The Dwelling Place of Light Part 21

"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said. "Why, yes, she's in your room."

"Oh!" said Ditmar.

"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on. "It's about that lawsuit. It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there, and they say they have to see you. Miss b.u.mpus has the memorandum."

Ditmar looked at his watch.

"d.a.m.n it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed. "I won't see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now. You understand. I've got to have a little time to do some letters. I won't be disturbed--by any one--for half an hour."

Caldwell nodded.

"All right, Mr. Ditmar."

Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him. She was occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did.

"Janet!" he exclaimed.

"There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she replied.

"I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking of you. Aren't you glad to see me?"

She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek, spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft contour of her arm, his pa.s.sion conquered.... Still he was acutely conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential self of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might capture it.

"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the reservation he was loth to acknowledge.

"Don't you love me?" he said.

"I don't know."

"You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it."

She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay idle in her hand.

"For G.o.d's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand this. Janet, aren't you happy?"

She shook her head.

"Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?"

"Because I'm not."

"Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know that. Tell me!"

"You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand."

"Is it something I've done?"

"You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that way, I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do."

"Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you."

She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize how impossible it is. I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't."

She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless, yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous.

"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that drowned all caution, all reason. "But you can help me--when we are married."

"Married!" she repeated. "You want to marry me?"

"Yes, yes--I need you." He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his, her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to penetrate to the depths of him. And despite his man's amazement at her hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed, ashamed as he had never been in his life. At length, when he could stand no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you to be my wife."

"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked.

"I didn't think, Janet. I was mad about you. I didn't know you."

"Do you know me now?"

"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen.

You'll marry me?"

"I'm afraid," she said. "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't. A woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much. And now you're willing to marry me, if you can't get me any other way." Her hand touched his coat, checking his protest. "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before. But I couldn't live as your--mistress."

The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour thrilled him.

"If I stayed here, it would be found out. I wouldn't let you keep me.

I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all I've got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were reviewing the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married.

I've tried to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was saying. My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton wouldn't understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--"

she spoke with more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of them, it all seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, I wouldn't stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago."

Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he listened to her.

"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady--I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you suppose I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll be married in the spring, when the rush is over."

He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her will--and her pa.s.sion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpa.s.sing any he had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself.

"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again.

She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.

"I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe in it, somehow."

"You must believe in it," he said.

"I can't,--perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged.

"You'll miss your train."

He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--"

"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night."