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         
                    
A Publication of the Society of Dance History Scholars

  

The Origins of the Bolero School, edited by Javier Suárez-Pajares and Xoán M. Carreira

Carlo Blasis in Russia by Elizabeth Souritz, with preface by Selma Jeanne Cohen

Of, By, and For the People: Dancing on the Left in the 1930s, edited by Lynn Garafola

Dancing in Montreal: Seeds of a Choreographic History by Iro Tembeck

The Making of a Choreographer: Ninette de Valois and “Bar aux Folies-Bergère” by Beth Genné

Ned Wayburn and the Dance Routine: From Vaudeville to the “Ziegfeld Follies” by Barbara
Stratyner

Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet, edited by Lynn Garafola
(available from the University Press of New England)

Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War by Naima Prevots, with introduction
by Eric Foner (available from the University Press of New England)

José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, edited by Lynn Garafola, with introduction by

Deborah Jowitt, foreword by Carla Maxwell, and afterword by Norton Owen
(available from the University Press of New England)

Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities on and off the Stage, edited by Jane C. Desmond

Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz

Writings on Ballet and Music, by Fedor Lopukhov, edited and with an introduction by
Stephanie Jordan, translations by Dorinda Offord

Liebe Hanya: Mary Wigman’s Letters to Hanya Holm, compiled and edited by Claudia
Gitelman, introduction by Hedwig Müller

The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Gennaro Magri and His World, edited by
Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Bruce Alan Brown

Kaiso! Writings by and about Katherine Dunham, edited by VèVè A. Clark and Sara E.
Johnson

Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities, edited by Theresa Jill Buckland
Dancing from Past
to Present
Nation, Culture, Identities

Edited by

            

    

 The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53711

www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/

3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England

Copyright © 2006
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved

1 3 5 4 2

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dancing from past to present: nation, culture, identities /
edited by Theresa Jill Buckland.
p. cm.—(Studies in dance history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-299-21850-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-299-21854-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Dance—History. 2. Dance—Anthropological aspects.
I. Buckland, Theresa. II. Series: Studies in dance history (unnumbered).
GV1601.D36 2006
793.3109—dc22 2006008620
    

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi

1 Dance, History, and Ethnography: Frameworks,

Sources, and Identities of Past and Present 3
     
2 Dances and Dancing in Tonga: Anthropological
and Historical Discourses 25
    .  
3 Constructing a Classical Tradition: Javanese Court
Dance in Indonesia 52
       - 
4 Utopia, Eutopia, and E.U.-topia: Performance and
Memory in Former Yugoslavia 75
   .  
5 Qualities of Memory: Two Dances of the Tortugas
Fiesta, New Mexico 97
   
6 Dancing through History and Ethnography: Indian
Classical Dance and the Performance of the Past 123
   ’  
7 Interpreting the Historical Record: Using Images of
Korean Dance for Understanding the Past 153
     
8 Romani Dance Event in Skopje, Macedonia: Research
Strategies, Cultural Identities, and Technologies 175
       

v
vi Contents

9 Being Traditional: Authentic Selves and Others in

Researching Late-Twentieth-Century Northwest
English Morris Dancing 199
      

Selected Further Reading 231

Contributors 239
Index 241
  

This book has two principal goals. First, it aims to stimulate debate on
the combined use of ethnographic and historical strategies in investigat-
ing dance as embodied cultural practice. Second, it aims to expand the
field of mainstream dance studies by focusing on examples beyond typi-
cally Eurocentric conceptualizations of concert dance. The eight essays
presented here constitute a specially commissioned collection of case
studies on dancing in Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico,
India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. Each author was asked to root
discussion in her or his own long-term ethnographic inquiry and to
reflect upon issues of past and present within the dance practice inves-
tigated. Authors were also invited to discuss their relationship to the
research. The resultant collection provides examples not only of the
making of histories and identities through bodily practices, but also of
the part that disciplinary frameworks, methodology, and autobiography
play in determining selection and interpretation. The balance of this
collection lies with researchers of dance whose investigations did not
begin with history; rather they turned toward the diachronic perspec-
tive in order to shed light on present cultural meanings.
Scholarly examination of “the past” might not immediately suggest
the research focus of the human sciences as social scientists traditionally
concentrate their attention on the present, initially at least. Such was the
starting point for all the contributors to this volume. Traditionally too,
social scientists are concerned more with understanding communal
than individual practice. Again, this is a characteristic of the essays,
apart from one example ( Janet O’Shea), in which the practice of indi-
viduals is examined in relation to interpretations of shared pasts. Taken
as a whole, the collection of essays sheds light upon continuities and

vii
viii Preface

disruptions in codified movement systems, interrogates attributions of

significance and power to particular dance forms, and scrutinizes social
and political agency behind a rhetoric that may foreground dance as
cultural expression by reference to specific “past(s).” The inquiry has
been undertaken through the explicit juxtaposition of ethnographic and
historical frameworks. The concentration is on dance practices typically
associated with particular cultural groups professing national, ethnic, or
regional identities. Such identification may be challenged within the es-
says, and differing interpretations of the working processes of ethno-
graphic and historical inquiry are evident. Nonetheless, the emphasis
upon empirically based studies, resulting from long immersion in what-
ever constitutes the “ethnographic community,” is a collective feature.
Not every writer in this volume, of course, would necessarily con-
sider herself or himself first and foremost as a social scientist. Some con-
tributors work in university dance departments or dance organizations
and may have training that parallels or draws upon aspects of the social
sciences; others do hold specific qualifications as social scientists and are
institutionally situated in such disciplines. The resultant treatment of
the selected dance practices across this volume addresses a number of
research questions that reach across past and present documentation
and interpretation of dance practices. In answering such questions, the
research requires techniques and analytical models beyond those tradi-
tionally associated with a single framework of inquiry. What brings the
authors together here is less a single shared theoretical vision and more
an interest in issues and knowledge gained from dancing across both
pasts and presents.
Obviously, the collection does not represent every academic dis-
course that utilizes ethnography as a major methodology. Evident
absences are sociology and cultural studies, both fields that have made
innovative contributions to advancing dance knowledge and under-
standing.1 The principal academic frameworks used here are anthro-
pology, dance ethnology, folk life studies, dance history, and perform-
ance studies. The essays demonstrate variation in the ways in which
the researcher, as a result of his or her training, may relate to people
and their practices. Even where the authors explicitly locate themselves
within one disciplinary field, there exist differences of approach. Three
essays are written from within anthropology (Adrienne Kaeppler,
Felicia Hughes-Freeland, and Lynn Maners), but the specific treatment
emerges from the separate schools of ethnoscience, social anthropology,
Preface ix

