Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

es 'F ‘leaped into life and color. THE LAST DANCE. —and how damnable. No, és dancing days were over. He relaxed in his chair. Several couples swirled by, but they did not notice him. A foolish train of thought made him think of the quick and the dead, and he was dead. Dead—how very foolish! Of course, he wasn’t dead——but—well, he might as well be. Nobody noticed him any more. In the center of the floor Isobel was show- ing Jimmy Ferguson a dance step. Several stopped to watch her. Ferguson was a born dancer—he learned quickly. In a minute he was showing it to the others, he and Isobel. It was a step that she and Andy had danced so many, many times. Confound it all! Why couldn’t he dance? Andy’s elbow rested on the arm ef his chair, his chin cupped in the palm of one hand. Once, when they stumbled over ‘a step, he started to correct them, but— what was the use? In his dancing days he had been better than any of them, and - now—he stirred uneasily.. He was young enough, untried enough, to be sorry for himself. oO His thoughts, as they often did, traveled back over the years. Once he had had so much to live for, but now there was noth- ing. To-night, it seemed to him that even Isobel had deserted him. Why shouldn’t | she? She was having such a good time with erguson. Suddenly he rose, and limped\ toward the door. At the threshold he stopped. It was not only the dancing that hurt him— is wasn’t that Isobel—the Isobel that he had once thought he loved more than all the world, the girl whose picture he had carried into that hell of No Man’s Land—did not care—it was just—ceverything / ’ “ Nobody,’’ he said aloud. The single word startled him. A picture In those days he had been a somebody—he Aad counted. He was 2 little boy —good-leoking, clever, he had attracted them all hecause he was not too smart, because his mother had taught him to be very polite, and his father that politeness plus husky play never makes aman a sissy. The swiftly changing por- trait showed him himself as he had been in the years before college. Then they had 695 noticed him because he grew tall and very straight, because he was still good-looking, and, because they were all amused to see him at his first club dances—or thrilled with the interest that all country club members know, when they see the cub developing into a crack tennis player, and a golfer that many of the men were forced_to admit, was no mean competitor. Afterward had come college—and more triumph. His parents were not wealthy in the Jargest sense of the word, but they could keep him provided with plenty of pocket money, and clothes. His father had never suggested that he go to work during the summer, because he was secretly much pleased to have his husky son drive up in the roadster, about four in the afternoon, and demand that he leave the care of the great mill to others, while father and son played golf. Then, surmounting the other memories, came the tall when he had made the ’var- sity football team. That had been a home- town victory, and they celebrated it royally at the Christmas holidays. And all this while Andy could dance. The music would flood him, and he would float on the floor lightly. as & cloud hangs over a valley at sun- rise. There was not a woman in the club that would not have given much to have had ‘him for her partner an entire evening, if only because it would have made her the most-talked-of woman in the country club set. ; Then had followed the biggest tnumph of them all—the war. Andrew Eaton had not been over-enthusiastic about enlisting. ‘Hé had hed so many good times at home every summer—he was rather sorry, but they graduated his class at college a few months ahead of time, and Andy went to the training camp, where he drilled under an almost tropic sun, managed to get enough to eat, and lived only for the Satur- day and Sunday rest that came to him as an oasis in a desert of labor. But it was worth it all when he swung back that Saturday night in August, wear- ing the bar of a first lieutenant. That was the night they came forward as a body to welcome him, and Isobel would dance with no one but him. | ebook