Who does not find the intermission tedious after the tragic second
act? The curtain has lowered between you and knowledge of what the end
of the play is to be. Over the auditorium side of the footlights the
indirect glow from dome and gallery flares. You straighten and turn to
your friends. You see them brush the damp from their eye-lashes; hear
them clear the husk from their voices; appreciate that they, as well as
you, are groping back to reality. But you resent your friends; resent
yourself; resent reality. It is a poor exchange for the make-believe
whose artistry has humbled a thousand egos into a unit--an audience.
Because so essentially temporary, the intermission is a strain. And if
to you, how much more to the actors, also waiting behind the scenes,
whose ecstasies have brought the great sophisticated house to tears!
The week following Mrs. Cabot’s departure from her Fifth Avenue mansion
was one of poignant loneliness for Dolores Trent. Strangely enough,
however, she refused such companionship as offered. When good Mrs.
Morrison urged that she come down to the cheerful first-floor parlor at
tea-time or in the evenings, she plead the necessity of brushing-up on
the languages upon which she depended for her next position. So almost
painful to one of her yielding habits were her frequent refusals to
see Dr. Shayle that she left a standing “Not-at-home” with those who
answered the door and telephone.
With none to give her orders, she looked for things to do and tried
to the full of her gentle authority to maintain discipline in the
establishment, as when the Cabots were at home. That, so far as she
knew at the time, was madame’s chief reason for leaving her in
charge. Tactfully she submitted suggestions for increased orderliness
to the housekeeper. She instructed the yard-man according to her own
ideas of the winter needs of the trees and shrubs under his charge. A
stable-boy, suspected of mistreating his master’s mount, she brought to
confession and a quixotic zeal to make amends.
But chiefly she waited. Impatient of interruption from those who wished
to be her friends, of the warm, indirect lighting shafted over her by
the Cabot millions, of the comfort of reality, she merely endured the
intermission. Her imagination strained toward what would be revealed
when the curtain rose again.
The Airedale terrier, that now was not to know the joys of owning his
own “boy,” she made her particular charge. Although she had resented
him from first sight, she came to take a vicarious pride in his
up-bringing and points. Through Jack’s eyes she watched his development
out of puppyhood into promising young dogship; daily brushed the
harsh tan coat over which the outlines of a black saddle already were
forming; noted with interest that, although scarcely two months old,
his eyes were turning black; attended his diet herself, lest his canine
voracity weaken the bones of his front legs, now straight as two
gun-barrels. In time she felt for him a comradeship even greater than
Jack’s would have been. Was he not in the same, culpable position which
had saddened her youth? Had not another died for him?
She did not realize how much his demonstrative preference for her
company had gained upon her until one night when awakened from her
early sleep by the ache of loneliness. She decided to join him in
Jack’s living room where he was allowed to dream his puppy dreams
curled up on the foot-stool that stood as of yore before the lame
little autocrat’s arm-chair. Slipping a warm robe over her nightgown
and loose long hair, she tip-toed in mules along the balcony and
into the suite of so many memories. Scarcely had she closed the door
when the puppy rose to receive her. Although he stood a picture of
preparedness in the center of the room, instinctively posing after the
traditions of his A. K. C. ancestry when on hunt or show-bench, the
waggle of his short, flagstaff tail and certain quivers of his stiff
chin whiskers assured her that he was delighted she had come.
And Dolores returned his greeting with more than usual cordiality. She
rubbed the level of his back with her foot and stooped to scratch the
section of forehead between the small, V-shaped ears when he kissed
effusively her bare ankles.
She straightened; for a moment stood listening. The room was very
quiet--so much quieter than usual. She glanced at the grandfather’s
clock which had ticked through so many generations of Cabots. The
living John had tinkered it to outlast the life of his heir and it had
made good his boast. Reproachfully Dolores eyed the “calm” face which
Jack had approved. Indeed, a clock needed to be “calm-faced,” when its
office was ticking lives away.