and cultural anthropology, respectively. Dance ethnology may con-

stitute the disciplinary base for the essays by Judy Van Zile and Elsie
Ivancich Dunin, but each author’s treatment of the overall theme by no
means suggests a uniformity of engagement. The interpretations pro-
vide reminders that even if the writers have a declared “home” disci-
pline, they also exercise individual theoretical and methodological pref-
erences. Moreover, all authors respond to different influences in dealing
with their material in relation to the book’s theme. Interdisciplinary ten-
dencies evident in this collection may result from the author’s training
in more than one academic discipline and/or her or his openness to en-
gaging with literature beyond the declared home discipline.
Each case study is concerned with a dance practice that is popularly
seen as “other” to Euro-American-derived concert dance. The specific-
ities of each essay refute any overarching tendency toward monolithic
conceptualizations of world dance cultures. Hughes-Freeland’s study,
for example, reveals the fluid diversity of dance practice that belies the
current seeming stability and tightly defined notion of classical dance in
Indonesia. O’Shea discusses differing beliefs between individuals who
perform a genre that is often popularly and erroneously referred to in a
generalized fashion as “Indian dance.” Even within the arguably more
familiar terrain of scholarship on dancing in Europe, the three essays by
Maners, Dunin, and Theresa Buckland examine dancing that has devel-
oped within particular historical, socioeconomic, and political situa-
tions. The selection of dance forms and geographies in this volume,
then, is intended to contribute to redressing the long-standing balance in
dance studies, observed by many, that “classist and racist ideologies . . .
assigned the past and present of the socioculturally powerful to ‘history’
and ‘criticism,’ and the past and present of everyone else to ‘anthropol-
ogy/ethnography.’”2
This situation is changing, albeit slowly. It might be argued that this
particular assemblage of case studies in one volume perpetuates such a
division. At this juncture in the early twenty-first century, however, the
appearance of eight specialist essays within a mainstream book series
that is dedicated to dance history is symptomatic of the increasing profile
of the traditionally perceived “other” in dance academia. The volume
highlights sustained inquiry around a particular theme; it is not designed
as a collection of examples under the umbrella of “world dance,” a term
that has replaced, often without full critical interrogation, that of “ethnic
dance.” The essays presented here are representative of the regions that
x Preface

have been studied from both ethnographic and historical perspectives.

The original conception included material on Africa and the African di-
asporas, but, regrettably, the few knowledgeable scholars working in
this area were already pressed to contribute their research in a variety of
avenues. Considerable effort was made to elicit a suitable essay, but
both the timeframe and comparative paucity of research activity con-
spired against inclusion in this volume. Such a situation needs to be ad-
dressed in dance scholarship, not least to bear witness to the voices of
minority scholars. It is hoped that the examples within this volume will
prompt further publications on this theme of communal dancing pasts
and presents; not least with respect to the various dance practices of
Africa but also those of China, South America, and Australasia.

 
1. See, in particular, the works of Helen Thomas, for example, The Body,
Dance, and Cultural Theory (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003); and those of Jane C. Desmond, an influential example being
her “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,” in Meaning
in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond (Durham and Lon-
don: Duke University Press, 1997), 29–54.
2. Kent De Spain, “Review of Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, eds.,
Moving History/Dancing Cultures,” Dance Research Journal 34, no. 1 (2002): 106. See
also John O. Perpner III’s thoughtful critique, “Cultural Diversity and Dance
History Research,” in Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry, ed. Sondra
Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein (London: Dance Books, 1999), 334–51.
     

The impetus for this collection began at the 20th Symposium of the
International Council for Traditional Music Study Group on Ethno-
choreology in 1998 when a major theme was traditional dance and its
historical sources. In addition to new historical research, a number of
often contrasting theoretical and methodological approaches to dance
study was exposed at this international meeting. These differences were
frequently the result of geographical circumstances and intellectual tra-
ditions in the practices of dance history and dance ethnography that
cried out for more overt acknowledgment and sustained treatment.
Since 1998, there has been ongoing expansion in scholarly investigation
across dance practices worldwide. Such developments, I would argue,
coupled with further questioning of how we conduct dance research,
have made the potential of juxtaposing dance history and dance eth-
nography even more relevant to the future direction of dance studies.
I am therefore most grateful to the editorial board of the Society of
Dance History Scholars, especially to Lynn Garafola, then its chair, for
recognizing the value of such a project for inclusion in their highly re-
garded series on dance and for offering advice. Ann Cooper Albright as
the new chair has continued to champion and advance the volume’s
production through helpful recommendations. Greatly appreciated too
has been the generous advice and attention to detail received from the
staff at the University of Wisconsin Press.
My thanks also go to my own institution, De Montfort University,
Leicester, for ongoing support and financial help to facilitate com-
pletion of the project. Thanks too to all those colleagues, Thomas
DeFrantz in particular, who came so quickly to my assistance in provid-
ing ideas and answers when chapter commissions unfortunately could

xi
xii Acknowledgments

not be realized. I would also like to thank Trvtko Zebec for his swift and
effective help in selecting and providing photographs.
For a considerable period in this book’s gestation, Georgiana Gore
acted as coeditor until time pressures unfortunately prevented her con-
tinuing participation. This present collection would undoubtedly be
much the poorer without her insightful editorial comments, sharp intel-
lectual input, and stimulating discussions in the earlier phases. Several
of the contributors to this volume and I have benefited greatly from her
suggestions.
This book could never have been realized without the ongoing pa-
tience of the contributors, who have toiled tirelessly in response to some-
times lengthy and frequent editorial requests; my grateful thanks to all.
An invaluable figure in the background, but whose participation has
been very much “hands-on,” has been Chris Jones, whose critical edito-
rial eye, expert advice, and unflagging commitment to the project have
been faultless. Added to this, her unbelievable patience, good humor,
and encouragement make her a treasured companion on any editorial
journey.
Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to my husband for
his unfailing support in listening and inspiring me to bring this volume
to fruition.
         
World map: Main locations cited in the text. Map by Stephen Heath.
Random documents with unrelated
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“Oh, his letter’s just a little friendly jolly. He’s had to go to Kansas
City instead of coming back here right away.”
“Of course he just had to explain that!” Irene laughed. “I can see
this is going to be a real case. See what you can do with that
woman just coming in. She looks as though she might really have
some of the mazuma.”
It was not so easy as Grace had imagined in her spiritual ardor of
Sunday to begin retreating from Irene. She realized that Irene would
hardly listen in an amiable spirit to the warning she had thought in
her hours of contrition it was her duty to give her friend. Irene’s
serenity as she paced the aisles of the department, her friendliness
and unfailing good humor were all disarming. Irene wasn’t so bad
perhaps; Grace was much more tolerant of Irene than she had
thought on Sunday would ever be possible again.
The letter from Ward Trenton had the effect of reopening a door
which Grace had believed closed and the key thrown away. She
found herself wondering whether he might not always write to girls
he met and liked; and yet as his image appeared before her—and he
lived vividly in her thoughts—she accepted as sincere his statement
that he had broken an established reserve in talking of his wife. This
of course was what he referred to; and she saw a fine nobility in his
apprehension lest the recipient of his confidences might think the
less of him for mentioning his wife at all.
Grace was again tormented by curiosity as to whether Trenton still
loved his wife and the hope that he did not. She hated herself for
this; hated herself for having lost her grip upon the good resolutions
of Sunday to forget the whole episode of Kemp’s party. She knew
enough of the mind’s processes to indulge in what she fancied was a
rigid self-analysis. She wondered whether she was really a normal
being, whether other girls’ thoughts ran riot about men as hers did;
whether there might not be something vulgar and base in her nature
that caused her within a few hours to tolerate the thought of two
men, both married, as potential lovers....
It occurred to her that she might too effectually have burned her
bridges when she left the university. There were young men she had
known during her two years in Bloomington whose interest she
might have kept alive; among them there were a number of sons of
well-to-do families in country towns. But she was unable to visualize
herself married and settled in a small town with her prospect of
seeing and knowing the world limited by a husband’s means or
ambition. There were one or two young professors who had paid her
attentions. One of them, a widower and a man of substantial
attainments, had asked her to marry him, but she was unable to see
herself a professor’s wife, beset by all the uncertainties of the
teaching profession.
She had always been used to admiration, but until now she had
heavily discounted all the compliments that were paid her good
looks. She found herself covertly looking into the mirrors as she
passed. Trenton had been all over the world and no doubt had seen
many beautiful women; and yet he wrote that she haunted him,
which could only mean that he was unable to escape from the
thought of her. Again, deeply humble, she scouted the idea that he
could have fallen in love with her; he was only a little sorry for her,
thinking of her probably as a rather nice girl who was to be pitied
because she had to work for her living.
He had spoken of being lonely. Maybe it was only for lack of
anything better to do that he fell to thinking of her as he sat in the
club in St. Louis and wrote to her out of his craving for sympathy. At
twenty-one Grace did not know that the only being in the world who
is more dangerous than a lonely woman is a lonely man.

