“There is a library in Birchfield not a hundred yards from the dance-hall, but it’s safe to say that ninety per cent. of the people who attended the dances didn’t know what the inside of the library looked like. It’s amazing how many different cliques, castes, or strata can flourish in a
small town without ever rubbing shoulders with each other; how many institutions can exist and never touch the lives of half the people! And the girl who was librarian had perhaps never spoken to the girls who worked in the factory. It wasn’t her fault. Dorothy Walton is neither a snob nor a high brow; but the social customs of Birchfield were so hedged about by habits of longstanding that there was no common meeting ground for those who happened to be once cast into separate grooves. It made life rather narrow for all of them, and Miss Walton was planning to leave Birchfield.
“Driving his car into town one evening Peter overtook her on the country road and gave her a ride. She told him that she had been helping to revise the library in the school on the corner of his farm, and he wasn’t interested. He says he remembered his own school days and pitied the poor little beggars who had to depend on any school library for their reading. In fact he had seen Miss Walton many times before and hadn’t been at all interested in what she was doing. He supposed a librarian was a person who kept the books straight on the shelves. And she wasn’t at all interested in him. She didn’t know about his books at home, or his violin or the power-line. She only knew that he was a young man of good family, who was becoming notoriously popular
at the dance-hall. That was where he went when he left her.
“And all the time Peter’s mother talked of ‘When Peter gets married.’ And Peter went on dancing with the commonest kind of a dance-hall girl. Of course his mother wouldn’t have needed to worry over the possibility of his bringing home a bride of this type. If he had been ten years younger she might have been dangerous. The danger for Peter now was that he might develop into the gay old dog searching around for amusement anywhere, compromising with all the standards that had made him a man any woman might like. The Birchfield dances had not fascinated him—he had gone to them because there was nothing else to do. He was a student and a dreamer; he was also human. There had been no one to share his dreams, but he had found what seemed to be an outlet for his humanness.
“Two weeks ago an unprecedented thing happened in Birchfield—not in the village, but among the farms in the Summers’ neighborhood. Some woman conceived the startling idea that the people were not getting together enough—not just for the future of the power-line, but for the good of their souls. They were also missing a great deal by not being acquainted with the people in neighboring communities. The village hadn’t proved a desirable centre; so they would create a centre of their own in their own neighborhood,
and make it of such a character that the best people of the village would come to them. They invited the people from neighboring communities all over the township; they asked Peter to come and state the case for the power-line; and they had Miss Walton there to talk about libraries. I was at the meeting myself and when the girl got up to speak I was heartily sorry for her. It was plain that she was frightened; she was not used to talking to crowds of people older than the children who came to her story hour at the library. It seems Peter noticed this too, and set himself to help her. I suppose he began with the idea that if giving her his undivided attention would be of any use he would see her through. She saw him and it did help. The next minute she had forgotten him—she was lost in her story; she loved books with a human affection and she was carried away with them, as any lover loses himself in the thing he loves. And there sat poor old Peter, staring. I suppose he had never dreamed that anyone else, at least any girl, ever thought of things that way. When everyone else applauded, he still sat, staring. And he had lived five miles from this girl all his life, and had known her—as a librarian.
“The rest of the night’s programme was a bigger surprise to Birchfield. The furniture was pushed to the walls and an old character who cuts wood for the farmers by day and fiddles for
dances at night was tuning his violin—and Peter had the shock of his young life when he saw his own stately father and his rather portly, dignified mother lead out a set at the lancers. It was largely an old-people’s dance, and they laughed a lot, and panted a lot over it; but there was no doubt they enjoyed it. Afterwards they went off in little groups by themselves, and looked on pityingly at their young folks’ degeneracy into fox-trotting.
“There were a lot of young people from the country around who hadn’t learned to dance—the town dance hall was the only available dancing school and naturally they weren’t encouraged to go there. When the farming community started a dance of its own it was inevitable that there should be a lot of boys and girls standing around the walls, watching. So the chairwoman of the evening cut into things, pushed the dancers off to one half of the floor, and had a row of benches strung across to keep them there, then made the announcement that Miss Walton would give the others a lesson on the fox-trot. I looked about for Peter just then, and found him standing against the wall, still staring. If the girl had been embarrassed on the platform she was perfectly at home here. It seems she teaches dancing to a kindergarten class at the library on Saturday afternoons. She strung her class out in a circle and spent some time drilling them