The hour hand was close to eleven. But then, the hour didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except that Jack was gone. With the thought, she
turned toward the closed bedroom door. Impossible--almost too
impossible for belief it seemed that he was not sleeping within.
Comparing to-night with other nights when she had crept in to assure
herself that his sleep was sound, the past seemed real, the now the
unreality. Surely he would be hunched up beneath his eider-down and
satin just as usual.
Moved by her longings, the girl continued across the living-room;
opened, then closed behind her the bedroom door and stopped beside the
bed. Its absolute flatness, the neat roll of the comforter between its
foot-posts, the prim set of the pillows at its head--all filled her
with realization keen as actual disappointment. She bunched up the
pillows, threw herself upon them and shook out the comforter over her.
With a sob, she tried to clasp to her heart the delusion that a twisted
little shape lay within her arms.
Before she fell asleep she realized that the puppy had followed her
into the room. He had hidden under the bed, evidently, until eased of
fear over his temerity. Her resistance of the whimpers with which he
soon grew emboldened kept her awake for a time. What was he--stupid,
brute atom--that he presumed to offer comfort for her human loss? And
had not he himself deprived her? Quite roughly she pushed away his
exaggeratedly shivering body and repulsed his suggestion that he, too,
was lonely. Let him continue to hide from her sight--let him die of his
loneliness!
And yet---- In those little-girl days of long ago, had _she_ died,
willing though she might have been to offer that apology for her
existence? What would she have done if the father whom she had deprived
had not been merciful to her?
A damp nose in her down-stretched palm emphasized the question. She
should remember that the creature wasn’t hers to mistreat. Jack would
want his dog given the benefit of every doubt. She picked up the recent
bundle of canine pathos--now one of exuberant joy--and permitted him to
wriggle down upon the coverlet.
A sound louder than his dream barks, then a movement more definite than
the twitching of the four feet co-ordinating with the speed at which he
imagined himself running, awakened her. Against the slivers of light
which outlined the door-frame, she saw that the puppy was standing at
attention--hind legs thrust well back, bristles stiff, nose close to
the sill. She sat up and shook herself wider awake. Someone had entered
the sitting-room and made a light.
She would better announce her presence inside than have the dog bark
the announcement for her. With the idea of returning to her own
chamber, she gathered her dressing-gown close around her and opened the
door.
There she stood absolutely still. Everything seemed to halt with her
feet--the beat of her heart, all capability to move or speak, even any
sense of surprise.
Powerless as she felt looked John Cabot.
He was sitting in Jack’s arm-chair, beside the lamp; was looking at
her. The parts of Jack’s broken, pace-setting toy were spread out on
the table. In both hands he clutched the torn magazine in which the boy
had drawn a circle around the dog of his choice. He was pale and gaunt.
From the look of him, he must have imagined her a vision. And she made
no move to undeceive him. He was convinced of the reality of the moment
by the puppy. Holding aside the frisking beast, he straightened and
forced himself to speak.
“You mustn’t stay here, Dolores.”
His words, his frown, his harsh tone--all stabbed into the wound of
her solitariness as she had not been stabbed when alone. She could not
manage an answer, except to cross to the hall door. Then, just as her
hand turned the knob----
“For God’s sake, don’t leave me--don’t go!” At her distressed
hesitation, he added a jumble of words. “There is something I’ve been
wanting to say to you--to offer--about your future. Forgive me if I
seem abrupt or rude. I feel the strain of--of recent events. It might
help to talk with someone who understands. Won’t you stay--a little
while?”
Dolores felt more hurt than when he had spoken first, but hurt for him.
Knowing the steel control of the man, she wondered at his mood. She
returned into the room and stood before him, one thought clear in her
mind. So this, then, was what she had been awaiting all along--this
need for companionship of John Cabot?