V
Grace was correct in her assumption that Ward Trenton had written
her in a fit of loneliness but she did not know that in the same hour
he had written also to his wife. After a few sentences explaining his
presence in St. Louis, the letter to Mrs. Trenton ran:
“It’s almost ridiculous,—the distinctly separate lives we
lead. I was just studying the calendar and find that we
haven’t met for exactly six months. When I’m at home—if
I may so refer to the house in Pittsburgh that fixes my
voting place and—pardon me!—doesn’t fix much of
anything else—I occasionally find traces of your visits. I
must say the servants do pretty well considering that they
go their own gait. You’re a wonderful housekeeper at long
range! But I’m not kicking. The gods must have their will
with us.
“I read of you in the newspapers frequently and judge
that you’re living the life that suits you best. I found a
copy of your ‘Clues to a New Social Order’ on the new
book table here in the club library and reread parts of it. It
never ceases to tickle me that a woman of your
upbringing, with your line of blue-nosed New England
ancestors, should want to pull down the pillars of society.
I marvel at you!...
“You’ve asked me now and then not to be afraid to tell
you if ever I ran into a woman who interested me
particularly. I haven’t had anything to report till now. But
the other night I met a girl,—she’s probably just crossing
the line into the twenties,—an interesting, provocative
young person. She represents in a mild degree the new
order of things you’re so mad about; going to live her own
life; marriage not in the sketch. She’s a salesgirl in a big
shop, but her people have known better days and she
went half-way through college. She’s standing with
reluctant feet where the brook and river meet, but I’m
afraid won’t be satisfied to play in the brook; she’s keen
for the deeper waters. She’s as handsome as a goddess.
She kissed me very prettily—her own idea I assure you!
The remembrance of this incident is not wholly displeasing
to me; it was quite spontaneous; filial perhaps....
 “Those bonds you have in the Ashawana Water Power
Company are all right. I had a look at the plant recently
and the dividends are sure....”
Having sealed and addressed the envelopes Trenton laid them side
by side on the blotter before him, lighted a cigarette, and then drew
out and opened the locket that Grace had noted at The Shack,
studying the woman’s face within a little wistfully. Then with a sigh
he thrust it into his pocket and went out into the night and tramped
the streets, coming at last to the post office where he mailed both
letters.

