The next day Wilbur Cowan sought Sharon Whipple with the news that he
meant to do a bit of plain fighting overseas. He found the old man in
the stable, in troubled controversy with a rebellious car. He sat
stonily at the wheel and at intervals pressed a determined heel upon a
self-starter that would whir but an impotent protest. He glared up at
Wilbur as the latter came to rest beside the car.
"Well, what now?" He spoke impatiently.
"I'm going to enlist; I thought I would tell you."
Sharon pointed the heavy brows at him with a thumb and uttered a
disparaging "Humph!" Then he appeared to forget the announcement, and
pressed again on the self-starter, listening above its shrill song for
the deeper rumble of the engine. This did not ensue, and he shifted his
heel, turning a plaintive eye upon the young man.
"She don't seem to excite," he said. "I've tried and tried, and I can't
excite her."
It was an old, old story to Wilbur Cowan.
"Press her again," he directed. Sharon pressed and the other raptly
listened. "Ignition," he said.
He lifted the hood on one side and with a pair of pliers manipulated
what Sharon was never to know as anything but her gizzard, though the
surgeon, as he delicately wrought, murmured something about platinum
points.
"Try her!" Sharon tried her.
"Now she excites!" he exploded, gleefully, as the hum of the motor took
up the shrill whir of the self-starter. He stopped the thing and bent a
reproachful gaze upon Wilbur.
"Every one else leaving me--even that Elihu Titus. I never thought you
would, after the way we've stood together in this town. I had a right to
expect something better from you. I'd like to know how I'm goin' to get
along without you. You show a lot of gratitude, I must say."
"Well, I thought--"
"Oh, I knew you'd go--I expected that!"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"You wouldn't been any good if you hadn't. Even that Elihu Titus went."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. He had been waiting to ask Sharon's opinion
about the only troubling element in his decision. This seemed the
moment. "You don't suppose--you don't think perhaps the war will be
stopped or anything, just as I get over there?"
Sharon laboured with a choice bit of sarcasm.
"No, I guess it'll take more'n you to stop it, even with that Elihu
Titus going along. Of course, some spy may get the news to 'em that
you've started, and they may say, 'Why keep up the struggle if this
Cowan boy's goin' in against us?' But my guess is they'll brazen it out
for a month or so longer. Of course they'll be scared stiff."
Wilbur grinned at him, then spoke gravely.
"You know what I mean--Merle. He says the plain people will never allow
this war to go on, because they've been tricked into it by Wall Street
or something. I read it in his magazine. They're working against the war
night and day, he says. Well, all I mean, I'd hate to go over there and
be seasick and everything and then find they had stopped it."
Intently, grimly, Sharon climbed from his car. His short, fat leg went
back and he accurately kicked an empty sprinkling can across the floor.
It was a satisfying object to kick; it made a good noise and came to a
clattering rest on its dented side. It was so satisfying that with
another kick he sent the can bounding through an open door.
"Gave it the second barrel, didn't you?" said Wilbur. Sharon grinned
now.
"Just a letter to your brother," he explained. Then he became profanely
impassioned. "Fudge! Fudge and double fudge! Scissors and white aprons!
Prunes and apricots! No! That war won't be stopped by any magazine! Go
on--fight your fool head off! Don't let any magazine keep you back!"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"They can't stop the war, because there are too many boys like you all
over this land. Trick or no trick, that's what they're up against.
You'll all fight--while they're writing their magazines. Your reactions
are different. That's a word I got from the dirty thing--and from that
brother of yours. He gets a lot of use out of that word--always talking
about his reactions. Just yesterday I said to him: 'Take care of your
actions and your reactions will take care of themselves.' He don't
cotton to me. I guess I never buttered him up with praise any too much.
His languageousness gets on me. He's got Gideon and Harvey D. on a hot
griddle, too, though they ain't lettin' on. Here the Whipples have
always gone to war for their country--Revolutionary War and 1812,
Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American--Harvey D. was in that. Didn't
do much fighting, but he was belligerent enough. And now this son of his
sets back and talks about his reactions! What I say--he's a Whipple in
name only."
