Cheerful-By Request Part 44

"No ma'am."

"Take the head of the line, please. Watch Mr. Kamps. Now then, all together, please."

And they were off again.

At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask them to dance; fearful lest they be pa.s.sed by. Little Miss Hall had brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for them.

Gunner Moran's great scarlet hands were knotted into fists. His Adam's apple worked convulsively.

"Le's duck," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. The jackie band in the corner crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot.

"Oh, it don't seem--" But it was plain that Tyler was weakening. Another moment and they would have turned and fled. But coming toward them was little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying couples. At her right and left was a girl. Her bright eyes held her two victims in the doorway. They watched her approach, and were helpless to flee. They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination. Their limbs were fluid.

A sort of groan rent Moran. Miss Hall and the two girls stood before them, cool, smiling, unruffled.

"Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps. Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham.

Miss Drew--Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps."

The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something.

"Would you like to dance?" said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes to Tyler's.

"Why--I--you see I don't know how. I just started to--"

"Oh, _that's_ all right," Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully.

"We'll try it." She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from her a certain friendliness, a certain a.s.surance and understanding that was as calming as it was stimulating. In a sort of daze Tyler found himself moving over the floor in time to the music. He didn't know that he was being led, but he was. She didn't try to talk. He breathed a prayer of thanks for that. She seemed to know, somehow, about those four straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn-two, turn-four. He didn't know that he was counting aloud, desperately. He didn't even know, just then, that this was a girl he was dancing with. He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette. He never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom experience.

The music ceased. A spat of applause. Tyler mopped his head, and his hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream. They were off again for the encore.

Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a chair against the wall. And for the first time since their meeting the mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling.

"Why don't you?" Tyler asked, and was aghast.

"Why don't I what?"

"Smile if you want to."

At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of met and sparked and she laughed. Tyler laughed, too, and then they laughed together and were friends.

Miss Cunningham's conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison.

"Where are you from?"

"Why, I'm from Texas, ma'am. Marvin, Texas."

"Is that so? So many of the boys are from Texas. Are you out at the station or on one of the boats?"

"I'm on the Station. Yes ma'am."

"Do you like the navy?"

"Yes ma'am, I do. I sure do. You know there isn't a drafted man in the navy. No ma'am! We're all enlisted men."

"When do you think the war will end, Mr. Kamps?"

He told her, gravely. He told her many other things. He told her about Texas, at length and in detail, being a true son of that Brobdingnagian state. Your Texan born is a walking ma.s.s of statistics. Miss Cunningham made a sympathetic and interested listener. Her brown eyes were round and bright with interest. He told her that the distance from Texas to Chicago was only half as far as from here to there in the state of Texas itself. Yes _ma'am_! He had figures about tons of grain, and heads of horses and herds of cattle. Why, say, you could take little ol' meachin'

Germany and tuck it away in a corner of Texas and you wouldn't any more know it was there than if it was somebody's poor no-'count ranch. Why, Big Y ranch alone would make the whole country of Germany look like a cattle grazin' patch. It was bigger than all those countries in Europe strung together, and every man in Texas would rather fight than eat. Yes ma'am. Why, you couldn't hold 'em.

"My!" breathed Miss Cunningham.

They danced again. Miss Cunningham introduced him to some other girls, and he danced with them, and they in turn asked him about the station, and Texas, and when he thought the war would end. And altogether he had a beautiful time of it, and forgot completely and entirely about Gunner Moran. It was not until he gallantly escorted Miss Cunningham downstairs for refreshments that he remembered his friend. He had procured hot chocolate for himself and Miss Cunningham; and sandwiches, and delectable chunks of caramel cake. And they were talking, and eating, and laughing and enjoying themselves hugely, and Tyler had gone back for more cake at the urgent invitation of the white-haired, pink-cheeked woman presiding at the white-clothed table in the centre of the charming room. And then he had remembered. A look of horror settled down over his face. He gasped.

"W-what's the matter?" demanded Miss Cunningham.

"My--my friend. I forgot all about him." He regarded her with stricken eyes.

"Oh, that's all right," Miss Cunningham a.s.sured him for the second time that evening. "We'll just go and find him. He's probably forgotten all about you, too."

And for the second time she was right. They started on their quest. It was a short one. Off the refreshment room was a great, gracious comfortable room all deep chairs, and soft rugs, and hangings, and pictures and shaded lights. All about sat pairs and groups of sailors and girls, talking, and laughing and consuming vast quant.i.ties of cake.

And in the centre of just such a group sat Gunner Moran, lolling at his ease in a rosy velvet-upholstered chair. His little finger was crookt elegantly over his cup. A large and imposing square of chocolate cake in the other hand did not seem to cramp his gestures as he talked. Neither did the huge bites with which he was rapidly demolishing it seem in the least to stifle his conversation. Four particularly pretty girls, and two matrons surrounded him. And as Tyler and Miss Cunningham approached him he was saying, "Well, it's got so I can't sleep in anything _but_ a hammick. Yessir! Why, when I was fifteen years old I was--" He caught Tyler's eye. "h.e.l.lo!" he called, genially. "Meet me friend." This to the bevy surrounding him. "I was just tellin' these ladies here--"

And he was off again. All the tales that he told were not necessarily true. But that did not detract from their thrill. Moran's audience grew as he talked. And he talked until he and Tyler had to run all the way to the Northwestern station for the last train that would get them on the Station before sh.o.r.e leave expired. Moran, on leaving, shook hands like a presidential candidate.

"I never met up with a finer bunch of ladies," he a.s.sured them, again and again. "Sure I'm comin' back again. Ask me. I've had a elegant time.

Elegant. I never met a finer bunch of ladies."

They did not talk much in the train, he and Tyler. It was a sleepy lot of boys that that train carried back to the Great Central Naval Station.

Tyler was undressed and in his hammock even before Moran, the expert. He would not have to woo sleep to-night. Finally Moran, too, had swung himself up to his precarious nest and relaxed with a tired, happy grunt.

Quiet again brooded over the great dim barracks. Tyler felt himself slipping off to sleep, deliciously. She would be there next Sat.u.r.day.

Her first name, she had said, was Myrtle. An awful pretty name for a girl. Just about the prettiest he had ever heard. Her folks invited jackies to dinner at the house nearly every Sunday. Maybe, if they gave him thirty-six hours' leave next time--

"Hey, Sweetheart!" sounded in a hissing whisper from Moran's hammock.

"What?"

"Say, was that four steps and then turn-turn, or four and two steps t'

the side? I kinda forgot."

"O, shut up!" growled Monicker, from the other side. "Let a fellow sleep, can't you! What do you think this is? A boarding school!"

"Shut up yourself!" retorted Tyler, happily. "It's four steps, and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn two, turn two."

"I was pretty sure," said Moran, humbly. And relaxed again.

Quiet settled down upon the great room. There were only the sounds of deep regular breathing, with an occasional grunt or sigh. The normal sleep sounds of very tired boys.