Part 21

Prue broached the question of a room to teach in. To Mrs. Prosser, renting a room had always the joy of renting a room. She said that her "poller" was not used much and she'd be right glad to get something for it. She would throw in the use of the pianna. Prue touched the keys. It was an old boarding-house piano and sounded like a wire fence plucked; but almost anything would serve.

So Prue and Orton hastened away to the party, and danced with the final rapture of doing the forbidden thing under an overhanging cloud of menace. Several more pupils enlisted themselves in Prue's classes. Another problem was solved and a new danger commenced by Mr. Norman Maugans.

The question of music had become serious. It was hard to make progress when the dancers had to hum their own tunes. Prue could not buy a phonograph, and the Prosser piano dated from a time when pianos did not play themselves. Prue could "tear off a few rags," as she put it, but she could not dance and teach and play her own music all at once. Mrs. Hippisley was afraid to lend her phonograph lest the judge should notice its absence.

And now like a sent angel came Mr. Norman Maugans, who played the pipe-organ at the church, and offered to exchange his services as musician for occasional lessons and the privilege of watching Prue dance, for which privilege, he said, "folks in New York would pay a hundred dollars a night if they knew what they was missin'."

Prue grabbed the bargain, and the next morning began to teach him to play such things as "Some Smoke" and "Leg of Mutton."

At first he played "Girls, Run Along" so that it could hardly be told from "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night?" and his waltzes were mostly hesitation; but by and by he got so that he fairly tangoed on the pedals, and he was so funny bouncing about on the piano-stool to "Something Seems Tingle-ingle-ingle-ingling So Queer" that the pupils stopped dancing to watch him.

The tango was upon the world like a Mississippi at flood-time. The levees were going over one by one; or if they stood fast they stood alone, for the water crept round from above and backed up from below.

In Carthage, as in both Portlands, Maine and Oregon, and the two Cairos, Illinois and Egypt, the Parises of Kentucky and France, the Yorks and Londons, old and new; in Germany, Italy, and Japan, fathers, monarchs, mayors, editors stormed against the new dance; societies passed resolutions; police interfered; ballet-girls declared the dances immoral and ungraceful. The army of the dance went right on growing.

Doctor Brearley called a meeting of the chief men of his congregation to talk things over and discipline, if not expel, all guilty members. Deacon Luxton was in a state of mind. He dared not vote in favor of the dance and he dared not vote against it. He and his wife were taking lessons from Prue surreptitiously at their own home. Judge Hippisley's voice would have been louder for war if he had not discovered that his wife was secretly addicted to the one-step. Old Doctor Brearley was walking about rehearsing a sermon against it when he happened to enter a room where Idalene was practising. He wrung from her a confession of the depth of her iniquity. This knowledge paralyzed his enthusiasm.

Sour old Deacon Flugal was loudly in favor of making an example of Prue. His wife was even more violent. She happened to mention her disgust to Mrs. Deacon Luxton:

"I guess this'll put an end to the tango in Carthage!"

"Oh, I hope not!" Mrs. Luxton cried.

"You hope not!"

"Yes, I do. It has done my husband no end of good. It's taken pounds and pounds of fat off him. It brings out the prespiration on him something wonderful. And it's taken years off his age. He's that spry and full of jokes and he's gettin' right spoony. He used to be a tumble cut-up, and then he settled down so there was no livin' with him. But now he keeps at me to buy some new clothes and he's thinkin' of gettin' a tuxeda. His old disp'sition seems to have come back and he's as cheerful and, oh, so affectionate! It's like a second honeymoon."

Mrs. Luxton gazed off into space with rapture. Mrs. Flugal was so silent that Mrs. Luxton turned to see if she had walked away in disgust. But there was in her eyes that light that lies in woman's eyes, and she turned a delicious tomato-red as she murmured:

"How much, do you s'pose, would a term of lessons cost for my husband?"

XII

Somehow the church failed to take official action. There was loud criticism still, but phonographs that had hitherto been silent or at least circumspect were heard to blare forth dance rhythms, and not always with the soft needle on.

Mrs. Prosser's boarders were mainly past the age when they were liable to temptation. At first the presence and activities of Prue had added a tang of much-needed spice to this desert-island existence. They loved to stare through the door or even to sit in at the lessons. But at the first blast of the storm that the church had set up they scurried about in consternation. Mrs. Prosser was informed that her boarding-house was no longer a fit place for church-fearing ladies. She was warned to expurgate Prue or lose the others. Mrs. Prosser regretfully banished the girl.

