CHAPTER IX
A SINGEING OF WINGS
All the vitality of Millings—and whatever its deficiencies the town lacked nothing of the splendor and vigor of its youth—throbbed and stamped and shook the walls of the Town Hall that night. To understand that dance, it is necessary to remember that it took place on a February night with the thermometer at zero and with the ground five feet beneath the surface of the snow. There were men and women and children, too, who had come on skis and in toboggans for twenty miles from distant ranches to do honor to the wedding-anniversary of Greely and his wife.
A room near the ballroom was reserved for babies, and here, early in the evening, lay small bundles in helpless, more or less protesting, rows, their needs attended to between waltzes and polkas by father or mother according to the leisure of the parent and the nature of the need. One infant, whose home discipline was not up to the requirements of this event, refused to accommodate himself to loneliness and so spent the evening being dandled, first by father, then by mother, in a chair immediately beside the big drum. Whether the spot was chosen for the purpose of smothering his cries or enlivening his spirits nobody cared to inquire. Infants in the Millings and Hidden Creek communities, where certified milk and scientific feeding were unknown, were treated rather like family parasites to be attended to only when the irritation they caused became acute. They were not taken very seriously. That they grew up at all was largely due to their being turned out as soon as they could walk into an air that buoyed the entire nervous and circulatory systems almost above the need of any other stimulant.
The dance began when the first guests arrived, which on this occasion was at about six o'clock, and went on till the last guest left, at about ten the next morning. In the meantime the Greelys' hospitality provided every variety of refreshment.
When Sheila reached the Town Hall, crowded between Sylvester and joyous Babe in her turquoise blue on the front seat of the Ford, while the back seat was occupied by Girlie in scarlet and "Momma" in purple velveteen, the dance was well under way. The Hudsons came in upon the tumult of a quadrille. The directions, chanted above the din, were not very exactly heeded; there was as much confusion as there was mirth. Sheila, standing near Girlie's elbow, felt the exhilaration which youth does feel at the impact of explosive noise and motion, the stamping of feet, the shouting, the loud laughter, the music, the bounding, prancing bodies: savagery in a good humor, childhood again, but without the painful intensity of childhood. Sheila wondered just as any débutante in a city ballroom wonders, whether she would have partners, whether she would have "a good time." Color came into her face. She forgot everything except the immediate prospect of flattery and rhythmic motion.
Babe pounced upon a young man who was shouldering his way toward Girlie.
"Say, Jim, meet Miss Arundel! Gee! I've been wanting you two to get acquainted."
Sheila held out her hand to Mr. James Greely, who took it with a surprised and dazzled look.
"Pleased to meet you," he murmured, and the dimple deepened in his ruddy right cheek.
He turned his blushing face to Girlie. "Gee! You look great!" he said.
She was, in fact, very beautiful—a long, firm, round body, youthful and strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is shown by the cud-chewing cow. She is diverted from fear and soothed from self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted. The smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it. Girlie and Babe had it from the continual labor of their jaws. Every hope and longing and ambition in Girlie's heart centered upon this young man now complimenting her, but as he turned to her, she just stood there and looked up at him. Her jaws kept on moving slightly. There was in her eyes the minimum of human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation—a blank, defenseless expression of—"Here I am. Take me." As Jim Greely expressed the look: "Girlie makes everything easy. She don't give a fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do. She's kind of home folks at once."
"We can't get into the quadrille now," said Jim, "but you'll give me the next, won't you, Girlie?"
"Sure, Jim," said the unsmiling, rosy mouth.
Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet. He shot a sidelong glance at Sheila.
"Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after … Meet Mr. Gates," he added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow.
Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates's invitation for "the next."
The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a snakelike motion.
"Us fellows," it said, "have been aiming to give you a good time to-night."
Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing. Her smile dawned enchantingly. It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event.
"That's very good of—you fellows. I didn't know you knew that there was such a person as—as me in Millings."
