Tramping on Life Part 12

With the table between me and her....

"Wouldn't you like a little beer, and some sandwiches? I have some in the ice box.... _Do_ let's have some beer and sandwiches."

I a.s.sented, though hating the bitter taste of beer, and hungry for her instead of sandwiches. And soon we were sitting down calmly at the table, or rather, she was sitting down calmly ... baffled, I pretended to be calm.

As she rose for something or other, I sprang around the table and caught her close to me once more, marvelling, at the same time, at my loss of shyness, my new-found audacity. Again she snuggled in close to me, her flesh like a warm, palpitating cushion.

"Flora, my darling ... help me!" I cried, half-sobbing.

"What do you mean?" laughing.

"I love you!"

"I know all _you_ want!"

"But I do love you ... see...."

And I prostrated myself, in a frenzy, at her feet.

"Say, you're the queerest kid I've ever known."

And she walked out of the room abruptly, while I rose to my feet and sat in a chair, dejected. She came in again, a twinkle in her eye.

"Don't torture me, Flora!" I pleaded, "either send me away, or--"

"Stop pestering me ... let's talk ... read me some of that Tennyson you gave me...." and I began reading aloud, for there was nothing else she would for the moment, have me do....

"You're a poet," whimsically, "I want you to write some letters to me because I know you must write beautiful."

"--if you will only let me love you!"

"Well, ain't I lettin' you love me?"

A perverse look came into her face, a thought, an idea that pleased her--

"I've lots and lots of letters from men," she began, "men that have been in love with me."

"Oh!" I exclaimed weakly ... she had just expressed a desire to add some of mine to the pack ... the next thing that she followed up with gave me a start--

"Your father--"

"My father?--" I echoed.

"He's written me the best letters of all ... wait a minute ... I'll read a little here and there to you." And, gloating and triumphant, and either not seeing or, in her vulgarity, not caring what effect the reading of my father's love letters would have on me, she began reading ardent pa.s.sages aloud. "See!" She showed me a page to prove that it was in his handwriting. The letters told a tale easy to understand. She was so eager in her vanity that she read on and on without seeing in my face what, seen, would have made her stop.

A frightful trembling seized me, a loathing, a horror. This was my father's woman ... and ... I!...

I sat on, dumbfounded, paralysed. I remembered his stories of trips to T---- and other places on supposed lodge business ... unluckily, I also remembered that several times Flora had been off on trips at the same time.

"Just listen to this, will you!" and she began at another pa.s.sage.

She was so absorbed in her reading that she did not see how I was on my feet ... had seized my hat ... was going.

"I'm sorry, Flora, but I've got to go!"

"What?" looking up and surprised, "--got to go?"

"Yes ... Yes ... I must--must go!" my lips trembled.

"Why, we're just getting acquainted ... I didn't mean for you to go yet."

She rose, dropping the letters all in a heap.

She was the aggressive one now. She drew me to her quickly, "Stay ...

and I'll promise to be good to you!"

I pushed back, loathing ... loathing her and myself, but myself more, because in spite of all my disgust, my pulses leaped quick again to hers.

"Sit down again."

I did not listen, but stood.

"I was thinking that you would stay for supper and then we could go to some show and after come back here and I would give you a good time."

I staggered out, shocked beyond belief, the last animal flush had died out of me. All my body was ice-cold.

"Promise me you'll come again this day next week," she called after me persistently.

She drew the door softly shut and left me reeling down the dark corridor.

I could hardly speak to my father that night. I avoided him.

At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cl.u.s.ter of white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.

"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"

"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall in loathing.

"I'll call a doctor."