"He's educated," protested Wilbur, quick to defend this brother, even
should he cheat him out of the good plain fighting he meant to do.
"Educated!" Sharon imitated a porpoise without knowing it. "Educated out
of books! All any of that rabble rout of his knows is what they read
secondhand. They don't know people. Don't know capitalists. Don't even
know these wage slaves they write about. That's why they can't stop the
war. They may be educated, but you're enlightened. They know more books,
but you know more life in a minute than they'll ever know--you got a
better idea of the what-for in this world. Let 'em write! You fight! If
it rests on that hairy bunch to stop the war you'll get a bellyful of
fighting. They're just a noisy fringe of buzzers round the real folks of
this country."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "I thought I'd ask."
"Well, now you know. Shove off!"
"Yes, sir." Sharon's tone changed to petulance.
"That's right, and leave me here to farm twenty-five hundred acres all
by myself, just when I was going to put in tractors. That's the kind you
are--just a fool country-town boy, with a head full of grand notions.
Well, somebody's got to raise food for the world. She's goin' short
pretty soon or I miss my guess. Somebody's got to raise bread and meat.
All right, leave me here to do the dirty work while you flourish round
over there seein' the world and havin' a good time. I'm sick of the
sight of you and your airs. Get out!"
"Yes, sir."
"When you leaving?"
"To-morrow night--six-fifty-eight."
"Sooner the better!"
"Yes, sir."
Sharon turned back to the car, grumbling incoherent phrases. He affected
to busy himself with the mechanism that had just been readjusted,
looking at it wisely, thumbing a valve, though with a care to leave
things precisely as they were.
* * * * *
That afternoon as Sharon made an absorbed progress along River Street he
jostled Winona Penniman, who with even a surpassing absorption had been
staring into the window of one of those smart shops marking Newbern's
later growth. Whereas boots and shoes had been purchased from an
establishment advertising simple Boots and Shoes, they were now sought
by people of the right sort from this new shop which was labelled the
Élite Bootery.
Winona had halted with assumed carelessness before its attractively
dressed window displaying a colourful array of satin dancing slippers
with high heels and bejewelled toes. Winona's assumption of carelessness
had been meant to deceive passers-by into believing that she looked upon
these gauds with a censorious eye, and not as one meaning flagrantly to
purchase of them. Her actual dire intention was nothing to flaunt in the
public gaze. Nor did she mean to voice her wishes before a shopful of
people who might consider them ambiguous.
Four times she had passed the door of the shop, waiting for a dull
moment in its traffic. Now but two women were left, and they seemed to
be waiting only for change. Her resolution did not falter; she was
merely practising a trained discretion. She was going to buy a pair of
satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as
lost. Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways. As she
had confided to her journal, the placid serenity of her life had become
a sea of mad unrest. Old moorings had been wrenched loose; she floated
with strange tides. And Wilbur Cowan, who was going to war, had invited
her to be present that evening at the opening of Newbern's new and
gorgeous restaurant, where the diners, between courses and until late
after dinner, would dance to the strains of exotic and jerky music,
precisely as they did in the awful city.
Winona had not even debated a refusal. The boy should be gratified. Nor
did she try to convince herself that her motive was wholly altruistic.
She had suddenly wished to mingle in what she was persuaded would be a
scene of mad revelry. She had definitely abandoned the untrodden ways.
She thought that reading about war might have unsettled her ideals.
Anyway, they were unsettled. She was going to this place of the gay
night life--and she was going right!
It was while she still waited, perturbed but outwardly cool, that the
absorbed Sharon Whipple brushed her shoulder. She wondered if her secret
purpose had been divined. But Sharon apparently was engrossed by other
matters than the descent into frivolity of one who had long been
austere.
"Well," he said, beaming on her, "our boy is going over."
Winona was relieved.
"Yes, he's off, but he'll come back safe."
"Oh, I know that! Nothing could hurt him, but I'll miss the skeesicks."
