"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a formal visit.
"Don"t hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?"
"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, pa.s.sionate quality which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!"
she declared. "It"s so ugly, I never want to see it again."
"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don"t mind saying so. But it"s interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more serious.
"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why, in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she divined in him restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw in Hampton. His opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea. "Why do you think it"s interesting?" she demanded.
"Well, I"m always expecting to hear that it"s blown up. It reminds me of nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling.
She repeated the word.
"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never went back."
"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All those foreigners! I"ve felt it that something would happen, some day, it frightened me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I never would have thought of--nitro-glycerine."
She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered lightly enough:--"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you can"t play with human chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you"ve got to know something about chemistry."
This remark was beyond her depth.
"Who is playing with them?" she asked.
"Everybody--no one in particular. n.o.body seems to know much about them, yet," he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin with a worm in its bill was hopping across the gra.s.s; he whistled softly, the bird stopped, c.o.c.king its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in conflict with her desire to remain indefinitely talking with this strange man, Janet felt an intense impulse to leave. She could bear the conversation no longer, she might burst into tears--such was the extraordinary effect he had produced on her.
"I must go,--I"m ever so much obliged to you," she said.
"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand.... When she had walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in friendly fashion.
For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, keeping time with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common, seeing nothing, paying no attention to the pa.s.sers-by, who glanced at her curiously. But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village below. She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied.
Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears: she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was not conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And the fact that something of his meaning had eluded her grasp made her rebel all the more bitterly against the lack of a greater knowledge....
Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at her desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer she started to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory....
CHAPTER IV
Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky. The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia. Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her; excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, her feet were sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged outline of the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey pavements, was at hand, listless householders and their families were already, seeking refuge on front steps she pa.s.sed on her way to Fillmore Street.
It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed, was seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered yards and the backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite the heaviness of the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the fabric of Janet"s dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with other dreams of a different nature, such as her sister"s, often sufficed to dissolve them. She resented, for instance, the presence in the plush oval of Mr. Eustace Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced Mr. Wiley"s, and who had played the part of the western hero in "Leila of Hawtrey"s." With his burning eyes and sensual face betraying the puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, he was not Janet"s ideal of a hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was holding a newspaper: not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled "Three O"clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the top of the page:--
"JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY"S FAVOR."
As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--"Say, that Nealy girl"s won out!"
"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly.
"You are from the country, all right," was her sister"s rejoinder. "I would have bet there wasn"t a Reub in the state that wasn"t wise to the Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show"s over and want to know who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn"t beat the band!"
"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?"
"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by her sister"s ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the biggest copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for seventy five. I wish I"d been in court when that jury came back!
There"s her picture."
To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that evening, Lise"s intense excitement, pa.s.sionate partisanship and approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner,"
the envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, in spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a day and give some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture hat was coquettish, if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose talents were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express her grat.i.tude to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American womanhood. Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, when at length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been "prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally, yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, that had been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile....
Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper.
But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no longer.
"I don"t see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed.
"It"s--it"s horrible."
"Horrible?" Lise repeated.
Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping.
"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred and feathered. She"s nothing but a blackmailer."
Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain"t he a millionaire?"
"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can"t tell me she didn"t know what she was up to all along--with that face."
"I"d have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly.
"Then you"d be a blackmailer, too. I"d sooner scrub floors, I"d sooner starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first place, I"d have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn"t help me any. Where do you get such ideas? Decent people don"t have them."
Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the ident.i.ty of a sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing. Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as completely to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed with bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such reproaches, holding her own in the pa.s.sionate quarrels that occasionally took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when her resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her hands. Janet reached out and touched her.
"Don"t be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was a disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is."
"I"m not silly," said Lise. "I"m sick of that job at the Bagatelle"--sob--"there"s nothing in it--I"m going to quit--I wish to G.o.d I was dead! Standing on your feet all day till you"re wore out for six dollars a week--what"s there in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the floor never lettin" up on you. He come up to me yesterday and says, "I didn"t know you was near sighted, Miss b.u.mpus" just because there was a customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait on"--sob--"That"s his line of dope--thinks he"s sarcastic--and he"s sweet on Annie.
Tomorrow I"m going to tell him to go to h.e.l.l. I"m through I"m sick of it, I tell you"--sob--"I"d rather be dead than slave like that for six dollars."
"Where are you going?" asked Janet.
"I don"t know--I don"t care. What"s the difference? any place"d be better than this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high, though subdued, whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A feeling of helplessness, of utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to comfort herself, how could she comfort her sister? She glanced around the familiar, sordid room, at the magazine pages against the faded wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the littered bed, over which Lise"s clothes were flung. It was hot and close even now, in summer it would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to her a glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty and freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her, terrified by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she, Janet, was powerless to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness.
What would become of Lise? And what would become of her, Janet?... So she clung, desperately, to her sister"s hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and perspiration.
"I can"t stand it any more--I"ve just got to go away anywhere," she said, and the cry found an echo in Janet"s heart....
But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill....
The fact that Lise"s love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was understood by Lise"s friends and Lise"s family, though not by the gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, t.i.tle, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in the social scale--being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street.
"Stick to him and you"ll wear diamonds--that"s what he tries to put across," was Lise"s comment on Mr. Frear"s method, and thus Janet gained the impression that her sister"s feelings were not deeply involved. "If I thought he"d make good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But say, he"s one of those ginks that"s always tryin" to beat the bank. He"s never done a day"s work in his life. Last year he was pa.s.sing around Foley"s magazine, and before that he was with the race track that went out of business because the ministers got nutty over it. Well, he may win out," she added reflectively, "those guys sometimes do put the game on the blink. He sure is a good spender when the orders come in, with a line of talk to make you holler for mercy."