And now Prue felt like the locust turned away from ant-hill after ant-hill. She walked the streets disconsolately. Her feet from old habit led her past her father's door. She paused to gaze at the dear front walk and the beloved frayed steps, the darling need of paint, the time-gnawed porch furniture, the empty hammock hooks. She sighed and would have trudged on, but her mother saw her and called to her from the sewing-room window, and ran out bareheaded in her old wrapper.

They embraced across the gate and Serina carried on so that Prue had to go in with her to keep the neighbors from having too good a time. Prue told her story, and Serina's jaw set in the kind of tetanus that mothers are liable to. She sent Horace to fetch Prue's baggage from "old Prosser's," and she re-established Prue in her former room.

When William came slumping up the steps, still jobless, he found the doors locked, front and back, and the porch windows fastened. Serina from an upper sill informed him that Prue was back, and he could either accept her or go somewhere else to live.

William yielded, salving his conscience by refusing to speak to the girl. Prue settled down with the meekness of returned prodigals for whom fatted calves are killed. According to the old college song, "The Prod.," when he got back, "sued father and brother for time while away." That was the sort of prodigal Prue was. Prue brought her classes with her.

Papa Pepperall gave up the battle. He dared not lock his daughter in or out or up. He must not beat her or strangle her with a bowstring or drop her into the Bosporus. He could not sell her down the river. A modern father has about as much authority as a chained watch-dog. He can jump about and bark and snap, but he only abrades his own throat.

There were Pepperall feuds all over town. One by one the most conservative were recruited or silenced.

William Pepperall, however, still fumed at home and abroad, and Judge Hippisley would have authorized raids if there had been any places to raid. Thus far the orgies had been confined to private walls. There was, indeed, no place in Carthage for public dancing except the big room in the Westcott Block over Jake Meyer's restaurant, and that room was rented to various secret societies on various nights.

Prue's class outgrew the parlor, spread to the dining-room, and trickled into the kitchen. Here the growth had to stop, till it was learned that if Mr. Maugans played very loud he could be heard in the bedrooms up-stairs. And there a sort of University Extension was practised for ladies only.

And still the demand for education increased. The benighted held out hands pleading for help. Young men and old offered fabulous sums, a dollar a lesson, two dollars! Prue decided that if her mother would stay up-stairs as a chaperon it would be proper to let the men dance there, too.

"But how am I going to cook the meals?" said mamma.

"We'll hire a cook," said Prue. And it was done. She even bought mamma a new dress, and established her above-stairs as a sort of grand duenna.

Mamma watched Prue with such keenness that now and then, when Prue had to rush down-stairs, mamma would sometimes solve a problem for one of Prue's "scholars," as she called them.

One day papa came home to his pandemonium, jostled through the couple-cluttered hall, stamped up-stairs, and found mamma showing Deacon Flugal how to do the drop-step.

"You trot four short steps backward," mamma was saying, "then you make a little dip; but don't swing your shoulders. Prue says if you want to dance refined you mustn't swing your shoulders or your--your--the rest of you."

Papa was ready to swing his shoulders and drop the deacon through the window, but as he was about to protest the deacon caught mamma in his arms and swept backward, dropping his fourth step incisively on papa's instep, rendering papa _hors de combat_.

By the time William had rubbed witch-hazel into the deacon's heel-mark, the deacon in a glorious "prespiration" had gone home with his own breathless wife ditto. William dragged Serina into the bathroom, the only room where dancing was not in progress. He warned her not to forget that she had sworn to be a faithful wife. She pooh-poohed him and said:

"You'd better learn to dance yourself. Come on, I'll show you the Jedia Luna. It's very easy and awful refined. Do just like I do."

She put her hands on her hips and began to sidle. She had him nearly sidled into the bathtub before he could escape with the cry of a hunted animal. At supper he thumped the table with another of his resolutions, and cried:

"My house was not built for a dance-hall!"

"That's right, poppa," said Prue; "and it shakes so I'm afraid it'll come down on us. I've been thinking that you'll have to hire me the lodge-room in the Westcott Block. I can give classes there all day."

He refused flatly. So she persuaded Deacon Flugal and several gentlemen who were on the waiting-list of her pupils to arrange it for her.

And now all day long she taught in the Westcott Block. The noise of her music interfered with business--with lawyers and dentists and insurance agents. At first they were hostile, then they were hypnotized. Lawyer and client would drop a title discussion to quarrel over a step. The dentist's forceps would dance along the teeth, and many an uncomplaining bicuspid was wrenched from its happy home, many an uneasy molar assumed a crown. The money Prue made would have been scandalous if money did not tend to become self-sterilizing after it passes certain dimensions.

By and by the various lodge members found their meetings and their secret rites to be so stupid, compared with the new dances, that almost nobody came. Quorums were rare. Important members began to resign. Everybody wanted to be Past Grand Master of the Tango.

