The Dwelling Place of Light Part 27

Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window. The day was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge.

"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly, exultantly....

CHAPTER XII

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 a.s.sailed 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 b.u.t.toned 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s, 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 una.s.sailable. 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.sured 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.