VI
Grace set off with the liveliest expectations to keep her appointment
with Miss Reynolds. The house struck her at once as a true
expression of the taste and characteristics of its owner. It was
severely simple in design and furnishing, but with adequate provision
for comfort. Grace had seen pictures of such rooms in magazines
and knew that they represented the newest ideas in house
decoration. The neutral tint of the walls was an ease to eye and
spirit. Ethel had spoken of Miss Reynolds as quaint, an absurd term
to apply either to the little woman or any of her belongings. She was
very much up to date, even a little ahead of the procession, it
seemed to Grace.
“Oh, thank you! I’m glad if it seems nice,” Miss Reynolds replied
when Grace praised the house. “All my life I’ve lived in houses where
everything was old and the furniture so heavy you had to get a
derrick to move it on cleaning day. But I can’t accept praise for
anything here. The house was built for a family that moved away
from town without occupying it. The young architect who designed it
had ideas about how it ought to be fixed up and I turned him loose.
There was a music room, so I had to get a grand piano to fit into the
alcove made for it. That young man is most advanced and I thought
at first he wouldn’t let me have any place to sit down but you see he
did allow me a few chairs! Are you freezing? I hate an over-heated
house.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable,” said Grace, noting that Miss Reynolds
wore the skirt of the blue suit she had sold her, with a plain white
waist and a loose collar. Her snow white hair was brushed back
loosely from her forehead. Her head was finely modeled and her
face, aglow from an afternoon tramp in the November air, still
preserved the roundness of youth. The wrinkles perceptible about
her eyes and mouth seemed out of place,—only tentative tracings,
not the indelible markings of age. She had an odd little way of
turning her head to one side when listening, and mistaking this for a
sign of deafness Grace had lifted her voice slightly.
“Now, my dear child!” cried Miss Reynolds, “just because I cock my
head like a robin don’t think I’m shy of hearing. It always amuses
me to have people take it for granted that I can’t hear. I hear
everything; I sometimes wish I didn’t hear so much! I’ve always had
that trick. It’s because one of my eyes is a bit stronger than the
other. You’ll find that I don’t do it when I wear my glasses, but I
usually take them off in the house.”
At the table Miss Reynolds rambled on as though Grace were an old
friend.
“Our old house down on Meridian Street was sold while I was
abroad. It had grown to be a dingy hole. Garret full of trunks of
letters and rubbish like that. I cabled at once to sell or destroy
everything in the place. So that’s why I’m able to have a new deal.
Are you crazy about old furniture? Please tell me you are not?”
“Oh, I like new things ever so much better!” Grace assured her.
“I thought you would. I despise old furniture. Old stuff of every kind.
Old people too!” With a smile on her lips she watched Grace to note
the effect of this speech. “I shouldn’t have dreamed of asking you to
give up an evening for me if I meant to talk to you like an old
woman. My neighbors are mostly young married people, but they
don’t seem to mind my settling among them. I’m sixty-two; hurry
and say I don’t look a day over fifty!”
“Forty!” Grace corrected.
“I knew I was going to like you! I think I’ll spend my remaining
years here if I can keep away from people who want to talk about
old times, meaning of course when I was a girl. It doesn’t thrill me
at all to know that right here where this house stands my
grandfather owned a farm. Every time I go down town I dodge old
citizens I’ve known all my life for fear they’ll tell me about the great
changes and expect me to get tearful about it. I can’t mourn over
the passing of old landmarks and I’d certainly not weep at the
removal of some of the old fossils around this town who count all
their money every day to make sure nobody’s got a nickel away from
them. They keep their lawyers busy tightening up their wills. They’ve
invented ways of tying up property in trusts so you can almost take
it with you!”
“That’s their way of enjoying life, I suppose,” remarked Grace, who
was taking advantage of Miss Reynolds’ talkativeness to do full
justice to a substantial dinner. The filet of beef and the fresh
mushrooms testified to the presence of an artist in the kitchen, and
the hot rolls were of superlative lightness. Miss Reynolds paused
occasionally to urge Grace to a second helping of everything offered.
“I detest anemic people,” Miss Reynolds declared. “If you don’t eat
my food I’ll feel terribly guilty at asking you here.”
“It’s the best food I ever ate! We were going to have corned beef
and cabbage at home, so all these wonderful dishes seem heavenly!”
“You’ve probably wondered why I grabbed you as I did and asked
you to sit at meat with me?”
“Why, I hope you asked me because you liked me!” Grace answered.
“That’s the correct answer, Grace—may I call you Grace? I hate
having a lot of people around; I like to concentrate on one person,
and when I met you in the church entry it just popped into my head
that you wouldn’t mind a bit giving me an evening. It’s awfully
tiresome going to dinners where the people are all my own age. I’ve
always hated formal entertaining. You struck me as a very fair
representative of the new generation that appeals to me so much.
Don’t look so startled; I mean that, my dear, as a compliment! And
of course I really don’t know a thing about you except that you have
very pretty manners and didn’t get vexed that day in the store when
I must have frightened you out of your wits.”
“But you didn’t,” Grace protested. “I liked your way of saying exactly
what you wanted.”
“I always try to do that; it saves a lot of bother. And please don’t be
offended if I say that it’s a joy to see you sitting right there looking
so charming. You have charming ways; of course you know that.
And the effect is much enhanced when you blush that way!”
Grace was very charming indeed as she smiled at her singular
hostess, who had a distinct charm of her own. She felt that she
could say anything to Miss Reynolds and with girlish enthusiasm she
promptly told her that she was adorable.
“I’ve been called a crank by experts,” Miss Reynolds said
challengingly, as though she were daring her guest to refute the
statement. “I get along better with foreigners than with my own
people. Over there they attribute my idiosyncrasies to American
crudeness, to be tolerated only because they think me much better
off in worldly goods than I really am.”
They remained at the table for coffee, and the waitress who had
served the dinner offered cigarettes. Grace shook her head and
experienced a mild shock when Miss Reynolds took a cigarette and
lighted it with the greatest unconcern.
“Abominable habit! Got in the way of it while I was abroad. Please
don’t let me corrupt you!”
“I suppose I’ll learn in time,” Grace replied, amused as she
remembered the stress her mother and Ethel had laid on Miss
Reynolds’ conservatism.
It occurred to her that Miss Reynolds was entitled to know
something of her history and she recited the facts of her life simply
and straightforwardly. She had only said that her father had been
unfortunate without explaining his connection with Cummings-
Durland. Miss Reynolds smoked and sipped her coffee in silence;
then asked in her quick fashion:
“Cummings-Durland? Those names tinkle together away back in my
memory.”
“Father and Mr. Cummings came here from Rangerton and began
business together. The Cummingses used to live neighbors to us
over by Military Park.”
“Bob Cummings is one of my neighbors,” said Miss Reynolds. “Rather
tragic—putting that young man into business. He hates it. There
ought to be some way of protecting artistic young men from fathers
who try to fit square pegs into round holes. I suppose the business
troubles broke up the friendship of your families.”
“Yes; my mother and sister are very bitter about it; they think father
was unfairly treated. But I met Bob only this morning and he was
very friendly. He seemed terribly cut up because I’d left college.”
“He’s a sensitive fellow; he would feel it,” said Miss Reynolds. “So
you children grew up together—the Durlands and the Cummings. I’m
asking about your present relations because Bob comes in
occasionally to play my piano—when there’s something on at his
own house that he doesn’t like. His wife’s the sort that just can’t be
quiet; must have people around. She’s crazy about bridge and he
isn’t! He called me on the telephone just before you came to ask if
he might come over after dinner, as his wife’s having people in for
bridge. I told him to come along. I enjoy his playing; he really plays
very well indeed. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” said Grace, wondering at the fate that was throwing her
in Bob Cummings’ way twice in one day and a day in which she had
been torn with so many conflicting emotions.
“If you have the slightest feeling about meeting him do say so; you
may always be perfectly frank with me.”
“Yes; thank you, Miss Reynolds. But I’d love to hear Bob play.”
When they were again in the living room Grace stood for a moment
scanning a table covered with periodicals and new books.
“Since I came home I’ve been trying to find out what’s going on in
America, so I read everything,” Miss Reynolds explained. “The
general opinion seems to be that things are going to pot. Right
under your hand there’s a book called ‘Clues to a New Social Order,’
written by a woman named Trenton. I understand she’s a
respectable person and not a short-haired lunatic; but she throws
everything overboard!”
“I’ve read it,” said Grace. “It’s certainly revolutionary.”
“All of that!” Miss Reynolds retorted. “But it does make you think!
Everybody’s restless and crazy for excitement. My young married
neighbors all belong to families I know or know about; live in very
charming houses and have money to spend—too much most of them
—and they don’t seem able to stand an evening at home by
themselves. But maybe the new way’s better. Maybe their chances of
happiness are greater where they mix around more. I’m curious
about the whole business. These young folks don’t go to church.
Why don’t they, when their fathers and grandfathers always did?
Their parents stayed at home in the evening. My father used to
grumble horribly when my mother tried to get him into a dress suit.
But there was wickedness then too, only people just whispered
about it and tried to keep it from the young folks. There were men
right here in this town who sat up very proper in the churches on
Sunday who didn’t hesitate to break all the commandments during
the week. But now you might think people were sending up
fireworks to call attention to their sins! I remember the first time I
went to a dinner—that was thirty years ago—where cocktails were
passed around. It seemed awful—the very end of the world. When I
told my mother about it she was horrified; said what she thought of
the hostess who had exposed her daughter to temptation! But now
prohibition’s driven everybody to drink. I asked my chauffeur
yesterday how long it would take him to get me a quart of whiskey
and he said about half an hour if I’d let him use the car. I told him to
go ahead and sure enough he was back with it in twenty minutes. It
was pretty fair whiskey, too,” Miss Reynolds concluded. “I was
curious to see just how it felt to break the law and I confess to you,
my dear, that I experienced a feeling of exultation!”
She reached for a fresh cigarette and lighted it tranquilly.
“Everybody’s down on the young people,” said Grace, confident that
she had a sympathetic listener. “They tell us all the time that we’re
of no account.”
“There are pages of that on that table,” Miss Reynolds replied. “Well,
I’m for the young people; particularly you girls who have to rustle for
yourselves. If I stood up in a store all day or hammered a typewriter
I’m sure I’d feel that I was entitled to some pleasure when I got
through. Just what do girls do—I don’t mean girls of your upbringing
exactly and your schooling,—but less lucky girls who manage their
own affairs and are not responsible to any one.”
“I haven’t been at work long enough to know much about that,” said
Grace; “but—nearly every girl who’s at all attractive has a beau!”
“Certainly!” Miss Reynolds affirmed promptly. “It’s always been so.
There’s nothing new in that.”
“And they go to dances. Every girl likes to dance. And sometimes
they’re taken out to dinner or to a show if the young man can afford
it. Girls don’t have parties at home very much; I mean even where
they live at home. There’s not room to dance usually; the houses are
too small and it isn’t much fun. And if the beau has a car he takes
the girl driving.”
“And these girls marry and have homes of their own? That still
happens, doesn’t it?”
“Well, a good many girls don’t want to marry,—not the young men
they’re likely to meet. Or if they do, some of them keep on working.
There are girls in Shipley’s who are married and keep their jobs.
They like the additional money; they can wear better clothes, and
they like to keep their independence.”
“There you are!” Miss Reynolds exclaimed. “The old stuff about
woman’s place being in the home isn’t the final answer any more. If
you won’t think it impertinent just how do you feel on that point,
Grace?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t want to marry for a long, long time!—even if I had
the chance,” Grace answered with the candor Miss Reynolds invited.
“I’ve got that idea about freedom and independence myself! I hope
I’m not shocking you!”
“Quite the contrary. I had chances to marry myself,” Miss Reynolds
confessed. “I almost did marry when I was twenty-two but decided I
didn’t love the young man enough. I had these ideas of freedom too,
you see. I haven’t really been very sorry; I suppose I ought to be
ashamed of myself. But the man I almost married died miserably, an
awful failure. I have nothing to regret. How about college girls—you
must know a good many?”
“Oh, a good many co-eds marry as soon as they graduate, and settle
down. But those I’ve known are mostly country town girls. I think it’s
different with city girls who have to go to work. They’re not so
anxious to get married.”
“The fact seems to be that marriage isn’t just the chief goal of a
woman’s life any more. Things have reached such a pass that it’s
really respectable to be a spinster like me! But we all like to be loved
—we women, don’t we? And it’s woman’s blessing and her curse
that she has love to give!”
She was silent a moment, then bent forward and touched Grace’s
hand. There was a mist of dreams in the girl’s lovely eyes.
“I wish every happiness for you, dear. I hope with all my heart that
love will come to you in a great way, which is the only way that
counts!”

