Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/227

 like a deer; fat Beemer, waddling at the tail of a score of others.

Forgetting his feud with Beemer, Bastien strode to the door.

"Hi, Beemer!" he called. "What's the matter?"

"Batter enough," choked Beemer. "The women folks is gone clean crazy and they're killin' my girl—you know, the Prize girl—I mean the Mainprize girl—Delight. Oh, don'd keep me, Mr. Bastien!" He ran on, vainly trying to overtake the others.

Delight! The syllables clutched at the men's hearts like fingers of fire. They burst into incoherent babbling all at once and rushed for the doors. Some of them ran with glasses in their hands, hesitated in the street to drain them; then dashed them into the road as they sped on.

Charley Bye was among the leaders when they started. His noble head thrown back, his chest inflated, he looked, in truth, like some classic runner. But his erratic legs played him false, he tripped over his own toes, fell to the road and lay there groaning while Kirke leaped over him, Bastien gave him a kick, and, at last, fat Beemer trotted round him. When he gathered himself up, the others had turned in at the park gates. He sighed, brushed the dust from his legs and, remembering that the bar was deserted, ambled back there and had a glass of gin and water in peace.

Meanwhile men from doorways of cottages joined the others. Men, chopping wood for their wives, dropped their axes and made the streaming tail of the rescue party longer. One man, leaning on a gate, nursing his baby, ran for a space after the others with it in his arms, till his wife overtook him and brought him back, shame-faced, but muttering the name that thrilled them all.

As the first of the men reached the park gates, strange