CHAPTER XVI
Who does not find the intermission tedious after the tragic second act? The curtain has lowered between you and knowledge of what the end of the play is to be. Over the auditorium side of the footlights the indirect glow from dome and gallery flares. You straighten and turn to your friends. You see them brush the damp from their eye-lashes; hear them clear the husk from their voices; appreciate that they, as well as you, are groping back to reality. But you resent your friends; resent yourself; resent reality. It is a poor exchange for the make-believe whose artistry has humbled a thousand egos into a unit—an audience.
Because so essentially temporary, the intermission is a strain. And if to you, how much more to the actors, also waiting behind the scenes, whose ecstasies have brought the great sophisticated house to tears!
The week following Mrs. Cabot’s departure from her Fifth Avenue mansion was one of poignant loneliness for Dolores Trent. Strangely enough, however, she refused such companionship as offered. When good Mrs. Morrison urged that she come down to the cheerful first-floor parlor at tea-time or in the evenings, she plead the necessity of brushing-up on the languages upon which she depended for her next position. So almost painful to one of her yielding habits were her frequent refusals to see Dr. Shayle that she left a standing “Not-at-home” with those who answered the door and telephone.
With none to give her orders, she looked for things to do and tried to the full of her gentle authority to maintain discipline in the establishment, as when the Cabots were at home. That, so far as she knew at the time, was madame’s chief reason for leaving her in charge. Tactfully she submitted suggestions for increased orderliness to the housekeeper. She instructed the yard-man according to her own ideas of the winter needs of the trees and shrubs under his charge. A stable-boy, suspected of mistreating his master’s mount, she brought to confession and a quixotic zeal to make amends.
But chiefly she waited. Impatient of interruption from those who wished to be her friends, of the warm, indirect lighting shafted over her by the Cabot millions, of the comfort of reality, she merely endured the intermission. Her imagination strained toward what would be revealed when the curtain rose again.
The Airedale terrier, that now was not to know the joys of owning his own “boy,” she made her particular charge. Although she had resented him from first sight, she came to take a vicarious pride in his up-bringing and points. Through Jack’s eyes she watched his development out of puppyhood into promising young dogship; daily brushed the harsh tan coat over which the outlines of a black saddle already were forming; noted with interest that, although scarcely two months old, his eyes were turning black; attended his diet herself, lest his canine voracity weaken the bones of his front legs, now straight as two gun-barrels. In time she felt for him a comradeship even greater than Jack’s would have been. Was he not in the same, culpable position which had saddened her youth? Had not another died for him?
She did not realize how much his demonstrative preference for her company had gained upon her until one night when awakened from her early sleep by the ache of loneliness. She decided to join him in Jack’s living room where he was allowed to dream his puppy dreams curled up on the foot-stool that stood as of yore before the lame little autocrat’s arm-chair. Slipping a warm robe over her nightgown and loose long hair, she tip-toed in mules along the balcony and into the suite of so many memories. Scarcely had she closed the door when the puppy rose to receive her. Although he stood a picture of preparedness in the center of the room, instinctively posing after the traditions of his A. K. C. ancestry when on hunt or show-bench, the waggle of his short, flagstaff tail and certain quivers of his stiff chin whiskers assured her that he was delighted she had come.
And Dolores returned his greeting with more than usual cordiality. She rubbed the level of his back with her foot and stooped to scratch the section of forehead between the small, V-shaped ears when he kissed effusively her bare ankles.
She straightened; for a moment stood listening. The room was very quiet—so much quieter than usual. She glanced at the grandfather’s clock which had ticked through so many generations of Cabots. The living John had tinkered it to outlast the life of his heir and it had made good his boast. Reproachfully Dolores eyed the “calm” face which Jack had approved. Indeed, a clock needed to be “calm-faced,” when its office was ticking lives away.
The hour hand was close to eleven. But then, the hour didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Jack was gone. With the thought, she turned toward the closed bedroom door. Impossible—almost too impossible for belief it seemed that he was not sleeping within. Comparing to-night with other nights when she had crept in to assure herself that his sleep was sound, the past seemed real, the now the unreality. Surely he would be hunched up beneath his eider-down and satin just as usual.
Moved by her longings, the girl continued across the living-room; opened, then closed behind her the bedroom door and stopped beside the bed. Its absolute flatness, the neat roll of the comforter between its foot-posts, the prim set of the pillows at its head—all filled her with realization keen as actual disappointment. She bunched up the pillows, threw herself upon them and shook out the comforter over her. With a sob, she tried to clasp to her heart the delusion that a twisted little shape lay within her arms.