VII
A moment later Bob Cummings appeared and greeted Grace with
unfeigned surprise and pleasure.
“I’ll say we don’t need to be introduced! Grace and I are old friends,”
he said, still unable to conceal his mystification at finding Grace
established on terms of intimacy in his neighbor’s house.
“I inveigled Grace here without telling her it was to be a musical
evening,” said Miss Reynolds.
“Oh, I’d have come just the same!” laughed Grace.
“We’ll cut the music now,” said Cummings. “It will be a lot more fun
to talk. I tell you, Grace, it’s a joy to have a place of refuge like this!
Miss Reynolds is the kindest woman in the world. I’ve adopted her
as my aunt.”
He bowed to Miss Reynolds, and glanced from one to the other with
boyish eagerness for their approval.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Miss Reynolds retorted with a
grieved air. “Why don’t you tell him, Grace, that being an aunt
sounds too old. You might both adopt me as a cousin!”
Grace and Bob discussed the matter with mock gravity and decided
that there was no good reason why they shouldn’t be her cousin.
“Then you must call me Cousin Beulah!” said Miss Reynolds. Her
nephews and nieces were widely scattered she said, and she didn’t
care for her lawful cousins.
Grace talked much more freely under the stimulus of Bob’s presence.
It appeared that Miss Reynolds had not known Bob until she moved
into the neighborhood and their acquaintance had begun quite
romantically. Miss Reynolds had stopped him as he was passing her
house shortly after she moved in and asked him whether he knew
anything about trees. Some of the trees on her premises were
preyed upon by malevolent insects and quite characteristically she
had halted him to ask whether he could recommend a good tree
doctor.
“You looked intelligent; so I took a chance,” Miss Reynolds explained.
“And the man you recommended didn’t hurt the trees much—only
two died. I’ve bought a tree book and hereafter I’ll do my own
spraying.”
When Miss Reynolds spoke of Mrs. Cummings she referred to her as
Evelyn, explaining to Grace that she was the daughter of an old
friend. Evelyn, it appeared, was arranging a Thanksgiving party for
one of the country clubs. Bob said she was giving a lot of time to it;
it was going to be a brilliant affair. Then finding that Grace did not
know Evelyn and remembering that in all likelihood her guest
wouldn’t be invited to the entertainment, Miss Reynolds turned the
talk into other channels. It was evident that Bob was a welcome
visitor to Miss Reynolds’s house and that she understood and
humored him and indulged and encouraged his chaffing attitude
toward her. That he should make a practice of escaping from a
company at home that did not interest him was just like Bob! He
was lucky to have a neighbor so understanding and amiable as Miss
Reynolds. Perhaps again and often she would meet Bob at Miss
Reynolds’s when he found Evelyn irksome. Grace rose and changed
her seat, as though by so doing she were escaping from an idea she
felt to be base, an affront to Miss Reynolds, an insult to Bob.
“The piano’s waiting, Bob”; and Miss Reynolds led the way to the
music room across the hall.
Bob began, as had always been his way, Grace remembered, by
improvising, weaving together snatches of classical compositions,
with whimsical variations. Then, after a pause, he sat erect, struck
into Schumann’s Nachtstuck, and followed it with Handel’s Largo and
Rubenstein’s Melody in F, all associated in her memory with the days
of their boy-and-girl companionship. He shook his head impatiently,
waited a moment and then a new mood laying hold of him he had
recourse to Chopin, and played a succession of pieces that filled the
room with color and light. Grace watched the sure touch of his
hands, marveling that he had been so faithful to the music that was
his passion as a boy. It had always been his solace in the unhappy
hours to which he had been a prey as far back as she could
remember. There was no questioning his joy in the great harmonies.
He was endowed with a talent that had been cultivated with
devotion, and he might have had a brilliant career if fate had not
swept him into a business for which his temperament wholly unfitted
him.
While he was still playing Miss Reynolds was called away by callers
and left the room quietly.
“You and Bob stay here,” she whispered to Grace. “These are people
I have to see.”
When Bob ended with a Chopin valse, graceful and capricious, that
seemed to Grace to bring the joy of spring into the room, he swung
round, noted Miss Reynolds’s absence and then the closed door.
“My audience reduced one-half!” he exclaimed ruefully. “At this rate
I’ll soon be alone.”
“Don’t stop! Those last things were marvelous!”
“Just one more! Do you remember how I cornered you one day in
our old house—you were still wearing pigtails—and told you I’d
learned a new piece and you sat like a dear angel while I played this
—my first show piece?”
It was Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, and she thrilled to think that he
hadn’t forgotten. The familiar chords brought back vividly the old
times; he had been so proud and happy that day in displaying his
prowess.
Her praise was sweet to him then, and she saw that it was grateful
to him now.
“You play wonderfully, Bob; it’s a pity you couldn’t have kept on!”
“We can’t do as we please in this world,” he said, throwing himself
into a chair and reaching for the cigarettes. “But I get a lot of fun
out of my music. I’m not sorry I stuck to it as I did from the time I
could stretch an octave. Are you spending the night with Miss
Reynolds?”
“No; we’re not quite that chummy. Miss Reynolds said she’d send me
home.”
“Not on your life she won’t! I’m going to run you out in my roadster.
That’s settled. I don’t have to show up at home till midnight, so
there’s plenty of time. You and Cousin Beulah seem to get on
famously.”
Grace gave a vivacious account of the beginning of her acquaintance
with Miss Reynolds, not omitting the ten dollar tip.
He laughed; then frowned darkly.
“I’ve been troubled about this thing ever since I met you today,” he
said doggedly; “your having to quit college, I mean. I feel guilty,
terribly guilty.”
“Please, Bob! don’t spoil my nice evening by mentioning those things
again. I know it wasn’t your fault. So let’s go on being friends just as
though nothing had happened.”
“Of course. But it’s rotten just the same. You can hardly see me
without——”
She raised her hand warningly.
“Bob, I’d be ashamed if anything could spoil our friendship. I’m
perfectly satisfied that you had nothing to do with father’s troubles.
So please forget it.”
She won him back to good nature—she had always been able to do
that—and they talked of old times, of the companions of their youth
in the park neighborhood. This was safe ground. The fact that they
were harking back to their childhood and youth emphasized the
changed circumstances of both the Durlands and the Cummingses.
It didn’t seem possible that he was married; it struck her suddenly
that he didn’t appear at all married; and with this came the
reflection that he was the kind of man who should never marry. He
should have kept himself free; he had too much temperament for a
harmonious married life.
“You don’t know Evelyn,” he remarked a little absently. And then as
though Grace’s not knowing Evelyn called for an explanation he
added: “She was away at school for a long time.”
“What’s she like, Bob?” Grace asked. “A man ought to be able to
draw a wonderful picture of his wife.”
“He should indeed! Let me see. She’s fair; blue eyes; tall, slender;
likes to have something doing; wins golf cups; a splendid dancer....
Oh, pshaw! You wouldn’t get any idea from that!” he said with an
uneasy laugh. “She’s very popular; people like her tremendously.”
“I’m sure she’s lovely, Bob. Is she musical?”
“Oh, she doesn’t care much for music; my practicing bores her. She
used to sing a little but she’s given it up.”
He hadn’t said that he hoped she might meet Evelyn; and for a
moment Grace resented this. She was a saleswoman in a
department store and Evelyn had no time for an old friend of her
husband who sold ready-to-wear clothing. A snob, no doubt, self-
centered and selfish; Bob’s failure to suggest a meeting with his wife
made it clear that he realized the futility of trying to bring them
together.
“You haven’t missed me a bit!” cried Miss Reynolds appearing
suddenly. “Is the music all over?”
“Oh, we’ve been reminiscing,” said Grace. “And you missed the best
of Bob’s playing.”
“I’m sorry those people chose tonight for their call. It was Judge
Sanders, my lawyer, and his wife, old friends—but I didn’t dare
smoke before them! You’ve got to stay now while I have a cigarette.”
When Grace said presently that she must go and Miss Reynolds
reached for the bell to ring for her car, Bob stayed her hand.
“That’s all fixed! I’ll run around and bring my car and I’ll take Grace
home. Please say you don’t mind!”
“Of course, I don’t mind; but you needn’t think you’re establishing a
precedent. The next time Grace comes I’ll lock the door against you
and all the rest of the world!”
While Bob went for his car Miss Reynolds warned Grace that she was
likely to ask her to the house again.
“You’ll be doing me a favor by coming, dear. And remember, if
there’s ever anything I can do for you you’re to tell me. That’s a
promise. I should be sorry if you didn’t feel that you could come to
me with anything.”