Usually so punctilious about the courtesies, he remained seated, his
knuckles whitening in his grip of the crumpled magazine. That he now
avoided looking at her filled her with the equivocal sensations of hope
and fear which had unsteadied her that night of the dinner. But she
tried not to feel for herself. She wanted all she was to feel for him.
She saw that he was making an effort to get himself in hand and wished
that she might help him. Yet she hesitated to speak lest she sound some
discordant note.
“I thought it was only Jack I was lonely for--that sitting in his room,
among his things---- But I was deluding myself. I know that now. The
sight of you---- Well, it has not calmed me.”
All too brief a glance he lifted to her startled eyes.
“If I seem strange or--or incoherent---- Dolores, you never could
imagine such loneliness as I’ve been suffering. Every night since I
moved to the club, I’ve been obsessed with the desire to come here. I
knew I shouldn’t trust myself. Last night I tramped the street until
five in the morning to wear out the wish. But to-night it came back
stronger than before. It has half crazed me--has worn me out. I--I am
run down, I guess. I feel like the last half-second of an eight-day
clock.”
At his simile, the girl glanced toward the corner. The hour hand of the
tall old time-piece was exactly where it had been, close to eleven.
She realized why the silence had seemed so intense when she first had
entered the room. Shocked, she leaned closer to John Cabot.
“Jack’s clock,” she murmured. “I wound it only yesterday. It has
stopped.”
As he, too, turned and looked, his face reflected her superstitious
tone. The quiet increased. Everything in their world seemed to have
stopped.
The young Airedale broke the pause. With a whine and one paw he
importuned the master’s lax-hanging hand. John pushed him away.
“I owe you worse than nothing, puppy. I meant that Jack should be
considerate of you, but not that he should die for you.”
The dog appeared to understand; at least, raised his head and howled
dismally.
To hush his weird lament, Dolores sank down upon the hassock which
never more would rest a pair of shrunken legs; dragged the wretched
alien out from under the chair; stroked and patted him.
“He didn’t intend that Jack should die for him,” she interceded. “He
didn’t intend anything--any more than I intended that my mother should
die for me. I try not to hate him. I am sure Jack would know and be
distressed if I did. He’s just a foolish puppy.”
“‘And what is folly, but a riotous expenditure of will?’” muttered
John. His hand sought the head of the dog for the importuned caress,
but spasmodically clasped around Dolores’. He leaned toward her,
although with eyes turned away, as he continued to quote: “‘There
are to will and to have your will. There are your social ideas, your
immoderate desires, your excesses, your pleasures that end in death,
your sorrows that quicken the pace of life. For pain is perhaps but a
violent pleasure.’”
Then he looked at her. His eyes, dark and brilliant through a surface
film, asked her consideration. Never had she seen such misery. She had
thought it could only be felt in the heart.
“Do you believe that?” he demanded. “Is the pain that is wrecking me
only a form of pleasure?”
Dolores doubted her voice, but she forced it. It sounded unsteady as
her thoughts. “I wish I knew what to say. I--I cannot endure to see you
so unhappy. I wish I knew----”
“There is no heartbreak except deliberate sin. That I keep telling
myself,” he interrupted. “If I am true to Jack’s trust, true to myself,
true to you----”
His hand slid to her wrist; hesitated there.
“But with the best I can do I am breaking. Everything has combined
to weaken my resistance. Jack, who was your protector, died and
immediately after him the canary. To-night the clock that has not
missed a minute for three generations of us--even the old clock gives
up.”
“Do you remember what Jack said,” Dolores reminded, “that nothing is
wasted? Maybe----”
“Don’t start me on that train of thought,” he objected harshly. “It
maddens me. If Jack and his restraining influence were to die--if we
were to meet here to-night--if time for us was to stop----”
He clutched her other arm and passed both hands to her shoulders. One
remained there. The other continued around her neck; forced her face
to lift to his; clung to her throat. The pulse of his fingers beat
against the pulse just under her chin.
