"No, of course. You wouldn"t." d.i.c.kie spoke slowly again, looking at the rug. "I went East--"
"But--Hilliard?"
He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am coming to him, Sheila. I"ve got to tell you _some_ about myself before I get around to him or else you wouldn"t savvy--"
"Oh." She couldn"t meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for d.i.c.kie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at her fingers.
"I went to New York because I thought I"d find you there, Sheila. Pap"s hotel was on fire."
"Did you really burn it down, d.i.c.kie?"
He started violently. "_I_ burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you think such a thing?"
"Never mind. Your father thought so."
d.i.c.kie"s face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then shrugged his shoulders. "I didn"t. I don"t know how it started ... I went to New York and to that place you used to live in--the garret. I had the address from the man who took Pap there."
"The studio? _Our_ studio?--_You_ there, d.i.c.kie?"
"Yes, ma"am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might come ... Well"--d.i.c.kie hurried as though he wanted to pa.s.s quickly over this necessary history of his own experience--"I got a job at a hotel."
He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire.
It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like--you know the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco--I must have been talking to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly--kind of sharp, and said: "Say that again, will you?"--He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ... That"s how I got into the job. But I"m only telling you because--"
Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, d.i.c.kie! How silly you are! As if I weren"t _dying_ to hear all about it. How did you get "into the job"? What job?"
"Reporting," said d.i.c.kie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He began to stammer a little. "Of course, the--the fellow helped me a lot.
He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He--he took down what I said and later he--he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in.
He--he was almighty good to me. And I--I worked awfully hard. Like h.e.l.l.
Night cla.s.ses when I wasn"t on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face.
He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon him. "Aren"t they wonderful? They"re like polished stones--each one a different shape and color and feel. You fit "em this way and that and turn "em and--all at once, they shine and sing. G.o.d! I never knowed what was the matter with me till I began to work with words--and that _is_ work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and worship them. I used to think I wanted _whiskey_." He laughed scorn at that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was shamefaced--"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized.
"You see, it was because I was a--a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts.
It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me; "Young Hilliard"s car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He"s hurt."
Well, of course, I knew it"d be a good story--all that about Hilliard and his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance--it had just come out a couple of months before...."
"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair without turning her wide look from d.i.c.kie and sat down with an air of deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated.
"Yes, ma"am. That"s what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you.
But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They found him only about a week ago--with Hilliard"s letter in his pocket."
d.i.c.kie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I"ve got it."
"Don"t give it to me yet," she said. "Go on."
"Well," d.i.c.kie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion to question _me_. "You"re from the West," he said; and when I told him "Millings," he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, "Come see me at the hospital." I was willing enough--I went. And they took me to him--private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots of friends in New York--Hilliard, you bet you--" It was irony again and Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would have kept me from going, anyway," d.i.c.kie added quaintly. "When I learned what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from Rusty to answer his--well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about all that, Sheila. But, anyway--" d.i.c.kie moved his hands. They sought the arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said."
"What did he say?"
d.i.c.kie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence.
He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come--" And far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, d.i.c.kie pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the bewildering change in the young waif"s life, the necessity he was under to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after d.i.c.kie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire leapt and crackled on Hilliard"s forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and gleams across d.i.c.kie"s thin, exhausted face and Sheila"s inscrutably thoughtful one.
She held out her hand.
"Give me the letters now, d.i.c.kie."
He handed her the bundle that had acc.u.mulated in Rusty and the little withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one that had spent so many months under the dumb snow.
Berg, who had investigated d.i.c.kie, leaned against her knee while she read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but she was watching d.i.c.kie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his att.i.tude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun.
"It is not true, d.i.c.kie, that things were--were that way between Cosme and me ... We had not settled to be married ..." She paused and saw that he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" d.i.c.kie was silent. He would not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice.
d.i.c.kie"s face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up this claim of Hilliard"s--he"s through with it. He likes the East. You see, Sheila, he"s got the whole world to play with. It"s quite true." He said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything--"
"And you?"
d.i.c.kie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered.
"I mean--_you_ don"t like the East?--You will give up your work?"
"Oh--" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma"am. I"ll give up newspaper reporting. I don"t like New York."
"But, d.i.c.kie--your--words? I"d like to see something you"ve written."
d.i.c.kie"s hand went to an inner pocket.
"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a flaming pride. "My _poems_."
Sheila felt a shock of dread. d.i.c.kie"s _poems_! She was afraid to read them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that sordid hotel lobby ... Newspaper stories--yes--that was imaginable.
But--poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain.
"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, penitent hand. "Let me see them--at once!"
He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him, then--? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. d.i.c.kie"s words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face of his world"s scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him mysteriously on a wind--the wind that fans such flame--
"Oh, little song you sang to me A hundred, hundred days ago, Oh, little song whose melody Walks in my heart and stumbles so; I cannot bear the level nights, And all the days are over-long, And all the hours from dark to dark Turn to a little song--"
"Like the beat of the falling rain, Until there seems no roof at all, And my heart is washed with pain--"
"Why is a woman"s throat a bird, White in the thicket of the years?--"
Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to crying bitterly. d.i.c.kie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly bewildered, utterly distressed.
"Sheila--h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song--your song--Are you angry with me--? I couldn"t help it. It kept singing in me--It--it hurt."
She thrust his hand away.
"Don"t be kind to me! Oh--I am ashamed! I"ve treated you _so_! And--and snubbed you. And--and condescended to you, d.i.c.kie. And shamed you.
You--! And you can write such lines--and you are great--you will be very great--a poet! d.i.c.kie, why couldn"t I see? Father would have seen. Don"t touch me, please! I can"t bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been through such long, long misery--there in Millings, behind that desk--all stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped you. I might have understood ... But I hurt you more."
"Please don"t, Sheila--it isn"t true. Oh,--_d.a.m.n_ my poems!"