VIII
“It’s only a little after ten,” said Bob as he started the car, “and I’m
going to touch the edge of the country before I take you home. Is
that all right? How long’s it been since we went driving together?”
“Centuries! It was just after you moved.”
“I was afraid you’d forgotten. I remember the evening perfectly. We
stopped at the Country Club to dance and just played around by
ourselves. But we did have a good time!”
His spirits were soaring; through his talk ran an undercurrent of
mischievous delight in his freedom. “It’s just bully to see you again!”
he repeated several times. “While I was playing I kept thinking of
the royal fun we used to have. Do you remember that day our
families had a picnic—we were just kids then—and you and I
wandered away and got lost looking for wild flowers or whatever the
excuse was; and a big storm came up and our mothers gave us a
good raking when we came back all soaked and everybody was
scared for fear we’d tumbled into the river!”
To Grace the remembrance of this adventure was not nearly so
thrilling as the fact that Bob, now married, still chortled over the
recollection and was obviously delighted to be spending an evening
with her while his wife enjoyed herself in her own fashion at home.
He would probably not tell Evelyn that he had taken the daughter of
his father’s old business associate driving, a girl who clerked in a
department store and was clearly out of his social orbit. Here was
another episode which Grace knew she dared not mention at home;
Ethel and her mother would be horrified. But Grace was happy in the
thought that Bob Cummings still found pleasure in her company
even if she was Number Eighteen at Shipley’s and took and accepted
tips from kindly-disposed customers. He halted the car at a point
which afforded a broad sweep of moonlit field and woodland.
“You know, Grace, sometimes I’ve been hungry and positively
homesick for a talk with you such as we’ve had tonight.”
“Please drive on! You mustn’t say things like that.”
“Well, that’s the way I feel anyhow. It’s queer how I haven’t been
able to do anything I wanted to with my life. I’m like a man who’s
been pushed on a train he didn’t want to take and can’t get off.”
Here again was his old eager appeal for sympathy. He was weak,
she knew, with the weakness that is a defect of such natures. It
would be perfectly easy to begin a flirtation with him, possibly to see
him frequently in some such way as she saw him now. It was wrong
to encourage him, but her curiosity as to how far he would go
overcame her scruples; it would do no harm to lead him on a little.
“You ought to be very happy, Bob. You have everything to make you
happy!”
“I’ve made mistakes all down the line,” he answered with a flare of
defiance. “I ought to have stood out against father when he put me
into the business. I’m no good at it. But Merwin made a mess of
things; father’s got him on a ranch out in Montana now, and Tom’s
got the bug to be a doctor and nothing can shake him. So I have to
sit at a desk every day doing things I hate and doing them badly of
course. And for the rest of it——!”
He stopped short of the rest of it, which Grace surmised was his
marriage to Evelyn. It was his own fault that he had failed to control
and manage his life. He might have resisted his father when it came
to going into business and certainly it spoke for a feeble will if he
had married to gratify his mother’s social ambitions. She was about
to bid him drive on when he turned toward her saying:
“I feel nearer to you, Grace, than to anybody else in the world! It
was always that way. It’s got hold of me again tonight—that feeling I
used to have that no matter what happened you’d know, you’d
understand!”
“Those days are gone, Bob,” she said, allowing a vague wistfulness
to creep into her tone. “I mustn’t see you any more. We’ve both got
our lives to live. You know that as well as I do. You’re just a little
down tonight; you always had moods like this when you thought the
world was against you. It’s just a mood and everything will look
differently tomorrow.”
“But I’ve got to see you, Grace; not often maybe, but now and then.
There’ll be some way of managing.”
“No!” she exclaimed, her curiosity fully satisfied as to how far he
would go. “I’ll be angry with you in a minute! This is positively the
last time!”
“Please don’t say that!” he pleaded. “I wouldn’t offend you for
anything in the world, Grace.”
“I know you wouldn’t, Bob,” she said kindly. “But there are some
things that won’t do, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” he conceded with the petulance of a child reluctantly
admitting a fault.
“I’m glad you still like me, but you know perfectly well this kind of
thing’s all wrong. I mustn’t see you again.”
“But Grace, what if I just have to see you!”
“Oh, don’t be so silly! You’ll never just have to. You’ve got a wife to
tell your troubles to.”
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to make it impossible for him to
see her again or that she really preferred that he tell his troubles to
his wife. His troubles were always largely imaginary, due to his
sensitive and impressionable nature.
“You needn’t remind me of that!” he said.
“Oh, start the car! Let’s all be cheerful! We might as well laugh as
cry in this world. Did you see the game Saturday? I had a suitor turn
up from the university and we had a jolly time.”
“Who was he?” Bob demanded savagely.
“Oh, Bob, you’re a perfect scream! Well, you needn’t be jealous of
him.”
“I’m jealous of every man you know!” he said.
“Now, you’re talking like a crazy man! Suppose I were to tell you I’m
jealous of Evelyn! Please remember that you forgot all about me and
married another girl quite cheerfully with a church wedding and
flowers and everything. You needn’t come to me now for
consolation!”
She refused to hear his defense from this charge, and mocked him
by singing snatches of college songs till they were in town. When
they reached the Durland house she told him not to get out.
“I won’t tell the family you brought me home; they wouldn’t
understand. Thanks ever so much, Bob.”
Mrs. Durland and Ethel were waiting to hear of her evening with
Miss Reynolds and she told everything except that she had met
Cummings there. She satisfied as quickly as possible their curiosity
as to Miss Reynolds and her establishment, and hurried to her room
eager to be alone. She assured herself that she could never love Bob
Cummings, would never have loved him even if their families had
remained neighbors and it had been possible to marry him. He
wasn’t her type—the phrase pleased her—and in trying to determine
just what type of man most appealed to her Trenton loomed large in
her speculations. Within a few weeks she had encountered two
concrete instances of the instability of marriage. Love, it seemed,
was a fleeting thing and loyalty had become a by-word. Bob was
only a spoiled boy, shallow, easily influenced, yet withal endowed
with graces and charms. But graces and charms were not enough.
She brought herself to the point of feeling sorry for Evelyn, who
probably refused to humor and pet Bob and was doubtless grateful
that he had music as an outlet for his emotions. It was something,
though, to have found that he hadn’t forgotten; that there were
times when he felt the need of her. She wondered whether he would
take her word as final and make no further attempt to see her.

