Dorothy was away; but he made out. On the night of Sue's dance, he delayed until almost midnight, in order to avoid his parents. He had worked late that afternoon, and had walked afterwards through the new portion of Hewintown that lay on both sides of the railroad track. The drabness, the noisome poverty, even in new shacks, depressed him immeasurably; his disgust at the utter inartistry had long been dulled.
As he paused at the bottom of the steps to the dancing floor, the shocking contrast unsteadied him. There, where the workers lived, all was bleak want; here, where the drones celebrated, all was plenteous riot.
The curving lines of dazzling gowns, where Lane Cullom led an elaborate figure—the shimmer of jewels, the gross powdered bosoms of the chaperones, the smug smartness of the men—what a pitiable travesty of pleasure! Festooned flowers, deferential service, barbaric, subtly lascivious music—this waste would have fed those workers for years! These were not brilliant nor creative people—merely average humanity, whom the spin of the unfair wheel had swung to the top, to fling broadcast the stolen blood-toll of underpaid, underfed, underwise grubbers.
An overdressed, overperfumed matron brushed down the steps, and gushingly pushed her simpering daughter at him. An indecent exposure, as of a woman whose charms were on sale—his mind leapt to a miner's widow, holding by the hand her anemic, sunken-eyed daughter, who had stopped him and begged for work that afternoon—any work, to keep life in her daughter's body. And this waste!
Shaking off the depressed mood, he submerged his moralizing nature, and lashed himself into a hearty share in the pleasure-making. The unhealthy intoxication caught and held him; he danced and philandered with an abandon foreign to his nature. He felt that his part in the revel dirtied him. Once started, he hurled himself almost hysterically into the soiling gayety.
He had told Tom Hewin he might be late the next morning, despite the rush caused by wartime orders; it was after four when he went to bed. A troubled dream bridged his passage from sleep to waking.
He dreamt that he was flying—a common beginning of his dreams. He had powerful, sullen red wings, that beat against the gusty waves of wind, and swirled him up and forward out of the misty valley shadows toward the lean black peak of a solitary hill. Here a figure cowered—for a moment he fancied it was Jane. It turned frightened eyes up to his—no, it was his mother. He crept into her embrace.
All at once he was aware of an approaching darkness flying between him and the twinkling valley lights at an unbelievable depth below. The darkness took form as a vast black flyer mounting toward him. He unwound his mother's arms from his neck. Dimly he knew that it was a time of war, and those twinkling lights were the eyes of vast munition factories, packed with explosives.
In a slanting drop he shot toward the black figure. He did not see the face; but he knew it for his father. Lower and lower he and the black figure circled, until the night activity below could almost be made out. He avoided two beating rushes of the black wings. He grappled with the enemy.
He felt his arms pressing outward the fierce talons that sought to grasp him, his hands straining against the pulsing throat. Back, back, back he pressed—then with a mighty effort released, and flung the other, wheeling like a thrown stick, straight into the factory of death below.