"I'd been in mourning a year. That was my coming out gown and I felt--"
Harriet was saying when Billy laughed and interrupted her.
"And you came out, Harriet dear," he assured her, as he poured her
champagne cup and his and signaled Wilks to serve the rest of us.
On the surface all of the joy that most of Goodloets was having was real
and brilliant and spontaneous, all the dancing and drinking and high
playing, but under the surface there were dark currents that ran in many
directions. Young Ted Montgomery and Billy played poker one Saturday
night until daylight out at the Club, and Bessie Thornton and Grace
Payne had "staid by" and were having bacon and eggs with them when the
sun rose. Judge Payne, Grace's father, has been a widower ten years and
Grace, with the four younger "pains," as Billy calls them, has run wild
away from him and her grandmother, old Madam Payne, who lives in a world
of crochet needles and silk thread with Mrs. Cockrell and Mrs. Sproul.
One night I went with Billy in his car to take Grace home and he had to
wait until I tiptoed to her room with my arm around her and put her to
bed, while Harriet was doing the same thing with Bessie Thornton. Those
girls are not much over twenty and they are only a little more
"liberated," as they call it, than the rest of their friends. Ted
Montgomery loves Grace, when he is himself and not at the card table,
but what chance have they to form a union of any solidity and
permanence? Billy's nephew, Clive Harvey, has always loved Bessie
Thornton, but he is teller in the Goodloets bank and almost never sees
her. He is one of the stewards in the Harpeth Jaguar's church, and the
suffering on his slim young face hurts me like a blow every time I meet
him. What's going to satisfy him, no matter what pace he should choose
to go or how many things he is driven by unhappiness to indulge himself
in?
And it was true that everything done up in the town had its effect down
in the Settlement. The lodge hall over the Last Chance was the only hall
available for the young people in the Settlement to dance, and the bar
of the East Chance, at which old Jacob Ensley officiated, was no better
stocked than the lockers at the Country Club. And all of us knew that
very frequently Billy and Nickols and the rest of our friends went down
to dance and drink with the girls from the mills and the shops. Billy
had told me once that Milly Burt, who stays at the cigar stand in the
Goodloe Hotel in Goodloets, dances so much like me and is so perfumed
with my especial sachet from France, Mother Spurlock having collected
the chiffon blouse from me for her to wear at the entertainment of the
Epworth League, that he came very near addressing her by my name in
giving her the invitation to the dance.