CHAPTER II
SEATED at her work table in her sitting room, Mrs. Bilter was putting the last stitches in a white Swiss dress that Renestine was to wear that night to a ball. The puff sleeve close to the shoulder was the last of the dainty dress to be put on. Mrs. Bilter took eager pleasure in dressing her pretty sister in the daintiest of gowns. When she looked up she saw her husband coming through the gate for his noon dinner. She put down her sewing and moved to meet him on the porch.
"Well, dear, how are you getting on with the ball dress?" For
Mr. Bilter was as interested in his little sister-in-law as his wife was.
"Renestine will have to look her prettiest to-night. There are some
visiting young men in the town and they will be at the ball."
They went in together and were received by old Aunt Mary, a colored family servant who was much respected and held in affection by the members.
"Dinnah jest put on de table, Missus."
"Has Miss Renestine come home?"
"No'm. I's hasn't seen her; prehaps she's kept in fer not knowin' her lessons."
Just then Renestine came in, her cheeks rosy and her large black eyes luminous with the exercise of walking home from school. She entered the dining-room laughing and sat down next to her brother-in-law.
"How were the lessons today, Renestine?" he asked, patting her hand that lay in his. "Arithmetic right?"
"No trouble at all. Oh, I am so glad that you both had the idea to send me to school, I love it. I love to be puzzled over a question and find it out for myself. I love to feel myself gaining knowledge and understanding many things that used to be dark and incomprehensible to me and that seem plain now. I rejoice that I am able to think and speak English," and Renestine turned her head toward her sister and her eyes were moist. "You are very good to me, Aldine, and besides you are spoiling me with all the pretty dresses you make for me."
"Oh, do come in right after dinner and look at your dress for to-night. It is just lovely with the little rosebuds around the shoulders," said Mrs. Bilter.
It did not take long before the three were admiring the fluffy white dress and predicting its success at the ball.
Renestine hurried home after school and sat down by the side of her sister to help sew rosebuds on the flounces of the wide skirt. When the dress was finished Renestine took it to her room and pinned it up on the curtains of her bed to look at it and get the effect of it. Then she got out her little white satin slippers and began the ceremony of the toilette for the ball.
Carriages were coming and going before the brilliantly lighted Colonial house owned by the Good Fellowship Club. The colored drivers sat proud and erect on their boxes and held in their restive horses while their masters and mistresses alighted. Young dandies in ruffled shirts and flowered velvet waistcoats came on foot and sprang eagerly up the steps and vanished through the double doors swung back by colored attendants. Strains of music reached the street and ceased when the doors opened and shut and the sound of many voices in conversation and happy laughter burst upon the ear of the passer-by. Inside, all was gaiety and animation. Festoons of greens hung from the chandelier of kerosene lights and garlands and wreaths decorated the walls of the wide hall and rooms where there was dancing. In the ballroom five colored musicians were the orchestra and the leader "called out" the figures of the lancers and quadrilles. "Face your pardners," he called out as the square dance was begun. Several sets of four couples were formed ready for the first strains of the lancers music and the prompter. "Forward all," and all the couples advanced to the center. "Swing your pardners," "balance corners," the lady and gentleman faced to the right and took steps to the music. "Swing," and they swung around.
The next figure was the "Grand right and left," called out by the prompter and the couples circled around and after a large ring was formed by taking hands and going first to the right and then to the left, amid laughter the dance broke up.
Standing near the window on the porch were two young men. They were smoking cigars and commenting on the guests and the surroundings generally.
"There's a little Queen Esther with her black hair braided and folded over her shell pink ears. Look at her graceful walk. Do you see the one I mean?".asked the taller of the two men.
"Do you mean the one with the rosebuds on her gown?"
"Yes, the very one. She has the most beautiful black eyes I have ever seen."
"Yes, she is a beautiful girl," assented his companion.
"Where have I seen her before? I recognize those eyes."
"You are not captured, are you, Jaffray?"
"Well, I don't know." And they both laughed. "Let us go inside."
They threw away their cigars and went in.
"Miss Jewel, Mr. Starr would like to be presented to you, may I bring him to you?" Renestine looked up and found a friend speaking to her, but before she could answer the tall stranger was at her friend's elbow.
"This is a great pleasure for me," said the newly introduced guest. "But, Miss Jewel, it has been an impression of mine since I first saw you this evening that we have met before. Can you help me settle upon the place, time and occasion?"
"Why, no," laughed Renestine, showing two rows of small, white teeth that enhanced her charm.
