It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants,
welcome to the poor. But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of
sunshine. The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore
Street. Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her,
and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself. And
all the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were
banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! The
words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt of a
song. What did the weather matter?
When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to
fall. But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance
down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in
the coat she had now come to regard as her own. He buttoned down the
curtains and took her in his arms.
“What shall we do to-day,” she asked, “if it snows?”
“Don't let that worry you, sweetheart,” he said. “I have the chains on,
I can get through anything in this car.”
He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove
it out of the rutty lane into the state road. The snow grew thicker and
thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery
flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet
caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway.
The ground was spread with fleece. Occasionally, and with startling
suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the
whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared. Presently, through the veil,
she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had
visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common
had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare
branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of
white--heavy with leaf. Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the
old-world houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her. And
she found herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had
mistaken for a carpenter. All that seemed to have taken place in a past
life. She asked Ditmar where he was going.
“Boston,” he told her. “There's no other place to go.”
“But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this.”
“Well, the trains are still running,” he assured her, with a quizzical
smile. “How about it, little girl?” It was a term of endearment derived,
undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes indulged.
She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she
could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the
world shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? They
were on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about Boston,
to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it had
held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of
childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it.
Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had
walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of
stately houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide,
tree-covered space where children were playing. And her childish
verdict, persisting to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability,
of jealously guarded wealth and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures
she was convinced they must contain, were not for her! Some of the panes
of glass in their windows were purple--she remembered a little thing
like that, and asking her father the reason! He hadn't known. This
purple quality had somehow steeped itself into her memory of Boston,
and even now the colour stood for the word, impenetrable. That was
extraordinary. Even now! Well, they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had
said they were going to Bagdad it would have been quite as credible--and
incredible. Wherever they were going, it was into the larger, larger
life, and walls were to crumble before them, walls through which they
would pass, even as they rent the white veil of the storm, into regions
of beauty....
And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still
were the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great
parkway of the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest
under the snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes
melted silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they
came led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar
told her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches
and fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the
far side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles.
And here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it,
as one chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might
see, with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited
to notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin
Chippering mansions standing side by side. Save for these shrines--for
such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing
more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and
social position made unassailable. But to-day he, too, was excited.
Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience;
and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her,
who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the
place from out of the snow. Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was
the reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed. And in
her delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of
more delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the
fast deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and
down the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at
the top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose
golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue. Boston! Why
not Russia? Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe
what she felt....
At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway
in front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet
demanded where they were.
“Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?” Ditmar replied. She noticed that
he was shivering.
“Are you cold?” she inquired with concern.
“I guess I am, a little,” he replied. “I don't know why I should be, in
a fur coat. But I'll be warm soon enough, now.”
A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping
them to alight. And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond
the entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor,
paved with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where
benches were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted
plants set in the intervals between them.
“Sit down a moment,” he said to her. “I must telephone to have somebody
take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter.”
She sat down on one of the benches. The soft light, the warmth, the
exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the
strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all
contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing. She could not
think. She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the
utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her
face wore the expression of one in a dream. Presently she saw Ditmar
returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform.
“All right,” he said. At the end of the corridor was an elevator in
which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting
a key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room. Between its
windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the
floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase
filled with dusky roses. Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their
fragrance, glanced around the room. The hangings, the wall-paper, the
carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge
in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece,
with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a
mansion of the Georgian period. The hands of a delicate Georgian clock
pointed to one. And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an
image she supposed, dreamily, to be herself. The bell boy was taking off
her coat, which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner.
“Shall I light the fire, sir?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Ditmar. “And tell them to hurry up with lunch.”
The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him.
“We're going to have lunch here!” Janet exclaimed.
“Why not? I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and
when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned.”
He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze. “Isn't
it cosy?” he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him. His own
hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold.
“You are cold!” she said.
“Not now--not now,” he replied. The queer vibrations were in his voice
that she had heard before. “Sweetheart! This is the best yet, isn't it?
And after that trip in the storm!”