He ruminated, then said pridefully: "That boy is what my son would have
been if I'd had one. You can't tell me any son of my get and raising
would have talked about his reactions when this time come!"
Winona winced ever so slightly at this way of putting it, but smiled
valiantly.
"Publishing magazines full of slander about George Washington, and this
new kind of stubby-ended poetry!"
"It is very different from Tennyson," said Winona.
"The other one's a man," went on Sharon. "You remember when you was
worried because he wouldn't settle down to anything? Well, you watch him
from now on! He hasn't got the book knowledge, but he's got a fine
outdoors education, and that's the kind we need most. Don't you see that
fine look in his eye--afraid of nothing, knowing how to do most
anything? His is the kind makes us a great country--outdoor boys from
the little towns and farms. They're the real folks. I'm awful proud of
him, though I ain't wanting that to get out on me. I been watching him
since he was in short pants. He's dependable--knows how. Say, I'm glad
he took to the outdoors and didn't want to dress up every day and be a
clerk in a store or a bank or some place like that. Wasn't it good?"
"Wasn't it?" said Winona, bravely.
"We need this kind in war, and we'll need it even more when the war is
over--when he comes back."
"When he comes back," echoed Winona. And then with an irrelevance she
could not control: "I'm going to a dance with him to-night." Her own
eyes were dancing strangely as she declared it.
"Good thing!" said Sharon. He looked her over shrewdly. "Seems to me
you're looking younger than you ought to," he said.
Winona pouted consciously for the first time in her hitherto honest
life.
"You're looking almighty girlish," added Sharon with almost a leer, and
Winona suffered a fearful apprehension that her ribs were menaced by his
alert thumb. She positively could not be nudged in public. She must draw
the line somewhere, even if she had led him on by pouting. She stepped
quickly to the door of the Elite Bootery.
"He'll come back all right," said Sharon. "Say, did I ever tell you how
he got me to shootin' a good round of golf? I tried it first with the
wooden bludgeons, and couldn't ever make the little round lawns under
seven or eight--parties snickering their fool heads off at me. So I says
I can never make the bludgeons hit right. I don't seem to do more'n
harass the ball into 'em, so he says try an iron all the way. So I tried
the iron utensils, and now I get on the lawn every time in good shape, I
can tell you. Parties soon begun to snicker sour all at once, I want you
to know. It ain't anything for me to make that course in ninety-eight
or"--Sharon's conscience called aloud--"or a hundred and ten or fifteen
or thereabouts, in round numbers."
"I'm so glad," said Winona.
"I give him all the credit. And"--he turned after starting on--"he'll
come back--he'll come back to us!"
Winona drew a fortifying breath and plunged into the Elite Bootery. She
was perhaps more tight-lipped than usual, but to the not-too-acute
observer this would have betokened mere businesslike determination
instead of the panic it was. She walked grimly to a long bench, seated
herself, and placed her right foot firmly upon a pedestal, full in the
gaze of a clerk who was far too young, she instantly perceived, for
negotiations of this delicacy.
"I wish to purchase," she began through slightly relaxed lips, "a pair
of satin dancing slippers like those in your window--high-heeled, one
strap, and possibly with those jewelled buckles." She here paused for
another breath, then continued tremendously: "Something in a shade to
go with--with these!"
With dainty brazenness the small hand at her knee obeyed an amazing
command from her disordered brain and raised the neat brown skirt of
Winona a full two inches, to reveal a slim ankle between which and an
ogling world there gleamed but the thinnest veneer of tan silk.
Winona waited breathless. She had tortured herself with the possible
consequences of this adventure. She had even conceived a clerk of
forbidding aspect who would now austerely reply: "Woman, how dare you
come in here and talk that way? You who have never worn anything but
black cotton stockings, or lisle at the worst, and whose most daring
footwear has been a neat Oxford tie with low heels, such as respectable
women wear? Full well you know that a love for the sort of finery you
now describe--and reveal--is why girls go wrong. And yet you come
shamelessly in here--no, it is too much! You forget yourself! Leave the
place at once!"