“Look at me, Dolores. Keep me seeing the surprise in your eyes. Do you
realize that you have only your inexperience to protect you?”
She was glad to obey. She looked and looked. And as she looked, she saw
her heaven--at last her home. Something lifted that for long had lain a
dead-weight on her heart, a question that now wafted like a fragrance
from her lips.
“You care--for me?”
“Dolores....”
“You have longed for me as I have longed for you?”
“Didn’t you know from the first? I tell you to implore you--don’t trust
me. I am no longer strong, Dolores. Against my will, against Jack’s
faith---- Life, position, integrity--everything is a trifle to me
except the need to know---- Dolores, will you try to understand? Won’t
you forgive and pity me? I am terrified for you. You must be stronger
than I.”
She did not appear to have heard him.
“You love me, then. You _love_ me.”
Over and over again the answer to her question gave sweet form to her
lips. Her head fell back. Her eyes pursued his.
The young Airedale, convinced at last that he was unwelcome, emerged
from under the chair, gave them a reproachful look, then trotted out of
the room. His exit seemed to impress John anew with their aloneness. He
drew up and away from her.
“Remember,” he warned, “that hopelessness is a dangerous state. So long
as I had hope I was strong. Now that I am hopeless--hopeless----”
It was then that he told her of his interview with Catherine. Knowing
his wife as most did not, he could not hope to change her private and
particular reasons for refusing to free him. As Clarke Shayle had said,
Catherine could not be “reached.” He had promised Jack to help Dolores
toward a safe future. He was glad of to-night’s opportunity to learn
what she wished that future to be.
But the girl no longer was restrained by his restraint. Now that she
understood, she had no thought of herself except as it might concern
him. And why consider the future in preference to the here and now? Why
lower her eyes from that first sight of home and heaven?
The admiration and pity which she felt in her mind for him blended into
a yearning desire voluntarily to satisfy the demands spoken only in the
glaze of his eyes, in the pallor of his face, in the stiff set of his
lips.
“Maybe you would be comforted,” she ventured, “to know how much I----”
Although he shrank farther back, his fingers, still pressed against her
throat, conducted the tremor that passed through him.
“I’d give my soul to hear you say it. Surely you know that? And yet I
must not hear--I dare not hear. Don’t trust me. Don’t try me.”
“Does love try love?” Her eyes widened incredulously. “Isn’t love
a question, incomplete unless answered? You say that you care as I
do--that you have cared all along. You would not tell me if it were
not true. You ask me by loving me. Let me answer. You want to hear me!
Don’t you--_don’t_ you, John?”
She shook back the loosened hair from her face that he might see while
he heard the truth. She had thought him pale; now all color left the
lips pressed against his teeth. His hands tightened on her, but to
hold her away. Before to-night she would have been silenced by this
continence. But now that she knew---- Everything was different now.
“Don’t repulse me as you did the dog, John. I deserve your pity more
than he. Don’t remind me that since birth my presence has brought
death.”
“Death, Dolores? I never guessed what life could be until I saw you.”
“Why, then, make me feel that you regard me as a curse?”
“Dear, I am blessed to have known you.”
Her appeal for herself gentled him as those for him could not do. In
his palms he cupped the oval of her cheeks; for long looked into her
eyes. Stiffly, as if compelled against their inclination by his will,
his lips moved.
“So fragrant and pure is the soul of you, but fragile as the rose that
Jack destroyed. You must not be wasted on me.
“But he said, John, that nothing is ever really wasted, not even the
tears of dew on a rose. They have only their day--roses. And hearts
have only their day. Why not enjoy them the more for their little life?
Tell me again and read your answer in my happiness. Is it true--_true_
that you love me?”
His eyes closed that he might not read; then opened at once lest he
fail.