The next step was the gradual postponement of meetings to permit of a little informal dancing in the evening. The lodges invited their ladies to enter the precincts and revel. Gradually the room was given over night and day to the worship of Saint Vitus.

XIII

The solution of every human problem always opens another. People danced themselves into enormities of appetite and thirst. It was not that food was attractive in itself. Far from it. It was an interruption, a distraction from the tango; a base streak of materialism in the bacon of ecstasy. But it was necessary in order that strength might be kept up for further dancing.

Deacon Flugal put it happily: "Eating is just like stoking. When I'm giving a party at our house I hate to have to leave the company and go down cellar and throw coal in the furnace. But it's got to be did or the party's gotter stop."

Carthage had one good hotel and two bad ones, but all three were "down near the deepo." Almost the only other place to eat away from home was "Jake Meyer's Place," an odious restaurant where the food was ill chosen and ill cooked, and served in china of primeval shapes as if stone had been slightly hollowed out.

Prue was complaining that there was no place in Carthage where people could dance with their meals and give "teas donsons." Horace was smitten with a tremendous idea.

"Why not persuade Jake Meyer to clear a space in his rest'runt like they do in Chicawgo?"

Prue was enraptured, and Horace was despatched to Jake with the proffer of a magnificent opportunity. Horace cannily tried to extract from Jake the promise of a commission before he told him. Jake promised. Then Horace sprang his invention.

Now Jake was even more bitter against the tango than Doctor Brearley, Judge Hippisley, or Mr. Pepperall. The bar annex to his restaurant, or rather the bar to which his restaurant was annexed, had been almost deserted of evenings since the vicious dance mania raged. The bowling-alley where the thirst-producing dust was wont to arise in clouds was mute. Over his head he heard the eternal Maugans and the myriad-hoofed shuffle of the unceasing dance. When he understood what Horace proposed he emitted the roar of an old uhlan, and the only commission he offered Horace was the commission of murder upon his person.

Horace retreated in disorder and reported to Prue. Prue called upon Jake herself, smilingly told him that all he needed to do was to crowd his tables together round a clear space, revolutionize his menu, get a cook who would cook, and spend about five hundred dollars on decorations.

"Five hundret thalers!" Jake howled. "I sell you de whole shop for five hundret thalers."

"I'll think it over," said Prue as she walked out.

She could think over all of it except the five hundred dollars. She had never thought that high. She told Horace, and he said that the way to finance anything was to borrow the money from the bank.

Prue called on Clarence Dolge, the bank president she knew best. He asked her a number of personal questions about her earnings. He was surprised at their amount and horrified that she had saved none of them. He advised her to start an account with him; but she reminded him that she had not come to put in, but to take out.

He said that he would cheerfully lend her the money if she could get a proper indorsement on her note. She knew that her father did not indorse her dancing, but perhaps he might feel differently about her note.

"I might get poppa to sign his name," she smiled.

Mr. Dolge exclaimed, "No, thank you!" without a moment's hesitation. He already had a sheaf of papa's autographs, all duly protested.

She went to another bank, whose president announced that he would have to put the very unusual proposal before the directors. Judge Hippisley was most of the directors. The president did not report exactly what the directors said, for Prue, after all, was a woman. But she did not get the five hundred.

Prue had set her heart on providing Carthage with a _café dansant_. She determined to save her money. Prue saving!

It was hard, too, for shoes gave out quickly and she could not wear the same frock all the time. And sometimes at night she was so tired she just could not walk home and she rode home in a hack. A number of young men offered to buggy-ride her home or to take her in their little automobiles. But they, too, seemed to confuse art and business with foolishness.

Sometimes she would ask Ort to ride home with her, but she wouldn't let him pay for the hack. Indeed he could not if he would. His devotion to Prue's school had cost him his job, and the judge would not give him a penny.

Sometimes in the hack Prue would permit Ort to keep his arm round her. Sometimes when he was very doleful she would have to ask him to put it round her. But it was all right, because they were going to get married when Orton learned how to earn some money. He was afraid he would have to leave Carthage. But how could he tear himself from Prue? She would not let him talk about it.

XIV

Now the fame of Prue and her prancing was not long pent up in Carthage. Visitors from other towns saw her work and carried her praises home. Sometimes farmers, driving into town, would hear Mr. Maugans's music through the open windows. Their daughters would climb the stairs and peer in and lose their taste for the old dances, and wistfully entreat Prue to learn them them newfangled steps.

In the towns smaller than Carthage the anxiety for the tango fermented. A class was formed in Oscawanna, and Prue was bribed to come over twice a week and help.