Before she fell asleep she realized that the puppy had followed her into the room. He had hidden under the bed, evidently, until eased of fear over his temerity. Her resistance of the whimpers with which he soon grew emboldened kept her awake for a time. What was he—stupid, brute atom—that he presumed to offer comfort for her human loss? And had not he himself deprived her? Quite roughly she pushed away his exaggeratedly shivering body and repulsed his suggestion that he, too, was lonely. Let him continue to hide from her sight—let him die of his loneliness!
And yet—— In those little-girl days of long ago, had she died, willing though she might have been to offer that apology for her existence? What would she have done if the father whom she had deprived had not been merciful to her?
A damp nose in her down-stretched palm emphasized the question. She should remember that the creature wasn’t hers to mistreat. Jack would want his dog given the benefit of every doubt. She picked up the recent bundle of canine pathos—now one of exuberant joy—and permitted him to wriggle down upon the coverlet.
A sound louder than his dream barks, then a movement more definite than the twitching of the four feet co-ordinating with the speed at which he imagined himself running, awakened her. Against the slivers of light which outlined the door-frame, she saw that the puppy was standing at attention—hind legs thrust well back, bristles stiff, nose close to the sill. She sat up and shook herself wider awake. Someone had entered the sitting-room and made a light.
She would better announce her presence inside than have the dog bark the announcement for her. With the idea of returning to her own chamber, she gathered her dressing-gown close around her and opened the door.
There she stood absolutely still. Everything seemed to halt with her feet—the beat of her heart, all capability to move or speak, even any sense of surprise.
Powerless as she felt looked John Cabot.
He was sitting in Jack’s arm-chair, beside the lamp; was looking at her. The parts of Jack’s broken, pace-setting toy were spread out on the table. In both hands he clutched the torn magazine in which the boy had drawn a circle around the dog of his choice. He was pale and gaunt.
From the look of him, he must have imagined her a vision. And she made no move to undeceive him. He was convinced of the reality of the moment by the puppy. Holding aside the frisking beast, he straightened and forced himself to speak.
“You mustn’t stay here, Dolores.”
His words, his frown, his harsh tone—all stabbed into the wound of her solitariness as she had not been stabbed when alone. She could not manage an answer, except to cross to the hall door. Then, just as her hand turned the knob——
“For God’s sake, don’t leave me—don’t go!” At her distressed hesitation, he added a jumble of words. “There is something I’ve been wanting to say to you—to offer—about your future. Forgive me if I seem abrupt or rude. I feel the strain of—of recent events. It might help to talk with someone who understands. Won’t you stay—a little while?”
Dolores felt more hurt than when he had spoken first, but hurt for him. Knowing the steel control of the man, she wondered at his mood. She returned into the room and stood before him, one thought clear in her mind. So this, then, was what she had been awaiting all along—this need for companionship of John Cabot?
Usually so punctilious about the courtesies, he remained seated, his knuckles whitening in his grip of the crumpled magazine. That he now avoided looking at her filled her with the equivocal sensations of hope and fear which had unsteadied her that night of the dinner. But she tried not to feel for herself. She wanted all she was to feel for him. She saw that he was making an effort to get himself in hand and wished that she might help him. Yet she hesitated to speak lest she sound some discordant note.
“I thought it was only Jack I was lonely for—that sitting in his room, among his things—— But I was deluding myself. I know that now. The sight of you—— Well, it has not calmed me.”
All too brief a glance he lifted to her startled eyes.
“If I seem strange or—or incoherent—— Dolores, you never could imagine such loneliness as I’ve been suffering. Every night since I moved to the club, I’ve been obsessed with the desire to come here. I knew I shouldn’t trust myself. Last night I tramped the street until five in the morning to wear out the wish. But to-night it came back stronger than before. It has half crazed me—has worn me out. I—I am run down, I guess. I feel like the last half-second of an eight-day clock.”
At his simile, the girl glanced toward the corner. The hour hand of the tall old time-piece was exactly where it had been, close to eleven. She realized why the silence had seemed so intense when she first had entered the room. Shocked, she leaned closer to John Cabot.
“Jack’s clock,” she murmured. “I wound it only yesterday. It has stopped.”
As he, too, turned and looked, his face reflected her superstitious tone. The quiet increased. Everything in their world seemed to have stopped.
The young Airedale broke the pause. With a whine and one paw he importuned the master’s lax-hanging hand. John pushed him away.
“I owe you worse than nothing, puppy. I meant that Jack should be considerate of you, but not that he should die for you.”
The dog appeared to understand; at least, raised his head and howled dismally.
To hush his weird lament, Dolores sank down upon the hassock which never more would rest a pair of shrunken legs; dragged the wretched alien out from under the chair; stroked and patted him.