“It's beautiful!” she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking
around her once more. “I never was in a room like this.”
“Well, you'll be in plenty more of them,” he exulted. “Sit down beside
the fire, and get warm yourself.”
She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As
usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise,
of appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the
inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of
woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as
though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she
might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter
of course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to
say anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the
excellences of the hotel. She did not appear to hear him, her eyes
lingering on the room, until presently she asked:--“What's the name of
this hotel?”
He told her.
“I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a
private room.”
“Oh!” he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this
statement impartially added to his perplexity. “Well,” he was able to
answer, “we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?” He leaned toward
her, he put his hand on hers. “The manager here is an old friend of
mine. He knows we're as good as married.”
“Another old friend!” she queried. And the touch of humour, in spite of
his taut nerves, delighted him.
“Yes, yes,” he laughed, rather uproariously. “I've got 'em everywhere,
as thick as landmarks.”
“You seem to,” she said.
“I hope you're hungry,” he said.
“Not very,” she replied. “It's all so strange--this day, Claude. It's
like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place,
and--and being with you.”
“You still love me?” he cried, getting up.
“You must know that I do,” she answered simply, raising her face to his.
And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never
seen before.... “What's the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing--nothing,” he assured her, but continued to look at her.
“You're so--so wonderful,” he whispered, “I just can't believe it.”
“And if it's hard for you,” she answered, “think what it must be for
me!” And she smiled up at him.
Ditmar had known a moment of awe.... Suddenly he took her face between
his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly. His hands
trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm.
“Why, you're still cold, Claude!” she cried anxiously.
And he stammered out: “I'm not--it's you--it's having you!”
Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which,
nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock
at the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it. Two waiters
entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding
above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses.
“I could do with a cocktail!” Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as
he served them. “Here's how!” he said, giving her a glass containing a
yellow liquid.
She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily.
“What's the trouble?” he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table
and took a drink of water.
“It's horrid!” she cried.
“Oh, you'll get over that idea,” he told her. “You'll be crazy about
'em.”
“I never want to taste another,” she declared.
He laughed again. He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying
its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of
the extent of her inexperience. She was, in truth, untouched by the
world--the world in which he had lived. He pulled out her chair for her
and she sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons
on either side of a plate of oysters. Oysters served in this fashion,
needless to say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street,
or in any Hampton restaurant where she had lunched. But she saw that
Ditmar had chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his
example.
“You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!” he exclaimed.
She touched one, delicately, with her fork.
“They're alive!” she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus
was by no means unknown to her. Lise had often boasted of a taste for
oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red
catsup in a “cocktail.”
“They're alive, but they don't know it. They won't eat you,” Ditmar
replied gleefully. “Squeeze a little lemon on one.” Another sort of
woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish.
She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and
swallowed it quickly.
“Well?” he said. “It isn't bad, is it?”
“It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it,” she said, as
she ate the rest of them.
“If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape,
right out of the water,” he declared, and went on to relate how he had
once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won
a bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had
lent a zest to his life. “We'll roll down there together some day next
summer, little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three
times a day and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't
swallow 'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open
'em. It's some trick to open 'em.”
He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving
to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience;
to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot
plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a
creamy soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully
disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of
coffee. Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were
aroused in her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to
eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical
hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses
drank in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming
fire, the heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in
contrast to the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the
windows, powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence
of cold, black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil
and limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a
nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep
within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality,
this illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to
believe in the illusion!
Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from
that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow. She
loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there
were moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an
objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from
the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it
crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this?
What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense
of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling
her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little
by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known,
that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an
expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more,
as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand,
as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the
waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer,
and she rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the
curtains, the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused
the light; and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.
“I'd like to be able to play!” she said.
“You can learn,” he told her.
“I'm too old!”
He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.
Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
them. The picture fascinated Janet.
“It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?” she asked.
“What? That? I guess so.” He got up and came over to her. “Sure,” he
said. “I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown
to the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book
again--we'll read it together.”
