The Dwelling Place of Light Part 50

"I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me."

"You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted.

"Then why, in G.o.d's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you ought to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd joined those anarchists--"

"They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she said.

He waved this aside. "I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did you do it?"

"Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want them to win--against you!" She lifted her head and looked at him, and in spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her defiance.

"Because you love me!" he said.

"Because I hate you," she answered.

And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic.

"Listen!" he pleaded. "I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that something had happened. It wasn't my fault--" he pulled himself up abruptly.

"I found out what men were like," she said. "A man made my sister a woman of the streets--that's what you've done to me."

He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear.

"I'm not that kind of a man," he said.

But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying.

"I'll take care of you," he a.s.sured her, after a moment. "If you'll only trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you."

She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of dignity and scorn to her words when they came.

"I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me." She rose. "But I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me again."

She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of her again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a pang. He could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had never understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he had brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted to kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed that she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood before him the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her.

"I love you, Janet," he said. "I want you to marry me."

"You don't understand," she answered. "You never did. If I had married you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had been married."

"Not as bad!" he exclaimed.

"If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me," she explained, slowly. "Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. I know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get away from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a chance, to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I knew were there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love you, I would have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that you didn't really love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get away from you, when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get tired of me. That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have been the same if we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it any more than I can now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now, but that's because you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going to trouble you any more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now, but that isn't love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you."

"You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--"

"If the world was right," she said, "I could have this child and n.o.body would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do what I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a child--especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything."

Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As the fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come as a supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless, there revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had wrung from her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a realization of her personality never before achieved. And because he had hitherto failed to achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated, surpa.s.sing glimpse of what she essentially was, and the thought of the child their child--permeating his pa.s.sion, transformed it into a feeling hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully, his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her.

"Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry you now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't after--after all we have been to each other."

But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing, and she scarcely heard him.

"I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear it."

"Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For G.o.d's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his hold.

"Let me go, please." All the pa.s.sionate anger had gone out of her, and she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a resolution which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake.

"But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you and want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged me--thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that, I guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder, after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! G.o.d knows what I've suffered, too!"

"Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he obeyed her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him.

He turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it.

"I'll see you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as she went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted hallway beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence.

He was trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him, tortured by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the great crisis of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that strange last look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed her to go out into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he fairly ran out of the office and down the stairs and across the bridge.

"Which way did that young lady go?" he demanders of the sergeant.

"Why--uh, West Street, Mr. Ditmar."

He remembered where Fillmore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived, and whether she had as yet come home....

After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed gone through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed.

She tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her cheeks, her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this physical sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments she was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had pa.s.sed since, in a terrible exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office in the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to find the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or to cast about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her failure had sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar speaking, the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not Ditmar's! They were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which she listened, he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she should marry Ditmar, because of her b.u.mpus blood. And this made her laugh.... Again, Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it.

She had taken it down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud, he said--so fine; its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed, became that of the detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made Janet smile! But Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why not go back to him and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation would be joy....

It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat, their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from G.o.d, and yet they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and would He help her?

The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless strokes--like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring her reluctant, drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness through which she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds were left undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an outcast! Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves, seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill and steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in the water when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold!

She wished she could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she couldn't.... Where was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop over that parapet and be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't she? Well, it was because--because--she was going to have a child. Well, if she had a child to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she would have something to love. She loved it now, as though she felt it quickening within her, she wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved affection. She seemed actually to feel in her arms its soft little body pressed against her. Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled, as an incident of the remote past, that she had told him she wanted it!

This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason why she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her, long ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her still, he had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him?

Why had she taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a father,--when she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted the child? why, even in her moments of pa.s.sionate hatred she recalled having been surprised by some such yearning as now came over her?

And for an interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling clarity. Not because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because he was what he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and possessed her, left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to her, willing to sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires, but he loved her, for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look that a woman never mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in his window glowed again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was drawing her, irresistibly....

The sentry recognized her as she came along the ca.n.a.l.

"Mr. Ditmar's gone," he told her.

"Gone!" she repeated. "Gone!"

"Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he asked the sergeant about you."

"And--he won't be back?"

"I guess not," answered the man, sympathetically. "He said good-night."

She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been so unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered, though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber Street were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs.

Seeking to escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading north, only to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from the sidewalk.