LOCAL institution in which “the gang” was more or less interested was known as the “Darley Club.” It occupied the entire upper floor of a considerable building on the main street, and had been organized, primarily, by the older married men of the town to give the young men of the best families a better meeting-place than the bar-rooms and offices of the hotels. At first the older men looked in occasionally to see that the rather rigid rules of the institution were being kept. But men of middle-age and past, who have comfortable firesides, are not fond of the noisy gatherings of their original prototypes, and the Club was soon left to the management of the permanent president, Mr. Wade Tingle, editor of the Headlight.
Wade endeavored, to the best of his genial nature, to enforce all rules, collect all dues, and impose all fines, but he wasn't really the man for the place. He accepted what cash was handed to him, trying to remember the names of the payers and amounts as he wrote his editorials, political notes, and social gossip, ending up at the end of each month with no money at all to pay the rent or the wages of the negro factotum. However, there was always an outlet from this embarrassment, for Wade had only to draw a long face as he met some of the well-to-do stay-at-homes and say that “club expenses were somehow running short,” and without question the shortage was made up. Wade had tried to be officially stern, too, on occasion. Once when Keith Gordon had violated what Wade termed club discipline, not to say club etiquette, Wade threatened to be severe. But it happened to be a point upon which there was a division of opinion, and Keith also belonged to “the gang.” It had happened this way: Keith had a certain corner in the Club reading-room where he was wont to write his letters of an evening, and coming down after supper one night he discovered that the attendant had locked the door and gone off to supper. Keith was justly angry. He stood at the door for a few minutes, and then, being something of an athlete, he stepped back, made a run the width of the sidewalk, and broke the lock, left the door hanging on a single hinge, and went up and calmly wrote his letters. As has been intimated, Wade took a serious view of this violation of club dignity, his main contention being that Keith ought to have the lock repaired and the hinge replaced. However, Keith just as firmly stood on his rights, his contention being that a member of the Club in good standing could not be withheld from his rights by the mere carelessness of a negro or a twenty-five cent cast-iron lock. So it was that, in commemoration of the incident, the door remained without the lock and hinge for many a day.
It was in this building that the grand ball in honor of Helen Warren's home-coming was to be given. During the entire preceding day Bob Smith and Keith Gordon worked like happy slaves. The floor had been roughened by roller-skating, and a carpenter with plane and sand-paper was smoothing it, Bob giving it its finishing touch by whittling sperm candles over it and rubbing in the shavings with the soles of his shoes as he pirouetted about, his right arm curved around an imaginary waist. The billiard-tables were pushed back against the wall, the ladies' dressing-rooms thoroughly scoured and put in order, and the lamps cleaned and trimmed. Keith had brought down from his home some fine oil-paintings, and these were hung appropriately. But Keith's chef-d'ouvre of arrangement and decoration was a happy inspiration, and he was enjoining it on the initiated ones to keep it as a surprise for Helen. He had once heard her say that her favorite flower was the wild daisy, and as they were now in bloom, and grew in profusion in the fields around the town, Keith had ordered several wagon-loads of them gathered, and now the walls of the ballroom were fairly covered with them. Graceful festoons of the flowers hung from the ceiling, draped the doorways, and rose in beautiful mounds on the white-clothed refreshment-tables.
As a special favor he admitted Carson Dwight in at the carefully guarded door at dusk on the evening of the ball, first drawing down the blinds and lighting the candles and lamps that his chum might have the full benefit of the scene as it would strike Helen on her arrival.
“Isn't that simply superb?” he asked. “Do you reckon they gave her anything prettier while she was down there? I don't believe it, Carson. I think this is the dandiest room a girl ever tripped a toe in.”
“Yes, it's all right,” Dwight said, admiringly. “It is really great, and she will appreciate it keenly. She is that way.”
“I think so myself,” said Keith. “I've been nervous all day, though, old man. I've been watching every train.”
“Afraid the band wouldn't come?” asked Dwight.
“No, those coons can be depended on; they will be down in full force with the best figure-caller in the South. No, I was afraid, though, that Helen might have written to that Augusta chump, and that he would come up. That certainly would give the thing cold feet.”