"You bet you, we knew. Here goes the waltz. Do you want to Castle it? I worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I'm wise on dancing."
Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards. She must hold one arm straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she must dance on her very tip-toes. Like every girl whose life has taken her in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner's intentions almost before they were muscularly expressed. Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own.
Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin. Girlie had the haughty manner of dancing.
"She's not much of a looker, is she, Jim?" But the pain in her heart gave the speech an audible edge.
"She's not much of anything," said Jim, who had not looked like the young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain. "She's just a scrap."
But Girlie could not be deceived. Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master's silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face! Girlie told herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was odd, defying classification; she knew, in spite of the rigid ignorance of her ideals, that these things mysteriously spelled enchantment. Sheila was as much more beautiful than anything Millings had ever seen as her white gown was more exquisite than anything Millings had ever worn. It was a work of art, and Sheila was, also, in some strange sense, a work of art, something shaped and fashioned through generations, something tinted and polished and retouched by race, something mellowed and restrained, something bred. Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines. But she did know. She did not know why Sheila's subtle beauty was greater than her obvious own. But she did know. And so great and bewildering a fear did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, it confused her wits.
"She's going back East soon," she said sharply.
"Is she?" Jim's question was indifferent, but from that instant his attention wandered.
When he took the small, crushable silken partner into his arms for "the next after," a one-step, he was troubled by a sense of hurry, by that desire to make the most of his opportunity that torments the reader of a "best-seller" from the circulating library.
"Say, Miss Arundel," he began, looking down at the smooth, jewel-bright head, "you haven't given Millings a square deal."
Sheila looked at him quizzically.
"You see," went on Jim, "it's winter now."
"Yes, Mr. Greely. It is winter."
"And that's not our best season. When summer comes, it's awfully pretty and it's good fun. We have all sorts of larks—us fellows and the girls. You'd like a motor ride, wouldn't you?"
"Not especially, thank you," said Sheila, who really at times deserved the Western condemnation of "ornery." "I don't like motors. In fact, I hate motors."
Jim swallowed a nervous lump. This girl was not "home folks." She made him feel awkward and uncouth. He tried to remember that he was Mr. James Greely, of the Millings National Bank, and, remembering at the same time something that the girl from Cheyenne had said about his smile, he caught Sheila's eye deliberately and made use of his dimple.
"What do you like?" he asked. "If you tell me what you like, I—I'll see that you get it."
"You're very powerful, aren't you? You sound like a fairy godmother."
"You look like a fairy. That's just what you do look like."
"I like horses much better than motors," said Sheila. "I thought the West would be full of adorable little ponies. I thought you'd ride like wizards, bucking—you know."
"Well, I can ride. But, I guess you've been going to the movies or the
Wild West shows. This town must seem kind of dead after Noo York."
"I hate the movies," said Sheila sweetly.
"Say, it would be easy to get a pony for you as soon as the snow goes. I sold my horse when Dad bought me my Ford."
"Sold him? Sold your own special horse!"
"Well, yes, Miss Arundel. Does that make you think awfully bad of me?"
"Yes. It does. It makes me think awfully 'bad' of you. If I had a horse, I'd—I'd tie him to my bedpost at night and feed him on rose-leaves and tie ribbons in his mane."
Jim laughed, delighted at her childishness. It brought back something of his own assurance.
"I don't think Pap Hudson would quite stand for that, would he? Seems to me as if—"
But here his partner stopped short, turned against his arm, and her face shone with a sudden friendly sweetness of surprise. "There's Dickie!"
She left Jim, she slipped across the floor. Dickie limped toward her. His face was white.
"Dickie! I'm so glad you came. Somehow I didn't expect you to be here.
But you're lame! Then you can't dance. What a shame. After Mr. Greely and
I have finished this, could you sit one out with me?"
"Yes'm," whispered Dickie.