Janet shivered.... “Here's another picture,” he said, turning to the
other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and
a small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
pearls.
“Isn't she beautiful!” Janet sighed.
“Beautiful!” He led her to the mirror. “Look!” he said. “I'll buy you
pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't
compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls.”
“No, no,” she cried. “I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them.
Please!” She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away
from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring,
supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her,
she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning
kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against
him--but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than
he, stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet
she craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them
dizzily--whither? The sheer sweetness and terror of it!
“Don't, don't!” she murmured desperately. “You mustn't!”
“Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can.
Won't you trust me? For God's sake, don't be cruel. You're my wife,
now--”
His voice seemed to come from a great distance. And from a great
distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters.
“Do you love me?--will you love me always--always?”
And he answered hoarsely, “Yes--always--I swear it, Janet.” He had found
her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the
room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased....
The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that
evening Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had
taken the train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She
knew that something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic,
which had irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left
Hampton that same morning--an age ago. But she was unable to realize the
metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime,
exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless
to feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of
people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller
cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she
began, in a detached way, to observe them. Their aspects, their speech
and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness
without arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval
which normally should have followed. Ordinarily she might have felt a
certain sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who
sat moodily staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group
across the aisle would surely have moved her to disgust. Two couples
were seated vis-a-vis, the men apparently making fun of a “pony” coat
one of the girls was wearing. In spite of her shrieks, which drew
general attention, they pulled it from her back--an operation regarded
by the conductor himself with tolerant amusement. Whereupon her
companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an
arm about her waist and held her while he presented the tickets. Janet
beheld all this as one sees dancers through a glass, without hearing the
music.
Behind her two men fell into conversation.
“I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open
winter, too.”
“Look out for them when they start in mild!”
“I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got
to watch every minute....”
Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed
at the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were
discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by
the fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They
denounced the mill owners.
“They speed up the machine and make work harder,” said one. “I think we
goin' to have a strike sure.”
“Bad sisson too to have strike,” replied the second pessimistically. “It
will be cold winter, now.”
Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she
heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming
to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little
and great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in
the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt
Ditmar's hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading
forgiveness--for her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself
saying:--“It was my fault as much as yours.”
And his vehement reply:--“It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it
was wonderful, Janet. I can't bear to see you sad.”
To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken
those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten?
And each time she had answered: “I'm not sad.” What she had felt indeed
was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself
was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so
different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to
be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he
himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had
actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had
reached the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace.
Even as he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly
by the quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and
were these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters
of life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity,
though she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a
fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....
At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under
the lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.
“Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!” she exclaimed.
“Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?”
“Lise?” Janet repeated. “Hasn't she been home?”
“Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so
uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't
come home for supper I was considerably worried.”
Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
gloves.
“I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar,” she announced.
For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the
old-fashioned clock.
“Mr. Ditmar!” said Hannah, at length. “You're going to marry Mr.
Ditmar!”
Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
stared at her.
“Not right away,” said Janet.
“Well, I must say you take it rather cool,” declared Hannah, almost
resentfully. “You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
just like you were talking about the weather.”
Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious
lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was
a suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift
perception of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and
kissed her. It was as though the relation between them were reversed,
and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter.
“I always knew something like this would happen!” said Edward. His words
incited Hannah to protest.
“You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus,” she exclaimed.
“Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!”
he went on, unheeding, jubilant. “You'll drop in and see the old people
once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?”
“I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father,” said Janet.
“Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he
stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--”
“That doesn't make him a good man,” Hannah declared, and added: “If he
wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him.”
“I don't know whether he's good or not,” said Janet.
“That's so, too,” observed Hannah, approvingly. “We can't any of us tell
till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see
him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street.”
The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their
own suggested appalling complications to her mind. “I suppose I won't
get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then.”
“There's plenty of time to think about that, mother,” answered Janet.
“I'd want to have everything decent and regular,” Hannah insisted. “We
may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says.”
“It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman,” Edward
assured her.