“He didn’t intend that Jack should die for him,” she interceded. “He didn’t intend anything—any more than I intended that my mother should die for me. I try not to hate him. I am sure Jack would know and be distressed if I did. He’s just a foolish puppy.”
“‘And what is folly, but a riotous expenditure of will?’” muttered John. His hand sought the head of the dog for the importuned caress, but spasmodically clasped around Dolores’. He leaned toward her, although with eyes turned away, as he continued to quote: “‘There are to will and to have your will. There are your social ideas, your immoderate desires, your excesses, your pleasures that end in death, your sorrows that quicken the pace of life. For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure.’”
Then he looked at her. His eyes, dark and brilliant through a surface film, asked her consideration. Never had she seen such misery. She had thought it could only be felt in the heart.
“Do you believe that?” he demanded. “Is the pain that is wrecking me only a form of pleasure?”
Dolores doubted her voice, but she forced it. It sounded unsteady as her thoughts. “I wish I knew what to say. I—I cannot endure to see you so unhappy. I wish I knew——”
“There is no heartbreak except deliberate sin. That I keep telling myself,” he interrupted. “If I am true to Jack’s trust, true to myself, true to you——”
His hand slid to her wrist; hesitated there.
“But with the best I can do I am breaking. Everything has combined to weaken my resistance. Jack, who was your protector, died and immediately after him the canary. To-night the clock that has not missed a minute for three generations of us—even the old clock gives up.”
“Do you remember what Jack said,” Dolores reminded, “that nothing is wasted? Maybe——”
“Don’t start me on that train of thought,” he objected harshly. “It maddens me. If Jack and his restraining influence were to die—if we were to meet here to-night—if time for us was to stop——”
He clutched her other arm and passed both hands to her shoulders. One remained there. The other continued around her neck; forced her face to lift to his; clung to her throat. The pulse of his fingers beat against the pulse just under her chin.
“Look at me, Dolores. Keep me seeing the surprise in your eyes. Do you realize that you have only your inexperience to protect you?”
She was glad to obey. She looked and looked. And as she looked, she saw her heaven—at last her home. Something lifted that for long had lain a dead-weight on her heart, a question that now wafted like a fragrance from her lips.
“You care—for me?”
“Dolores....”
“You have longed for me as I have longed for you?”
“Didn’t you know from the first? I tell you to implore you—don’t trust me. I am no longer strong, Dolores. Against my will, against Jack’s faith—— Life, position, integrity—everything is a trifle to me except the need to know—— Dolores, will you try to understand? Won’t you forgive and pity me? I am terrified for you. You must be stronger than I.”
She did not appear to have heard him.
“You love me, then. You love me.”
Over and over again the answer to her question gave sweet form to her lips. Her head fell back. Her eyes pursued his.
The young Airedale, convinced at last that he was unwelcome, emerged from under the chair, gave them a reproachful look, then trotted out of the room. His exit seemed to impress John anew with their aloneness. He drew up and away from her.
“Remember,” he warned, “that hopelessness is a dangerous state. So long as I had hope I was strong. Now that I am hopeless—hopeless——”
It was then that he told her of his interview with Catherine. Knowing his wife as most did not, he could not hope to change her private and particular reasons for refusing to free him. As Clarke Shayle had said, Catherine could not be “reached.” He had promised Jack to help Dolores toward a safe future. He was glad of to-night’s opportunity to learn what she wished that future to be.
But the girl no longer was restrained by his restraint. Now that she understood, she had no thought of herself except as it might concern him. And why consider the future in preference to the here and now? Why lower her eyes from that first sight of home and heaven?
The admiration and pity which she felt in her mind for him blended into a yearning desire voluntarily to satisfy the demands spoken only in the glaze of his eyes, in the pallor of his face, in the stiff set of his lips.
“Maybe you would be comforted,” she ventured, “to know how much I——”
Although he shrank farther back, his fingers, still pressed against her throat, conducted the tremor that passed through him.
“I’d give my soul to hear you say it. Surely you know that? And yet I must not hear—I dare not hear. Don’t trust me. Don’t try me.”
“Does love try love?” Her eyes widened incredulously. “Isn’t love a question, incomplete unless answered? You say that you care as I do—that you have cared all along. You would not tell me if it were not true. You ask me by loving me. Let me answer. You want to hear me! Don’t you—don’t you, John?”
She shook back the loosened hair from her face that he might see while he heard the truth. She had thought him pale; now all color left the lips pressed against his teeth. His hands tightened on her, but to hold her away. Before to-night she would have been silenced by this continence. But now that she knew—— Everything was different now.
“Don’t repulse me as you did the dog, John. I deserve your pity more than he. Don’t remind me that since birth my presence has brought death.”