Sometimes this improvisation had concluded with a homily in kinder
words, in which she would be entreated to go forth and try to be a
better woman. And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe
clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in
the day's trade. Other women wore such things, and perforce must buy
them in a public manner. She had steeled her nerve to the ordeal, and
now she flushed with a fine new confidence, for the clerk merely said,
"Certainly, madam"--in the later shops of Newbern they briefly called
you madam--and with a kind of weary, professional politeness fell to the
work of equipping her. A joyous relief succeeded her panic. She not only
declared a moment later that her instep was far too high, but fitted at
last in a slipper of suitable shade she raised her skirt again as she
posed before a mirror that reached the floor. Winona was coming on. Had
come!
* * * * *
Late that afternoon, while a last bit of chiffon was being tacked to a
dancing frock which her mother had been told to make as fancy as she
pleased, Winona hastily scribbled in her journal: "Am I of a gay
disposition? Too gay, too volatile? No matter! It is an agreeable defect
where one retains discretion sufficient for its regulation. This very
night I am one of a party avowedly formed for pleasure, something my
reflective mind would once have viewed with disapprobation. But again no
matter. Perhaps I have been too analytical, too introspective. Perhaps
the war has confused my sense of spiritual values. War is such a
mistake!"
It was a flushed and sparkling Winona who later fluttered down the dull
old stairs of the respectable Penniman home at the call of the waiting
Wilbur Cowan. Her dark hair was still plainly, though rather
effectively, drawn about her small head--she had definitely rebuffed the
suggestion of her mother that it be marcelled--but her wisp of a frock
of bronze gossamer was revolutionary in the extreme. Mrs. Penniman had
at last been fancy in her dressmaking for her child, and now stood by to
exclaim at her handiwork. Winona, with surprising _aplomb_, bore the
scrutiny of the family while she pulled long white gloves along her bare
arms. A feathered fan dangled from one of them.
"Now, I guess you believe me," said Mrs. Penniman. "Haven't I always
said what a few little touches would do for you?" Proudly she adjusted a
filmy flounce to a better line. "And such lovely, lovely slippers!"
The slippers were indeed to be observed by one and all. The short
dancing frock was in that year.
Wilbur Cowan was appreciative.
"Some kid!" he cried; "an eyeful!"
Winona pouted for the second time that day, instead of rebuking him for
these low phrases of the street. Only Judge Penniman caviled.
"Well, I'd like to know what we're coming to," he grumbled. "The idee of
a mere chit like her goin' out to a place that's no better than a
saloon, even if you do guzzle your drinks at a table--and in a dug-out
dress!"
Winona, instead of feeling rebuked, was gratified to be called a mere
chit. She pouted at the invalid.
"Poor father!" she loftily murmured, and stood while her mother threw
the evening cloak about her acceptable shoulders.
It was true that at the La Bohême alcoholic stimulant would be served to
those who desired it, but this was not compulsory, and the place was in
no sense a common saloon. Her father was old-fashioned, as he had shown
himself to be about the lawless new dance steps that Wilbur had been
teaching her. He had declared that if people performed such antics in
public without music they'd mighty soon find themselves in the lockup,
and Winona had not even shuddered. Now, as he continued to grumble at
this degeneracy, she gracefully tapped his arm with her fan. She had
read of this device being effectively employed by certain conquerors of
men, and coolly she tried it upon her father. She performed the trifle
gracefully, and it seemed of value audacious and yet nothing to be
misunderstood by a really clean-minded man. She tapped the judge again
as they left, with a minor variation of the technic. The judge little
knew that he but served as a dummy at target practice.
The car in which Wilbur conveyed his guest to the scene of revelry was
not of an elegance commensurate with Winona's. It was a mongrel of many
makes, small, battered, and of a complaining habit. He had acquired it
as a gift from one who considered that he bestowed trash, and had
transformed it into a thing of noisy life, knowing, as a mother knows of
her infant, what each of its squeaks and rattles implied. It was
distressing, in truth, to look upon, but it went. Indeed, the proud
owner had won a race with it from a too-outspoken critic who drove a
much superior car. It was Wilbur Cowan who first in Newbern discovered
that you could speed up a car by dropping a few moth balls into the
gasoline tank. He called his car the Can, but, unreasonably, was not too
cordial to others using the name.
