Once to Every Man

“Denny,” she cried, “Denny, I’ve come to you! Strike a light! I’m here, Denny, and–oh, I’m afraid–afraid of the dark!”

Before he could rise, almost before his big-shouldered body whirled in the chair toward her, her swift rush carried her across to him. She knelt at his knees, her thin arms clutching him with desperate strength. Denny Bolton felt her body shudder violently as he leaned over, dumb with bewilderment, and put his hands on her bowed head.

“Thank God,” he heard her whispering, “thank God–thank God!”

But far more swiftly than his half numbed brain could follow she was on her feet the next instant, tense and straight and lancelike in the gloom.

“Damn ’em,” she hissed. “Damn ’em–damn ’em–damn ’em!”

His fingers felt for and found a match and struck it. Her face was working convulsively, twisted with hate, both small fists lifted toward the huge house that crowned the opposite hill. It made him remember that first day when he had looked up, with the rabbit struggling in his arms, and found her standing there in the thicket before him, only now the fury that blazed in her eyes was not for him. There was a rough red welt across her forehead only half hidden by the tumbled hair that cascaded to her waist, torn loose from its scant fastenings by the whipping brush. And as he stood with the flame of the flickering match scorching his fingers, Denny Bolton remembered all the rest–he remembered the light that still burned unanswered in the window across the valley. He bowed his head.

“I–I forgot,” he faltered at last. “I did not know it was so late. I must have been–pretty tired.”

Slowly the girl’s clenched hands came away from her throat while she stared up into his face, brown and lean and very hard and bitter. The ashen terror upon her own cheeks disappeared with a greater, growing comprehension of all that lay behind that dully colorless statement. For just a moment her fingers hovered over the opening at the neck of her too small blouse and felt the thick white card that lay hidden within, before she lifted both arms to him in impulsive compassion, trying to smile in spite of the wearily childish droop at the corners of her lips.

“I know, Denny,” she quavered. “I–I understand.” Her arms slipped up around his neck. “Hold me tight–oh, hold me tighter! For they forgot me, too, Denny; they forgot me, too!”

As his arms closed about her slim body she buried her bright head against the vividly checkered coat and sobbed silently–great noiseless gasps that shook her small shoulders terribly. Once, after a long time, when she held his face away to peer up at him through brimming eyes, she saw that all the numb bitterness was gone from it–that he had forgotten all else save her own hurt.

“Why, you mustn’t feel so badly for me,” she told him then, warmly tremulous of mouth. “I–I don’t mind now, very much. Only”–her voice broke unsteadily–“only I did want to go just once where all the others go; I wanted them to see me just once in a skirt that’s long enough for me–and–and to wear stockings without any patches, and silk, Denny, silk–next to my skin!”

CHAPTER IV

At her first swift coming when she had cried out to him there in the dark and run across to kneel at his knees, a dull, shamed flush had stained his lean cheeks with the realization that, in his own great bitterness he had failed even to wonder whether she had been forgotten, too.

Now as his big hand hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair, loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After the quivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as if to speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He was smiling a faint, gravely gentle smile that barely lifted the corners of his lips when she turned in his arms and lifted her face once more to him.

“We don’t mind very much,” she repeated in a half whisper. “Do we–either of us–now?”

Slowly he shook his head. With effortless ease he stooped and swung her up on one arm, seating her upon the bare table before the window. Another match flared between his fingers and the whole room sprang into brightness as he touched the point of flame to the wick of the lamp bracketed to the wall beside him.

She sat, leaning forward a little, both elbows resting upon her slim knees, both feet swinging pendulum-like high above the floor, watching with a small frown of curiosity growing upon her forehead, while he stooped without a word of explanation and dragged a bulky package from the table and placed it beside her. Then she sighed aloud, an audible sigh of sheer surprise after he had broken the string and drawn aside the paper wrapper.

Just as they had seemed in the picture they lay there under her amazed eyes–the pointed, satiny black slippers of the dancing girl, with their absurdly slender heels and brilliant buckles, and filmy stockings to match. And underneath lay two folded squares of shimmering stuff, dull black and burnished scarlet, scarce thicker than the silk of the stockings themselves.

The faint, vaguely self-conscious smile went from Denny Bolton’s lips while he stood and watched her bend and touch each article, one by one–the barest ghost of contact. Damp eyes glowing, lips curled half open, she lifted her head at last and gazed at him, as he stood with hands balanced on his hips before her.

A moment she sat immobile, her breath coming and going in soft, fluttering gasps, and looked into his sober, questioning face; then she turned again and picked up one web-like stocking and held it against her cheek, as hotly tinted now beneath its smooth whiteness as the shining scarlet cloth beside her.

He heard her murmur to herself little, broken, incoherent phrases that he could not catch.

“Denny,” he heard her whisper, “Denny–Denny!”

And then, with the tiny slippers huddled in her lap, her hands flashed out and caught his face and drew it down against the too-small white blouse, open at the throat.

