THE LIGHT OF DAWN
There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in
the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle
of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him.
He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and
wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was
carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the
look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he
had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and
delicate with feeling.
Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar
hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender,
eager carriage and of his eyes.
"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily,
"what are you doing here at this hour?"
"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the
window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's
almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun."
He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the
window. They stood facing the sunrise.
"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only
deepened her misery and shame.
"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an
awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila--" He drew the hand he still
held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it.
Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was
shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the
curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame.
She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand
under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come
away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon.
You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they
do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila,
I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and
thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care
of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"--his voice rocked on the
word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love--"before I let you
suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"--he stopped as though that
leaping heart had sprung up into his throat--"only a little bit,
Sheila," he whispered, "maybe--?"
"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I
can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired."
She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of
his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It
was still alight and tender and pale.
"You're real sure, Sheila, that you _never_ could?--that you'd rather go
on with this--?"
She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking
at him, and nodded her head.
"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and
watch this, Sheila--unless, some way, I can help you."
"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what
else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long,
of course--"
He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away
and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back
and--and see if--if you feel any sort of--different from what you do now?
It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like--like Hell!" His thin hand
shot into a fist.
Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling
smile.
"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out.
"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand.
And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do
like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something
great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a
much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I
think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I
ought to have had. Dickie"--she gave a dry sort of sob--"_you_ are one of
the lovely things."
His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded
with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be
so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me."
She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she
saw Sylvester's face.
It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the
teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they
looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught
Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his
back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across
the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun
and flashed like a little stream of green fire.
Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He
writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced
him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great
cracking sound at every slap.
Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!"
she wailed again and again.
Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him
and Sylvester came back across the floor.
His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across
his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it
himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little
breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very
gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put
her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there.
"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said
gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light.
I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you,
because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal.
And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and
Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you
gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't
good enough for my purpose--not for mine."
Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of
his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and
his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She
tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips.
"You won't tell _me_, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his
face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness--"that
you've never been kissed."
Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door,
unlocked it, and went out.
She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the
chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She
reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed.
"You told me it was a good old world."