The Can bore the pair to a fretful halt under the newest electric
lights on River Street. "The La Bohême" read the dazzling sign. And
Winona passed into her new life. She was feeling strangely young as she
relinquished her cloak to a uniformed maid. She stood amid exotic
splendour, and was no longer herself but some regal creature in the
Sunday supplement of a great city paper. She had always wanted to be a
girl, but had not known how--and now at thirty-five how easy it seemed!
She preceded Wilbur to a table for two, impressive with crystal and
damask, and was seated by an obsequious foreigner who brought to the act
a manner that had never before in Newbern distinguished this
service--when it had been performed at all.
Other tables about them were already filled with Newbern's elect,
thrilled as was Winona, concealing it as ably as she, with the town's
new distinction. Hardly had food been ordered when a hidden orchestra
blared and the oblong polished space of which their own table formed
part of the border was thronged with dancing couples. Winona glowingly
surrendered to the evil spell. Wilbur merely looked an invitation and
she was dancing as one who had always danced. She tapped him with her
fan as he led her back to the table where their first course had
arrived. She trifled daintily with strange food, composing a sentence
for her journal: "The whole scene was of a gayety hitherto unparalleled
in the annals of our little town."
There was more food, interspersed with more dancing. Later Winona, after
many sidewise perkings of her brown head, discovered Merle and Patricia
Whipple at a neighbouring table. She nodded and smiled effusively to
them. Patricia returned her greeting gayly; Merle removed a shining
cigarette holder of remarkable length and bowed, but did not smile. He
seemed to be aloof and gloomy.
"He's got a lot on his mind," said Wilbur, studying his brother
respectfully.
Merle's plenteous hair, like his cigarette holder, was longer than is
commonly worn by his sex, and marked by a certain not infelicitous
disorder. He had trouble with a luxuriant lock of it that persistently
fell across his pale brow. With a weary, world-worn gesture he absently
brushed this back into place from moment to moment. His thick eyeglasses
were suspended by a narrow ribbon of black satin. His collar was low and
his loosely tied cravat was flowing of line.
"Out of condition," said Wilbur, expertly. "Looks pasty."
"But very, very distinguished," supplemented Winona.
Patricia Whipple now came to their table with something like a dance
step, though the music was stilled. She had been away from Newbern for
two years.
"Europe and Washington," she hurriedly explained as Wilbur held a chair
for her, "and glad to get back--but I'm off again. Nurse! Begin the
course next week in New York--learning how to soothe the bed of pain. I
know I'm a rattlepate, but that's what I'm going to do. All of us mad
about the war."
Wilbur studied her as he had studied Merle. She was in better condition,
he thought. She came only to his shoulder as he stood to seat her, but
she was no longer bony. Her bones were neatly submerged. Her hair was
still rusty, the stain being deeper than he remembered, and the freckles
were but piquant memories. Here and there one shone faintly, like the
few faint stars showing widely apart through cloud crevices on a murky
night. Her nose, though no longer precisely trivial, would never be the
Whipple nose. Its lines were now irrevocably set in a design far less
noble. Her gown was shining, of an elusive shade that made Wilbur think
of ripe fruits--chiefly apricots, he decided. She was unquestionably
what she had confessed herself to be--a rattlepate. She rattled now,
with a little waiting, half-tremulous smile to mark her pauses, as if
she knew people would weigh and find her wanting, but hoped for
judgments tempered with mercy.
"Mad about the war? I should think so! Grandpa Gideon mad, and Harvey
D.--that dear thing's going to do something at Washington for a dollar a
year. You'd think it was the only honest money he'd ever earned if you
heard Merle talk about bankers sucking the life blood of the people.
Juliana taking charge of something and Mother Ella mad about
knitting--always tangled in yarn. She'll be found strangled in her own
work some day. And Uncle Sharon mad about the war, and fifty times
madder about Merle.