“I love you with a crave that terrifies me--only less, I hope, than my
honor--with a will to protect you from what you do not understand--from
myself and yourself----”
“Protect love against itself?” Her incredulity silenced him. “If my
heart is a rose that you wish to pluck, John, take it, crush it, sift
its petals through your fingers. If it brings you a moment’s pleasure,
it will not have been wasted.”
His hands recoiled from her face as if from a danger.
But Dolores lifted her arms and laid them around his neck. She felt no
false shame before him. She knew now.
“Take me, John, and crush me. Waste me, since you call love a waste. I
am satisfied to be the rose of your day--to give off my fragrance for
you.”
He could not have shaken her off had he tried, so overwhelming was her
wish to give him that for which he would not ask. He sat perfectly
still, looking down into her eyes, listening to what she said. His
breath came harder when she lifted to her knees on the hassock and
leaned against him.
“Jack told you to see that I was happy. I cannot be so while you are
unhappy, John. Think of me and take me in your arms. Let me feel that
I belong to you--that at last I _belong_.”
“That first day I saw you, Dolores----” His white lips again moved
in words. “Two visible creatures seemed to be born of our meeting.
The best of me went out to you--my love. The best of you appealed to
me--your innocence. Help me to see them plainly as on that day. Remind
me of your inexperience. Don’t urge yourself upon me. For the sake of
your innocence and my love, loose me and leave me.”
But confusing sensations dulled the girl to his prayer--sensations of
vehement rebellion, of incompleteness within sweet proximity of all, of
a vast sadness and vaster joy. She shook with the shudder that shook
him. Her hands drew his head to a resting place where the robe had
fallen from her breast. She felt him relax in her arms; realized that
his lips had touched, then drawn away from hers, as if offended by the
contact.
“God help me.... More than my honor.”
She scarcely heard his words, so low were they rasped. The next moment
he spoke plainly, although in a hoarse, hurried voice.
“Who do you suppose made the law that I am trying to obey? To be born
with passions like mine, to hold them in leash all my life because
of the righteous hope my mother taught me of this moment and you,
then to try to convince myself that it is all a lie for which I have
lived--that love is less than law---- If God Almighty made it----”
“No. Man must have made that law,” the girl interrupted. “Don’t you
feel, John, that love is right? I don’t know God, but I know you. Can’t
you believe that way in me?”
“_Dolores!_” With worshipful reproach, he gave her the vow she asked.
“With my mind, my heart, my body I believe in you. I always shall
believe.”
Wonderingly he looked at her lips; saw on them for the first time a
smile. Timidly yet bravely, it rewarded and further tempted him.
“Then kiss me. Then love me,” she panted. “Oh, I want so to kiss
you--to love you. I didn’t know how much until----”
A strand of her hair fell across the smiling lips--across temptation.
Although so tenuous and soft, it was a barrier between him and that
from which he had plead to be saved. His hand shook from his hurry
to brush it aside. The more greedily for its interference, his lips
lowered to those lips that were tempting him; sank to them; found the
complete answer they had sought in vain to speak.
Dolores’ body was lifted into an embrace which would have been cruel,
except for her desperate response. Her long hair drifted about them,
a curtain from the light. Increasingly she felt that new sense of
incompleteness, that weight of sadness and lightness of joy. Shaking
from the violence aroused by her yearnings, she yet clung as if to
gentleness.
“How strange I feel,” she breathed.
“You are my mate, Dolores.”
Again: “I did not know--did not understand that love was like this.”
And again he reassured her: “You are my mate.”
“But is this what they felt for me, those other men? I hated them for
it. I blamed them.”
“No.” He deprived her lips of his that his eyes might blaze the
indignant denial into her eyes. “Their passion was lust. Yours is the
fragrance of the rose--the pollen of your love. Do not fear that I
could misunderstand.”
“Fear? If God made the rose, why fear?” she half-sobbed. “If it is not
lust for you to love me, give me back your lips. Oh, kiss me, John. Oh,
love me. I _belong_.”