, but--"
"Don't, don't think of that," Tilly urged, her pretty lips twitching with almost maternal sympathy. "If you were to offer to pay it would offend Sally."
"Offend her? Why, in the name of common sense?"
"I don't know, but it would hurt _me_--it would hurt _anybody_. It is of no consequence."
"But you talked differently before it happened," John insisted, his lip hanging and quivering. "You said distinctly that the things were borrowed and that Miss Sally wanted--"
"Yes, but it is done now and the only thing is to forget it. Don't even mention it to Sally."
"Not mention it to her? Why not?" John's tongue was thick with the mystery in which he was warmly floundering.
"Because that would not be right--not according to--to custom."
"Custom be--" John bit off the oath with exasperated teeth. "I don't care a hill of beans what the custom is here in these backwoods. I want to pay my way in this life. I laid a cigar down one day against a fellow's hat, and burned a big hole in it. I bought him another and it tickled him to death. It was the best hat in town, while his was an old one, and--"
"But this is different," Tilly pleaded. "Let it drop, please do. For my sake don't say anything more about it. I'll explain what I mean some other time."
That had to suffice. There was more music and dancing and the game of "Stealing partners" on the lawn. Tilly asked John if he wanted to play the game, but he confessed that he did not know what it was like. Saying that it would not look well for them to sit together so long, she led him down to the grass, and they stood watching the big circle of couples. It was very simple--far too simple to interest John. A partnerless young man would dart across the ring, select the partner of another, and they would merrily trip back to his "home" on the other side.
Seeing Tilly, a young man unknown to John came and "stole" her and drew her into the circle.
"Now let the girls steal!" a voice cried out, and several girls sped across the ring after partners. A lively minx with blue eyes and flowing golden hair danced up to John. "Come get in with me," she laughed.
"Tilly Whaley hasn't introduced you to any of us. It is a shame. You may have heard Tilly mention me. I'm Jennie Webster."
"No, I never heard of you before," John said, bluntly, as they settled into their places in the ring.
Jennie laughed in her small handkerchief. She even bent her golden head to give vent to her amusement.
"What is the matter?" John demanded, in slow irritation, his eyes on Tilly, directly opposite with a young farmer whom he had once seen at the Whaleys'.
"Why, you are as funny as they all say you are," Jennie tittered. "I heard you were rough and outspoken, but I didn't think you'd admit that you never heard of _me_ before. Why, sir, I'll have you know that I'm somebody, _I am_. You may bet your boots. I got the first prize for butter at the fair last fall and my father got two blue ribbons on a white pig--one on its neck and the other on its stumpy tail."