"D'you see Merle's picture in that New York paper yesterday?--all hair
and eyeglasses, and leaning one temple on the two first fingers of the
right hand--and guess what it said--'Young millionaire socialist who
denounces country's entrance into war!' Watch him--he's trying to look
like the picture now! Uncle Sharon read the 'millionaire socialist,' and
barked like a mad dog. He says: 'Yes, he'd be a millionaire socialist if
he was going to be any kind, and if he was going to be a burglar he'd
have to be one of these dress-suit burglars you always read about.'
"Of course he's awfully severe on Merle for not going to fight, but how
could he with his bad eyes? He couldn't see to shoot at people, poor
thing; and besides, he's too clever to be wasted like a common soldier.
He starts people to thinking--worth-while people. He says so himself.
Mixed up with all sorts of clever things with the most wonderful
names--garment workers and poet radicals and vorticists and new-arters
and everything like that, who are working to lift us up so nobody will
own anything and everybody can have what he wants. Of course I don't
understand everything they say, but it sounds good, so sympathetic,
don't you think?"
She had paused often with the little smile that implored pity for her
rattlepatedness. Now it prolonged itself as the orchestra became wildly
alive.
Winona had but half listened to Patricia's chatter. She had been staring
instead at the girl's hair--staring and wondering lawlessly. She had
seen advertisements. Might her own hair be like that--"like tarnished
gold," she put it? Of course you had to keep putting the stuff on at the
roots as it grew out. But would her colour blend with that shade?
Patricia's skin had the warm fairness of new milk, but Winona was
dusky. Perhaps a deeper tint of auburn----
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 clustered 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.
These had been exclusively of a sentimental character, for Frank had
never been the fighting dog his first owner had promised he would be. He
was an arch sentimentalist and had followed a career of determined
motherhood, bringing into the world litter after litter of puppies,
exhibiting all the strains then current in Newbern. He had surveyed each
new family with pride--families revealing tinges of setter, Airedale,
Newfoundland, pointer, collie--with the hopeful air of saying that a dog
never knew what he could do until he tried. Now he could only dream of
past conquests, and merely complained when his master roused him.
"I hope you'll be here when I get back--and I hope I'll be here, too,"
said his master, and went on, sauntering up to the station a bit later
as nonchalantly as ever Dave Cowan himself had gone there to begin a
long journey on the six-fifty-eight. Spike Brennon lounged against a
baggage truck. Spike's only token of departure was a small bundle
covered with that day's _Advance_. They waited in silence until the
dingy way train rattled in. Then Sharon Whipple appeared from the
freight room of the station. He affected to be impatient with the
railway company because of a delayed shipment which he took no trouble
to specify definitely, and he affected to be surprised at the sight of
Wilbur and Spike.
"Hello! I thought you two boys went on the noon train," he lied,
carelessly. "Well, long as you're here you might as well take these--in
case you get short." He pressed a bill into the hand of each. "Good-bye
and good luck! I had to come down about that shipment should have been
here last Monday--it beats time what these railroads do with stuff
nowadays. Five days between here and Buffalo!"
He continued to grumble as the train moved on, even as the two waved to
him from a platform.
"A hundred berries!" breathed Spike, examining his bill. "Say, he sheds
it easy, don't he?"
They watched him where he stood facing the train. He seemed to have quit
grumbling; his face was still.
"Well, kid, here we go! Now it's up to the guy what examines us. You'll
breeze through--not a nick in you. Me--well, they're fussy about teeth,
I'm told, and, of course, I had to have a swift poke in the mush that
dented my beak. They may try to put the smother on me."
"Cheer up! You'll make the grade," said Wilbur.
Through the night he sat cramped and wakeful in the seat of a crowded
day coach, while Spike beside him slept noisily, perhaps owing to the
dented beak. His head back, he looked out and up to a bow moon that
raced madly with the train, and to far, pale stars that were still. He
wondered if any one out there noted the big new adventure down here.