“Death, Dolores? I never guessed what life could be until I saw you.”
“Why, then, make me feel that you regard me as a curse?”
“Dear, I am blessed to have known you.”
Her appeal for herself gentled him as those for him could not do. In his palms he cupped the oval of her cheeks; for long looked into her eyes. Stiffly, as if compelled against their inclination by his will, his lips moved.
“So fragrant and pure is the soul of you, but fragile as the rose that Jack destroyed. You must not be wasted on me.
“But he said, John, that nothing is ever really wasted, not even the tears of dew on a rose. They have only their day—roses. And hearts have only their day. Why not enjoy them the more for their little life? Tell me again and read your answer in my happiness. Is it true—true that you love me?”
His eyes closed that he might not read; then opened at once lest he fail.
“I love you with a crave that terrifies me—only less, I hope, than my honor—with a will to protect you from what you do not understand—from myself and yourself——”
“Protect love against itself?” Her incredulity silenced him. “If my heart is a rose that you wish to pluck, John, take it, crush it, sift its petals through your fingers. If it brings you a moment’s pleasure, it will not have been wasted.”
His hands recoiled from her face as if from a danger.
But Dolores lifted her arms and laid them around his neck. She felt no false shame before him. She knew now.
“Take me, John, and crush me. Waste me, since you call love a waste. I am satisfied to be the rose of your day—to give off my fragrance for you.”
He could not have shaken her off had he tried, so overwhelming was her wish to give him that for which he would not ask. He sat perfectly still, looking down into her eyes, listening to what she said. His breath came harder when she lifted to her knees on the hassock and leaned against him.
“Jack told you to see that I was happy. I cannot be so while you are unhappy, John. Think of me and take me in your arms. Let me feel that I belong to you—that at last I belong.”
“That first day I saw you, Dolores——” His white lips again moved in words. “Two visible creatures seemed to be born of our meeting. The best of me went out to you—my love. The best of you appealed to me—your innocence. Help me to see them plainly as on that day. Remind me of your inexperience. Don’t urge yourself upon me. For the sake of your innocence and my love, loose me and leave me.”
But confusing sensations dulled the girl to his prayer—sensations of vehement rebellion, of incompleteness within sweet proximity of all, of a vast sadness and vaster joy. She shook with the shudder that shook him. Her hands drew his head to a resting place where the robe had fallen from her breast. She felt him relax in her arms; realized that his lips had touched, then drawn away from hers, as if offended by the contact.
“God help me.... More than my honor.”
She scarcely heard his words, so low were they rasped. The next moment he spoke plainly, although in a hoarse, hurried voice.
“Who do you suppose made the law that I am trying to obey? To be born with passions like mine, to hold them in leash all my life because of the righteous hope my mother taught me of this moment and you, then to try to convince myself that it is all a lie for which I have lived—that love is less than law—— If God Almighty made it——”
“No. Man must have made that law,” the girl interrupted. “Don’t you feel, John, that love is right? I don’t know God, but I know you. Can’t you believe that way in me?”
“Dolores!” With worshipful reproach, he gave her the vow she asked. “With my mind, my heart, my body I believe in you. I always shall believe.”
Wonderingly he looked at her lips; saw on them for the first time a smile. Timidly yet bravely, it rewarded and further tempted him.
“Then kiss me. Then love me,” she panted. “Oh, I want so to kiss you—to love you. I didn’t know how much until——”
A strand of her hair fell across the smiling lips—across temptation. Although so tenuous and soft, it was a barrier between him and that from which he had plead to be saved. His hand shook from his hurry to brush it aside. The more greedily for its interference, his lips lowered to those lips that were tempting him; sank to them; found the complete answer they had sought in vain to speak.
Dolores’ body was lifted into an embrace which would have been cruel, except for her desperate response. Her long hair drifted about them, a curtain from the light. Increasingly she felt that new sense of incompleteness, that weight of sadness and lightness of joy. Shaking from the violence aroused by her yearnings, she yet clung as if to gentleness.
“How strange I feel,” she breathed.
“You are my mate, Dolores.”
Again: “I did not know—did not understand that love was like this.”
And again he reassured her: “You are my mate.”
“But is this what they felt for me, those other men? I hated them for it. I blamed them.”
“No.” He deprived her lips of his that his eyes might blaze the indignant denial into her eyes. “Their passion was lust. Yours is the fragrance of the rose—the pollen of your love. Do not fear that I could misunderstand.”
“Fear? If God made the rose, why fear?” she half-sobbed. “If it is not lust for you to love me, give me back your lips. Oh, kiss me, John. Oh, love me. I belong.”