All this raced through her mind at Mimi’s words. She smiled bravely.
“No—no. I don’t want to dance,” she lied cheerfully. “You two go ahead.”
She watched them leave trying hard to keep from herself the certainty that her best and dearest friend had created in an instant, with two or three meaningless words, an interest which she had hoped and dreamed she would arouse. It was hard—terribly hard. Consciously, she held Mimi blameless. But underneath it was a bitterness, a feeling almost of nausea, a pain that made her think of the Spartan youth smiling while his abdomen was being gnawed underneath his tunic or shirt or whatever they wore in those days. The figure gave her a bit of cold comfort. She toyed with the idea, turning it over and over in her mind as she went and sat silent with her mother. …
Mimi was wholly unaware of the emotions she and Carl had roused in Hilda. She knew of Hilda’s carefully shielded affection for him, but she had been so absorbed in her own reactions towards him she had neither noticed the expression on Hilda’s face during the brief episode nor had she caught the too elaborately casual way in which Hilda had urged her to dance with Carl. As she walked with him towards the pavilion all her old resentment against him surged through her. She detested his cool and aloof superiority, his calm assumption that she would gladly dance with him. Carl too was silent. His thoughts were of this girl who was Mimi, yet was not the Mimi he had only casually noticed before. Her flaming hair intrigued him, he had always loved that torch-like shade of gold and red. And she had a temper, too. That was fine—he liked folks to show some spirit.
They danced. Mimi loved to dance. She found herself forgetting her resentment, she had to keep reminding herself that she was angry. And Carl did dance well. No stepping awkwardly all over her feet as did most of the other boys. The big bass fiddle moaned. The violin chirped. The mandolin pertly strummed. Every few minutes the players joined in the song. From near at hand came the smells of meat being barbecued. With it mingled the fragrancy of pines and the shout of children. It was going to be hard to remain aloof.
The music stopped. Its spell broken, she found her resentment rising. But Carl only stood and grinned happily at her.
“That’s the best dance I ever had,” he announced.
“How many times and to how many different girls have you said that?” she countered.
“Many, many times and to countless girls! But I meant it each time I said it.”
At any rate he didn’t protest he had never said such a thing before.
“Shall we sit over there and talk? I’d like to,” he asked, simply.
They sat down and watched the crowd. Over near the pavilion sat a little cluster of middle-aged women, heads close together but not so close that they missed anything going on around them.
“The anvil chorus commences,” Carl commented, nodding his head at the group. “The old tabbies will now proceed to dissect every soul around here.”
“Oh, they mean no real harm. Why bother about them? That’s about all they care about,” Mimi easily remarked.
“Why? The hit dog yelps. They’ve begun again on me right where they left off when I went away to school nearly six years ago. I am discovering that I’m an extremely worthless fellow—I smoke cigarettes, I don’t see much use in going to church and listening to a lot of platitudes about religion mixed with bum philosophy and worse science—the direct opposite of most of the things I learned in school. I haven’t sense enough to listen to it and keep my mouth shut—I go around mouthing my own disagreement with a lot of ignorant preachers!”
“Why go to the trouble of expressing your own opinions? Why not ignore the things that annoy you by their falseness? It would be much easier—”
“Ignore them? Lord, I’ve tried a thousand times and just when I think I’ve tied my tongue, out pops an objection and I’m in hot water again. My dad’s disgusted with me—he says I’m a conceited, useless young fool and I’m more than halfway inclined to believe he’s right. He’s yanked me out of college ’cause I flunked math and physics again even though I did fairly well in languages and literature and one or two other things. He says I’ve got to go to work in the insurance business or he’s going to wash his hands of me.”
“What makes you so restless—makes you kick against the traces all the time?” Mimi found herself taking delight in siding with Mr. Hunter against Carl.
“I don’t know,” Carl answered, a faint note of bafflement, almost of despair, creeping into his voice. “All my life I’ve been just what you called me a kicker. I’ve tried to conform—but all the time I find myself saying: ‘Is that so?’ when some greybeard starts to lecture me. And most of the things that everybody accepts as axiomatic, as truths never to be questioned,
