XXXI
LAFOND'S FIRST CARD
Lafond, in the meantime, had left the dispensation of drinks almost entirely to Frosty. He darted here and there in the crowd, a light of unwonted excitement in his eye.
"That thar Mike's shore waked up," commented Old Mizzou. "Never see him so plumb animated. He shore looks nutty. Dance halls is mostly too rich fer his blood, I reckon."
But Tony Houston and Jack Snowie and a dozen others by now knew better than to attribute this excitement to dance halls. Lafond possessed in his pocket a copy of Knapp's dismissal, and he had told them of it.
He told them of it mysteriously, in half-limits, pointing out tendencies and solutions to what they already knew, leaving them to draw deductions, sowing anxieties that there might spring up a harvest of distrust.
Through the woof of gayety he rapidly ran a dull thread of angry suspicion. Men made merry, and forgot all the past and all the future. Other men talked low-voiced in corners, and tried, from the distraction of drink and gayety, to draw clear plan and reflection. And always Lafond took other men aside and whispered eager little half-confidences, and went on quickly to the next.
His spirit was upheld by a great excitement, such as it had never experienced before, not even in his early and adventurous days. He seemed to himself to be mounting higher and higher on the summit of a great wave of luck, as a swimmer is lifted by the sea. And yet, behind it all, again for the first time in his life, he felt a portent in the air. It was as though the wave were rearing itself, only to curl over and break upon the shore. He laid this to nervousness, and yet it affected him with a certain superstitious awe.
So occupied was he, that he quite missed the girl's sudden exit, and was drawn from his brown study only by the sudden hush that succeeded it. In the silence a drunken voice uplifted itself loudly.