She was recalled from this perilous musing by Rapp, Senior, who came pressing his handkerchief to a brow damp from the last dance. He bowed to Winona.
"May I have this pleasure?" he said. Winona rose like a woman of the world.
"We"re on the map at last," said Rapp, Senior, referring to Newbern"s newest big-town feature.
"I know I"m on the map at last," said Winona, coyly, and tapped the arm of Rapp, Senior, with her feathered trifle of a fan.
"Dance?" said Wilbur to Patricia.
"Thanks a heap! Merle won"t. He says how can he dance when thinking of free Russia? But did you see those stunning Russian dancers? It doesn"t keep them from dancing, does it? Poor old Merle is balmy--mice in his wainscoting."
They danced, and Patricia was still the rattlepate.
"You"re going over, Uncle Sharon told us. Merle says you"re a victim of mob reaction--what does that mean? No matter. Pretty soon he said you"d be only a private. Grandpa Gideon looked as if he had bitten into a lemon. He says, "I believe privates form a very important arm of the service"--just like that. He"s not so keen on Merle, but he won"t admit it. With him it"s once a Whipple always a Whipple! When he saw Merle"s picture, leaning the beautiful head on the two long fingers and the hair kind of scrambly, he just said, "Ah, you young scamp of a socialist!" as if he were saying, "Oh, fie on you!" Merle can talk the whole bunch down when he gets to shooting on all six--sounds good, but I"ve no doubt it"s just wise twaddle.
"What a stunning dancer you are! Ask me quick again so I won"t have to go back to free Russia. I"ll promise to nurse you when you get wounded over there. I"ll have learned to do everything by that time. Wouldn"t it be funny if you were brought in some day with a lot of wounds and I"d say, "Why, dear me, that"s someone I know! You must let me nurse him back to health," and of course they would. Anyway, the family"s keen about my going. They think I ought to do my bit, especially as Merle can"t, because of his eyes. Be sure you ask me again."
He asked her again and yet again. He liked dancing with her. Sometimes when she talked her eyes were like green flames. But she talked of nothing long and the flames would die and her little waiting smile come entreating consideration for her infirmities.
"Now you be sure to come straight to me directly you"re wounded," she again cautioned him as they parted.
He shook hands warmly with her. He liked the girl, but he hoped there would be other nurses at hand if this thing occurred; that is, if it proved to be anything serious.
"Anyway, I hope I"ll see you," he said. "I guess home faces will be scarce over there."
She looked him over approvingly.
"Be a good soldier," she said.
Again they shook hands. Then she fluttered off under the gloomy charge of Merle, who had remained austerely aloof from the night"s gayety.
Wilbur had had but a few words with him, for Patricia claimed his time.
"You seem a lot older than I do now," he said, and Merle, brushing back the errant lock, had replied: "Poor chap, you"re a victim of the mob reaction. Of course I"m older now. I"m face to face with age-long problems that you"ve never divined the existence of. It does age one."
"I suppose so," agreed Wilbur.
He felt shamed, apologetic for his course. Still he would have some plain fighting, Wall Street or no Wall Street.
He wrested a chattering Winona from Mrs. Henrietta Plunkett at the door of the ladies" cloakroom. Mrs. Plunkett was Newbern"s ablest exponent of the cause of woman, and she had been disquieted this night at observing signs of an unaccustomed frivolity in one of her hitherto stanchest disciples.
"I can"t think what has come over you!" she had complained to Winona.
"You seem like a different girl!"
"I am a different girl!" boasted Winona.
"You do look different--your gown is wonderfully becoming, and what lovely slippers!" Mrs. Plunkett inspected the aged debutante with kindly eyes. "But remember, my dear, we mustn"t let frivolities like this divert our attention from the cause. A bit more of the good fight and we shall have come into our own."
"All this wonderful mad evening I have forgotten the cause," confessed Winona.
"Mercy!" said Mrs. Plunkett. "Forgotten the cause? One hardly does that, does one, without a reason?"
"I have reasons enough," said Winona, thinking of the new dancing slippers and the frock.
"Surely, my dear, you who are so free and independent are not thinking of marriage?"
Winona had not been thinking of marriage. But now she did.
"Well"--she began--"of course, I----"
"Mercy! Not really! Why, Winona Penniman, would you barter your independence for a union that must be demeaning, at least politically, until our cause is won?"
"Well, of course----" Winona again faltered, tapping one minute toe of a dancing slipper on the floor.
"Do you actually wish," continued Henrietta Plunkett, rising to the foothills of her platform manner, "to become a parasite, a man"s bond slave, his creature? Do you wish to be his toy, his plaything?"
"I do!" said Winona low and fervently, as if she had spoken the words under far more solemn auspices.
"Mercy me! Winona Penniman!"
And Wilbur Cowan had then come to bear her off to her room, that echoed with strange broken music and light voices and the rhythmic scuffing of feet on a floor--and to the privacy of her journal.
"I seem," she wrote, "to have flung wisdom and prudence to the winds.
Though well I know the fading nature of all sublunary enjoyments, yet when I retire shortly it will be but to protract the fierce pleasure of this night by recollection. Full well I know that Morpheus will wave his ebon wand in vain."
Morpheus did just that. Long after Winona had protracted the fierce enjoyment of the night to a vanishing point she lay wakeful, revolving her now fixed determination to take the nursing course that Patricia Whipple would take, and go far overseas, where she could do a woman"s work; or, as she phrased it again and again, be a girl of some use in a vexed world.
In the morning she learned for the first time that Wilbur was to go to war in company with a common prize fighter. It chilled her for the moment, but she sought to make the best of it.
"I hope," she told Wilbur, "that war will make a better man of your friend."
"What do you mean--a better man?" he quickly wanted to know. "Let me tell you, Spike"s a pretty good man right now for his weight. You ought to see him in action once! Don"t let any one fool you about that boy!
What do you expect at a hundred and thirty-three--a heavyweight?"
After he had gone, late that afternoon, after she had said a solemn farewell to him in the little room of the little house in the side yard, Winona became reckless. She picked up and scanned with shrewd eyes the photograph of Spike that had been left: "To my friend Kid Cowan from his friend Eddie--Spike--Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside."
She studied without wincing the crouched figure of hostile eye, even though the costume was not such as she would have selected for a young man.
"After all, he"s only a boy," she murmured. She studied again the intent face. "And he looks as if he had an abundance of pepper."
She hoped she would be there to nurse them both if anything happened.
She had told Wilbur this, but he had not been encouraging. He seemed to believe that nothing would happen to either of them.
"Of course we"ll be shot at," he admitted, "but like as not they"ll miss us."
Winona sighed and replaced the photograph. Now they would be a couple of heads cl.u.s.tered with other heads at a car window; smiling, small-town boys going lightly out to their ordeal. She must hurry and be over!
Wilbur, with his wicker suitcase, paused last to say goodbye to Frank, the dog. Frank was now a very old dog, having reached a stage of yapping senility, where he found his sole comfort in following the sun about the house and dozing in it, sometimes noisily dreaming of past adventures.