IX
Grace addressed herself sincerely to the business of bringing all the
cheer possible to the home circle. She overcame her annoyance at
being obliged to recount the details of her work, realizing that her
mother spent her days at home and save for the small affairs of her
club had little touch with the world beyond her dooryard. Ethel’s
days in the insurance office were much alike and she lacked Grace’s
gift for making a good story out of a trifling incident. Even Mr.
Durland enjoyed Grace’s account of the whims and foibles of the
women she encountered at Shipley’s. Grace reasoned that so long as
she lived at home it would be a mistake not to make the best of
things; but even in her fits of repentance she had not regretted her
assertion of the right to go and come unquestioned.
In the week following she left the house on two evenings saying
merely that she was going out. On one of these occasions she
returned a book to the public library; on another she walked
aimlessly for an hour. These unexplained absences were to
determine whether her new won liberty was really firmly established.
Nothing was said either by her mother or Ethel, though it was clear
that they were mystified by her early return, though not to the point
of asking where she had been. On a third evening she announced at
the table that she had earned a good bonus that day and would
celebrate by taking them all to the vaudeville. Mrs. Durland and
Ethel gave plausible excuses for declining, but not without
expressing their appreciation of the invitation in kind terms, and
Grace and her father set off alone.
In her cogitations Grace was convinced that nothing short of a
miracle could ever improve materially the family fortunes. They had
the house free of encumbrance, but it needed re-roofing, and the
furnishings were old and dingy. Mrs. Durland had worked out a
budget by which to manage the family finances, and it was clear
enough to Grace that what she and Ethel earned would just about
take care of the necessary running expenses. Mrs. Durland had
received for many years an income of five hundred dollars a year
from her father’s estate, and this Grace learned had always been
spent on the family. The last payment had been put away, Mrs.
Durland explained to her daughters, to help establish Roy after he
completed his law course. It was impressed upon Grace constantly
that all the hopes of bettering the family conditions centered in Roy.
Ethel shared, though in less degree, her mother’s confidence in the
son of the house. Grace kept silent when Roy’s prospects were
discussed, feeling that it would serve no purpose to express her
feeling that Roy had no special talent for the law, and even if he had
the Durlands were without family or business connections that could
possibly assist him in establishing himself.

X
Grace’s meeting with Bob Cummings served to sharpen her sense of
social differentiations. Her mother had always encouraged the idea
that the Durlands were a family of dignity, entitled to the highest
consideration; but stranded as they were in a neighborhood that had
no lines of communication with polite society, Mrs. Durland now
rarely received an invitation even to the houses of her old friends.
Grace’s excursions in social science had made her aware of the
existence of such a thing as class consciousness; but she had never
questioned that she belonged to the favored element. The thought
assailed her now that as a wage-earning girl she had a fixed social
status from which there was little likelihood she would ever escape.
The daughters of prominent families she waited on at Shipley’s were
no better looking, no more intelligent and had no better social
instincts than she possessed; but she was as completely shut off
from any contact with them as though she were the child of a Congo
chieftain. With all her romanticism she failed to picture the son of
one of the first families making her acquaintance and introducing her
to his family as the girl he meant to marry. Several young men with
whom she became acquainted in Shipley’s had asked her to go to
dances, or for Sunday drives. Irene sniffed when Grace reported
these overtures.
“Oh, they’re nice fellows; but what have they got to offer? They’re
never going to get anywhere. You can’t afford to waste your time on
them.”
However, Grace accepted one of these invitations. The young man
took her to a public dance hall where the music was good, but the
patrons struck her as altogether uninspiring; and she resented being
inspected by a police matron. She danced with her escort all
evening, and then they went to a cafeteria for sandwiches and soda
water.
Irene had warned Grace that such young fellows were likely to prove
fresh; that they always expected to kiss a girl good-night, and might
even be insulting; but this particular young man was almost
pathetically deferential. Grace was ashamed of herself for not
inviting him to call, but she shrank from encouraging his further
attentions; he might very easily become a nuisance.
Again, she went to Rosemary Terrace, a dance and supper place on
the edge of town, in company with a young man who carried a
bottle on his hip to which he referred with proud complacency, as
though it were the symbol of his freedom as an American citizen.
The large dance hall was crowded; the patrons were clearly the
worse for their indulgence in the liquor carried by their escorts; the
dancing of many of the visitors was vulgar; the place was hot and
noisy and the air heavy with tobacco smoke. Grace’s young man
kept assuring her that the Rosemary was the sportiest place in town;
you didn’t see any dead ones there. His desire to be thought a sport
would have been amusing if he hadn’t so strenuously insisted upon
explaining that he was truly of the great company of the elect to
whom the laws of God and man were as nothing. When Grace asked
to be taken home he hinted that there were other places presumably
even less reputable, to which they might go. But he did not press
the matter, when, reaching the Durland gate, he tried to kiss her and
she, to mark the termination of their acquaintance, slapped him.
These experiences were, she reflected, typical of what she must look
forward to unless she compromised with her conscience and
accepted Irene’s philosophy of life.
She had replied immediately to Trenton’s letter from St. Louis with a
brief note which she made as colorless as possible. She knew that it
was for her to decide whether to see more of him or drop the
acquaintance. He was not a man to force his attentions upon any
young woman if he had reason to think them unwelcome. Hearing
nothing from him for several days she had decided that he had
settled the matter himself when she received a note explaining that
he had been very busy but would start East the next day. He hoped
she would dine with him on Thursday night and named the
Indianapolis hotel where her reply would reach him.
“Don’t turn him down!” exclaimed Irene when Grace told her Trenton
was coming. “He wouldn’t ask you if he didn’t want you. Tommy
skipped for New York last night so it’s a safe bet that Ward’s
stopping on purpose to see you.”
“I don’t know—” began Grace doubtfully.
“Oh, have a heart! There’s no harm in eating dinner with a married
man in a hotel where you’d get by even if all your family walked in
and caught you! Of course Tommy can’t appear with me at any
public place here at home, but it’s different with you and Ward. He
doesn’t know a dozen people in town.”
“I wouldn’t want to offend him,” Grace replied slowly, a prey to
uncertainty; but she withheld her acceptance until the morning of
the day of Trenton’s arrival.