He was not as inexpressive as it might seem however. His face, a rather startling face here in this crowded, boisterous room, a face that seemed to have come in out of the night bringing with it a quality of eternal childhood, of quaint, half-forgotten dreams—his face was very expressive. So much so, that Sheila, embarrassed, went back almost abruptly to Jim. Her smile was left to bewilder Dickie. He began to describe it to himself. And this was the first time a woman had stirred that mysterious trouble in his brain.
"It's not like a smile at all," thought Dickie, the dancing crowd invisible to him; "it's like something—it's—what is it? It's as if the wind blew it into her face and blew it out again. It doesn't come from anywhere, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, at least not anywhere a fellow knows …" Here he was rudely joggled by a passing elbow and the pain of his ankle brought a sharp "Damn!" out of him. He found a niche to lean in, and he watched Sheila and Jim. He found himself not quite so overwhelmed as usual by admiration of his friend. His mood was even very faintly critical. But, as the dance came to an end, Dickie fell a prey to base anxiety. How would "Poppa" take it if he, Dickie, should be seen sitting out a dance with Miss Arundel? Dickie was profoundly afraid of his father. It was a fear that he had never been allowed the leisure to outgrow. Sylvester with torture of hand and foot and tongue had fostered it. And Dickie's childhood had lingered painfully upon him. He could not outgrow all sorts of feelings that other fellows seemed to shed with their short trousers. He was afraid of his father, physically and morally; his very nerves quivered under the look of the small brown eyes.
Nevertheless, as Sheila thanked Jim for her waltz, her elbow was touched by a cold finger.
"Here I am," said Dickie. He had a demure and startled look. "Let's sit it out in the room between the babies and the dancin'-room—two kinds of a b-a-w-l, ain't it? But I guess we can hear ourselves speak in there. There's a sort of a bench, kind of a hard one…"
Sheila followed and found herself presently in a half-dark place under a row of dangling coats. An iron stove near by glowed with red sides and a round red mouth. It gave a flush to Dickie's pale face. Sheila thought she had never seen such a wistful and untidy lad.
Yet, poor Dickie at the moment appeared to himself rather a dashing and heroic figure. He had certainly shown courage and had done his deed with jauntiness. Besides, he had on his only good suit of dark-blue serge, very thin serge. It was one that he had bought second-hand from Jim, and he was sure, therefore, of its perfection. He thought, too, that he had mastered, by the stern use of a wet brush, a cowlick which usually disgraced the crown of his head. He hadn't. It had long ago risen to its wispish height.
"Jim dances fine, don't he?" Dickie said. "I kind of wish I liked to dance. Seems like athletic stunts don't appeal to me some way."
"Would you call dancing an athletic stunt?" Sheila leaned back against a coat that smelled strongly of hay and tobacco and caught up her knees in her two hands so that the small white slippers pointed daintily, clear of the floor.
Dickie looked at them. It seemed to him suddenly that a giant's hand had laid itself upon his heart and turned it backwards as a pilot turns his wheel to change the course of a ship. The contrary movement made him catch his breath. He wanted to put the two white silken feet against his breast, to button them inside his coat, to keep them in his care.
"Ain't it, though?" he managed to say. "Ain't it an athletic stunt?"
"I've always heard it called an accomplishment."
"God!" said Dickie gently. "I'd 'a' never thought of that. I do like ski-ing, though. Have you tried it, Miss Arundel?"
"No. If I call you Dickie, you might call me Sheila, I think."
Dickie lifted his eyes from the feet. "Sheila," he said.
He was curiously eloquent. Again Sheila felt the confusion that had sent her abruptly back to Jim. She smoothed out the tulle on her knee.
"I think I'd love to ski. Is it awfully hard to learn?"
"No, ma'am. It's just dandy. Especially on a moonlight night, like night
before last. And if you'd 'a' had skis on you wouldn't 'a' broke through.
You go along so quiet and easy, pushing yourself a little with your pole.
There's a kind of a swing to it—"
He stood up and threw his light, thin body gracefully into the skier's pose. "See? You slide on one foot, then on the other. It's as easy as dreaming, and as still."