"I am sure if we try hard enough we shall soon discover," Jaffray said. "May I sit down?" Renestine drew sideways to allow him to draw up a chair, her hoop skirt spreading her tarlatan flounces some space around her.
"Why, yes, indeed, now that I look at you, the woods, gray moss, three frightened young ladies; it was in the dusk of evening as I was riding from McKinney, all of that picture returns," he put his forefinger to his lips, and looked down at the floor in deep reflection.
For a moment Renestine was silent, then turned rosy red. "Oh, Mr. Starr, was it you who brought us out of the Wilderness and restored us to our families? You appeared at the most fortunate moment, we were really lost," and she laughed heartily. "You are a stranger here, Mr. Starr?"
"Not altogether. I have visited here before on business. Where I live it is lonesome for me and I take my vacations with much the spirit of a school boy. Shall we dance?"
The "Kiss Waltz" was a great favorite and the opening bars were beginning, "Hun" Williams, leader of the orchestra, putting a good swing into it. Renestine and Jaffrey glided with the rhythm of the music and danced until the last strains closed the tuneful composition. Throwing a lace scarf about her shoulders, Jaffray led Renestine to the balcony. The moon was bright as day and the early May dew brought out the fragrance of the jessamine and clematis climbing over the balustrade.
They stood for a time without speaking, feeling the spell of the Southern spring time.
"Is not this solemn beauty? Somehow it hurts, it is so beautiful," said Renestine quietly, her large eyes dreamy and full of softness.
"Ah, you have a poet's soul, Miss Jewel. Will you tell me something of your life? You were not born here?"
They were walking up and down the broad verandah and Renestine was telling him of the little mother so far away, parted from, perhaps never to be seen again. She was saying, "At last when the time came to say good-bye, I clung to my mother's form and in that moment could see my soul, bared, bruised, wounded and somehow the little girl passed with that parting and although I was but a few months younger than I am to-night, I am here just one year, I feel much changed and older." Her lids closed and Jaffray did not interrupt. "Mr. Starr, do you know of any experience more cruel than this parting of parents in Europe with their children to come to America? I think of it now so often. I think there cannot be in all life . . . ."
Jaffray saw the tears in those wonderful eyes. "No, Miss Jewel, no. I know of nothing more humanly cruel! I, too, parted from my beloved mother and twin sister when a mere lad to cross the ocean to seek my fortune in America. A lad barely fifteen years of age, I had no idea of what I was going out to meet in the world when I took my small belongings and journeyed toward these shores. There were no friends, no relatives where I was going; all those were being left behind; but the spirit of adventure possessed me and I wanted more freedom to work out my destiny in and the parting had to be for me and I cannot tell you how I have suffered from homesickness for the beloved Mother and good sister, for the little home in the Rhine village where the terraces of grapes lay just back of our house; that never is forgotten, no matter how long one lives. We have a common bond of sympathy, may I hope it means a tie of friendship?"
She gave him her hand and shortly afterwards he led her back into the ballroom; but the music could not tempt them to dance again and, after seeing Renestine with friends, he said good-night and left.
It was near daylight when Jaffray smoked his last cigar and finally put out the light in his little room in the hotel and went to bed.
Jaffray paid frequent visits to Houston from McKinney, after he met Miss Jewel. Although Renestine was busy with her school work, her sister permitted her, like all the young girls, to accept the attentions of young men who wished to call or who invited her to social affairs.
Jaffray was some years older than Renestine and was aware that she was but a school girl, untutored in the ways of the world, even less than most girls of her age. But Renestine's modesty, her innocence, her beauty, appealed to him as no other woman's charms had done and thoughts of her took possession him. His stuffy little office in McKinney, in the long, narrow store where general merchandise was rather irregularly piled around in high wooden boxes, in barrels, and on shallow shelves, became a prison house and the weeks endless terms of sentence. It happened that be could not absent himself from duty oftener than once every month and then only from Friday to Sunday night. These days of freedom were now prized tenfold more dearly than if he had had his time free to do as he wished.
Heretofore it had been his dearest wish to employ his spare time with books, reading and studying to improve his mind and for the pleasure that books gave him. Now his thoughts refused to concentrate upon anything but Miss Jewel.
After some weeks of acquaintance there was an exchange of letters which grew into a long correspondence. Those were happy days for Jaffray! Eagerly he would look forward to the mail and from the receipt of each of Renestine's letters to the next he would be in a heaven all his own. He sent her songs and books of verse; he wrote long and throbbing letters, and Winter and Spring, Summer and Autumn were just one long summer day for him with the music of the birds overhead and the earth a garden of blossoms.