“Man–man,” she said, and he felt her breast rise and fall, rise and fall, against his cheek. “Man, you didn’t understand! It–it wasn’t the clothes, Denny, but–but I’m all the gladder, I think, because you’re so much of a man that you couldn’t, not even if I tried a hundred years to explain.”

He drew the chair at the side of the table around in front of her and dropped into it. With a care akin to reverence he lifted one slipper and held it outstretched at arm’s length upon his broad palm.

“I–I hadn’t exactly forgotten, tonight,” he told her. “I’d watched for the light, and I meant to bring them–when I came.” His steady eyes dropped to her slim, swinging feet. “They’re the smallest they had in any shop at the county-seat,” he went on, and the slow smile came creeping back across his face. “I crossed over through the timber late last night, after we had broken camp, and I–I had to guess the size. Shall we–try them on?”

She reached out and snatched the small thing of satin and leather away from him with mock jealous impetuosity, a little reckless gurgle of utter delight breaking from her lips.

“Over these,” she demanded, lifting one foot and pointing at the thickly patched old stocking above the dingy, string-tied shoe. “You–you are trying to shame me, Denny–you want to make me confess they are too small!”

Then, almost in the same breath, all the facetious accusation left her face. Even the warm glow of wonder which had lighted her wet eyes gave way to a new seriousness.

“No one has ever told me,” she stated slowly, “but I know it is so, just the same. Somehow, because it was to be the first party I had ever attended–or–or had a chance to attend, I thought it must be all right, just once, for you to buy me these. There was no one else to buy them, Denny, and maybe I wanted to go so very much I made myself believe that it was all right. But there isn’t any party now–for us. And–and men don’t buy clothes for women, Denny–not until they’re married!”

Her face was tensely earnest while she waited for the big man before her to answer. And Young Denny turned his head, staring silently out of the opposite window down toward the village, dark now, in the valley below. He cleared his throat uncertainly.

“Do they?” She was leaning forward until her hair brushed his own. “Do they, Denny?” A rising inflection left the words hanging in midair.

“I don’t know just what the difference is,” he began finally, his voice very deliberate. “I’ve often tried to figure it out, and never been quite able to get it straight”–he nodded his head again toward the sleeping village–“but we–we’ve never been like the rest, anyhow. And–and anyway,” he reached out one hand and laid it upon her knees, “we’re to be married, too–when–when–”

With swift, caressing haste she lifted the slippers that lay cradled in her lap and set them back inside the open package. Lightly she swung herself down and stood before him, both hands balanced upon his shoulders. For just the fraction of a moment her eyes lifted over his head, flickering toward the stone demijohn that stood in the far, shadowy corner near the door. Her voice was trembling a little when she went on.

“Then let me come soon, Denny,” she begged. “Can’t it be soon? Oh, I’m going to keep them!” One hand searched behind her to fall lightly upon the package upon the table. “They’re–they’re so beautiful that I don’t believe I could ever give them back. But do we have to wait any longer–do we? I can take care of him, too.”

Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage across under the opposite hill.

“He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I–I want to come, Denny. I’m lonesome, and–and–” her eyes darkened and swam with fear as she stared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, “why can’t I come now, before some time–when it might be–too late?”

He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them in front of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. She bent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. Then his fingers tightened.

“And be like them?” he demanded, and the words leaped out so abruptly that they were almost harsh. “And be like all the rest,” he reiterated, jerking his head backward, “old and thin, and bent and worn-out at thirty?” A hard, self-scathing note crept into the words. “Why, it–it took me almost a month–even to buy these!”

He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. But she only laughed straight back into his face–a short, unsteady laugh of utter derision.

“Old?” she echoed. “Work! But I–I’d have you, Denny, wouldn’t I?” Again she laughed in soft disdain. “Clothes!” she scoffed. And then, more serious even than before: “Denny, is–is that the only reason, now?”

The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton’s eyes whenever he remembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny’s last bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and as colorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back at her. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders.

“I’m not afraid–any more–to chance it,” she told him, her lips trembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. “I’m never afraid, when I’m with you. It–it’s only when I’m alone that it grows to be more than I can bear, sometimes. I’m not afraid. Does it–does it have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren’t we sure enough now–you and I–aren’t we?”

He stopped back a pace–his big body huge above her slenderness–stepped away from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to him he began to shake his head–the old stubborn refusal that had answered her a countless number of times before.

“Aren’t we?” she said again, but her voice sounded very small and bodiless and forlorn in the half dark room.

He swung one arm in a stiff gesture that embraced the entire valley.

“They’re all sure, too,” his voice grated hoarsely, “They’re all sure, too–just as sure as we could ever be–and there’s a whole town of them!”

She was bending silently over the table, retying the bundle, when he crossed back to her side, a lighted lantern dangling in one hand.

“I don’t know why myself,” he tried to explain. “I only know I’ve got to wait. And I don’t even know what I’m waiting for–but I know it’s got to come!”

She would not lift her head when he slipped his free arm about her shoulders and drew her against him. When he reached out to take the package from her she held it away from him, but her voice, half muffled against his checkered coat, was anything but hard.