Clint Sprague, the manager of the Carthage Opera House, which was now chiefly devoted to moving pictures, with occasional interpolations of vaudeville, came home from Chicago with stories of the enormous moneys obtained by certain tango teams. He proposed to book Prue in a chain of small theaters round about, if she could get a dancing partner. She said she had one.

Sprague wrote glowing letters to neighboring theater-managers, but, being theater-managers, they were unable to know what their publics wanted. They declined to take any risks, but offered Sprague their houses at the regular rental, leaving him any profits that might result.

Clint glumly admitted that it wouldn't cost much to try it out in Oscawanna. He would guarantee the rental and pay for the show-cards and the dodgers; Prue would pay the fare and hotel bills of herself, her partner, and Mr. Maugans.

Prue hesitated. It was an expense and a risk. Prue cautious! She would take nobody for partner but Orton Hippisley. Perhaps he could borrow the money from his father. She told him about it, and he was wild with enthusiasm. He loved to dance with Prue. To invest money in enlarging her fame would be divine.

He saw the judge. Then he heard him.

He came back to Prue and told her in as delicate a translation as he could manage that it was all off. The judge had bellowed at him that not only would he not finance his outrageous escapade with that shameless Pepperall baggage, but if the boy dared to undertake it he would disown him.

"Now you'll have to go," said Prue, grimly.

"But I have no money, honey," he protested, miserably.

"I'll pay your expenses and give you half what I get," she said.

He refused flatly to share in the profits. His poverty consented to accept the railroad fare and food enough to dance on. And he would pay that back the first job he got.

Then Prue went to Clint Sprague and offered to pay the bills if he would give her three-fourths of the profits. He fumed; but she drove a good bargain. Prue driving bargains! At last he consented, growling.

When Prue announced the make-up of her troupe there was a cyclone in her own home. Papa was as loud as the judge.

"You goin' gallivantin' round the country with that Maugans idiot and that young Hippisley scoundrel? Well, I guess not! You've disgraced us enough in our own town, without spreading the poor but honorable name of Pepperall all over Oscawanna and Perkinsville and Athens and Thebes."

The worn-out, typewritten-out Ollie pleaded against Prue's lawlessness. It would be sure to cost her her place in the judge's office. It was bad enough now.

Even Serina, who had become a mere echo of Prue, herself went so far as to say, "Really, Prue, you know!"

Prue thought awhile and said: "I'll fix that all right. Don't you worry. There'll be no scandal. I'll marry the boy."

XV

And she did! Took ten dollars from the hiding-place where she banked her wealth, and took the boy to an Oscawanna preacher, and telegraphed home that he was hers and she his and both each other's.

The news spread like oil ablaze on water. Mrs. Hippisley had consented to take lessons of Prue, but she had never dreamed of losing her eldest son to her. She and Serina had quite a "run-in" on the telephone. William and the judge almost had a fight-out--and right on Main Street, too.

Each accused the other of fathering a child that had decoyed away and ruined the life of the other child. Both were so scorched with helpless wrath that each went home to his bed and threatened to bite any hand that was held out in comfort. Judge Hippisley had just strength enough to send word to poor Olive that she was fired.

XVI

The next news came the next day. Oscawanna had been famished for a sight of the world-sweeping dances. It turned out in multitudes to see the famous Carthage queen in the new steps. The opera-house there had not held such a crowd since William J. Bryan spoke there--the time he did not charge admission. According to the Oscawanna _Eagle_: "This enterprising city paid one thousand dollars to see Peerless Prue Pepperall dance with her partner Otto Hipkinson. What you got to say about that, ye scribes of Carthage?"

Like the corpse in Ben King's poem, Judge Hippisley sat up at the news and said: "What's that?" And when the figures were repeated he "dropped dead again."

The next day word was received that Perkinsville, jealous of Oscawanna, had shoveled twelve hundred dollars into the drug-store where tickets were sold. Two sick people had nearly died because they couldn't get their prescriptions filled for twelve hours, and the mayor of the town had had to go behind the counter and pick out his own stomach bitters.

The Athens theater had been sold out so quickly that the town hall was engaged for a special matinée. Athens paid about fifteen hundred dollars. The Athenians had never suspected that there was so much money in town. People who had not paid a bill for months managed to dig up cash for tickets.

Indignant Oscawanna wired for a return engagement, so that those who had been crowded out could see the epoch-making dances. Those who had seen them wanted to see them again. In the mornings Prue gave lessons to select classes at auction prices.

Wonderful as this was, unbelievable, indeed, to Carthage, it was not surprising. This blue and lonely dispeptic world has always been ready to enrich the lucky being that can tempt its palate with something it wants and didn't know it wanted. Other people were leaping from poverty to wealth all over the world for teaching the world to dance again. Prue caught the crest of the wave that overswept a neglected region.