XI
When she reached the Hotel Sycamore at seven o’clock he was
waiting for her at the entrance.
“On time to the minute!” he exclaimed. “I took you at your word that
you’d rather not have me call for you.”
“Thanks; but it was easier this way,” she answered.
He had been so much in her thoughts, and she had considered him
from so many angles that at first she was shy in his presence. But by
the time they were seated in the dining room her diffidence was
passing. He appeared younger than at The Shack, but rather more
distinguished; it might have been the effect of his dinner coat; and
she noticed that he was the only man in the room who had dressed
for dinner.
“You’ve been busy of course and I’ve been up to my eyes in work,”
he said; “so we’ll dismiss business. Shall we talk of the weather or
see what we can do to save the world from destruction!”
“Oh, I’ve had a lot of ideas about things since I saw you,” she said.
“Half of them were right and half wrong.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “our old friend conscience!”
“Yes,” she replied, meeting his gaze squarely. “I’ve been trying to
decide a thousand questions, but I’ve got nowhere!”
“Terrible! But I’m glad to find that you’re so human; most of us are
like that. Honest, now, you weren’t at all sure you wanted to see me
tonight!”
“No,” she assented under his smiling gaze; “I didn’t send the answer
to your note till nearly noon!”
“So I noticed from the hotel stamp on the envelope! But I’d have
been very much disappointed if you’d refused.”
His tone was too serious for comfort. She felt that she must have a
care lest he discover the attraction he had for her.
“Oh, you’d have got over it! You know you would. You needn’t have
dined alone—Tommy’s out of town, but there’s Irene!”
“Much as I admire Irene she would be no substitute! I was sincerely
anxious to see you again, if only to make sure you were still on
earth.”
“Oh, I have no intention of leaving it!”
She was finding it easy to be flippant with him. Whatever liking he
had for her was no doubt due to the seriousness she had manifested
in their talk at The Shack. And the effect of that talk had been to
awaken a sympathy and interest on both sides; in her case she knew
that it was trifle more than that. She was sorry now that she had
kissed him; she was puzzled that she had ever had the courage to
do it, though it was such a kiss as she might have given any man
older than herself in the same circumstances. She had heard of
women, very young women, who were able to exert a strong
influence upon men much older than themselves. She felt for the
first time the power of sex—at least she had never before thought of
it in the phrases that now danced through her brain. If he was
annoyed not to find her as interesting and agreeable as at The
Shack he was successful in concealing his disappointment. He
continued to be unfailingly courteous, meeting her rejoinders with
characteristic mockeries until she began to feel ashamed of her lack
of friendliness. He deserved better of her than this.
“We’re going to the theatre; did you know that?” he asked toward
the end of the dinner. “And we’re going to be fashionably late.”
“‘Stolen Stars!’ Oh, that’s perfectly marvelous,” she exclaimed. “I’ve
been just dying to see it!”
“Then it’s lucky that you can live and see it!” Through the
performance the thought kept recurring to her that he meant to be
kind. No one had ever been so kind or shown her so flattering a
deference as Ward Trenton. She was proud to be sitting beside him.
When the lights went up after the first act a buzz of talk in one of
the boxes drew her attention, and she caught a glimpse of Bob
Cummings. At the same moment he saw her and bowed. There were
six in the party and she decided that Bob’s wife was the young
woman he most rarely addressed. Evelyn was not beautiful; she was
gratified to have Trenton’s confirmation of her opinion on this point
when she directed his attention to the box party.
“I’ll be here for several days,” said Trenton when they reached the
Durland house and he stood for a moment on the doorstep. “Could
you give me another evening? Tomorrow night I’m tied up with a
business appointment, but may we say day after tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she assented, “but isn’t there danger of seeing too much of
me?”
“I’ll take the risk!” he said. “And thank you ever so much.”
She fell asleep glad that she was to see him again.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
I
The second evening with Trenton was very like the first except that
after dinner at the Sycamore they attended a concert given by a
world-famous violinist. Again as under the spell of Bob Cummings’
playing at Miss Reynolds’, Grace was caught away into a wonder-
world, where she wandered like a disembodied spirit seeking some
vestige of a personality that had not survived her transition to
another realm. She was assailed by new and fleeting emotions, in
which she studied Trenton and tried to define her attitude toward
him, conscious that the time might be close at hand when some
definition would be necessary. Now and then she caught a glimpse
of his rapt look and saw the lines about his mouth tighten. Once he
clasped his hands as though, in response to some inner prompting,
he were attempting by a physical act to arrest some disturbing trend
of his thoughts.
There was a fineness in his face that she had not before fully
appreciated, and it was his fineness and nobility, Grace assured
herself, that appealed to her. Then there were moments when she
was undecided whether she loved or hated him, not knowing that
this is a curious phase which women of highly sensitive natures
often experience at the first consciousness of a man’s power over
them. She saw man as the hunter and woman as his prey. Then with
a quick revulsion she freed herself of the thought and drifted happily
with the tide of harmony.
When they left the theatre Trenton asked whether she felt like
walking. The night was clear and the air keen and stimulating.
“Of course; it would be a shame to ride! That music would carry me
a thousand miles,” she answered.
As soon as they were free of the crowd he began to talk of music, its
emotional appeal, its power to dissociate the hearer from material
things.
“I never felt it so much before,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s not much
poetry in me. I’m not much affected by things that I can’t reduce to
a formula, and I’m a little suspicious of anything that lifts me off the
earth as that fiddle did. If I exposed myself to music very often it
would ruin me for business.”
“Oh, never that! I feel music tremendously; everybody must! It
wakes up all manner of hopes and ambitions even if they don’t live
very long. That violin really made me want to climb!”
“Yes; I can understand that. For a few minutes I was conscious
myself of reaching up the ladder for a higher round. It’s dangerous
to feel so keenly. I wonder if there ever comes a time when we don’t
feel any more—really feel a desire to bump against the stars; when
the spirit goes dead and for the rest of our days we just settle into a
rut with no hope of ever pulling out? I have a dread of that. It’s
ghastly to think of. Marking time! Going through the motions of
being alive when you’re really dead!”
“Oh, don’t even think of it! You could never be like that!”
“Maybe I’m like that now!”
“You’re clear off the key!” she cried. “Of course you’re not at the end
of things. It’s wicked to talk that way.”
“Do you really think that?” he asked eagerly. “Do you see any hope
ahead for me?”
“You know you see it yourself! We wouldn’t any of us go on living if
we didn’t see some hope ahead.” Then with greater animation she
added:
“You’re not a man to sit down at the roadside and burst into tears
because things don’t go to suit you! I don’t believe you’re that kind
at all. If you are—well, I’m disappointed!”
“Now you’ve got me with my back to the wall!” he laughed. “No man
ever wants a woman to think him a coward. I’ll keep away from all
music hereafter except the snappiest jazz. But give music the benefit
of the doubt; it may not have been the fiddle at all!”
“More likely you ate too much dinner!”
“Impossible! The ostrich has nothing on me when it comes to
digestion. Maybe you’re the cause of my depression! Please consider
that for a moment!”
“Oh, that’s terribly unkind! If I depress you this must be our last
meeting.”
“You know I didn’t mean that, it’s because——”
“Don’t begin becausing! You know you’re in a tight corner; you hint
that I’ve given you a bad evening just by sitting beside you at a
concert—and a very beautiful concert at that.”
“The mistake is mine! You haven’t the slightest respect for my
feelings. I show you the wounds in my very soul and you laugh at
them.”
“I certainly am not going to weep my eyes out merely because you
let a few bars of music throw you. I had a fit of the blues too;
several times I thought I was going to cry. How embarrassed you’d
have been!”
“No; I should have held your hand until you regained your
composure!”
“Then we’d both have been led out by the ushers!”
He joined with her in playing whimsically upon all the possibilities of
their ejection. They would have been arrested for disturbing a public
gathering and their names would have figured in the police reports,
probably with pictorial embellishments. This sort of fooling was safe;
she thought perhaps he meant to maintain the talk on an impersonal
plane but in a moment he said:
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