“I thought I ought to tell you about it,” Janet said, “but you mustn't
mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very
busy now,--he hasn't made any plans.”
“I wish Lise could get married!” exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. “She's
been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all.”
“Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother,” Edward exclaimed. He
could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with
benevolence. “Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can
expect another Mr. Ditmar....”
“Well,” said Hannah, presently, “there's no use sitting up all night.”
She rose and kissed Janet again. “I just can't believe it,” she
declared, “but I guess it's so if you say it is.”
“Of course it's so,” said Edward.
“I so want you should be happy, Janet,” said Hannah....
Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of
Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they
say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached
her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not
been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because
the news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that
she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But,
now that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within
the scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered
circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized
that she was tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her
exhaustion there remained within her, possessing her, as it were
overshadowing her, unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man
who had awakened her to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When
her head touched the pillow she fell asleep....
When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she
lay awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The
discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right
hand was broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching
out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses
on a table with a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden
flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her
identity, to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire,
illuminating redly all the events of the day before. It was sweet to lie
thus, to possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories
of life lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given
herself and taken--all. A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he
would take an early train, he would be at the office by nine. How could
she wait until then?
With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out
her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right
side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear.
“Lise!” she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And
Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed,
searched for the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise;
her clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were
nowhere to be seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence
of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden
sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the
doors. In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with
the purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt
and jacket Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather. That
was all.... Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped
together, overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had
lurked, all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone,
but in which she herself was somehow involved. Just why this was so, she
could not for the moment declare. The room was cold, she was clad only
in a nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body. What should
she do? She must think. But thought was impossible. She got up and
closed the window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now
and again to stand motionless. In one such moment there entered her mind
an incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its
occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her
own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so
real and vital a thing! And it was the memory of this incident that
suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during
the past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold
coin! Now she knew for a certainty what had happened to her sister.
Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm,
filled with the smell of frying meat. Streaks of grease smoke floated
fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the frying-pan
in one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove. Wisps
of her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn
knot at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet
she looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her
dumb--pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that
lent a staggering insight into life itself. Hannah had once been young,
desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her. Janet
wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed
it now. But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's
face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the
foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks.
“Where's Lise?”
And Janet could not answer. She shook her head. Hannah dropped the fork,
the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing Janet
by the shoulders.
“Is she gone? I knew it, I felt it all along. I thought she'd done
something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I
couldn't--I couldn't! And now she's gone. Oh, my God, I'll never forgive
myself!”
The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible. For an
instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the
kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall. Her face
twitched. Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her
mother's eyes. She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself,
to have lived through ages of misery and tragedy.... She was aware of
a pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the
steak. Now and then she glanced at Hannah. Grief seemed to have frozen
her. Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in
the doorway.
“Well, what's the matter with breakfast?” he asked. From where he stood
he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her
figure. His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the
rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him.
“Is mother sick?” he asked falteringly.
Janet went to him. But it was Hannah who spoke.
“Lise has gone,” she said.
“Lise--gone,” Edward repeated. “Gone where?”
“She's run away--she's disgraced us,” Hannah replied, in a monotonous,
dulled voice.
Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to
break the silence.
“She didn't come home last night, father.”
“Didn't come home? Mebbe she spent the night with a friend,” he said.
It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful.
“No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her
again. My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have
guessed it. Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!”
Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat. So
appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise,
wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock,
his lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and
put his hand on her shoulder.
“There, there, mother,” he pleaded. “If she's gone, we'll find her,
we'll bring her back to you.”
Hannah shook her head. She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over
to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the
dish.
“Go in there and set down, Edward,” she said. “I guess we've got to have
breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not.”
It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about
her tasks automatically. And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become
aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through
many vicissitudes, shattered at last. He spilled his coffee when he
tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room,
searching for his overcoat. It was Janet who found it and helped him on
with it. He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for
the mill. Janet began to remove the dishes from the table.
“You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work,” said Hannah.
“I've had all I want,” Janet replied.
Hannah followed her into the kitchen. The scarcely touched food was laid
aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the
sink and let the water run. She turned to Janet and seized her hands
convulsively.
