XIV
Mrs. Powers had a small triumph: the railbirds had given her a “rush.”
“Say,” they had nudged each other, “look who Rufe’s got.”
And while the hostess stood in effusive volubility beside her straight, dark dress, two of them, whispering together, beckoned Madden aside.
“Powers?” they asked, when he joined them. But he hushed them.
“Yes, that was him. But that’s not for talk, you know. Don’t tell them, see.” His glance swept the group along the rail. “Won’t do any good, you know.”
“Hell, no,” they assured him. Powers!
And so they danced with her, one or two at first, then having watched her firm, capable performance, all of them that danced at all were soon involved in a jolly competition, following her while she danced with another of their number, importuning her between dances: some of them even went so far as to seek out other partners whom they knew.
Madden after a time merely looked on, but his two friends were assiduous, tireless; seeing that she did not dance too long with the poor dancers, fetching her cups of insipid punch; kind and a little tactless.
Her popularity brought the expected harvest of feminine speculation. Her clothes were criticized, her “nerve” in coming to a dance in a street dress, in coming at all. Living in a house with two young men, one of them a stranger. No other woman there … except a servant. And there had been something funny about that girl, years ago. Mrs. Wardle spoke to her, however. But she speaks to everyone who can’t avoid her. And Cecily Saunders stopped between dances, holding her arm, chatting in her coarse, nervous, rushing speech, rolling her eyes about at all the inevitable men, talking all the time. … The negro cornetist unleashed his indefatigable pack anew and the veranda broke again into clasped couples.
Mrs. Powers, catching Madden’s eye, signaled him. “I must go,” she said. “If I have to drink another cup of that punch—”
They threaded their way among dancers, followed by her protesting train. But she was firm and they told her good night with regret and gratitude, shaking her hand.
“It was like old times,” one of them diffidently phrased it, and her slow, friendly, unsmiling glance took them all.
“Wasn’t it? Again soon, I hope. Goodbye, goodbye.” They watched her until her dark dress merged with shadow beyond the zone of light. The music swept on, the brass swooned away and the rhythm was carried by a hushed plaintive minor of voices until the brass recovered.
“Say, you could see right through her,” Gilligan remarked with interest as they came up. Madden opened the door and helped her in, needlessly.
“I’m tired, Joe. Let’s go.”
The negro driver’s head was round as a capped cannonball and he was not asleep. Madden stood aside, hearing the spitting engine merge into a meshed whine of gears, watching them roll smoothly down the drive.
Powers … a man jumping along a trench of demoralized troops caught in a pointless hysteria. Powers. A face briefly spitted on the flame of a rifle: a white moth beneath a reluctant and sorrowful dawn.