"It's like a gondola—" suggested Sheila.
Dickie put his head on one side and Sheila explained. She also sang a snatch of a Gondel-lied to show him the motion.
"Yes'm," said Dickie. "It's like that. It kind of has a—has a—"
"Rhythm?"
"I guess that's the word. So's riding. I like to do the things that have that."
"Well, then, you ought to like dancing."
"Yes'm. Maybe I would if it wasn't for havin' to pull a girl round about with me. It kind of takes my mind off the pleasure."
Sheila laughed. Then, "Did you get my note?" she asked.
"Yes'm." Her laughter had embarrassed him, and he had suddenly a hunted look.
"And are you going to be my friend?"
The sliding of feet on a floor none too smooth, the music, the wailing of a baby accompanied Dickie's silence. He was very silent and sat very still, his hands hanging between his knees, his head bent. He stared at Sheila's feet. His face, what she could see of it, was, even beyond the help of firelight, pale.
"Why, Dickie, I believe you're going to say No!"
"Some fellows would say Yes," Dickie answered. "But I sort of promised not to be your friend. Poppa said I'd kind of disgust you. And I figure that I would—"
Sheila hesitated.
"You mean because you—you—?"
"Yes'm."
"Can't you stop?"
He shook his head and gave her a tormented look.
"Oh, Dickie! Of course you can! At your age!"
"Seems like it means more to me than anything else."
"Dickie! Dickie!"
"Yes'm. It kind of takes the awful edge off things."
"What do you mean? I don't understand."
"Things are so sort of—sharp to me. I mean, I don't know if I can tell you. I feel like I had to put something between me and—and things. Oh, damn! I can't make you see—"
"No," said Sheila, distressed.
"It's always that-a-way," Dickie went on. "I mean, everything's kind of—too much. I used to run miles when I was a kid. And sometimes now when I can get out and walk or ski, the feeling goes. But other times—well, ma'am, whiskey sort of takes the edge off and lets something kind of slack down that gets sort of screwed up. Oh, I don't know …"
"Did you ever go to a doctor about it?"
Dickie looked up at her and smiled. It was the sweetest smile—so patient of this misunderstanding of hers. "No, ma'am."
"Then you don't care to be my friend enough to—to try—"
"I wouldn't be a good friend to you," said Dickie. And he spoke now almost sullenly. "Because I wouldn't want you to have any other friends. I hate it to see you with any other fellow."
"How absurd!"
"Maybe it is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. "Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be a dandy guardian to you—Sheila."
Again Sheila laughed. But the ringing of her silver coins was not quite true. There was a false note. She shut her eyes involuntarily. She was remembering that instant an hour or two before when Sylvester's look had held hers to his will. The thought of what she had promised crushed down upon her consciousness with the smothering, sudden weight of its reality. She could not tell Dickie. She could not—though this she did not admit—bear that he should know.
"Very well," she said, in a hard and weary voice. "Be my guardian. That ought to sober any one. I think I shall need as many guardians as possible. And—here comes your father. I have this dance with him."
Dickie got hurriedly to his feet. "Oh, gosh!" said he. He was obviously and vividly a victim of panic. Sheila's small and very expressive face showed a little gleam of amused contempt. "My guardian!" she seemed to mock. To shorten the embarrassment of the moment she stepped quickly into the elder Hudson's arm. He took her hand and began to pump it up and down, keeping time to the music and counting audibly. "One, two, three." To Dickie he gave neither a word nor look.
Sheila lifted her chin so that she could smile at Dickie over Pap's shoulder. It was an indulgent and forgiving smile, but, meeting Dickie's look, it went out.
The boy's face was scarlet, his body rigid, his lips tight. The eyes with which he had overcome her smile were the hard eyes of a man. Sheila's contempt had fallen upon him like a flame. In a few dreadful minutes as he stood there it burnt up a part of his childishness.
Sheila went on, dancing like a mist in Hudson's arms. She knew that she had done something to Dickie. But she did not know what it was that she had done….