“Let me do this, mother,” said Janet. She knew her mother was thinking
of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released
her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung.
“You sit down, mother,” she said.
Hannah would not. They finished the dishes together in silence while the
light of the new day stole in through the windows. Janet went into her
room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and
rubbers. Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her.
“It ain't going to spoil your happiness?”
But Janet could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down
the stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and
out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow,
which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke,
leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed
by waves on the sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning
hatefully beautiful. In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and
labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny
Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind.
“Good morning, Miss Bumpus,” he said. “Now, if you'd only waited awhile,
I'd have had it as clean as a parlour. It's fine weather for coal
bills.”
She halted.
“Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?”
Johnny looked at her.
“Why sure,” he said. Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly
opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the
way to the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably.
He placed a chair for her. “Now what can I be doing to serve you?” he
asked.
“It's about my sister,” said Janet.
“Miss Lise?”
“I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately,” said
Janet.
Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister. In
spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of
her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected
the tragedy behind her apparent calmness. He met her magnificently.
“Why,” he said, “I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard
Duval--when he's been in town. He travels for a Boston shoe house,
Humphrey and Gillmount.”
“I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him,” said Janet. “I thought you
might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had
seen them. She left home yesterday morning.”
For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his
fingers running through his bristly hair.
“Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet. It's me that can
find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you. Just you stay
here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys.
I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it.”
He seized his overcoat and departed. Presently the sun, glinting on the
sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop,
noting its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered
work-bench with the shears lying across the vise. Once she thought of
Ditmar arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her....
The sound of a bell made her jump. Mr. Tiernan had returned.
“She's gone with him,” said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating
a fact.
Mr. Tiernan nodded.
“They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning. Eddy
Colahan was at the depot.”
Janet rose. “Thank you,” she said simply.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I'm going to Boston,” she answered. “I'm going to find out where she
is.”
“Then it's me that's going with you,” he announced.
“Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!” she protested. “I couldn't let you do that.”
“And why not?” he demanded. “I've got a little business there myself.
I'm proud to go with you. It's your sister you want, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady? How will you
find your sister?”
“Do you think you can find her?”
“Sure I can find her,” he proclaimed, confidently. He had evidently made
up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded. “Haven't
I good friends in Boston?” By friendship he swayed his world: nor was
he completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential
members of his race of the Boston police department. Pulling out a large
nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train,
he locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station. Mr.
Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow. The dry snow squeaked
under his feet.
After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the
smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning
the Charles River by the North Station. All the way to Boston she had
sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields,
incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of
feeling commensurate with the situation. She did not know what she
would say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's
expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote. When the
train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out
over its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of
dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth
with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide. In front
of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth.
They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped,
where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye. Something stirred within her,
became a shooting pain.... She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do.
“I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city,” he told her.
And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the
darkness of the subway. Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few
blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle
were displayed, and on which was painted the name, “Timothy Mulally.”
Mr. Tiernan entered.
“Is Tim in?” he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head
towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman
was seated at a desk under a drop light.
“Is it you, Johnny?” he exclaimed, looking up.
“It's meself,” said Mr. Tiernan. “And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady
friend of mine from Hampton.”
Mr. Mulally rose and bowed.
“How do ye do, ma'am,” he said.
“I've got a little business to do for her,” Mr. Tiernan continued. “I
thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while
I was gone.”
“With pleasure, ma'am,” Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair
with alacrity. “Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye.”
When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a
grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until
Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached
the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest.
“Well, I caught him. It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going
out on the road again, up to Maine. I know where Miss Lise is.”
“He told you!” exclaimed Janet.
“He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him. He was all for
bluffing at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white
as his collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right
he's heard of me in Hampton,” Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch
of pride.
“What did you say?” inquired Janet, curiously.
“Say?” repeated Mr. Tiernan. “It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet.
I was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss. I'm guessing he won't
take much pleasure on this trip.”
She asked for no more details.