The new ballet was a success. Miss Holm read the notices, and two little, old woman’s tears fell softly down upon the printed page as she read.
Letters came now and then from her sisters, letters about pawn-tickets and dire need. The days such letters came Miss Holm would forget her knitting and sit with her hands pressed to her temples, the open letter lying before her. Finally, one day, she made the round of the homes of her pupils, and begged shyly, with painful blushes, for the advance of half her money. This she sent home to her family.
So the days passed. Miss Irene Holm went back and forth to her dancing lessons. More pupils came to her, a half-score young peasants formed an evening class that met three times a week in Peter Madsen’s big room on the edge of the woods. Miss Holm walked the half mile in the darkness, timid as a hare, pursued by all the old ghost stories of the ballet school. At one place she had to pass a pond deeply fringed with willows. She would stare up at the trees that stretched their great arms weirdly in the blackness, her heart hanging dead as a stone in her breast.
They danced three hours each evening. Miss Holm called out, commanded, skipped here and there, and danced with the gentlemen pupils until two deep red spots appeared on her withered cheeks. Then it was time to go home. A boy would open the gate for her, and hold up a lantern to start her on the way. She heard His “Good night” behind her and then the locking of the gate, as it rasped over the rough stone pavement. Along the first stretch of the path was a hedge of bushes that bent over at her and nodded their heads.
It was nearly spring when Miss Holm’s course of lessons came to an end. The company at Peter Madsen’s decided to finish off with a ball at the inn.
III
It was quite an affair, this ball, with a transparency, “Welcome,” over the door, and a cold supper at two crowns a plate, with the pastor’s daughter and the curate to grace the table.
Miss Holm wore a barège gown much betrimmed, and Roman bands around her head. Her fingers were full of keepsake rings from her ballet-school friends. Between the dances she sprinkled lavender water about the floor, and threatened the “ladies” with the bottle. Miss Holm never felt so young again on any such festive occasion. The ball began with a quadrille. The parents of the pupils and other older people stood around the walls, each looking after his own young ones with secret pride. The young dancers walked through the quadrille with faces set as masks, placing their feet as carefully as if they were walking on peas. Miss Holm was all encouraging smiles and nods as she murmured her French commands. The music was furnished by Mr. Broderson and his son, the latter maltreating the piano kindly lent for the occasion by the pastor.
Then the round dances began, and the tone grew more free and easy. The elder men discovered the punch bowl in the next room, and the gentlemen pupils danced in turn with Miss Holm. She danced with her head on one side, raising herself on her toes, and smiling with her faded grace of sixteen years. After a while the other couples stopped dancing to watch Miss Holm and her partner. The men came out of the other room, stood in the doorway, and murmured admiration as Miss Holm passed, raising her feet a little higher under her skirt, and rocking gracefully in the hips. The pastor’s daughter was so amused that she pinched the curate’s arm repeatedly. After the mazurka, the schoolteacher cried out, “Bravo!” and they all clapped hands. Miss Holm bowed the elegant ballet courtesy, laying two fingers on her heart.